Yeah, the Bushites have made sure it won’t happen again. From Talking Points Memo:

A week ago it was reported that Justice Department lawyers had concluded at the time that the DeLay redistricting plan of 2003 violated the Voting Right Act, but that senior DOJ officials overruled that finding and okayed DeLay’s plan anyway. Justice Department officials have now instituted a policy to assure this never happens again. They have, as reported in today’s Post, “barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics.” It’s the Bush model: politics over expertise and/or law. Whether it’s at the Pentagon, the CIA, Justice or the EPA hardly matters. The formula is consistent throughout.

Quoted in its entirety, due to brilliance:

The Central Front In The War On Facts The usual antiwar suspects have been up in arms for well over a week over the military’s planting of covert propaganda in Iraqi newspapers, caterwauling about the undermining of a fundamental tenet of Iraqi democracy. As always, their concerns are wildly misplaced. First, shouldn’t a pretend democracy have a pretend free press? Second, most of these pieces weren’t factually inaccurate, but mere “spin” – such as the article that spun an Iraqi general’s death under torture as death under not-torture. Third, propaganda is merely a weapon. America’s leaders would be foolhardy indeed to refuse a weapon in their arsenal, especially against an adversary as deadly as the truth. While it may not be the ideal of journalism in a free society, is this planted, pro-military propaganda so different from the anti-military truthaganda published every day in the New York Times? While military propaganda shows a bias towards distortion, obfuscation, and outright lies in the service of the war effort, the baleful face of the Mainstream Media shows a clear bias towards reporting reality – and reality has always been America’s greatest enemy in Iraq. Along with facts on the ground and the ugly truth, cold hard reality has persistently undermined America’s efforts in the war on terror. Were it not for reality, America would already have destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-powered robo-mummy factories while uniting Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd in common love of their American liberators. Malicious facts, however, have conspired to turn Iraq into a bloody war zone racked by insurgent violence and sectarian bloodshed, and the war itself into an unwinnable quagmire built on a transparent fraud. Even now, reality is working to tarnish America’s reputation by exposing its routine torture of military prisoners, in defiance of the stated policies of the Bush administration. This pattern of obstruction and interference can leave no doubt: reality isn’t merely misguided or ill-informed. It’s on the other side. Is it any wonder the American military is fighting back by deploying strategic anti-truth operatives to counteract malicious, terrorist facts? Unfortunately, it may be too little, too late. What of those who assist the truth in its sabotage of US interests? By acting as independent journalists, American reporters are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, if not actively engaged in a terrorist conspiracy. Why is Dana Priest allowed to freely roam the streets? Shouldn’t Seymour Hersh be detained for questioning? Aren’t the offices of the Washington Post little more than a terrorist training camp? And while a certain willingness to take out these enemy bases is more than welcome, eventually the United States must take the fight directly to the enemy, with airstrikes and commando raids on logic, regime change in mathematics, and missions to hunt down the laws of physics wherever they may hide. Until we are confident that nothing we see or hear is real, victory may be impossible.

Fafblog Interviews Condi, sort of:

RICE: First of all, we don’t send prisoners off to be tortured, Fafnir. We just transport prisoners to countries where torture happens to be legal and where they happen to end up getting tortured. FB: Well that explains everything then! It’s all just a wacky misunderstanding, like that episode a Three’s Company where Jack sends Janet off to Uzbekistan to get boiled alive by the secret police. RICE: I’d also like to point out that whenever we send a prisoner to a country that routinely tortures prisoners, that country promises us NOT to torture them. FB: And then they get tortured anyway! RICE: Yes, they do! It’s very strange. FB: Over and over again, every time! That’s gotta be so frustrating. RICE: Oh it is, it is. FB: So the first time you kidnap a prisoner an send him to Saudi Arabia you’re like “don’t torture this guy” an they’re all “we totally won’t” an then they go an torture him an you’re all “ooh Saudi Arabia I told you not to torture him!” an they’re all “oh we’re sorry, we promise next time” an then you go “well you better” an you send em the next guy an they torture him too an you go “oh man Saudi Arabia you did it AGAIN!” RICE: The president believes in the value of patience, Fafnir. He’s not going to let a few dozen innocent torture victims come between him and his favorite third-world dictators. FB: See after the first coupla hundred times that happened I woulda registered a complaint with customer service. RICE: But the real point is that these accidental torture missions are vital to the war on terror. Remember that these aren’t just prisoners. These are known Muslims with names very similar to suspected associates of other Muslims. FB: They’re just the sorta key players that could lead us to Hosama bin Blaben and Musad al Zarcotti! RICE: Exactly. And by subjecting these high-profile non-targets to not-torture in nonexistent secret prisons, you can bet we’ll stop a lot of pretend terror.

From New York Magazine, via TPM:

Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity. Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said. […] In his Friday speech, Clinton blasted the Bush administration’s opposition as “flat wrong.” But the speech almost didn’t happen. The contretemps started late Thursday afternoon, when the Associated Press ran a story saying that Clinton had been added at the last minute to the gathering’s speaking schedule at the request of conference organizers. According to the source, barely minutes after the news leaked, conference organizers called Clinton aides and told them that Bush-administration officials were displeased. “The organizers said the Bush people were threatening to pull out of the deal,” the source said. After some deliberation between Clinton and his aides, Clinton decided he wouldn’t speak, added the source: “President Clinton immediately said, ‘There’s no way that I’m gonna let petty politics get in the way of the deal. So I’m not gonna come.’ That’s the message [the Clinton people] sent back to the organizers.” But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.'” Several hours went by, and at the Clinton Foundation’s holiday party on Thursday night, the former president and his aides still thought they weren’t going to Montreal. “The staff that was supposed to go with him had canceled their travel plans,” the source said. At around 8:30 p.m., organizers called Clinton aides and said that they’d successfully called the bluff of Bush officials, adding that Bush’s aides had backed off and indicated that Clinton’s appearance wouldn’t in fact have adverse diplomatic consequences.

Richard Pryor, 1940 – 2005.

The EFF is suing the North Carolina Board of Elections over the latter’s extralegal certification of Diebold’s voting machines.

The PATRIOT Act may be renewed with no actual reforms. Great.

Update: Maybe not; Feingold may filibuster.

It’s like they think nobody’s paying attention. In this AP story about AG-for-Torture Gonzales defending the Texas redistricting decision, we find this quote from some DoJ spokesdrone:

“All decisions made by the Justice Department involve thoughtful rigorous analysis of the law,” said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos. “There is no place for politics in this process and to suggest otherwise is unfortunate and just plain wrong.”

Sure, Tasia. And in any minute, monkeys are gonna fly out of my ass.

They’re trying to defend their illegal certification of the Diebold election-stealing machines.

The North Carolina board of elections has certified Diebold’s equipment for use despite their failure to follow a judge’s ruling that they must follow state law and allow their system to be completely examined by outside observers.

A 2003 memo from Justice Department lawyers concluded that Tom DeLay’s redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act, but senior officials (read: Bush partisans) overruled them and imposed a gag order on their findings. The Washington Post has the story, but it’s also all over the blogosphere.

Excerpt:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan. The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections. “The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect,” the memo concluded. The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options. But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress. J. Gerald “Gerry” Hebert, one of the lawyers representing Texas Democrats who are challenging the redistricting in court, said of the Justice Department’s action: “We always felt that the process . . . wouldn’t be corrupt, but it was. . . . The staff didn’t see this as a close call or a mixed bag or anything like that. This should have been a very clear-cut case.” . . . The 73-page memo, dated Dec. 12, 2003, has been kept under tight wraps for two years. Lawyers who worked on the case were subjected to an unusual gag rule. The memo was provided to The Post by a person connected to the case who is critical of the adopted redistricting map. Such recommendation memos, while not binding, historically carry great weight within the Justice Department.