Jury selection begins today in the trial of Lori Drew, indicted by federal prosecutors for using false information to create a MySpace account. Yes, that’s right: she’s not charged (pdf) with “cyber-bullying” or harassment or even causing the death of Megan Meier, the teen who committed suicide after she received mean messages from the accounted that Drew created. (Drew’s daughter, among others, had access to the account, too, and are believed to have sent the messages in question.) Lori Drew faces years in jail, under a federal anti-hacking statute, because …
Campaign finance warrior James Bopp, who has been involved in numerous fights to protect First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and political activity, is the lead lawyer in two new lawsuits filed against the McCain-Feingold law – the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (“BCRA”). Bopp won a significant victory last year in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, 127 S.Ct. 2652 (2007), when he convinced the Supreme Court to declare that sections of BCRA were unconstitutional as applied where they prohibited a pro-life organization from running issues …
On Wednesday morning it was 725; on Wednesday night it was 477; on Thursday night it was down to 336; by Friday it was 239; Sunday it was 221; and by today it was down to only 204. Are we talking about the Dow Jones falling on Wall Street? No, we are talking about the incredible shrinking margin of Sen. Norm Coleman’s victory over Al Franken. There is no question that there are usually some slight changes in the vote totals in counties throughout a state as election officials check …
The Volokh Conspiracy‘s Todd Zywicki flags this video from an ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia. This one television station identified more than 100,000 people who were registered to vote in both Georgia and also either Ohio or Florida. Despite the fact that this report aired before election day and involved only three cities, the station already identified three people that appear to have voted twice, and another 11 that could have. Zywicki comments: One really key concern that this story suggests is the potential for fraud among college students. Because …
I have previously posted about the failure of the Justice Department and its Civil Rights Division to enforce the Help America Vote Act against the Wisconsin election board and the Ohio Secretary of State over their failure to verify the accuracy of voter registration forms. Today’s question is why is the Department not enforcing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act against the State of Virginia? The McCain Campaign has been forced to file suit under UOCAVA because of the failure of Virginia counties like Arlington to send out …
For all of those who argue that fraudulent voter registrations, like registration forms with false addresses, don’t lead to voter fraud, the Election Journal report on an Obama field organizer in North Carolina who is registered in three states and has voted in two. Farah Minwalla is apparently registered to vote in North Carolina, New York, and Nevada. According to Election Journal, Ms. Minwalla registered and voted in the Nevada Caucus (through same day registration); two weeks later, she voted in the New York Presidential primary. Election Journal also reports …
According to federal election law, any presidential campaign that participates in public financing is automatically audited after an election. When Barack Obama broke his promise to the American people by forgoing the public financing system, his campaign became the first since public financing became law to have a chance of not being audited. Federal law does still allow the Federal Election Commission to audit a presidential campaign that doesn’t participate in public financing, but at least four of the six FEC commissioners must first vote to pursue an investigation “for …
It must really be tough to be a public affairs guy at the Department of Justice who has to explain why the Civil Rights Division is not carrying out its enforcement responsibilities. I have posted previously about the failure of the Civil Rights Division to enforce the Help America Vote Act against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has refused to forward information about mismatches between the information contained on new voter registration forms and other state records to county election officials (they have also failed to sue the …
Heritage Senior Legal Fellow and former Barack Obama student Robert Alt weighs in on the just unearthed 2001 Barack Obama “redistribution of wealth” radio interview. As with most of Obama’s public comments, his remarks in the interview were measured. In discussion of the high court’s liberal heyday under Chief Justice Earl Warren, for example, he said, “The court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in the society.” As a former student of Obama’s at the University of Chicago, …
All this month Congress has been holding hearings supposedly looking into the causes of the financial crisis. As Heritage fellow Brian Walsh explains, the hearings have been less about identifying causes, and more about finding villians: As in past economic crises, some criminal conduct associated with the subprime market has already been unearthed. More is likely to surface as investigations proceed. But to date there is precious little evidence that criminal conduct actually caused the meltdown. As in previous market-wide crises, including the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, …
