McHenry EXPOSED back up and running

Little Mr. Whiney Boy's empty legal threats couldn't keep 'em down. McHenry EXPOSED is back up and running.

Last week, the host was intimidated but McHenry has no influence in Sweden. According to McHenry EXPOSED

It will be our goal to investigate rumors and allegations and to only report on them once we have adequate evidence (tangible or intangible) to make our case. We will strive to establish adequate evidence, enough to present a case in court with the confidence of winning our case.

War Made Easy: McHenry's little role

Over at the Atlantic Free Press, Norman Solomon is posting exerpts from a new documentary film based on his book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

Patrick McHenry has a minor role in the section on the spin surrounding cutting and running:

NORMAN SOLOMON: And many propaganda lines become stock and trade of those who started the war in the first place.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of “cut and run.”

REP. J.D. HAYWORTH: The American people will not stand for surrender.

REP. JEAN SCHMIDT: Cowards cut and run.

REP. PATRICK McHENRY: They're advocating a policy called “cut and run.”

KARL ROVE: That party's old pattern of cutting and running.

REP. CHARLIE NORWOOD: If we high-tailed it and cut and run --

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We won’t cut and run.

Cut and run.

Cut and run.

We will not cut and run.

Cut and run.

ANDERSON COOPER: Cut and run. Cut and run. How do you respond?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We will stay the course.

We must stay the course.

We stay the course.

We will stay the course.

And we're not going to cut and run, if I’m in the Oval Office.

NORMAN SOLOMON: All a president has to do is start a war, and these arguments kick in that you can't stop it. So it's a real incentive for a president to lie, to deceive, to manipulate sufficiently to get the war started. And then they've got a long way to go without any sort of substantive challenge that says, hey, this war has to end.

Aren't we all so happy to be "represented in Congress by such an insipid tool of an administration bent on killing and lying about why?

McHenry violates Constitution by mandating religion on coins

There's so much happening right now. The Attorney General using politics to hire and fire. Immigration issues on the front burner. Should the president get a blank check to continue the unpopular war in Iraq that he lied to the American people to support in the first place? But what is Patrick McHenry up to? He's all set to violate our constitution by foisting (co-sponsoring) his version of religion on the rest of us. The method: HR 2510 which will mandate that the words "In God We Trust" appear on the face, not just the edge of every coin.

Jim at Irregular Times wrote:

While our nation sets a new record debt every day, while Americans kill and are killed in Iraq, while New Orleans still stands littered with debris from Hurricane Katrina, while Americans go bankrupt because they can’t afford medical care, Virgil Goode and 88 other members of the House of Representatives are getting busy. Unfortunately, they’re not getting busy solving these problems. They’re getting busy using the machinery of government to impose religious mandates.

Fellow North Carolinians Walter Jones and Sue Myrick join 85 other Republicans in wasting our time and violating the Constitution.

These members of Congress have not only missed their lessons about the Constitution, which prohibits the use of government to establish religion. They’ve also wasted their time solving non-existent problems with coin edges and missed a chance to address actual problems facing the nation.

Aren't you glad they're saving us from the terror of having our national motto appear on the edge of a coin, instead of the face? I feel like all those other problems will just fade away now that we've got the coin thing settled.

Back to paper ballots?

Pokey Anderson has spent years studying electronic voting and arrived at these findings:

Even if a person could check hundreds of thousands of lines of software code and find hidden malicious code,

and even if software could be written bug-free,
and even if the hardware works properly and interfaces perfectly with the software and peripherals,
and even if the binary and source code match identically,
and even if each electronic voting machine were physically guarded every minute to prevent insertion of malicious code (including by insider vendors or subcontractors or election personnel or anyone with a key including the janitor),
and even if every software change has been clean and legitimate,
and even if unexamined ballot definition files are accurate and trustworthy,
and even if there were reasonable ways to make sure that the software previously checked is now the software running on each machine on the morning of election day
. . .

chinks in the voting system armor could allow intrusion DURING voting day and during tabulation.

Here's her conclusion:

Of course, if everything about an election computer system were disclosed and vetted from head to toe, it would be safer. But, given what’s at stake -- the reward for stealing an election could amount to control of a jurisdiction, or even the entire US treasury -- the threat level is quite high. The quality of software for elections to date has been unreliable and has not inspired confidence. And, experts admit that the task of protecting elections without some sort of paper ballot records is near impossible.

One of the experts for RABA spoke of the vulnerabilities of the Diebold DREs, which at the time had already been used statewide in Georgia:

William Arbaugh: “There’s no security that’s going to be 100 percent effective. But the level of effort was pretty low. A high school kid could do this. Right now, the bar is maybe 8th grade. You want to raise the bar to a well-funded adversary.”

Raise the bar? Tell ya what. Instead of shaking their secrets out of private election companies one by one, and exposing their insecure election systems mistake by mistake, let’s get elections that can be overseen by average citizens.

Poll workers and citizens shouldn’t have to know about rootkits and encryption keys and buffer overflows to protect our votes from wholesale theft with a few keystrokes. And, attaching printers or doing audits after the fact seem like a weak overlay onto a shaky, vulnerable electronic system. Sort of like putting leather seats into a car that doesn’t run. Or maybe, more in keeping with gambling our democracy, it’s like hanging a new pair of dice over the mirror of the junk car.

An election should be observable from start to finish, with human eyes unmediated by “help” from software. And human eyes should be able to tell if it’s honest. Get it right on election night. Send everybody home convinced of the final result.

Computers can’t do that. Paper ballots can.

[Full disclosure: Ms. Anderson is Mr. DQ's stepsister.]

County officer training offered June 2

As previously reported at district meetings, in emails, in conversations, and everywhere else, our Western County Party Leader training day is this coming Saturday, June 2, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Morganton.

You must pre-register by email to attend. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Please remember that space is limited to 100 and there are 33 Western counties.

To register, send me an email including name, address, phone number, and email address (to mhufford at ncdp dot org ). I will send a reply confirming your registration and providing directions. County party officers may register their entire delegation if they wish. A separate, specific training for Party Treasurers is provided by the NC Board of Elections (click here) and scroll down for the training schedule).

This training will be well worth your time and the time of your party officers or leaders. It will include best practices from Western counties, presentations by several state party staff, and presentations by the top three state party officers.

Holding a training of this magnitude in the West is a precedent-setting event, so let's give those who are traveling West an overwhelming Western greeting.

The best defense . . .

A few days ago the editorial page of the Gaston Gazette ran an odd piece about Gaston County D.A. Locke Bell's indictment of McHenry's campaign worker for voter fraud. Withholding comment on the matter, they wrote, "The real issue is how much of... public opinion relies on thoughtful contemplation of a case that has yet to fully unfold. And as it does unfold, we’ll have more to say."

Well folks, the unfolding has begun. Today the Gazette printed four letters, presumably representing the full range of opinion in the responses they've received so far. Here are representative excerpts frome each:

1) "I’m sad to see that one of those campaign workers is being targeted by prosecutors for some kind of voter law violation."

2) "I don’t think there is anything to these charges brought against this former campaign worker."

3) "Locke Bell needs to re-examine his priorities in a major way."

4) "Gaston County does not need its own Mike Nifong."

It's unanimous! Patrick McHenry's man is above reproach and D.A. Locke Bell is a scum-sucking bottom feeder! (By the way, only one of the writers above is from McHenry's district -- but they're all in Bell's.)

Looks like the McHenry machinery is mounting a counterattack on their fellow Republican for having the audacity to follow the law -- starting with a letter-to-the-editor campaign in the prosecutor's home county. Is that classic Patrick or what?

(P.S.: Letters to the Gaston Gazette need the writer's signature, address, and daytime phone number, must be 300 words or less, and can be mailed to PO Box 1538, Gastonia NC 28053, or faxed to 704-867-5751, or emailed to gastongazette@link.freedom.com)

McHenry watchdog site removed from internet

McHenry EXPOSED, a McHenry watchdog site Pat Go Bye Bye just partnered with this week was shut down at 3 p.m. this afternoon by the host.

Click here to see the server's message.

We received this email from the site administrator:

In an apparent attempt to silence the message of Patrick McHenry Exposed, our website was disabled today around 3:00pm EST. This effort was undertaken by our host provider, AlphaOne Tech (aka 4Gays Hosting). While no further information is available at this time, we do know that someone contacted the host and made them aware of the site. This person’s complaint was that the information contained on the website was false, misleading and potentially in violation of corporate libel and slander laws. The hosting company is not providing any further details and acted only to protect their own interests - they are not the enemy.

But not to worry, Congressman:

[The site administrator is] currently working with an ally out of the country to arrange for hosting. . . . The new website will have a totally different look - not sporting the McHenry for Congress theme... at the request of my own attorney. Once back online, the United States Government will not be able to remove the site, outside of petitioning Sweden to do so (the site of our new server).

Be sure to check out this take on the situation from McHenry EXPOSED partner Interstate Q.

Crossposted at BlueNC and Scru Hoo.