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by Imaginatrix (forward)
Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 at 11:51 AM
imaginatrixx@yahoo.com
Rhenquists training as voter intimidator.
errorJUST OUR BILL by Dennis Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Saturday, December 02, 2000
Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix. "He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic,"said Pena. The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how long they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote. By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were givingup and going home. Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed. Arizona politics can be raw. Finally, Pena said, the guy raised a fist as if he wasfixing to throw a punch. "I said 'If that's what you want, I'll get someone to take you out of here' " Party leaders told him not to get physical, but this was the second straight election in which Republicans had sent out people to intellectually rough up the voters. The project even had a name: Operation Eagle Eye. Pena had a group of 20 iron workers holed up in a motel nearby. He dispatched one who grabbed Bill and hustled him out of the school. "He was pushing him across a yard and backed him into the school building," Pena remembered. Others in Phoenix remember Operation Eagle Eye, too. Charlie Stevens, then the head of the local Young Republicans, said he got a phone call from the same lawyer Pena remembered throwing out of Bethune School. The guy wanted to know why Charlie hadn't joined Operation Eagle Eye. "I think they called them flying squads," Stevens said. "It was perfectly legal. The law at the time was that you had to be able to read English and interpret what youread." But he didn't like the idea and he told Bill this. "My parents were immigrants," Stevens said. They'd settled in Cleveland, Ohio, a pair of Greeks driven out of Turkey who arrived in the United States with broken English and a desire to be American. After their son went to law school and settled in Phoenix, he even Americanized the name. Charlie Tsoukalas became Charlie Stevens. "I didn't think it was proper to challenge my dad or my mother to interpret the Constitution," Stevens said. "Even people who are born here have trouble interpreting the Constitution. Lawyers have trouble interpreting it." The guy told Stevens that if he felt that way about it, then he could take a pass.There was nothing illegal goingon there, Stevens said. "It just violated my principles. I had a poor family. I grew up in the projects in Cleveland, Ohio." Operation Eagle Eye had a two-year run. Eventually, Arizona changed the laws that had allowed the kind of challenges that had devolved into bullying. Pena went on to serve 30 years in the Arizona State Legislature. Stevens became a prosperous and well-regarded lawyer in Phoenix and helped Sandra Day O'Connor get her start in law. The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, presided yesterday over a case that centers on whether every vote for president was properly recorded in thestate of Florida. In his confirmation hearings for the court in 1971, Rehnquist denied personally intimidating voters and gave the explanation that he might have been called to polling places on Election Day to arbitrate disputes over voter qualifications. Fifteen years later, three more witnesses, including a deputy U.S. attorney, told of being called to polling places and having angry voters point to Rehnquist as their tormentor. His defenders suggested it was a case of mistaken identity. Now, with the presidency in the balance, Rehnquist has been asked to read passages of the Constitution and interpret them. Once again, a reading and interpretation will determine whose vote gets to count.
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by JFK
Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 at 12:28 PM
SENCE JFK'S ASSAINATION,PEOPLE HAVE GROVELED BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN JAUGGERNAUT IT TRULEY IS SAD TO SEE AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT ELECTED BY FACIST TRICKS AND VIOLENECE IE: DEMANDING 2 OR THREE PIECES OF ID WHEN STATE LAW REQUIRES 1,MISS INFORMING VOTERS WITH PUBLISHED (STATE SANCTIFIED) EXAMPLES OF BALLOTS THAT REQUIRED A VOTE ON EVER PAGE WHEN THE SELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENT REQUIRED TWO PAGES,REFUSING BLACK VOTERS BALLOTS SAYING THEY WERE OUT WHILE CONTINUING TO DISTRIBUTE THEM TO OTHERS,POLICE ROAD BLOCKS AND HARRASSMENT OF DEMOCRATIC LOOKING VOTERS,A BALLOT B0X WAS EVEN FOUND IN A HOTEL AFTER THE ELLECTION..........TELLING VOTERS THEY COULD NOT VOTE BECAUSE THEY WERE FELLONS WHEN IN FACT THIS INFORMATION WAS NOT TRUE......... IS THIS A TWO PARTY SYSTEM? NOPE, BUT IT IS A SYSTEMATICAL AND ILLEGAL FORM OF STATIST CONTROLL WITH THE MEDIA UNRESPONSIVE.... CHECK OUT JESSIE JACSONS SPEACH FROM 12/13!!!!!! DEMOCRATIC UNITY!!!!!!
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by Mr. Fair
Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 at 12:49 PM
If you can't spell, you shouldn't be able to vote.
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by Fairer than thou
Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 at 1:09 PM
if you can't spell -- you can't be president!
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by john
Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 at 1:28 PM
well, that disqualifies some of the white people *I* know.
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by Guglielmo Marconi
Saturday, Dec. 16, 2000 at 7:28 AM
Perhaps a compulsory national spelling bee could be organized, and only sigma 2 or above would be allowed to vote.
This would considerably simplify the vote counting process, as there would be about 50,000 voters left in the United States.
Come to think of it, we could dignify this elitism with some good conservative buzzword like Reverse Affirmative Action, and apply RAA everywhere. You wouldn't be allowed to use the Internet unless you could program in Perl. End of server overloads.
Soon this would be just the kind of country the Religious Right wants it to be, and they could go back to bake sales. Think how quiet it will be.
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