Wednesday, September 29, 2004

The Things You Learn on Air America

They had Greg Palast* on Morning Sedition this morning. This is the British journalist on whose investigations Michael Moore based much of Fahrenheit 9/11. He had a fascinating tidbit to share.

Do you remember those 95,000 voters who weren't allowed to vote in Florida in 2000 because they were on a list of felons who legally aren't allowed to vote (and then it turned out 90% of them were on the list in error and were NOT felons, but just happned to mostly be African American?). Then do you remember how this year they tried to do the same thing with something like 45,000 new voters but the press caught wind and voter's rights organizations raised hell, and they backed off? Well, guess what happened to those original 95k voters from 2000? Their voting priveleges were court-ordered to be re-instated after the NAACP sued following the election, but apparently there wasn't a timeframe on that court order. So far ONLY 4,000 have been taken off the list - which will be used again this year.

At this rate, they'll be lucky if they are all re-instated by 2012.

*Seriously, you should check out his blog/website. His most recent entry relates a candid interview with Dan Rather from 2002 wherein Rather got really blunt about the sad, pathetic state of American journalism following 9/11. It's pretty prophetic of the recent shit he's been catching regarding the TANG/Bush documentation fiasco.

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