Shaima Jastaina sentenced to 10 lashes after being found guilty of driving without permission A Saudi woman has been sentenced to be lashed 10 times with a whip for defying the kingdom’s prohibition on female drivers. It is the first time a legal punishment has been handed down for a violation of the longtime ban in the ultraconservative Muslim nation. Police usually stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo. The sentence comes two days after King Abdullah promised to protect women’s rights and decreed women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015. Abdullah also promised to appoint women to the all-male shura council advisory body. The mixed signals highlight the challenge for Abdullah, known as a reformer, in pushing gently for change without antagonising the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population. Abdullah said he had the backing of the official clerical council. But activists saw Tuesday’s sentencing as a retaliation from the hardline Saudi religious establishment that controls the courts and oversees the intrusive religious police. “Our king doesn’t deserve that,” said Sohila Zein el-Abydeen, a prominent female member of the governmental National Society for Human Rights. She burst into tears in a phone interview and said: “The verdict is shocking to me, but we were expecting this kind of reaction.” The driver, Shaima Jastaina, who is in her 30s, was found guilty of driving without permission, activist Samar Badawi said. The punishment is usually carried out within a month. It was not possible to reach Jastaina, but Badawi, in touch with Jastaina’s family, said she had appealed against the verdict. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women – both Saudi and foreign – from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 (£190 to £255) a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor. There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins. Activists say the religious justification is irrelevant. “How come women get flogged for driving, while the maximum penalty for a traffic violation is a fine, not lashes?” Zein el-Abydeen said. “Even the prophet [Muhammad's] wives were riding camels and horses because these were the only means of transportation.” Since June, dozens of women have led a campaign to try to break the taboo and impose a new status quo. The campaign’s founder, Manal al-Sherif, who posted a video of herself driving on Facebook, was detained for more than 10 days. She was released after signing a pledge not to drive or speak to media. Since then, women have been appearing in the streets driving their cars once or twice a week. Until Tuesday, none had been sentenced by the courts. But recently, several women have been summoned for questioning by the prosecutor general and referred to trial. Najalaa al-Harriri, a housewife, drove twice, not out of defiance, but out of need, she said. “I don’t have a driver. I needed to drop my son off at school and pick up my daughter from work.” “The day the king gave his speech, I was sitting at the prosecutor’s office and was asked why I needed to drive, how many times I drove and where,” she said. She is to stand trial in a month. After the king’s announcement about voting rights for women, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al Sheik blessed the move and said: “It’s for women’s good.” Al-Harriri, who is one of the founders of a women’s rights campaign called My Right My Dignity, said: “It is strange that I was questioned at a time the mufti himself blessed the king’s move.” Asked if the sentencing would stop women from driving, Maha al-Qahtani, another female activist, said: “This is our right, whether they like it or not.” Saudi Arabia Middle East Women Gender Feminism Equality guardian.co.uk
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Former Metropolitan police commissioner to head party’s ‘independent review’ into the future of policing in Britain Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, is to chair Labour’s “independent review” into the future of policing, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is to announce. The appointment is a boost for the credibility of the review, which risks being seen as a Labour party operation. Stevens is reported to have been courted by David Cameron to run as the Tory candidate for London mayor in 2006 and has in the past advocated the return of the death penalty. Cooper will tell the Labour conference on Wednesday that the review is to “bring some coherence and vision to the ideologically motivated, chaotic and piecemeal approach to police reform undertaken by this government.” Kathleen O’Toole, a former Boston police commissioner, and Tim Brain, the former Gloucestershire chief constable and an expert on police finance, are also to serve on the review. Although the timetable has yet to be decided it is expected to report before Labour draws up its next general election manifesto. The review follows repeated calls from the main police organisations for a royal commission to examine the fundamental purposes of policing in Britain. Both Sir Hugh Orde of the Association of Chief Police Officers and Paul McKeever, the chairman of the Police Federation, renewed their calls at a Labour fringe meeting yesterday and observed that when the last had reported in 1961 it was before the advent of colour television. McKeever revealed the home secretary, Theresa May, had refused to meet them since she addressed their annual conference in May. The federation warned her that the cuts would lead to riots on the streets and demanded to know how she slept at night. Cooper is to tell the conference that the time had come to set up a heavyweight independent review: “The government has refused to do so. So we will.” She says the inquiry would work with the police and take evidence from experts at home and abroad and look at how policing needs to change to respond to the crime challenges of the 21st century. “It will be led by someone who started as a beat officer in Tottenham and rose to be commissioner of the Metropolitan police. I am grateful to the much respected Lord John Stevens for agreeing to chair this important independent review.” Stevens has presided over several major inquiries since he retired as Met Commissioner in 2005 including into collusion between the British army and loyalist terrorists, into the death of Princess Diana and allegations of corruption in football. Stevens was appointed by Gordon Brown as his adviser on international security issues in 2007 as part of his policy of bringing non-Labour outsiders into Whitehall. The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, is also to announce that a Labour government would introduce a “victim’s law” along the lines advocated by the victims’ commissioner, Louise Casey, to honour the rights of families of homicide victims. “We are committed to delivering effective justice, and treating victims with respect and dignity, supporting victims through all stages of the process, including the deeply traumatic experience of when a case reaches court,” says Khan. Police Labour Metropolitan police Yvette Cooper Alan Travis Sandra Laville guardian.co.uk
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By Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press — A defense lawyer told an Italian court Tuesday that Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of killing her roommate, isn’t a manipulating, sex-obsessed “femme fatale” as her accusers charge, but is rather like Jessica Rabbit – just drawn that way. In closing arguments before an appeals court, lawyer Giulia Bongiorno compared Knox to the cartoon character, contending that Knox had been unfairly portrayed over the course of the media-hyped, four-year case. She said the 24-year-old American is instead a loving young woman who simply displayed immaturity and naivete at the time of the 2007 slaying. Knox was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student in Perugia, and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian who was Knox’s boyfriend at the time of the crime, was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years. They both deny wrongdoing and have appealed their 2009 convictions. A verdict in the appeals case is expected in early October. On Tuesday, Bongiorno likened Knox to the voluptuous character in the “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” film. “Jessica Rabbit looks like a man-eater, but she is a faithful and loving woman,” Bongiorno said. Paraphrasing a famous line from the movie, Bongiorno said Knox “is not bad, she’s just drawn that way.” Bongiorno is Sollecito’s lawyer, but, with the fates of the two defendants intertwined, she discussed Knox’s role in the case at length. By the media as well as in court, Knox has either been described either as a manipulative “she-devil” or as an innocent girl caught in a judicial inferno in a foreign land. Bongiorno said she was really an immature girl who had just started dating Sollecito. “One should not mistake tenderness for sexual obsession,” Bongiorno said, adding the two liked making faces at each other. “How do you reconcile that with the ‘Venus in Furs’ image?” – another reference Bongiorno threw in to a literary character who enslaved her lover. Bongiorno told reporters after the session that she had given a copy of the book – a 19th-century Austrian novella – to Knox, who reads avidly in prison, according to her family and supporters. Kercher, 21, was stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with Knox, in what prosecutors say had begun like a sexual assault. Knox and Sollecito insist they spent the night at his house the night of the murder, watching a movie, smoking pot and having sex. The movie they said they were watching, “Amelie,” led Bongiorno in the original trial to compare Knox to the title character, an innocent girl intent on doing good. Bongiorno also looked at DNA evidence linking her client to the crime, most notably an alleged trace on the bra clasp of the victim. Prosecutors maintain that Sollecito’s DNA was on the clasp of Kercher’s bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim’s genetic profile. They also say Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and Kercher’s DNA was found on the blade. A court-ordered review of evidence, carried out by independent experts, said much of that evidence was unreliable. It highlighted the risk of contamination, especially on the clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder. The review significantly weakened the prosecution case, giving the defendants hope that they might be freed after four years behind bars. Speaking of the clasp, Bongiorno said “that piece of evidence must be considered unusable.” Also convicted in separate proceedings was Rudy Hermann Guede from Ivory Coast. Italy’s highest criminal court has upheld Guede’s conviction and his 16-year prison sentence. Guede also denies wrongdoing.
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Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Bill O’Reilly Plays Nice On NPR About Obama, But Calls Press ‘A Bunch of Guttersnipes’
September 27, 2011 No Comment
Everyone was well-behaved when Fox's Bill O'Reilly came on NPR's Morning Edition Tuesday to promote his new book Killing Lincoln. NPR anchor Steve Inskeep was no hardball-throwing Terry Gross , and O'Reilly was wearing his pox-on-both-houses centrist hat and tried to say nice things about Obama. He denounced the media as a “bunch of guttersnipes,” but when Inskeep nudged him about whether he was also guilty of slamming people, O'Reilly insisted “I'm trying to do the right thing.” This sounded odd after all the NPR-Fox News crossfire in the wake of NPR firing Juan Williams over an interview on O'Reilly's show. But by far, the oddest part came when Inskeep tried to suggest our current “broken” politics could lead to another civil war and massive death. Speaking of Lincon's time, he said: “They tried to deal with it. They couldn't deal with it over time, and in the end, it led to a war and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Do you wonder if the political system is breaking now?” Before that, the NPR anchor asked if the press in Lincoln's time might have been a bit overwrought: INSKEEP: What did you think when you went back and read the media in those days, you know, it would say that Lincoln's a dictator, that Grant's a drunk, that General Sherman is insane? Everybody was ripped up at one time or another. O'REILLY: Well, that's what the media is today. The media remarkably hasn't changed since Benjamin Franklin was – written “Poor Richard's Almanac.” The media is a bunch of guttersnipes and, you know, low – what can I tell you? I mean, look. I'm in the media. I've been doing it for 35 years. I know the media as well as anybody in the world knows it. And th ere are always going to be people who try to make money by slamming other people and by, you know, creating all kinds of stuff that doesn't really get us anywhere. INSKEEP: Do you think you add to that sometimes ? O'REILLY: You know, I try not to do it personally. I think that we bring a robust debate to the nation every night. I think we try to stay away from the personal stuff. We try to back up our opinions with facts. So, yeah. I mean, you can accuse me of anything you want, but, you know, I'm trying to do the right thing. INSKEEP: What do you think when you hear people complain about the quality, not just in the media, but of political discourse today, that it's departed from reality, for example? O'REILLY: Well, I mean, if it's departed from reality, then we have to isolate the people who are doing that. President Obama was right in his Arizona speech, that he said, look, you know, you can't enflame to the point where you hate each other. That's not what America is supposed to be. But what can he do? I don't see him, his rhetoric, he doesn't do that. I don't see personal attacks coming from Mr. Obama. But some of his acolytes, they just can't help themselves. And on the other side, there are people who just hate him, and everything he does is bad. And I criticize those people just as much. For his part, George W. Bush felt that the media's “first draft of history” on his time in office was far too angry and overwrought, casting him as a dictator who was far too stupid to earn two Ivy League degrees. Then came the weird new-civil-war stuff: INSKEEP: You're also writing, Bill O'Reilly, about a period in history where I think it's fair to say the political system broke. There was this great issue facing the country. They tried to deal with it. They couldn't deal with it over time, and in the end, it led to a war and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Do you wonder if the political system is breaking now? O'REILLY: Well, I don't think it's breaking. I mean, I think we have a robust two-party system in the United States. We have a media that, while flawed and irresponsible in many levels, does keep an eye on what's going on, and that the people really get both sides of the story and most Americans overwhelmingly love their country. So I don't see any fracture along those lines. I do see that zealotry, probably, is way higher than it should be. Dishonesty in the media is almost at a scandalous level. But there's so much media now, with the PCs and all of that social network. There's so much, that I think Americans, if they really try and they think, they can get the real story. By the end, O'Reilly was almost sunny about everything: “I think Abraham Lincoln would be proud of his country today. He would certainly be proud that it elected a man like Barack Obama of mixed race, certainly Lincoln would be proud of that. And I don't see it as dire as some other people see it. I'm fairly optimistic that if we can get this economic stuff under control, America will make a stunning comeback.”
Continue reading …George Wright, fugitive US hijacker, caught in Portugal after 40 years
September 27, 2011 No Comment
George Wright escaped jail in 1970 after eight years for murder, then hijacked plane to Algeria as part of militant group A 1970s militant who escaped from a murder sentence in New Jersey and carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in US history has been captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive. There was a sudden break in the case only last wek when police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card. George Wright, 68, was arrested on Monday by Portuguese authorities in a town near Lisbon at the request of the US government, said a member of the fugitive task force that had been undertaking a renewed search since 2002. Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of a service station owner in Wall, New Jersey. Authorities said Wright and three associates had already committed multiple armed robberies by 23 November 1962 when he and another man shot and killed Walter Patterson, a decorated second world war veteran and father of two. Wright received a 15- to 30-year sentence and had served eight years when he and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in Leesburg, New Jersey, on 19 August 1970. The FBI said Wright then became affiliated with an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived in a “communal family” with several of its members in Detroit. On 31 July Wright, dressed as a priest and using the alias the Rev L Burgess, hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Miami accompanied by three men, two women and three small children from his group. They included Wright’s companion and their two-year-old daughter, according to Associated Press reports at the time. When the plane landed at the Miami airport the hijackers demanded a $1m ransom to free the 86 people on board. After an FBI agent delivered a 32kg (70lb) satchel of money – wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, as per the hijacker’s instructions – the passengers were released, according to AP. The hijackers then forced the plane to Boston, where an international navigator was taken aboard. The group flew on to Algeria where they sought asylum. They were taken in by Eldridge Cleaver, the American writer and activist, who had been permitted by Algeria’s socialist government to open an office of the Black Panther Movement in that country in 1970 after the Algerian president at the time professed sympathy for what he viewed as worldwide liberation struggles. Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the US at the request of the American government and briefly detained the hijackers before letting them stay. Coverage of the hijackers’ stay in Algeria said their movements were restricted. The Algerian president ignored their calls for asylum and requests to give them back the ransom money. The group eventually made their way to France, where Wright’s associates were tracked down, arrested, tried and convicted in Paris in 1976. France refused to extradite them to the US where they would have faced much longer sentences. According to news reports at the time, the defence hailed the light sentences they were given as “a condemnation of American racism” after the jury found “extenuating circumstances” in their actions, apparently agreeing with the defence’s assertion that the hijacking had been motivated by “racial oppression in the United States”. Wright remained at large and his case was among the top priorities when a New York-New Jersey fugitive task force was formed in 2002, according to Michael Schroeder, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service who worked with New Jersey’s FBI and other agencies on the task force. The US corrections department brought all its old escape cases to the task force, Schroeder said, and investigators started on them afresh. They looked at reports from the 1970s and interviewed Wright’s victims and the pilots of the plane he hijacked. They had age-enhanced sketches made and tried to track down any communication he may have made with family in the US. The address in Portugal was one of several on a list they compiled. But Schroeder said there was nothing about it that made it seem especially promising. “It was another box to get checked, so to speak,” he said. That changed last week when details started falling into place with the help of authorities there. “They have a national ID registry,” Schroeder said. “They pulled that. That confirmed his print matched the prints with the DOC. The sketch matched the picture on his ID card.” By the weekend US authorities were on a plane to Portugal. On Monday Portuguese police staking out the home had found Wright. Schroeder said he has not been told what, if anything, Wright said when he was caught. Wright made an initial court appearance in Portugal on Tuesday, according to US justice department Spokeswoman Laura Sweeney. He was arrested for extradition on the New Jersey murder charge and would serve the remainder of his sentence on that charge if returned to the US. United States guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Several members of the group Veterans for Peace were escorted out of the Old South Meeting House in Boston Monday night after they attempted a citizen’s arrest of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “I went down in front and looked Donald Rumsfeld in the eye and said, ‘I’m making a citizen’s arrest,’” protester Nate Goldschlag told WCVB-TV . “He lied us into Iraq. He lied about weapons of mass destruction. He lied about Saddam Hussein being involved in 9/11.” Three of the protesters removed from the event were with Veterans for Peace and a fourth was a member of Code Pink. One protester was arrested outside the event for allegedly using a bullhorn to assault a police officer. Most of the 300 people who had to buy a copy of Rumsfeld’s book, “Known and Unknown,” to attend the event appeared to be fans. “He’s one of the greatest Americans that has ever lived,” one woman said.
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Last year, Jessica Chastain was a complete unknown. Now she’s in everything – with everyone. She tells Steve Rose about working with Pitt, Pacino, Fiennes, Redgrave … There’s nothing we like better than an overnight success story, but Jessica Chastain ‘s feels just too good to be true. A perfect storm of Chastain movies, swelled by critical adulation, is currently heading for our shores, in what looks like a co-ordinated assault on the awards season. Earlier this year we had a taster, with the release of Terrence Malick’s Cannes-winning The Tree of Life , in which Chastain played Brad Pitt ‘s wife – as auspicious a debut as any actor could hope for. And this week the deluge begins. First there’s The Debt, an espionage drama starring Helen Mirren . Then Chastain teamed up with Sam Worthington in steamy murder mystery Texas Killing Fields . Plus, there’s civil rights Oscar bait The Help , already a hit in the US; the apocalyptic fable Take Shelter , another winner at Cannes; Ralph Fiennes ‘s Coriolanus , relocated to war-torn Bosnia, with Vanessa Redgrave ; The Wettest County in the World, a depression era saga scripted by Nick Cave and starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman ; and Wilde Salomé , the film version of Al Pacino’s theatrical crowd-pleaser. A year ago, Chastain was a complete unknown. Now she’s in danger of saturating the market. In a seedy diner somewhere in LA, there is probably a failed actor wondering who stole all her luck. And the answer could be the sunny, chatty, immaculately turned-out 30-year-old sitting in front of me. Although it’s a drizzly London morning, Chastain looks as if she’s just stepped in from a 1950s garden party: she’s wearing a sleeveless turquoise dress that sets off her red hair. Her feet
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The subpoenas are flying fast and furious in Wisconsin. This time, the story is over the “voter rewards” programs mounted during the recalls. Via JSOnline : Details of the secret investigation are sketchy, but it is clear the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office is investigating charges that Wisconsin Right to Life offered rewards for volunteers who signed up sympathetic voters in the recall races. Several people familiar with the investigation said subpoenas were being distributed “like candy.” Prosecutors had earlier acknowledged that they also were looking into complaints about get-out-the-vote block parties sponsored by a liberal group, Wisconsin Jobs Now . There’s a little false equivalence in this article, at least, that’s how it appears to me. Yes, there are two investigations, but let’s compare and contrast the specific voter rewards programs, which in some cases were a lot like the benefits you get for signing up for a new Visa card at the low, low interest rate of 23 percent per year. Here’s the Wisconsin Right to Life Voter Rewards program: During the recall races, the group had sent an email that described the elections as putting “a pro-family, pro-life state Senate at stake.” It then offered “rewards for volunteers who make an impact over the weekend by educating and encouraging family and friends to vote by absentee ballot.” Those who signed up 15 “pro-life/pro-family voters” by July 5 would get a $25 gift or gas card as a reward. The person signing up the most people in each Senate district would win a $75 gift or gas card. Awesome. Nothing says vote integrity like a $25 gift card. You might also recall this group as the one who sent out the phony absentee ballot notices to registered Democrats so they’d mail in their ballots a day late. Here’s the Wisconsin Jobs Now Voter Rewards program: Landgraf also acknowledged in August that he was looking into a complaint by the state Republican Party and Media Trackers, a conservative advocacy group, over what has been dubbed the BBQ-for-votes scandal. Wisconsin Jobs Now , a coalition of community and labor groups led by the Service Employees International Union , held at least five parties on Milwaukee’s northwest side in which it offered voters free food (including chicken and ribs from Speed Queen), drawings for prizes and free shuttles to Milwaukee City Hall so they could cast absentee ballots in the Darling-Pasch contest. Last month, a spokeswoman for Jobs Now defended the parties, describing them as “a celebration of voting” aimed at making it easier to vote for low-income and minority groups who might face more challenges under the state’s soon-to-begin photo identification law. Hmmm. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see a barbeque and bus in the same light as I do a cash card payoff. Not to worry, though. The Wisconsin Republican Party has hired James Bopp to press Wisconsin Jobs Now on their rewards program while defending their own. James Bopp was one of the architects of the Citizens United legal case. Turning the snark off for a moment, there is a real problem here; indeed, across the nation. Our voting system is being corrupted by Voter ID laws and hackable voting machines. As silly as I think it is to offer voting rewards programs, I also think we have a far deeper and more serious problem. Sending mailers with bogus dates on them is a far more egregious problem than having a barbeque or even handing out payola for voter quotas. I’m not sure how this is all going to turn out, but I hope people start realizing how precious their votes are, and how easily they can be corrupted.
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