Time Immortal

Erf writes in after a lengthy hiatus, and brings up a subject I have studiously avoided thus far:

Hi, Ken,

Although I’ve been sadly lax in reading your blog lately I know you’ve been following the doings of the American presidential campaigning with some interest, especially since you’re always interested in the use of lies and litigation to pursue an agenda. Thought you might be interested in this excellent discussion of the attempts by the Republicans to shut down the “ACORN” project — whose only crime is getting poor people registered to vote — by accusing them of voter registration fraud:

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2008/10/block-the-vote.html

This is the sort of dishonesty and outright scary behaviour that has me very, very glad that Barack Hussein Obama has a strong lead over John Sidney McCain. The corruption in JSM’s campaign has been so _blatant_ I can’t imagine what he would do if he got into office…

(How come you never use McCain’s middle name like you do with Obama’s, anyway? Just curious.)

Anyway, I figured you’d be interested in this discussion. (Slacktivist is pretty consistent in its coverage of this sort of thing, and is very good about keeping it about real issues like poverty and international relations, rather than getting personal. Recommended reading!)

Cheers!
-Erf.

I’ve been trying to avoid commenting on the whole ACORN business, good Reader, although I am not unaware that the whole affair reeks to high heaven. Not being an American citizen, and thus not having a vote to register against Obama, I’ve tended to focus on the only aspect of the entire presidential race that I can honestly say I find to be more or less agreeable, at a political and/or philosophical level: Sarah Palin.

If I may, I’m going to answer Erf’s letter in reverse (more or less). The above certainly addresses my interest in this particular aspect of the campaign: I’m aware of it, and following some of the details, but I had previously decided not to touch on the matter with an article. I suppose, for the purposes of an answer I’ll be giving presently, that I will now have to enumerate many of those details, and will do so in a while.

Concerning the bit about names, and why I use Obama’s middle name but not McCain’s: it’s the tagging system on the website. It’s a very handy convenience feature, not only for the good Reader to quickly find additional discussions about key topics in articles I have written previously, but also for me, in that the same tags that can be used to point the Reader to other material on the site can also be used to publicize written articles over e.g. Technorati, increasing the “reach” of what I write and (hopefully) boosting my readership a little bit. The disadvantage of the tagging system is that once something has been tagged, it’s “locked in,” and I cannot violate its format.

To give one example, consider what happens if I try and tag the word Morality. Though I’ve written the word with a small ‘m’ at its beginning, it should appear with a capital ‘M’ when displayed on the site. That is because in the first instance in which I tagged the word, it was at the beginning of a sentence, and so had been capitalized. And the tagged word will now always be displayed with that capital ‘M’ at its front.

So too with Obama’s name: the first time I tagged it, it was in an article which used his full name. When first I tagged John McCain’s name, it was in an article that did not include his middle name. Because I try and avoid needless duplication in the tags (there are over 4,000 of them as is!), I’m not inclined to go about tagging, for instance, just Obama’s last name, or just his first and last name. He’s already in the system, so to speak…he doesn’t need to be in there in triplicate. I’ve opted to just obey the convention that the tagging system has established for me, because it’s the most hassle-free course of action.

Even if I do have to pause to explain the decision every once in a while.

Now, as to the matter of dishonesty and scary behaviour in each candidate’s presidential campaigns…well, let’s be realistic: attack ads have been a fixture of American politics since the days of Thomas Jefferson (yes, that link is to a humour site, but the history is real). As troubling as it is, one expects it to happen…and happen it does, from both sides. And sometimes, it’s downright nasty stuff that gets said.

One recalls, for instance, the anti-McCain ad from the Obama campaign that lambasted McCain for his “computer illiteracy,” mocking his inability to do something as simple as send an email (McCain has been open about the fact that his wife helps him check his messages). Now, if McCain actually didn’t know how to use a computer, or how to check his email, that would actually be a concern…but the truth is, of course, somewhat more interesting. McCain is a Vietnam war veteran, and was captured and tortured during the course of that conflict. The injuries he sustained were severe, and the effects have been permanent and somewhat tragic: “McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.“

As to fraud and corruption, much the same could be observed. I note that Slacktivist doesn’t provide all that much in the way of examples of actual fraud or corruption perpetrated by the McCain campaign, although I’m sure examples could be found if one did some digging. But if one wants to avoid a candidate for fear of the corruption of his campaign, one would do better to avoid the Obama campaign, then. Massive online credit card fraud is, I submit, rather staggeringly corrupt, especially since Obama may have netted as much as $100 million in donations by this fraudulent means.

In the broad strokes, what has happened is this: the Obama campaign’s online donations website appeared to have AVS (the Address Verification System, a fairly basic security feature of every online credit card payment software) disabled, and then for an unknown duration. This means, of course, that when people submit a name and address along with their credit card information, so as to donate money to the Obama campaign, the submitted name and address do not have to match the billing information for the credit card.

What does this mean, then?

In the United States, electoral law prohibits an individual from donating more than $2300 to a presidential candidate. Were AVS being used, it would be very easy to maintain a database of contributors to prevent illegal donations (i.e. donations from individuals which exceed that limit). John McCain’s donations website uses this security feature. Its absence on the Obama campaign’s site, however, means that by simply giving a fraudulent name (which is, I remind the good Reader, illegal), a person could easily contribute many thousands of extra dollars to the Obama campaign without restriction or oversight.

For example, certain Mary T Biskup of Manchester, Montana, just found out that she had apparently donated over $174,000 dollars to Obama. Or, rather, she found out that her name had been used for multiple donations totalling up to that amount. Another noted Obama donor is a Mr. Adolfe Hitler, of #1 Reichstag Building, Berlin, Germany A Ms. Della Ware of 12345 No Way also managed to donate some funds to Obama, but failed in her attempt to donate to McCain using the same fraudulent name and address.

To be fair, McCain has had a few embarrassing contributors as well, because there are ways to get around verification schemes. But there’s a difference between getting past a verification scheme and turning the verification off altogether, which is what the Obama campaign did, thus opening the doors to the possibility (and probability) of massive credit card fraud.

And to be fair, if one wants to get into the finer points of the scary behaviour of each candidate, one has to pause for a moment — especially if one is a faithful Christian — to reflect on the blatant hagiography that Obama has been subjected to. As Binks notes, “WHATEVER OBAMA BELIEVES, it’s not classical Christianity. As we’ve noted before, no Christian would permit music, accolades and statements to be made about them that infringe on the turf of divinity. The One? Halo-pictures? If that was me being divinized, I’d rightly fear the flames of eternal punishment for presumption. But so far as I’ve heard, Obama hasn’t called it off, whatever he’s heard of thusfar. Indeed, he seems to have deliberately wrapped himself in Religion: healing the planet, change, hope, transformation! That’s why his opponents are given heresy-trials in the media, before their media-executions. It’s ironically fitting for the non-absolutist left to long for an absolute candidate; no secularity, just Obama & anti-Obama. Soon, like the Taliban, there will be trials for any blasphemy and desecration and doubting of The Obama. It’s evil to claim God’s proper praise for oneself.“

As to Obama’s being ahead in the polls: that doesn’t mean much, especially once one corrects for the latent pro-Democrat bias in polls and poll reporting. Obama’s lead is not as strong as it looks.

Now, as to ACORN: if ACORN’s only “crime” was getting the poor registered to vote, there’d be no problem, no controversy, and no story here. But ACORN’s interests seem to extend beyond ensuring that the poor are not disenfranchised. They also seem to be striving to ensure that other traditionally disenfranchised demographic segments of the American population — the non-existent and the deat — are properly registered to vote.

One ACORN worker, Clifton Mitchell, helped to register over 2,000 voters for ACORN — and not one of them was an actual, living person. And Mitchell wasn’t acting alone. Nor was he the only ACORN worker to submit fraudulent voter registrations: Jemar Barksdale submitted 18 fraudulent forms using the names of extant voters, and an additional 22 applications with fictional names. Even one of ACORN’s in-house lawyers suggests that ACORN and its 174 branch offices/affiliates may have committed illegalities in their drive to get voters registered.

And the rabbit hole gets deeper still. Fully 100% of ACORN’s voter registrations in Lake County, Indiana, were found to be fraudulent (although the YouTube video covering the story may have since disappeared). In Ohio, many people have come forward testifying that ACORN encourage them to (fraudulently) register to vote multiple times (shades of Capone: “vote now, vote often!”). Another 10,000 fraudulent registrations turned up in Cincinnati, again as part of an ACORN campaign.

In fact, ACORN’s activities have become so suspect, they’ve attracted the attention of the FBI. And yet, in spite of the mountain of evidence against ACORN an in support of allegations of voter registration fraud, Obama has suggested that those attempting to investigate voter fraud should be prosecuted.

(Note: fraudulent registrations are one thing. They’re concerning, to say the least, but, in the end, a voter registration doesn’t impact the outcome of an election. A fraudulent vote, on the other hand, can do just that. And ACORN has been explicitly linked to fraudulent votes cast in, for example, New Mexico. It would test the boundaries of reason to suggest that this is, and will remain, one isolated incident. Fraudulent registrations, after all)

There’s one other fly in the ointment here: Obama is very closely linked to, and involved with, ACORN. So much so, in fact, that he recently contributed some $800,000 to the group, and also provided the group with his 2007 donor list, something that the Obama campaign has guarded closely in other circumstances. There’s also mounting evidence that Obama and ACORN may have been involved with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the whole sub-prime mortgage mess.

Again, I don’t pretend that McCain is blameless. Personally, I don’t much agree with McCain, although I find him more palatable than I do Obama. Realistically, the only person in this whole campaign that I’d feel comfortable voting for is Sarah Palin — McCain is a fairly typical establishment Republican, despite his “maverick” image, and both Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, are abortion supporters of a fairly egregious sort. McCain is little better, given his support of embryonic stem cell research — only Palin really has any solid pro-life bona fides.

For Catholics, which both Erf and I are, Obama’s stance on abortion should automatically disqualify him from receiving our support. Oh, one desires not to be a one issue voter, and one shouldn’t be. But still: if one is faithful to the Church and her teachings, one has to take Canon Law into consideration when making any informed political decision. And in Canon Law, a person who “deliberately and knowingly provides essential or substantial means for any woman to procure an abortion also commits a mortal sin and also incurs the…sentence of excommunication.”

Now, typically, the concept of “knowingly providing substantial means for any woman to procure an abortion” does not extend to voting in favour of political candidates; Catholics may vote in favour of pro-abortion candidates under certain circumstances, provided that the candidate in question, should he or she gain power, not do anything to expand the legality or pervasiveness of abortion in society.

With Obama, however, that won’t happen. Not only did Obama enjoy Planned Parenthood’s endorsement above and beyond even Hillary Rodham Clinton (there I go, following the tagging conventions again) during the primaries; he has pledged to make legal the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). This comprehensive bill would abolish legislation against partial-birth abortions, get rid of parental notification laws across the U.S., and make abortion fully taxpayer funded. He has also spoken out against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA), which mandates that those infants which are “accidentally” delivered alive as the result of an abortion must be given live-saving care, rather than be left to die in a closet. There is good reason to suspect that Obama might attempt to see this act repealed.

It should also be noted, good Reader, that FOCA could potentially strip freedom of conscience protection from doctors and nurses who refuse, on moral grounds, to perform or assist with abortions.

Thus, the argument could be made that a vote for Obama is an act of “knowingly providing substantial means for any woman to procure an abortion,” and as such is a Canon Law violation. Not that any bishop or priest is likely to go to such lengths and deny Communion to Obama supporters post-November 4th, of course. But the moral argument is there, and so are the facts at hand: a vote for Obama is a vote for a candidate who will vastly expand abortion “rights” in the United States. In general, that not a vote that a Catholic should make, and it should be troubling to Catholics that a candidate who is so ardently pro-abortion appears to be leading in the polls, even against an otherwise despicable candidate.

John Zmirak, whose article I link to above, likens the electoral choices facing the American people to the line of soldiers outside the Tsar’s palace, facing the advancing mob and being given the order to fire. “They must choose,” he suggests, “between a crooked, bumbling oligarchy prone to starting futile wars — and a ravening, reckless mob. While it’s mostly made up of citizens rightly enraged, the mob is led (or will soon be led) by vicious ideologues who promise to persecute Christianity.” The soldiers given the order to fire know this; the know whom they defend, they know his crimes, and they know the grievances of those rushing forward. Do they fire, or turn on their officers and join the mob?

Discussing the implications of FOCA where freedom of conscience is concerned, as noted above, Zmirak concludes thusly. “So President Obama and his congressional supermajority would force every Christian hospital, doctor, or nurse either to abandon their faith, or go out of business. By federal law, believing Christians would be banned from a major industry (and apostolate). This is literally equivalent to a law banning faithful Jews from owning newspapers.

Unless we obey our worthless officers, and fire on the mob. With all that in mind, I’m endorsing Tsar Nicholas II — er, John McCain — this November 4.”

The comparison is rather apt, especially at the level of moral implications.

McCain is little better on life issues, of course, but at least there is the reasonable probability that abortion law won’t be expanded under a McCain presidency (especially not with Palin in the VP’s seat). A lack of expansion is not the same as a reduction (and reduction is preferable), but perhaps it will have to do. But if McCain is essentially neutral on the issue of abortion, he is still supportive of stem cell research, which is morally problematic. And he’s also supportive — or, at least, will do nothing to abate — the “interrogation methods” used at places like Guantanamo Bay (read: torture).

So in a very real way, a vote for McCain is also, in its own way, a sinful act, not unlike the sin of a soldier obeying the order to fire on the advancing mob. And perhaps, for American Catholics, the trip to the polls will have to be followed up with a trip to the confessional; were I in the position to have to make the decision myself, that would probably be my course of action. It might seem best to do as Mark Shea often proposes, and cast a vote for a quixotic candidate, but I think Zmirak nails this option to the wall only too well when he notes that this is rather like firing into the air rather than at the mob; in the end, the mob may still win because the responses of the soldiers facing them are divided — given the implications of an Obama victory, there is every reason to avoid subjecting the Republicans to a form of “the Nader effect.”

The manufactured “scandal” resulting from this? Sarah Palin sometimes uses her personal email account for state business. ZOMG!!!!!one111!!five! Clearly, she’s dishonest and can’t be trusted with the Vice Presidential office!

Democrat supporters have absolutely no consistency. First, they mock John McCain for his inability to use email¹. Now, they’re attacking Palin for being too email savvy? Which one is it, children?

The tech-savvy governor has one [BlackBerry] (which allow users to read and send e-mails) for state business, another for personal matters, but those worlds intertwine.

Palin routinely uses a private e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor’s office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts too.

Shocking, I tell you. Government workers with personal email accounts? How very frightening? Is there no end to the corruption of this Republican VP nominee?

The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be “open and transparent.”

Even before the McCain campaign plucked Palin from Alaska, a controversy was brewing over e-mails in the governor’s office. Was the administration trying to get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?

Activists, still fighting to obtain hundreds of e-mails that were withheld from public records requests earlier this year, say that’s what it looks like.

Yes, it’s all secrets and conspiracy, isn’t it?

Or could it just be that Palin takes her job…y’know…seriously? Could it be that she sometimes uses her personal account for state business because she is a 24/7 kind of governor, even when she leaves the “work” Blackberry at home for some reason? Is it even wrong to use a personal email account for work-related correspondence? If so, then I suppose that me and pretty much everyone I’ve ever worked with should be hauled before our respective managers, shouldn’t we?

I get that the Left and the media (but I do repeat myself) are trying to dig up something — anything — with which to crucify Palin. But let’s remember what has happened here: someone has hacked Palin’s private email account, and has shared its contents with the world. That’s a federal crime, last time I checked…and one could argue that the various news agencies picking up this story in any kind of detail are complicit in that crime. This is what it has come to: so desperate are the Democrats for anything to use against Palin that they will even accept, as resources in that fight, the ill-gotten spoils of illegal activities by their supporters.

There’s your “hope” and “change” right there, methinks.

Personally, I find it reassuring that Palin isn’t above using her personal email account for business purposes. It’s just…practical. I mean, it’s all well and good that correspondence comes to one’s BlackBerry…if one brings the BlackBerry along. But there are things that a BlackBerry isn’t as well-suited to doing, and that includes viewing and printing documents.

And there’s a question to be asked here: when an employee of the Alaskan government is away from the office, is there some manner of web-based portal which that employee can use to access his or her email online? And if not, then doesn’t it make even more sense for Palin to sometimes route work-related messages through her Yahoo! account (for example: to receive important attachments)?

Update: The hacker may have been identified.

The son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell told The Tennessean.

Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, said his 20-year-old son David had been contacted by authorities investigating the hacking of Palin’s personal e-mail account, the newspaper reported on its Web site this afternoon.

The FBI and the Secret Service started a formal investigation Wednesday into the hacking, according to the Associated Press.

Well, doesn’t that just figure: the hacker is the son of a Democrat politician.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!