The Vatican’s recent snub of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is only the latest salvo in the battle between Pope Benedict XVI and President George W. Bush. This tug of war has profound implications for both U.S. foreign policy and the critical Catholic vote in 2008's presidential race.

Overlapping Agendas

Things haven't always been tense between Bush and Benedict. They share similar views regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button conservative issues. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (as Benedict was known before becoming Pope in April 2005) even helped Bush secure the White House for a second term.

As being reported by the AP press, Jim Webb, Democratic challenger to George "Macaca" Allen, has had his name chopped off or "hacked" off by electronic voting machines!

What is being called a "glitch", three cities in Virginia -- Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville -- will not properly display Jim Webb's name on the November ballot. Voters will only see 'James H. "Jim"' on the ballot, instead of James H. "Jim" Webb.

To make matters worse, the candidates will have "their party affiliations...cut off."

To summarize, in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, Virginia, voters will not be able to recognize Jim Webb by name OR by party affiliation!

So sayeth George Will (h/t Glenn Greenwald):

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

If you've read Congressman Conyers report or Greg Palast's book or Mark Crispin Miller's book or if you had access to the internet in November and December of 2004, or if you follow Brad Blog, then you probably already know the answer to the question in the title of this new Rolling Stone article: Was the 2004 Election Stolen? The author is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his concludion: "Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."

Stolen Election 2004 just won't go away, 'cause Bush's Grand Larceny Democracy is just too large a crime to cover-up... this COULD open the floodgates to state-wide prosecutions of election theft in Ohio...

(newsnet5) BOE Employees Indicted In 2004 Presidential Recount - Women Charged With Disobeying Election Laws Two Cuyahoga County Board of Elections employees were indicted Tuesday on charges stemming from the 2004 presidential election recount. Rosie Grier and Kathleen Dreamer have been indicted on six counts each. The charges include failure to perform duties imposed upon them by law, misconduct of Board of Election employees, knowingly disobeying elections law, unlawfully obtaining possession of ballots/ballot boxes or pollbooks, and unlawfully opening or permitting the opening of a sealed package containing ballots. If convicted, the women could spend up to four years in prison each...

It's shades of Stolen Election 2000 all over again. Back in 2001 it was Inquisitor General AshKKKroft's Justice Dept. that found no wrong doing in Florida, months and months after the Bush Junta was first installed. Now we get the same shite in Stolen Election 2005. Only more blatant!, report says distribution of votings machines favored black voters because of lower turnout in the black community. Gee, wonder if that might have anything to do black voters having to wait in line for hour upon hour to exercise their franchise? Think perhaps thousands were discouraged from voting and left the long lines?

Justice Clears Ohio in Voting Booth Bias
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Department of Justice says it found no evidence of discrimination in the distribution of voting machines in two Ohio counties in the 2004 presidential election. The department began investigating after voters complained of long voting lines and alleged discrimination in Franklin and Knox counties. Investigators wanted to determine if elections officials had intentionally skewed the placement of machines to favor Republicans. The Justice Department said, however, the distribution in Franklin County narrowly favored black voters.

Via the Kucinich forum comes news from the CommonBlog...

An Important Victory: Blackwell Loses in Court
By Barb Burt

You may remember that attorney Cliff Arnebeck, a board member of Common Cause Ohio, was threatened with sanctions for his activism concerning the recount effort and other suits related to the November 2nd, 2004, election in Ohio. We believe that such an action (sanctioning activists for questioning the outcome of an election) would have a chilling effect on others' efforts to raise reasonable doubts about election administration and election validity -- and indeed we believe that was the intent behind the motions for sanctions, which were entered by Attorney General Petro at the official request of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Therefore, we're glad to know that Blackwell's effort failed. In an email today, Cliff sent us the good news that, "Decisions [were] issued today denying the motions for sanctions in the elections contests we filed." Sometimes the good guys win, even in Ohio!

On Inauguration Eve - to prove Bush "really" won this time - Warren Mitofsky published his analysis of why the exit polls that showed Kerry won were "wrong." He offered four hypotheses:

• Distance restrictions from polling places imposed upon the interviewers by election officials at the state and local level.
• Weather conditions, which lowered completion rates at certain polling locations.
• Multiple precincts voting at the same location as the precinct in the exit poll sample.
• Interviewer characteristics, such as age, which were more often related to the errors last year than in past elections.

After reading the 77-page document, Stop_George of Newsclip Autopsy discovered one teensy-tiny flaw with Mitofsky's self-criticism.

Even if all of these factors had been "fixed," Mitofsky's own numbers show KERRY STILL WON!

Our hard-fought victory is winning us respect.

For example, here's today's NY Times:

The election in Ohio, one of the most fiercely contested states, has been seized on by the Green Party, liberal Democrats and advocates of changing the voting system because of its long lines, lack of uniform policies on provisional ballots and the allocation of voting machines.

In many ways, the debate came about because of the relentless efforts of a small group of third-party activists, liberal lawyers, Internet muckrakers and civil rights groups, who have been arguing since Election Day that the Ohio vote was rigged for Mr. Bush.

In the weeks since, those groups have organized rallies and public hearings in Ohio protesting the vote, filed lawsuits contesting Mr. Bush's victory and demanded a statewide recount that resulted in Mr. Bush's margin of victory shrinking by 300 votes, to about 118,450. They also protested in Washington on Thursday.

We won!!!! Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has signed the challenge to Ohio's 20 Electors!!!!!

"I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts surrounding Ohio's election," Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), a leader of the Democratic effort.

You GO, Barbara!!!!!!

At 12:15, Boxer explained her reasons to a packed press conference on Capitol Hill. She especially thanked Rep. Tubbs-Jones for her letter to Boxer, which she called "substantive and compelling." Boxer emphasized her motivation for her challenge:

I was moved by your point that it is impossible to get official House consideration for electoral reform.