ATLANTA (AP) - The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday approved rules governing Georgia's new photo IDs for voters, clearing the way for the State Election Board to decide whether to require them for the July 18 primary.
The rules establish what kinds of documents must be presented to obtain one of the free IDs, as well as where and when they will be distributed. Critics of the law - which mandates that all voters present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot - are expected to respond by seeking an injunction to block the law.
The Republican-backed law was passed in 2005, but a federal judge blocked enforcement, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax. The state Legislature amended the law early this year to make the IDs free of charge.
Under rules the Election Board adopted last week by a 3-1 vote, anyone needing a voter ID card must provide one or more documents showing date of birth, evidence of being registered to vote, and proof of name and address. Student ID cards, nursing home cards, a pilot's license, a birth certificate, a utility bill and a bank statement are among items on the long list of acceptable forms of ID.
Not strict enough, but it's a start.
Election Board members said last week that once they received approval from Washington they would decide whether the law could be implemented for the primary. A special meeting of the board has been called for Thursday.
Board members Tex McIver and Randy Evans said they hoped to begin issuing the IDs soon for the July primary. However, McIver had said earlier Wednesday that it was unlikely the state could mount an effective voter education effort before then.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/29/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
bout time. In my opinion, this is the biggest threat to our freedom that we have ever faced. Voting prevents fighting. If the votes don't matter - eventually fighting will ensue.
#2
Rantburgers, I need your help. The Georgia voting ID post is a good place for me to talk about my dilemma: a friend of mine is running for Congress in GA-6, and he's playing for the other team.
A little background, he's a friend through sports and a mutual love of radio. He's an old-time "radio guy" who's deejayed at many, many radio stations over the last 30 years or so, and he's got that great "radio guy" voice. I always liked chatting with him about the bizness and politix of radio, the real inside-baseball stuff.
A few years ago he and his brother ended up in NYC, helping to found...Air America. Gah! He got downsized out of that fine organization about eighteen months ago, ended up in Atlanta, and decided that the only way he could get back to DC (where he did most of his deejaying) was by running for Congress.
Mind you, he has told me face to face that "Bush knew" about 9/11 and all the rest.
Now I'm getting emails from his campaign, asking for money and a vote in some "Democracy for America" poll. I have no intention of assistinghim in any way, but I wonder if I have any responsibility to actively work against him. And I admit I'm a little sad, 'cos I want all my friends to be happy and successful, but he's a straight-up nutroots guy and I don't want him writing my laws.
#3
Sea - that's quite a delimma. Take it from someone who knows - nobody is all good or all bad. You don't have a responsibility to actively campaign against him but you don't want him writing your laws. My humble advice is that you do exactly what you are doing now - be honest when asked about him but don't feel that his defeat is your own personal responsibility and don't actively campaign against him unless it is something that you feel you need to do.
#4
You don't live or vote in GA-6 so why take this any more seriously than any of the other 434 races? Let the people of GA-6 choose the Rep they want. I doubt it'll be a nutrooter. New friends are to hard to cultivate.
If he is a threat to the safety and security of the United States, he is no longer a friend.
Were someone beloved to me (even my youngest brother) to spout such crap as the nut-roots people do and try to position himself in a place where he would have power to directly affect policy, then I would feel morally obligated to prevent that - and that includes quietly and clandestinely handing over all the dirty laundry on him to his opponent if that is what it takes.
I've already had that split with a cousin back east who was running for state house there over abortion and taxes and welfare and imigration and gay marriage (she's a laundry list nutroots liberal). And I didnt tell the pro-life opponent any particular facts, just where to start digging for interesting things about her. Enough pressure came to get her to back out of the caucuses.
#7
I wish I had some of his dirty laundry, but I really don't. He's a good guy. Though I never dated him, some of my friends did, and they still blush when we talk about him. He's (I think) at least a second amendment guy as he maintains his status as a deputy marshal in a Georgia police dept.
#8
Seafarious---your so-called friend will exploit your friendship to further his ends. You must have a solid basis for a friendship. I wonder if sports and radio are a strong enough basis. Good friends are ones that would give their lives for you, and vice versa. I had a few like that. The rest are chaff. Let the wind take them. [/Dr. Laura moment]
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/29/2006 11:11 Comments ||
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#9
Sea - if you decided to run for congress as a conservative Republican, I'm sure your friend would do free voiceovers for ads, right? No? well then.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/29/2006 11:27 Comments ||
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#10
Invite him out to Maggiano's in Buckhead and have a nice meal and some vino. Don't let politics get in the way of a good friendship.
#11
normally I'd agree, Beso - but considering that he's buying into 911 conspiracies and wants to be a lawmaker - it seems like more is at stake here.
I'd say keep doing what you are doing. Tell everyone what a great guy he is ... except for ....then tell them the crazy things he has done. That is dirty laundry and if he doesn't come clean with it the public does have a right to know. Unless he is a total fraud and slickster, he shouldn't mind you advertising his point of view.
That said, remember that just simply witholding your approval does carry weight.
#12
He got downsized out of that fine organization about eighteen months ago, ended up in Atlanta, and decided that the only way he could get back to DC (where he did most of his deejaying) was by running for Congress.
Charming though he no doubt is, and separate from his politics, the man is a Carpetbagger. And a recent one at that. What odds the Atlantans will choose him over a local boy/girl more likely to actual know about their cares and concerns?
Seafarious, you can certainly politely decline to support his campaign either with money or otherwise, on the principle of not getting involved in politics where you can't vote. If you want, send him a personal note mentioning that it's always good when people get involved in politics, hope that he didn't throw his hat in too soon after the move, and leave it at that. Possibly even express the confidence that the will of the people will prevail. If anyone asks you, you can tell them he came to Atlanta after his Air America venture failed -- you needn't express your opinion of that august institution -- people will understand his positions from that, and your position is none of their business. If any of his blushing ex-girlfriends ask, say you sent him a personal note when you found out he was running (if you choose to do so), and possibly express concern that this move so soon after he arrived might be seen by the locals as carpetbagging...
The only time I went to Greece, we shared a ferry ride and subsequently three days of beach house rental with some college kids -- two cousins and the girlfriend. Some years later, we got a letter from one of the cousins, now a young actor in New York City, asking us for money for a very-off Broadway play he'd written and wanted to produce. It's only prudent for such people to try to hit up everyone they've ever met, even just for cocktails the one time, in case they might turn out to be helpful. And generally the recipient of such attentions gives more weight to it that the supplient.
Do you think the gentleman in question has a real shot of winning? Or is he essentially indulging himself by putting his name forward -- in which case your action or inaction will have no significant impact? What odds that his opponents don't know that he was involved in Air America? If you feel truly uncomfortable that he is even in the race, send an anonymous note to his opponent mentioning the Air America thingy -- as Oldspook says, "just where to start digging." More than that shouldn't be necessary.
#13
It's hard to say how well he is or isn't doing. He's *not* running against Cythia McKinney, but he is the (I think) only Dem running against a GOP incumbent. The incumbent has a GOP challenger, though. He doesn't make a secret of his relationship with Err America.
He's got some good press on DKos, but not by Kos himself, just some of those diaries. He has a picture of himself with Max Cleland, and (I think) an endorsement by Howard Dean.
He may be doing well in the polls, or not. It's hard to tell with the nutroots; they claim they're winning up to Election Day, then they claim the GOP cheated.
Anyway, I appreciate y'alls thoughts while I decide what I need to do next. I may contact "The Radio Equalizer", who did all that nice work with Michelle Malkin on Air America's money issues.
#14
Sea:
Good friends are hard to find. Its important to remember what you are: his friend. Youre not a potential constituent, you dont work for the Republican Party, and youre not a professional pundit. Its kind of difficult to imagine your buddy winning this election in any case. Let me explain where Im coming from. Ive lived in San Francisco for many years. I have a number of close friends whose political views are close to totally insane - but, as lame as it sounds, they arent bad people. Just misinformed, weak, and weirdly provincial in that San Francisco kind of way. Theyre dumb but I love em all the same.
Being pushy about my political views has cost me friendships that Ive come to miss as Ive grown older. If your friend already knows that you have right-leaning beliefs, he will understand when you dont actively support him. Politely remind him if he doesnt. You both like sports and radio? Then talk about that stuff when you get together, not politics. Theres nothing wrong with that, and in the end all youve got in life is friends. Politics isnt everything in life.
Nobody loves a buddyf&cker. John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election partially because of his reputation as one. Dont be one yourself. If you behave like a standup guy your friends will defiantly notice that a Republican has behaved that way. It matters.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The latest design of the skyscraper being built to replace the World Trade Center covers its 20-story concrete base with thousands of glass prisms and tops it with a lighted spire meant to resemble the Statue of Liberty's torch, the lead architect said Wednesday.
Other details of the latest design for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower include landscaped plazas, sweet gum trees on cobblestone plazas and a fountain with a glass base.
Architect David Childs unveiled the new details of the design at a ceremony of the American Institute of Architects inside 7 World Trade Center, the skyscraper Childs also designed that sits across from ground zero.
Construction began this spring on the Freedom Tower, after a redesign more than a year ago to address concerns that it wouldn't be adequately protected from truck bombs. The building was moved several feet back from the street and made smaller, with a footprint the size of one of the twin towers'.
Some derided the windowless base that security officials sought, saying it resembled more of a bunker than an office building. Architects had originally thought that shimmering metal panels would cover the bottom of the building, but they recently decided on 13-foot-high panels that combine triangular glass prisms.
The prisms would create a "wonderful, light, sculptural and I think artistic" effect and make the building appear more open, Childs said.
The glass panels are still being developed.
Security experts have approved of the new panels, which are designed to shatter into tiny particles so they wouldn't cause severe damage, designers said.
Childs said the spire, enclosed in a white fiberglass sheath that a sculptor is helping to create, would make it more visible from a distance and turn it into a landmark similar to the spires on the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.
Daniel Libeskind, the original architect of the Freedom Tower, initially designed the spire to be off-center on a twisting building meant to resemble the Statue of Liberty. The spire was moved to the center and remains there, but the new design calls for a pedestal, housing satellite dishes and antennas, that more closely resembles the statue's torch.
The tree-lined plazas would be on all four sides of the building; one entrance would take an estimated 5 million annual visitors to an observation deck, while another would go straight to restaurant space on the higher floors. Visitors could also enter from an underground concourse that connects to more than a dozen train lines.
With a 50-foot-high lobby and 69 floors of office space, the Freedom Tower is scheduled to open in 2011.
#2
I wonder how many Qurans were destroyed in the first attack. Isn't that offense punishable by eternity in hell or something?
Posted by: grb ||
06/29/2006 1:12 Comments ||
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#3
I don't think much of this whole Freedom Tower thing. I lean more towards the Ghenghis Khan 'pyramid of skulls' kind of memorial. I wondered how many skulls it would take to make a pyramid 1776 feet high (assumed a 45 deg. angle of repose) - if I did the arithmentic correctly, it would take the skulls of 144 billion Islamofascists, and such numbers fortunately do not exist. I had no idea how insignificant the entire human population of the planet is, volumetrically. Oh well, start small and let the pyramid grow.
#6
Sweet gum trees? While native, and stunningly beautiful in the fall (scarlet, star-shaped leaves), they prefer high-moisture situations, and drop masses of prickly seed pods. The new, disease resistant American Elms are a much better idea (Princeton variety, I think), or perhaps Black Maples if they want the leaf shape -- though perhaps the maple's shallow roots aren't such a good idea.
America: 2006. How'd you like this guy for a neighbor?
PETALUMA -- Rat lovers were furious Wednesday that a Petaluma animal shelter had euthanized more than 1,000 of the rodents taken last week from a man who had been hoarding the creatures inside his home. You rat bastards, you killed the rats!
Roger Dier, 67, was cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty last week after animal control officers found hordes of squealing rats inside his dingy one-bedroom house in Petaluma. Nancee Tavares, the city's Animal Services manager, had promised to find homes for as many rats as possible but admitted Wednesday that some 1,020 of them had to be put down. A RAT needs a home? Oh, sign me up...
"We euthanized all of the adults except the ones we have to keep on quarantine because they bit staff," she said. "They weren't social. I would call them feral. We found many with eyeballs missing, teeth growing into the opposite jaw, huge abscesses with open wounds. Some were starving." Sounds like a fun week at Petaluma Animal Services...
Rat fanciers, who had formed an e-mail chain called "petalumarats" in an attempt to find homes for the rodents, were horrified. The shelter was bombarded Wednesday with angry phone calls and e-mails. Most members of the rat lobby felt they had been misled. Oh, my! The rat lobby has been misled!
"This is an unspeakable injustice to those rats who deserved better," Phyllis Mason, a self-described rat lover, wrote in an e-mail. ...rats who deserved better. Like...what, you friggin lunatic?
"Why didn't the Petaluma Animal Shelter give us a chance to help? I cannot imagine that all of those rats were ill. It seems to me that they felt overwhelmed and just didn't want to bother with them." Or maybe because...THEY WERE FUCKIN RATS!!!
Tina Bird, of Campbell, said the rat community was in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed. The rat community was in the process of mobilizing. I wonder what that looks like? I might pay to see it.
"Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving," she wrote in an e-mail. "Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma's actions and culpability for this slaughter." Petaluma's like Guantanamo... for rats!
Nine of the remaining rats have been adopted, four are available at the Rohnert Park animal shelter and 30 more are being taken to Los Angeles to be put up for adoption by the Rat and Mouse Club of America, Tavares said. The Rat and Mouse Club of America? I've led a very sheltered life...
She said another 20 are being neutered and all the females are being held for 21 days so veterinarians can determine whether they are pregnant. So we can, what? Save the baby rats? We can't do baby rat abortions? Are we denying the rats the right to choose?
In all, about 150 rats are either available or will be available for adoption. Rats are also commonly available in pet stores around the Bay Area. Now why doesn't that surprise me?
Tavares said that potential adoptees who come to the shelter must be carefully screened. She said a woman who adopted rabbits from the shelter a year ago turned out to be a pet hoarder. "We're not going to give them to another home that is just as bad," she said. "Our philosophy is not that any life is preferable to death. Quality of life counts." Do the Democrats know about this? They could make Rat Quality of Life part of their platform.
The rat fanciers, she said, are not being rational."Everybody's saying you can't euthanize them and they all say they want to help, but very few can take any," she said. "We're not enjoying this, but frankly there aren't enough homes." Turn them loose at the UN...
Meanwhile, Tavares said, animal control officers went back to Dier's home Wednesday to capture about two dozen more rats that were reportedly still scampering around his house. Send in the Rat Squad. We missed a couple.
She said Dier, a convicted armed robber who first gained notoriety when his home in Southern California was used as a hideout for two men later convicted in the 1963 plot to kidnap the son and namesake of Rat Pack leader Frank Sinatra, didn't seem like a bad guy, just a bit troubled. Yeah, not a bad guy for a convicted armed robber who lived with a thousand rats. Just a bit troubled...
"He's an intelligent man to talk to, but he smells like rat urine," Tavares said. "He told me that when he had only 100 of them he'd let them sleep with him in his bed. They'd get all in his shorts and stuff. And you can't potty train them, so you know they were urinating and defecating in there." Helpful hint for the next time? Just set the house on fire.
Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people across the Northeast. Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges, and cut off villages in some of the worst flooding in the region in decades, with more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week.
Wilkes-Barre, a city of 43,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania coal-mining country, was devastated by deadly flooding in 1972 from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes. It is protected by levees, and officials said the Susquehanna was expected to crest just a few feet from the tops of the 41-foot floodwalls. But Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid said officials were worried about the effects of water pressing against the levees for 48 hours. The floodwalls were completed just three years ago. "It is honestly precautionary," Vonderheid said. "We have great faith the levees are going to hold."
An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people in the county of about 351,000 were told to get out by nightfall. The evacuation order applied to more than half the residents of Wilkes-Barre, as well residents of several outlying towns, all of them flooded by Agnes more than three decades ago. Mayor Tom Leighton said about 10,000 people had left their homes by late Wednesday. Police and National Guard troops were patrolling the streets in the evacuated area and were under orders to arrest anyone who violated a 9 p.m. curfew.
Two words: Johnstown Flood.
PA Rantburgers, hope you stay dry and let us know if we can help.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/29/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
"PA Rantburgers, hope you stay dry and let us know if we can help."
We need beer. Urgently.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/29/2006 6:24 Comments ||
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#2
We need beer. Urgently.
Swim, baby, swim. I'm hoarding my beer.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/29/2006 7:43 Comments ||
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Damn, was at Indiantown Military Reservation for summer camp training at that time. Those little blue dots on the maps marking intermit streams where actually chest high raging waters. Tough orienteering course. Same chest high water in the firing pits on the rifle range.
#10
Wxjames, we actually didn't get all that much down here, except for last night. From last weekend through most of this week, all the heavy stuff went scooting along just west of us.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/29/2006 11:27 Comments ||
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#11
Thanks, AP. Right now the beer situation seems to have stabilized; what we need most here now are chips, T.P. and condoms.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/29/2006 11:28 Comments ||
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#12
Talked to relatives in Kutztown and Monacacy. Only wet basements in Kutztown but at my aunt's place along the Schuylkill R. it has risen enough that it is at the 5 foot mark in her basement. She has her go bag ready - During the Agnes excitment she got evac'd off her roof by the USCG.
Lotp - have the fam check on The Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville. If that goes - well, there just won't be any point in going on . . .
#13
Lotp - have the fam check on The Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville. If that goes - well, there just won't be any point in going on . . .
Funny story...my boss' boss is from Pittsburgh. Now here in Atlanta. Anyways, I got my first taste of Yuengling last year when we travelled together. And, guess where we had it....Miami Beach of all places. Talk about your small worlds.
Posted by: BA ||
06/29/2006 12:38 Comments ||
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#14
The emergency is over in Wilkes-Barre. When Pennsylvania builds a levee, it's permanent, not some mushy Nawlins levee that washes away. Connections to the occupied territory of New Jersey are also being restored.
#15
As a former Upper Bucks guy, and as someone who lived outside of WB for a year shortly after Agnes (heard the stories while still fresh), I will give props to PA levy building skills (as well as local brewing skills. I was also impressed that people actually evacuated instead of ordering another "hurricane ina comemorative cup". Good Job, Brownie!
However, being 550 ft above sea level as opposed to 6 feet under makes comparisons to NOLA apples to seafood.
Also, to poster who referenced the Johnstown flood, it was a seriously whack flood that came sideways, and was as much human caused as nature driven.
#16
Dave D.---Chips, TP, and Rascal Wrappers coming your way on a pallet. We have a backhaul on one of our carriers we deal with and it will arrive tonight at the airport. Airbill coming your way with the particulars. Heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/29/2006 16:07 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people across the Northeast. Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges, and cut off villages in some of the worst flooding in the region in decades, with more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week.
