Eideard

Federal civil rights officials announced…they have sent election observers to locations in five states to keep an eye out for potential trouble at the polls Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division dispatched 11 staff attorneys along with 85 trained election observers from the Office of Personnel Management to watch activities at the polls and report any irregularities…

In Mississippi, monitors are being dispatched to four counties, as voters go to the polls in a gubernatorial election to replace Haley Barbour, who is term-limited from running again. The campaign features the white Republican Lieutenant Gov. Phil Bryant and African-American Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, a Democrat. Mississippi political observers say Bryant is a strong favorite to win the election…

The Justice Department has also assigned monitors to Lorain County, Ohio, to protect the rights of Spanish-speaking voters. Last month, the federal government signed an agreement with Lorain County to resolve concerns that limited-English Hispanic voters were being denied their full voting rights because the county failed to provide language assistance as required by law.

In Alameda County, California, the U.S. will monitor voting following an agreement between federal officials and the county in July. The agreement requires Alameda County to provide election materials and information in Spanish and Chinese. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said the agreement “ensures that Alameda County’s Spanish- and Chinese-speaking citizens will be able to cast an effective ballot and successfully participate in the electoral process.”

In Jasper, Texas, racial tensions have run high over the recall election for three African-American city council members responsible for the hiring of the city’s first black police chief.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, activists claim minorities were turned away at the polls in the September primary, and said there was no Spanish-language assistance for voters. Hispanic leaders, the NAACP and ACLU had all urged the Justice Department to travel to Springfield to protect voting rights of all minorities.

Republicans around the country continue to mobilize to deny the franchise to citizens on the basis of ethnicity and language. Nothing new about the practice. Nothing less than bigotry is expected – after all – since the so-called Southern Strategy has never been limited to the South. Or to Black folks alone.

Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina Coyne
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The poet, peace campaigner and president of Galway United football club Michael D Higgins is poised to become Ireland’s next president after rivals conceded defeat in the most fractious campaign in the country’s history.

The Irish Labour party candidate was on course to win at least 40% of the first preference vote. Of the first eight constituencies to declare, Higgins was leading in seven of them.

The 70-year-old enjoyed a late surge of support, putting him well ahead of the former frontrunner Seán Gallagher. Martin McGuinness, whose candidacy turned the spotlight on his past as the IRA’s chief of staff and his role in many prominent atrocities during the Troubles, was almost certain to come third.

Leaders of other parties and rival candidates conceded on Friday afternoon that Higgins was on course to win the presidential contest. Micheál Martin, the leader of the main opposition party, Fianna Fáil, congratulated Higgins on his performance “which will see him elected the ninth president of Ireland”…

Sinn Féin appeared to acknowledge the damage that his IRA legacy had inflicted on McGuinness’s bid. He had hoped to achieve about 20% but may only get around 15% – the same as the party polled in February’s general election…

The main party in the current government, Fine Gael, had a disastrous election. In Roscommon, the early morning tallies reported that in some ballot boxes there were only four votes for its candidate, the Euro MEP Gay Mitchell. The party also appeared likely to suffer another loss in the Dublin West byelection, caused by the death of Ireland’s former finance minister Brian Lenihan. The Irish Labour party appeared poised to win the seat.

Bravo. In a land with many political currents represented in a democratic election, Higgins’ victory is significant in size and breadth.

In the hours after the 2008 election of the country’s first African-American president, three white men crept up to a predominantly African-American church being built here in Springfield, Massachusetts, blessed it corruptly with gasoline — and faded into the fresh November night.

Soon the church’s pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., was at the crime scene’s flickering edge, weary, saddened. Moments before, he had been anticipating a new chapter in American history, and now here was one page, stuck. He didn’t need an investigation to tell him this was a racist act of arson. He is a black man with snow in his hair; he knew.

As he watched the new home for the Macedonia Church of God in Christ burn to the ground, Bishop Robinson imagined only one response: Rebuild.

Now, nearly three years later, that election night’s crisp air of possibility has all but faded in Washington, where the first African-American president, Barack Obama, struggles with grinding wars, a broken economy and spirit-killing partisanship. But here in Springfield, the smoke has lifted to reveal a new, 20,000-square-foot church standing on top of an old crime scene, its sanctuary walls painted the color of a clear blue sky.

Resting in one of its pews the other day, a silver cane by his side, Bishop Robinson, 74, said that this building on Tinkham Road reflects the ever-unfolding American story of race, in Washington, Springfield, everywhere. “The hatred in our country,” he said. “And the goodness in our country.”

The election night burning of a New England church became national news…Two months after the fire, three white men in their 20s were charged with burning down the church to express their rage at the thought of a black president. Two pleaded guilty, and the third was convicted after trial, in a case that The Republican newspaper of Springfield described as a “blot on the whole city.”

“Unfortunately, it was a confirmation of my experiences as an African-American,” Bishop Robinson said, adding: “My faith teaches me to forgive, and I forgive them. But I cannot be accepting of their behavior. I cannot be victimized by hatred. So I have to move forward.”

How many Americans have not “moved forward”?

I’d rather you RTFA and study the courage and spirit of Bishop Robinson. I’m certain I’d find a number of issues to debate with the gentleman. I’m equally certain I’d be honored to welcome him under my roof.

Click photo for video – about 9 minutes long. Sorry for the commercial.

John Taylor visited CNBC the other morning to discuss currency trading – a topic guaranteed to give you an ulcer if you do it for a living – or bore you into a greenback coma.

As an ingredient of his analysis, he makes the point that the Republican Party is using their majority in the House of Representatives to send our economy into another recession. We have left the boundaries of the Great Recession caused essentially by greedy investment banks and criminal mortgage procedures – aided by Republican policies obscuring and inhibiting oversight. They have decided to trigger another – deliberately.

He says this is a strategy decision by the Republican Party. Cause another recession – blame the Democrats and President Obama for it. Run for office as the alternative which will save the world.

I wonder if the Democrats and Obama have enough smarts, enough power to prevent this from happening?

A white man has been convicted of setting fire to a mostly black church in November 2008 to protest Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president.

The arson fire on November 5, 2008, just hours after election results were announced, destroyed the almost-completed Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts, about 90 miles west of Boston. Several firefighters were slightly injured battling the flames.

Prosecutors argued that Michael Jacques, 26, and two white friends were motivated by racial resentment when they doused the building with gasoline and torched it. The church’s congregation was about 90 percent African American and authorities said the white men wanted to denounce Obama’s victory.

After a three-week trial, the jury in U.S. District Court in Springfield deliberated for nearly three days before finding Jacques, of Springfield, guilty of conspiracy to violate civil rights, religious property damage because of race and damage to religious property by use of fire…

Jacques faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced on September 15, said assistant attorney Paul Smyth, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Two other men charged in the hate crime, Benjamin Haskell and Thomas Gleason, both 24, already have pleaded guilty to similar charges. Haskell was sentenced in November to nine years in federal prison, and Gleason, who testified for the prosecution in the trial, will be sentenced in October…

The church is being rebuilt and is now expected to open later this year, its pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson, said last month.

Throw away the key.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

India’s former telecommunications minister has been arrested by detectives investigating suspected corruption in the government auction of 2G mobile phone licences.

Andimuthu Raja was forced to resign as India’s telecommunications minister in November following allegations that corruption in the allocation of phone licences had cost Indian taxpayers more than £22 billion in lost revenues.

Public anger erupted over the issue in the same month when secretly taped telephone conversations of one of India’s top public relations figures revealed she had campaigned for Mr Raja’s appointment as telecommunications minister while working as a lobbyist for one of the main beneficiaries of the 2G auction.

Protests on the issue and demands for a full inquiry into the affair by India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party brought the country’s parliament to a standstill in its last session.

Mr Raja was still being questioned by detectives from the Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday night while two of his former civil servants were also arrested…

He denied the charges and said he had followed the same system set in place by the previous BJP-led government. He also said his decision to sell licences cheaply had been a key factor in the rapid increase in the number of Indians using mobile telephones. India today has 730 million mobile phone subscribers — more than those who have access to a toilet.

I’ll leave the jokes about mobile-phones and toilets to folks running for office in India.

Though it’s tempting.

Emmanuel celebrates in a Chicago bar

The Chicago elections board underscored an important rule for politicians Thursday when it cleared Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor, which is that it’s fine to rent your house out to a complete stranger, as long as you leave your wife’s wedding dress stuffed under the stairs, or maybe just some old pasta in the refrigerator.

But for all the farce surrounding the question of Mr. Emanuel’s residency, the elections board, whether or not it intended to, also affirmed a serious and more important principle with its ruling — that Washington is in fact an extension of the rest of the country, rather than some alien territory cloistered within it.

This, of course, was not the most obvious issue to surface in the proceedings to decide whether Mr. Emanuel really was or was not a Chicagoan, a sideshow that must have made the former White House chief of staff pine for the relative sanity of Congress. Led by the man who rented Mr. Emanuel’s house from him and who had himself threatened to run for mayor, about 30 citizens questioned Mr. Emanuel, under oath, about whether he had actually left behind any boxes in the basement that might prove his continued residency…

“Were you ever a member of the Communist Party?” one of the interrogators jokingly asked Mr. Emanuel, tacitly acknowledging, it seemed, the ludicrous nature of the entire hearing.

Illustrating the stupidity and core values of populist opposition to this union called the United States, describing teabagger ideology by repeating the ironic question characteristic of paranoid nutballs years back in our poltical history of fear.

And yet there was a serious cultural subtext to the debate, beyond the question of whether Mr. Emanuel, a lifelong Chicagoan, is enough of a Chicagoan to run the city. At issue was also the larger question of whether someone who goes to Washington to serve his community and his country, as Mr. Emanuel did as both a congressman and a presidential aide, can be seen as having left his home to take up residence somewhere else.

This was essentially the argument [countered] by Mr. Emanuel’s lawyer, Kevin Forde, who pointed out that the residency law made allowances for people who were away “on business of the United States,” like soldiers stationed overseas. “If being chief of staff for the president of the United States isn’t in the service of the United States, I don’t know what is,” he said…

As it is, assuming the decision survives an inevitable appeal, Mr. Emanuel, who is leading handily in public polls, can now look forward to the election. After that, perhaps, he can return to his house and unpack the contents of those disputed storage boxes, the accumulated this-and-that of your average American life.

The appeal is guaranteed by sufficient funding for delay by those in high places and low whose singular interpretation of Constitutional Law holds that holy writ supersedes legal precedent, secession remains a viable alternative to federal decision-making, dedication to parochialism in education, religion and jurisprudence is what is lacking in government.

A Polish singer and tabloid celebrity has put up posters of herself stretched out on the sand in a provocative bikini as part of her campaign to win a Warsaw district council seat in municipal elections on November 21.

Several of the posters…are to be seen around Warsaw’s Bemowo district bearing Sara May’s slogan: “Beautiful, independent, competent.”

“The deeds count, not the words, so I will not promise anything. I live in Bemowo in Warsaw,” May, whose real name is Katarzyna Szczolek, wrote on her English language website, adding that she would try to make the city a better place to live in.

Ah, yes. Poland maintains their tradition of interesting poster art.

The election? Oh.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Mexicans will elect mayors and governors in a dozen states on Sunday amid drug gang intimidation and murders of several candidates, which highlight the government’s struggle to curb the escalating drug war.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is expected to sweep the elections in part because the ruling conservatives of the National Action Party, or PAN, have been criticized for their handling of the economic downturn and raging drug violence. The PRI hopes its gains in Sunday’s election will lay the groundwork for a victory in the 2012 presidential election.

A big win for the PRI will test support for President Felipe Calderon, whose popularity is flagging, and could help launch a presidential bid for Enrique Pena Nieto, the fresh-faced new star of the PRI who has a wide lead in polls…

Opinion polls show support for PAN’s Calderon has slumped in recent months as Mexicans tire of a sputtering economy and a steady surge in killings since the president launched his army-led drug war in late 2006.

More than 26,000 people have been slain since then, mostly traffickers and police but also some bystanders and children. Campaigning for Sunday’s elections has been marred by a spurt in violence, including the murders of two candidates…

Surveys show Mexicans’ top concern is the economy, which is limping back from recession. But the bloodshed and weak courts that brings few criminals to justice are increasingly a worry.

I chat once in a while with a group of acquaintances from Mexico. They all share an apartment here in the county and travel back to their wives and family whenever they can catch an extended holiday weekend – or longer. Yes, they all have Green Cards.

And they have nothing but contempt for the police and judges in their home state – as corrupt and cowardly. Nothing has changed.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s resignation after just eight months in office has triggered shock across Japan and raised new doubts about the country’s political stability. The fact that a U.S. military base figured centrally in his decision has also generated concerns about the damage to the crucial relationship with Washington under his government.

Hatoyama pointed to two factors in his decision. The first was his inability to fulfill his campaign promise to relocate the U.S. military’s Futenma Marine Air Station on Okinawa…

Perhaps more surprising was the role of a political scandal. In Hatoyama’s announcement, he also asked the party’s secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, to resign with him…

Perhaps as important is the DPJ’s foreign and security policy vision. The U.S.-Japan alliance and the management of forty thousand U.S. troops in Japan created opportunity for opposition party critique of the old-fashioned LDP approach of solving problems behind closed doors. Public tolerance for this approach was growing thin, particularly in Okinawa where the bulk of U.S. forces are concentrated. In its rise to power, the DPJ took aim at some of these oversight practices. Likewise, it took aim at some of the allegations that “secret agreements” with Washington ran counter to government statements on nuclear weapons transit and other sensitive issues…

What remains to be seen is how the Democratic Party of Japan internalizes the lessons learned over the past eight months as Japan’s governing party and what the legacy of Hatoyama’s resignation will be. In Tokyo, there is also concern that the first effort to govern by the DPJ so badly bruised the bilateral relationship with Washington–particularly with President Barack Obama, a president that many think shared so much of the DPJ’s own goals.

The CFR doesn’t confront the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to address secret agreements, obvious and unpublished restrictions on Japan’s freedom to manage their own political life.

Wars of national liberation have been fought over as much.