Fraud Complaints Cloud Afghan Election

by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
National Public Radio
September 1, 2009

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is ahead in the slow tally of ballots cast in the Aug. 20 elections. But the question looming for many Afghan voters isn't who will win, but whether the balloting was credible.

That decision rests with an American, a Canadian, a Dutchman and two Afghans who serve on the country's Electoral Complaints Commission. Hundreds of formal complaints of election fraud have been filed to the commission. If proven, the allegations could change the outcome of the race...

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Nadler: Obama Violating Law By Not Investigating Bush

by Sam Stein
August 21, 2009
Huffington Post

...Nadler said that a special prosecutor should handle the task, because some of the likely subjects of such an investigation worked in the Justice Department. "There is an inherent conflict interest," said Nadler," which is why you must appoint a special prosecutor. But, again, you have no choice because that's the law."

Respected by his colleagues as one of the sharpest legal minds in Congress, Nadler has taken a leading role in pushing the Obama administration to investigate its predecessor. Beyond the legal requirements, he argues that there is a moral and political imperative - lest the precedent be set that potential illegalities go un-probed...

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Supreme Court Orders Evidentiary Hearing for Death Row Prisoner Troy Anthony Davis; Rare Decision Could Result in New Trial

DemocracyNow!
August 19, 2009

The Supreme Court has taken the rare step of ordering a new hearing for Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. The nation’s highest court ordered a federal district court in Georgia to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes his innocence.” Davis was convicted for the 1989 killing of a white police officer. Since then, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, and there is no physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. In a Democracy Now! special, we hear from Davis, speaking from death row; Davis’s fifteen-year-old nephew Antone, and his sister Martina Correia, who have led the campaign to exonerate him; Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA; and Ezekiel Edwards, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project...

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Afghanistan Holds National Elections Amidst Violence, Fraud Allegations and Media Censorship

DemocracyNow!
August 20, 2009

Millions of Afghans are voting in presidential and provincial elections today amid tight security and threats of violence from the Taliban. There are also widespread concerns about corruption, with reports of voting cards being openly sold and of candidates offering large bribes. We speak to independent journalist Rick Rowley in northern Afghanistan and get analysis from radio host and author Sonali Kolhatkar...

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Why We Must Shift Our Attention from “Save Newspapers” to “Save Society”

The revolution will not be published
by Clay Shirky
July-August 2009
Utne Reader

...That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can be neither mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify...

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Cheney's CIA Secrets: We Must Fight to Get the Truth

By Marie Cocco, Washington Monthly (via Alternet). Posted July 17, 2009.

The scary part is how little we know about the Bush Administration's clandestine plans...

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Politico and the Washington Post Have Become Virtual "Escort Services" for Moneyed Elites

From Raw Story
Alternet
July 17, 2009

More and more mainstream media are brokering cozy relationships between politicians and lobbyists...

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