Who Really Won?

Monday, May 09, 2005

First: Steal Elections Second: Start Censoring

Editor and Publisher on the first column ever spiked by syndicated columnist Robert Koehler:

Tribune Media Services didn't syndicate today's Robert Koehler column about alleged voting irregularities in the 2004 election, but allowed him to substitute a piece on the same topic.

"At first I was upset, but it wasn't like I couldn't write about this issue," said Koehler, a TMS editor as well as columnist, when reached today by E&P. "I just wish it [questions about last November's election] would get into the mainstream media more. That would help us have secure elections in 2006, 2008, and beyond."

John Twohey, vice president of editorial and operations at TMS, added: "I'm pleased that Bob's columns on this topic are getting so much attention. It's an important issue." In addition to the many e-mails Koehler has received, the situation involving today's column was publicized on BradBlog.com
.

Here's his first column, The Silent Scream of Numbers:

As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone — we citizens — as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”


Here's the censored column, Citizens in the Rain:

“Where there is a free press the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.” — Lord Macaulay (one of many stirring quotes on the sacred role of the Fourth Estate adorning the lobby of the Chicago Tribune)

My fantasy of the mainstream media actually doing their job, and living up to the words they carve in marble to describe their own importance, is an 80-point (Terri Schiavo- or even Pope John Paul II-sized) headline running across the top of tomorrow’s paper: ELECTION RESULTS IN DOUBT.

That would stop a few hearts. But the nation’s major newspapers, even as they struggle with declining readership, have no intention of being quite that relevant to their readers — no intention, it appears, even to begin the process of looking into the hornets’ nest of vote fraud allegations abuzz in meticulously researched reports on electronic voting (see uscountvotes.org) or the voluminous Conyers Report on what happened in Ohio on Nov. 2 (see truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf).

Isn’t our democracy at stake? Doesn’t that matter?


Here's the replacement column, Moonbat lefty for fair elections:

Our democracy nerve is resonating.

I've gotten such a huge response to two recent columns I've written on the troubling, underreported irregularities in the Nov. 2 election that I've decided to give my column over to the voices of my readers, or at least a small sampling of them.

WHY DIDN'T YOU SPEAK UP? — Your column really expresses the isolation I feel and the urgency to get back to Democracy. . . . My grandfather, a German, left Germany when Hitler declared his power. My grandfather knew what was happening when people were not allowed to speak their minds. And we've been asking the Germans about the Holocaust, "Why didn't you DO something about it? How could you let it get so bad?" Grandpa, who loved this country so much, is my main inspiration, it seems. — D.B., Tennessee


Here's another column to read, Democracy's Abu Gharib:


“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.” — Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

What if it could happen here?

This is the disquieting question I hesitate to ask because, once asked, it pretty much changes everything. The answer roars in behind it, as obvious as a Florida hurricane, an Ohio twister, ripping up the complacent heart. What if it could? What if it did? I think of my daughter, quickly, guiltily, and the country she’d inherit. I can no longer stay on the sidelines. No breath comes easily afterward.