How many of you know what caging really is? Here's a multiple choice quiz.
Caging is one of the following:
a) When a baseball player takes batting practice in a batting cage
b) The process of getting a wild animal into a cage
c) A vote suppression technique used by Republicans
If your answer was (c), you're a winner!
In her recent testimony, Monica Goodling casually said that Tim Griffin had been involved in caging. She could casually say it because she had prosecutorial immunity for anything she said. So she wanted to get that out of the way in her opening statement. If she hadn't said it and no one had asked her about it, she still could have been prosecuted for it since vote caging is highly illegal. This doesn't prevent the Republicans from doing it. Tim Griffin, by the way, is the newly appointed US Attorney for Arkansas replacing one of the eight US Attorneys fired by Attorney General Antonio Gonzales. Tim Griffin is also a protege of Karl Rove.
The way vote caging works is as follows. Registered letters labeled "Do Not Forward" are sent to voters in poor black districts or to voters known to be soldiers serving in Iraq. This means that the voter or citizen has to go to the front window of the post office and sign for the letter. Many people are reluctant to do this because they suspect it may be a court summons or a dunning letter or they may not be able to do it because they're serving in Iraq or they may be homeless. So the letter gets sent back. This gives the Republicans grounds for challenging that voter when he or she comes to the polls to vote that they are not legally registered at that address. So the voter must then go home and get a utility bill and come back to the polls and show them that they do live there. In some cases they may be given a provisional ballot. The chances of a provisional ballot being counted are next to nothing. In most cases the voter would simply give up and go home. Thus Republicans suppress likely Democratic votes. Clever, eh?
It turns out (small world, eh) that Tim Griffin was Monica Goodling's former boss at the Republican National Committee (RNC) where he bragged that his shop made the bullets in the war against Democrats.
This Monica revealed something hotter — much hotter — than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One….And the Committee members didn’t even know it.
Goodling testified that Gonzales’ Deputy AG, Paul McNulty, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: McNulty denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin’s “involvement in ‘caging’ voters” in 2004.
Huh?? Tim Griffin? “Caging”???The perplexed committee members hadn’t a clue — and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling. If the members had gotten the clue, and asked the right questions, they would have found “the keys to the kingdom,” they thought they were looking for. They dangled right in front of their perplexed faces.
The keys: the missing emails — and missing link — that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.
Vote caging is illegal under the Federal Voting Rights Act. Oh, but that was passed mainly due to black Democrats. Republicans voted to do away with it. So it is a "Democrat law" which can be ignored by Republicans. Well, who would prosecute them anyway? The US Attorney? That would be Tim Griffin. Oh, he's the very one doing the vote caging. Does this mean he will have to prosecute himself? Fat chance! That is why he shouldn't ever be allowed to become US Attorney for Arkansas in the first place. Instead, he should be in jail for committing an illegal act: vote caging. Now he's being positioned to do more of it in the 2008 election.
Y'all Democrats, listen up y'heah! You want to know what the firing of the US Attorneys was about? It was about positioning people like Tim Griffin to throw the 2008 election(s) to Republicans. Oh, part of Tim Griffin's job was digging up dirt on Al Gore. You don't think that maybe he was placed as US Attorney in Arkansas for the reason of digging up dirt on Hillary Clinton just in time for the 2008 election, do ya? Oh, blimey! Then he would have to prosecute himself again. Has the fox been put in charge of the henhouse? Tim Griffin has done a fine job of suppresssing the votes of poor blacks especially poor black soldiers fighting in Iraq as well as homeless people and others suspicious of registered letters. Why not appoint him to US Attorney? I see no reason at all. He has not only professed loyalty to Bush and Rove. He has demonstrably shown it with his deeds.
Someone's caging lord, kum bay ya.
