Congressman Ted Poe Speaks

My Congressman, since redistricting a couple of years ago, is Ted Poe. He spoke Monday evening at King Street Patriots, and I thought there were enough things worth repeating.

Catherine Engelbrecht, head of King Street, gave quite an introduction. She said, “Of all of the politicians I have ever met, Congressman Ted Poe is my favorite.”

Congressman Ted Poe
at King Street Patriots, 6-2-2014

If you’ll recall, Catherine Engelbrecht testified before Congress not long ago, during hearings about the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Her testimony was powerful. So, anyway, she has met more than the typical number of politicians. And she mentioned how comforting it was to see Ted Poe's friendly face when she testified.

Ted Poe’s father was on the row in front of me. Here’s what the Congressman told us about his father. Ted Poe was listed as the seventh most conservative member of Congress (out of 435, so if you do the math, he’s at the 98^th percentile, which isn’t too shabby). Early in the morning that the news appeared, there was his dad on the phone, “Why are you only number seven?”

Ted Poe talks straightforward, Texas style. Words like this come naturally: “The Constitution is not a mere suggestion. It is the law of the land.”

This was partly, but not totally, in relation to the news over the weekend about the president unilaterally (and illegally) exchanging five dangerous terrorists being held at GITMO for a prisoner of war (or possibly a defector—still to be determined, in a court martial, I’m assuming). The Congressman offered us a three-page handout, “Fact Sheet on Guantanamo Transfers,” which was a House Armed Services Committee Press Release, June 2, 2014. You’ve probably heard the essence of this elsewhere by now. Here’s what the law requires (this law was signed by the president some six months ago):

·        The Secretary of Defense must determine that the risk posed by the detainee will be substantially mitigated and that the transfer is in the national security interests of the United States.

·        The Secretary of Defense must notify the appropriate committees of Congress at least 30 days before the transfer or release of a Guantanamo detainee

·        The Secretary of Defense must provide detailed information regarding the circumstances of the transfer or release along with the notification, including how the risk posed by the detainee will be substantially mitigated, the security arrangements in the receiving country, and an assessment of the capacity, willingness, and past practices of the receiving country.

So, clearly the law has been broken.

The Q&A portion of the evening was heavy with questions about what can be done in response to the president’s lawless behavior. I don’t know that there is a good answer. However, Congressman Poe is an optimist. He’s seeing protests of the president’s behavior from both sides of the aisle. He thinks the House will pick up 10 seats, and that Republicans will take the Senate as well. Then we have to have a presidential candidate that can win the 7 states that must be won. He thinks that, because most Americans are conservative, we need to appeal to conservative values. We need to be able to talk to our neighbors and speak persuasively, and get them engaged. Incidentally, he pointed out that only 5% of eligible voters participated in the runoff election held last week.

Much of the speech portion of the evening concerned the First Amendment. We’re in agreement that the very first words, “Congress shall make no law” means that, concerning those things, Congress really can’t violate our rights.

I enjoyed a story he told, of a time when he was in the midst of raising his four kids. He had a daughter who was 8, on a girls’ soccer team. The coach moved away. And somehow Ted Poe got “volunteered to coach. He knew nothing about soccer. He said the first game he ever saw was the first one he coach—rule book in hand. But he did what he could.

At one point he took a girl out of the game and replaced her with another player. She pouted and cried. He found, eventually, that this was not an uncommon reaction among young girls. But he was perplexed. There’s no crying in sports!

But eventually he figured it out, and sees this as a metaphor for us concerned citizens. The girl wanted to be in the game. She wanted to participate.

“Most Americans,” he said, “aren’t participating; they’re in the stands. But you want to play because you think you can make a difference.”

I think he’s right about that. That meeting, on a Monday night, held I’m guessing a full room of 200 people, maybe more. Our regular local tea party meetings have 30-50 people meeting on Saturday afternoons. Everyone is asking, “What can we do?”

I hope there are answers. The other day, along with the Edmund Burke quote, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” a friend sent some suggestions:

·         Support a strong party platform.

·         Contact Congress often, and instruct Congress and Senators to elect leadership who oppose tyranny.

·         Donate to true conservative candidates.

·         Stay informed.

·         Network with other patriots.

I’m doing some of these very things this weekend, at the Texas GOP Convention, where I’m a delegate. I expect to hear a lot of conservative language—nothing else would be acceptable. I pray that all of us will be able to discern between those who mean it—because we need them—and those who are just saying it because they have to. So many thousands of people will be there—because we want to do whatever good we can. I hope we can use this combined energy for the good of all.

Coordinated Targeting

I continue to watch for further information to come out about the various scandals swirling around this administration. Today I want to take a further look at the targeting of conservative groups, focusing on True the Vote, which I have participated in personally. [I’ve written about TTV here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.]

This will lead to a question about how the administration goes about business: Who is doing the targeting, and how do they go about coordinating?

There are two nonprofit organizations started by Catherine Engelbrecht, here in Houston, Texas, in 2010 that have grown nationwide since that small beginning. One is True the Vote, with the mission of helping people learn how to verify free and fair elections. Its purpose is nonpartisan and educational and should qualify as a 501(c)3 organization, which would allow donations to be tax deductible. The other is King Street Patriots, a nonpartisan but conservative group helping to share information and advocating on specific issues. KSP has been holding weekly meetings, with speakers, and annual conferences. It does not endorse candidates or parties, and welcomes all interested comers. KSP should qualify as a 501(c)4 organization—nonprofit for the organization’s tax purposes, but donations would not be deductible.

Filing for nonprofit statuses for these two organizations was done in July 2010 (almost three years ago). I have applied for nonprofit status before. We organized a homeschool support group in December 2005. We were able to apply online and qualify as a Texas nonprofit organization while the organizing meeting was still underway. It took a few months to put together the paperwork (a few pages) to apply for federal 501(c)3 status, with educational purposes. We received that status about two months after applying. There were no IRS visits, phonecalls, or examinations of our personal IRS filings. Our organization handled very little money—enough dues to cover basic insurance and facility rentals; there were no employees, and most activities were paid for by participants. So it was simple—also quick. (We also didn’t have a president then who makes it clear he believes parents do not have a natural right to school their own children.)

TTV and KSP are much bigger, and more complex. But their purposes are no more nefarious or suspicious than our homeschool group. I can understand a few additional clarifying questions, to make sure the group does what it claims to do. But those could have been simply answered by IRS people visiting the website, where videos of meetings are archived, or having someone drop in to observe. Meetings are open. Rolls aren’t taken, although there is always a sign-up sheet to get emails, if you want to get announcements.

These organizations have done everything required by the law—as well as everything required by the harassing IRS. And still they have not received their nonprofit certification.

It’s odd enough that the IRS has taken three years, has acknowledged knowing about the targeting for well over a year, and still hasn't ruled on the status—either way, granted or denied. So clearly the IRS problem isn’t cleared up yet.

But the real scary part is how many other federal agencies got involved. The full timeline of encounters is available. (This article is also a good summary. Also, watch the 13-minute interview on Huckabee, above.) Besides multiple encounters with the IRS, and the hundreds and hundreds of pages of answered questions still not qualifying as enough, there has been scrutiny from the FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit, twice, asking about attendance by a specific person. (Don’t know who this person was, but no information was available except that this person had attended, according to a sign-in sheet.) Plus there were four additional FBI general inquiries.

Then there were personal audits by the IRS of the Engelbrecht’s small business. Let me say that, in the dozens of times I have attended events at King Street Patriots, Catherine Engelbrecht has never even said the name of her family business or what it did. All she has said was that she stepped away from the family business to do this volunteer citizen work, and her husband stands behind her and continues without her. I have never been aware of his attendance at any event; if he’s been there, he has remained anonymous. I saw her children only once, at an all-day presentation by another organization, educating on the US Constitution.

Her family has stayed very separate from the nonprofit work. She has done nothing to connect her private life with the nonprofit organizations. The personal audit ended up giving them a small refund—that’s how squeaky clean they were, even under scrutiny.

Then came unscheduled visits and audits by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. The business has a class 7 license, which would allow them to manufacture gun parts, if they chose to—which they do not do. They were required to open their safes and provide serial numbers of any personally owned firearms. ATF made more than one visit.

OSHA dropped in unannounced, even though they’d never found the need to make contact in the first 20 years the family business was in operation. They wanted to see the family farm, count animals, examine fence lines, and a great many things unrelated to running a small manufacturing business. Violations were found: the seatbelt on a forklift was the wrong kind. They were using safety goggles as required, but not the right kind.

Result: fines of $25,000. They were able to talk those down to $17,000. They feared arguing further, because who knew how much further the persecution would go? It was not an insignificant amount for a small business of 30 employees.

The cost for the nonprofits has probably reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for accounting and attorneys. Note that this is all in response to questioning, with no accusations of crime or wrongdoing. They do not have that kind of money; they do not even have employees. I believe (not sure) that much of the legal help has been provided pro bono; Jay Sekulow of American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has been involved with this and another couple dozen similar cases.

Another agency, puzzling to me because the name makes it appear to be a state agency, not federal. In November of 2012 was an unscheduled audit by the Texas Commission on Environment Quality. In response to yet another unrevealed complaint?

Only the IRS and FBI made contacts related to the nonprofits and their activity—pretty intrusive, but at least related. But the family and family business got harassed by the IRS, OSHA, ATF, and TCEQ. Never happened before, but at the same time scrutiny follows the nonprofit applications. Coincidence?

On radio yesterday a caller reached Sean Hannity’s radio show (around 3:45 PM CDT, 5-30-2013), saying a similar harassment happened to him a few years ago. He and his wife own a small mom-and-pop business. They support traditional marriage and made a donation to the Prop 8 campaign; within a month they also made a donation to a church. Shortly later they were suddenly targeted by OSHA, the IRS, and another agency I didn’t catch. It cost them considerably in accounting and legal fees, fighting accusations like “you have too much money in your account,” when they kept only three months of working capital. Sean Hannity responded that there are a great many untold stories. Some of them he has collected in a studio audience for Friday’s show (TV show, on Fox News, I believe). These are people who have reason to believe they have been targeted purely for their political views.

There are three possible explanations:

1. There is no targeting based on political beliefs; this is all just coincidence (which pretty much no one believes anymore; even the IRS has admitted to targeting).
2. There has been targeting based on political beliefs, but it was limited to low level rogue employees in a specific IRS, acting on their own (pretty unlikely, considering all the evidence from various places and various agencies).
3. There has been targeting, beyond the IRS nonprofit office, beyond even the IRS as a whole, coordinated among various agencies, including private citizens and their businesses aside from their nonprofit activities.

I think the evidence grows stronger that it’s the third explanation. So the question is, who coordinates, and how do they accomplish it? Over and over the White House declares it knew nothing. But all of the federal agencies involved come under the executive branch; the President is ultimately responsible for their behavior.
 

Technically, it’s possible the President remains hands off, but it’s hard to imagine he maintains his ignorance in any other way but with a wink-wink, “we never had this conversation,” “you know what to do without it being spelled out; that’s why you were hired—for your initiative” kind of machination. It’s also possible that there’s some specific coordination going on that is being covered up and lied about. The Chicago Way (which our president is much more qualified to teach than he ever was Constitutional law) includes both versions.

Questions are arising concerning an unusual number of White House visits by the former IRS Commissioner, now counting up to 157 (compared to one by his predecessor during the eight Bush years). He’s not supposed to be a policy maker. So what is there to talk about? And we’re supposed to believe neither he nor any White House person knew anything about the targeting? Just another odd coincidence?

I don’t want scapegoats. I want truth about what is actually happening, so we can learn from this history and never suffer repeating it.

More on CSCOPE

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about curriculum, with some info about CSCOPE, the Texas version of Common Core. I went to a presentation about it Monday evening and learned a few more things. The full presentation is available at King Street Live, with speakers radio commentator Ben Streusand and Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity-Texas. Some details I picked up by monopolizing Mr. Streusand’s time afterward with my questions; if I have things wrong, however, please assume I got it wrong while gathering info during conversation without taking notes.

Ben Streusand, Peggy Venable, and Catherine Engelbrecht

I learned that it has been used for nearly a decade in some districts, mostly rural. In fact, it’s more a problem in rural areas than in cities—although my large suburban district has been using it, at least for some subjects. (Fun fact: CSCOPE isn’t an acronym for anything; it just seemed like an appealing name.)

There are Education Service Centers, (ESCs) across the state, where districts can combine, maybe county-wide or bigger, to share information, curriculum, and other resources. In cities, there are so many districts within a county that this simply isn’t an issue. Of those districts using ESCs, 80% use CSCOPE; they pay a hefty chunk of taxpayer education dollars for access to the materials.

To review, CSCOPE is supposedly a collection of lesson plans, 1600 or so, submitted by teachers, former teachers, and curriculum writers across the state. Submitters had to sign away their rights to review their materials and how they were used. No organization previewed the entire set of materials before implementing them, possibly not even the board of CSCOPE. And there are rumors that many of the materials were written by the same curriculum writers as the federal Common Core.

Teachers and others who use CSCOPE are required to sign an oath not to share the materials with the parents of students or anyone else. Supposedly this was for copyright protection of materials that are only digital. But it appears more secretive than that purpose deserves. Curriculum is subject to review by the State Board of Education, but CSCOPE sidestepped that requirement by claiming it is just “lesson plans,” not curriculum.

I looked up an official definition of “lesson plan”:

A detailed description of the individual lessons that a teacher plans to teach on a given day. A lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide instruction throughout the day. It is a method of planning and preparation. A lesson plan traditionally includes the name of the lesson, the date of the lesson, the objective the lesson focuses on, the materials that will be used, and a summary of all the activities that will be used. Lesson plans are a terrific set of guidelines for substitute teachers.

What’s the difference between that and curriculum? Nothing. A lesson plan is just a small unit of curriculum. It’s like saying, “That’s not bread; it’s a slice.” Pretending it’s something else by using a different word is kind of a creepy way to get around having oversight, especially when you look at it in tandem with the no disclosure policy. Under those circumstances, we’d be remiss not to be suspicious.

Dan Patrick, my state senator and the head of the Senate Education Committee, introduced a bill to create oversight. As of today, the bill looks like it’s making progress. A public hearing was held Tuesday, and SB 1406 was approved in the Education Committee Thursday (voted 7-0 in favor). Next it moves on to the full Senate for a vote. Then it moves on to the House. It looks like it has a good chance. (There’s a similar bill in the House, HB 760, referred to the Education Committee, but not making as much progress yet.)

The legislation is the result of an agreement with the CSCOPE board, to implement oversight. Dan Patrick’s press release on February 8 describes what the legislation is designed to do.  In short, the agreement includes:

·         the State Board of Education (SBOE) to review all the materials;

·         CSCOPE board meetings must be public meetings;

·         teachers who submitted lesson plans will be allowed to review and reveal the plans;

·         parents will be allowed to review the lesson plans online.

Of course eliminating the curriculum entirely would be better than just overseeing it. Senator Patrick would have preferred legislation to eliminate CSCOPE altogether. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get enough votes to make that happen. It’s not really a problem of persuading Democrats to join in; Dems tend to represent larger inner city districts that don’t use ESCs, and therefore aren’t very interested in CSCOPE in the first place. It’s the GOP representatives of rural districts that are the challenge.

If you’re looking for someone to influence, a polite call or email to the following, suggesting they take into account your disapproval of CSCOPE, could be helpful. It’s too late to put forth legislation this session to eliminate CSCOPE (with the unlikely exception that SB 1406 could be amended to the point that it essentially gets substituted with elimination, but I don’t foresee that). But approval of SB 1406 at least improves the situation and gives us a first step.

·         Senator Robert Nichols, District 3

·         Senator Kevin Eltife, District 1

·         Senator Craig Estes, District 30

·         Senator Kel Seliger, District 31

·         Senator Robert Duncan, District 28 

Here’s one more opportunity for you Texans. This bill creates a method of review of the extremely large mass of lesson plans. The SBOE members aren’t going to be doing that alone. You could become one of the reviewers. Contact your representative on the State Board of Education and offer your services. The review is starting with social studies first, and then will move on to science. I don’t yet know all that being a reviewer entails. Pretty certain this would be volunteer work. But it could be extremely valuable.

It’s possible that, as we speak, the CSCOPE powers-that-be are scrubbing the materials of the most blatantly objectionable content. But if problems are found, those portions can be eliminated. Presumably if massive portions are objectionable and overall value is seen as negative, maybe the SBOE can disapprove of CSCOPE as a whole.

You can also find out if CSCOPE is used in your district and go directly to your local school board to insist on it being eliminated. No need to wait for the next legislative session, if we assert the power of parents, where the power belongs.

Americans for Prosperity-Texas provides basic information as well as links to more details. Also review Glenn Beck's March 7 story.

Texas Senate Race

Monday evening I got to attend the last debate between candidates for US Senate from Texas: David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz. Earlier I listened to a radio debate they’d had last week on the Matt Patrick Show. I’ve been leaning toward a candidate for a while, but I wanted to be fair and hear them, just to be sure. [The Monday night debate was filmed and moderated by KRIV, the local Fox TV station, and was presented at King Street Patriots. I haven’t found a full recording to link yet, however.]

Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst
photo from KSEV.com

Let’s start with this understanding: Texas is a conservative state. It hasn’t always been, but it finally elected a Republican governor in the early 1990s and hasn’t gone back, and the legislature has grown continually more conservative since that time. When I started going to Texas state conventions in 2004, most of what we heard was conservative, but mixed in was still a fair amount of “Let’s not be too extreme; we might not want to go that far.” No longer. The last couple of conventions, if anyone had attempted to give a “moderate,” squishy message, they’d have heard boos.

So if you have two candidates in a runoff election for the Republican candidate in Texas, you can be certain that all the words will be conservative. So, to know if they really mean it (and possibly both do), you need to know more of their background, their records, and their hearts—if you can sense that, which is why I wanted to hear them in person.

David Dewhurst has been around a while. He has been Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor since George W. Bush left the governor’s mansion for the White House. He’s done his job well enough. Texas has moved more conservative in that time. Our business climate is better than most states: no income tax, lower taxes and less strangling regulations. That’s why one of the biggest problems is dealing with surging growth while the recession slogs on with high unemployment (around 7% in Texas, lower than the rest of the nation, but still too high).

If you look at the last legislative session (2011), a lot of incremental pro-life legislation got through. And Texas is standing up to the federal government’s health care and other intrusions on our sovereignty. I had wanted a TSA anti-groping bill to go through, but it failed. At the time I believed it was David Dewhurst’s fault that it didn’t come up for final vote. But I am fuzzy on details now. It passed the state senate (where he is essentially the head as lieutenant governor, the way the VP is in the US Senate). It was in the state house where it didn’t come up for final vote. I wanted an answer about how that went down. I wanted to ask this question, but didn’t get a chance (and it didn’t come up during the two debates I heard):

I’m concerned about TSA’s infringement against our right to be free from illegal searches and seizures. What do you see that can be done about it at the federal level, and at the state level?

But I still don’t know their answers. Mostly I was satisfied with their conservative answers to the rest of the questions. Ted Cruz has the advantage of speech. Dewhurst speaks well enough, but he is likely to talk Texas slow, with stories to make a point, and maybe some generalities. He mentioned that he grew up with a stuttering problem, and while he has overcome that (I’d say beyond anything I could notice; I never knew this before), he says he’s a doer, not a talker.

Ted Cruz, a lawyer and former state solicitor general, who has helped argue for Texas on constitutional issues before the Supreme Court issues, is smooth and organized. He’ll answer a question with, “We’ll do these three things,” and then list them. So there are style differences. I can see how Dewhurst can be appealing, and why he’s been reelected without much of a fight. But I prefer Cruz’s style when there’s a “debate” with limited time, and we want to get the answers as efficiently as possible. It shows thoughts organized in a way that are likely to lead to measurable actions.

The two mostly agree on issues, as well as on many solutions. Both agree that immediate full repeal of Obamacare is a first priority—and neither of them like the phrase “repeal and replace.” Just repeal. Cruz said he would “keep not a single word of Obamacare.” Both agree that we need to use market reforms to keep Medicare and Medicaid from bankrupting us and enslaving future generations—but we need to keep our promises to those who need it and have gone through their working lives counting on the help.

Cruz made one of his lists about how to go about the needed reforms: allow insurance across state lines, encourage health savings accounts (that can be passed along to heirs), and de-link health insurance from employments, to make insurance portable—to empower the patient and disempower government.

Dewhurst is very a successful businessman—an oil-related business he built from the ground up and still runs. He grew up poor. His dad was killed by a drunk driver when Dewhurst was only three (he mentioned this more than once in the debate). His mother went to work, and taught him faith, integrity, truthfulness, humility, and hard work.

Cruz mentioned (only once, although it was also in his introduction) that his father escaped from Cuba at age 18, broke and unable to speak the language. But with hard work and perseverance he and Cruz’s mother were able to prepare the next generation for success in America.

Contention in this campaign, as well as during the debate, comes down to accusations against each other. I’ve heard many (many times) of the Dewhurst-approved ads claiming Cruz is crooked, un-American, chooses to advocate for the wrong side (a Chinese-owned company in a case against another Chinese-owned company, if I understand correctly). Cruz was effective when he held up a campaign card, right after telling us about his father’s ordeal in coming from Cuba, and told us to imagine how his father felt when he recently received that card in the mail and read on the back that his son was un-American. Dewhurst said it didn’t say that, but, really, I’ve heard the ads and probably seen those very leaflets: the wording might not be exact, but the implication is clear. That is what Dewhurst was saying.

The kerfuffle the other way was about Dewhurst’s position on immigration and whether he had ever been for amnesty. There was, according to Cruz, a speech Dewhurst gave, I think in 2007, where he said he could support a guest worker program (which isn’t exactly amnesty, but he was talking about creating a legal pathway for those already here, so Cruz has a point). Cruz pointed out the inconsistency, such as it is, and cited Dewhurst’s Lieutenant Governor website as the source with the speech. And then suddenly the speech was no longer there at the previous link. Cruz said Dewhurst must have removed it for political reasons. Dewhurst, while claiming his position has always been consistent, only argued that the speech was not taken down in response to the ad but had been archived a year prior.

Cruz has also claimed that Dewhurst shouldn’t take credit for as much budget success as he has claimed, that some of it is “smoke and mirrors.” This raised the ire of Sen. Dan Patrick, who said the claim maligned the entire legislature, which had done remarkable work and made real budget cuts. Patrick may be right. It is difficult to get traction when coming up with negatives in either record, but at least Cruz has been attacking record rather than character.

This is the worst these two can dredge up; clearly this isn’t Chicago. In the dirty ads contest, I’d say Dewhurst has thrown the most mud. And while negative campaigning in general does work, it also works at the risk of making both sides look bad.

One question was, “Will you keep your promise to be conservative after the election,” and I liked Cruz’s answer, and I’m sorry I didn’t write fast enough for an exact quote. He said yes, but then everyone would say that. So it’s like his father said about being Christian; make sure there’s enough evidence to convict.

I am persuaded to vote for Ted Cruz. I think they are both conservative enough. I think Dewhurst believes he is conservative, but possibly in the way Rick Perry believes he is conservative. Conservative—as long as the support of the people and the legislature make sure they’re conservative. And then they get credit for being kept in line. When I heard Ted Cruz talk about the Constitution, and arguing for our God-given rights, I believed he understood the philosophy of conserving our founding documents.

There isn’t much opposition from the Democrat (unknown to me at this point, until I eventually look up who it is). So it is generally believed this runoff election will decide who will be the next senator from Texas. Early voting is currently underway through Friday. And election day is Tuesday, July 31^st.

Restoring the Republic

US Rep. John Culberson (R., TX)

A couple of evenings ago I got to hear Rep. John Culberson (R., Texas) at King StreetPatriots. He was my representative until the recent redistricting lined us out. I appreciated that he was both conservative and responsive. Hearing him speak was enjoyable. He knows history and adds in little extra details here and there to illustrate points about today. He’s a great fan of Thomas Jefferson, and believes if we apply core Jeffersonian principles, we can get back to the Constitution. We can restore our republic.

Rep. Culberson used a visual illustration about rights. He poured a full cup of water into a glass he called individual rights—the rights God gave us, not rights granted by some governmental entity. From that cup he poured an ounce, not too much, into a cup he called states’ rights—the things he grant to the state and local governments to keep order in our lives. From that cup he poured just a trickle into a third cup labeled federal government. The only powers the federal government has are the few enumerated things—so we can protect our borders, avoid piracy on the high seas, not much else. Anything not poured into that cup (i.e., enumerated in the Constitution) is in the small amount in the states’ rights cup or, mostly, in the individual rights cup. (Every time he took a sip of water, he said, “I’m drinking that out of the federal government cup.”)

The purpose of the evening was to outline a specific plan for shutting down whole sections of the federal government. While I think he needed another hour to fully flesh out his idea, I think we got some of the basics. In essence, he is looking at federal legislation in conjunction with state legislation and litigation over individual rights.

If you are an individual who feels your rights have been abridged, he would like you to contact him to see if your case can serve to bring the issue in front of the courts. This was the main action item he asked of the audience. (Personally, I feel violated for having been forced through a TSA scan without probable cause. I don’t know if this is enough, but it is an example.)

An example of legislation includes changing federal grant money bills to make all grant programs disappear in two years, so that there is a need to look at the purpose again, and requiring states to opt in, rather than the typical status quo in which states must opt out of perpetual programs.

He also suggests following the method of codifying done in Texas: sunset and repeal of all federal law, and then recodify in plain English (can be understood by layman without law degree). He believes this can be done logically and systematically, because he saw the results in Texas. He wants to get rid of any federal programs that are redundant of state programs (education, welfare) so no money for such programs gets filtered through the federal government; he suggests any money a state has put into such programs be divided into two parts: one to pay down the national debt, and the rest to go to the state to handle those issues itself.

He said every federal law should identify the portion of the Constitution granting federal power to make such an action.

He would cause ever executive order to be defended as to legality and powers granted to the executive branch.

He said we should repeal five or ten laws for every one that gets passed.

There were a few quotable moments. When he was recalling the attempt to reform the prison system in Texas, he said, “It’s like fighting a fog bank.”

Talking about the refusal to allow prayers at funerals at Houston’s Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery, he told how the official who made that rule was fired. That happened because he is on the committee for veterans’ benefits, and threatened to allow funding if that person wasn’t removed. It took that much influence to make it happen. He said, “If you can’t fire somebody for interfering with a veteran to pray over a grave, you can’t fire anyone for anything.”

He talked about the imbalance of power that happened during the Civil War, but even speaking in the South, he was clear that Lincoln valued the Constitution and individual rights, and he personally believes that if Lincoln had lived, the balance would have quickly returned. I hope he writes a book on that someday.

Especially I hope he and others who believe in God-given rights are quickly successful in restoring our republic after there has been so much damage.

Oral Arguments

On Monday evening I heard an interview with Ben Shapiro, at King Street Patriots. He was there to talk about his new book, Prime Time Propaganda, but he also happens to write about the Obamacare issue for Breitbart.com, so he spent a little time on that as well. He gave a good summary of what’s going on this week, sort of your armchair guide to the proceedings.

Shapiro said there are three main issues, one per day (there are also a couple of additional issues, if you read news elsewhere about it):

1.      Timing and ripeness—Monday

2.      Individual mandate

3.      Severability

One point Shapiro made was that oral arguments are pretty much a formality. Most of the justices have already researched and decided their positions—and have for the most part already written their opinions. It is expected that the four conservative members of the court will find the law unconstitutional, and the four most liberal members will find a way to claim it can stand. The unpredictable deciding vote is Anthony Kennedy. He tends to frame his opinions, however, based on his view of personal liberty. He decided Lawrence v. Texas, for example, on his opinion that a state couldn’t have an anti-sodomy law since a sexual act is a private decision (ignoring anti-prostitution laws, anti-bigamy laws, anti-child molestation laws, and a myriad other concerns in so opining). So maybe concerning Obamacare he will be hesitant to force individuals to buy a product.

Timing has to do with the question of whether the issue can be taken up now, even though the penalties don’t kick in for a couple more years. If there’s a tax injury question, the person suing can’t sue until after suffering injury from the tax. Thus the question couldn’t come up until after 2014. The Obama administration sold Obamacare as something other than a tax; it is a penalty forcing compliance, not a revenue source for the general fund. But now the lawyers are claiming it is a tax—so they can put off the question until after the election. But on Monday no one was buying that argument. It can’t be a tax and not a tax at the same time. Really the issue for the justices is whether or not they want to postpone a ruling or handle it now. They all seem ready to take it on, with the exception of Kennedy, who would probably be glad to procrastinate. But on that issue the vote would likely be 8-1.

Tuesday the big issue was the individual mandate. Questions asked by the justices reveal something of their opinions. And it looked very bad for the pro-Obamacare crowd. Government lawyers seemed surprisingly unprepared to answer the basic question at the heart of the issue: can government force a person to participate in commerce they would otherwise not choose so that government can regulate that commerce? The deer-in-the-headlights response made it look like they’d never considered the question, which isn’t possible. But it does reveal how unanswerable the question is for them. And the follow-up core question is, if government can force a person to buy a product they would not otherwise purchase simply because there is the power to regulate commerce, what can government not force a person to do? There were analogies galore: can government force a person to buy broccoli? Since everyone will die, can government force a person to purchase burial insurance? Since anyone might at some point need to make a 911 call, can everyone be forced to purchase a cell phone plan?

Near the end of the day, Kennedy gave a tiny spark of hope. The government argument was that young healthy people not participating in the health insurance market did possibly have an effect on the costs of the market. Actuarially that is true: if young healthy people don’t put themselves into the insurance pool, then the pool is made up of individuals more likely to make claims, and therefore the costs overall are higher. If those young healthy people who won’t be making many claims can be forced to pay for full coverage, the costs overall go down—because those young people are subsidizing the less healthy. Those young people without coverage, if they can afford it, would likely opt for catastrophic coverage only—and pay out of pocket for their fewer basic medical needs. But Obamacare prohibits them from having the option of buying catastrophic coverage; it forces them to buy full coverage. The mandate is intended to force healthy people to buy a product they do not want so that the government can say it is lowering costs for unhealthy people.

You might see it as enslaving the lower-earning youthful demographic to pay for the healthcare costs of those who have saved up enough to retire.

Anyway, Tuesday did appear to be disastrous for supporters of the individual mandate. I hope that proves true.

Wednesday is about severability—assuming the mandate is struck down, does that mean the whole bill is struck down, or can the mandate be removed with the rest left standing. This is probably the biggest question. Technically, there is no severability clause written into the bill as required; the bill was written intentionally to have the mandate be the means of making the rest of the bill possible. If the mandate falls, the whole bill falls. But, after arguing the other way to get the bill passed, the government is now arguing that even without the mandate, the rest of the bill should stand.

There are economic and plenty of other reasons this is wrong. But the Supreme Court as a whole isn’t about simply looking at the law and the Constitution; it’s about deciding what they and/or the people want and then crafting a slant toward that end. In this case the likely reason the mandate will be struck down is that a majority of the people are strongly against it and believe it is unconstitutional (this has been true since before passage and continues true even after two years, even before the pain of payment has kicked in). So I think it’s likely the mandate will be struck down. But then this severability question becomes the sticking point. The liberals on the court ask things like, shouldn’t we let Congress decide these things? (even though, clearly, that was a bad idea in the first place—particularly when it was totally partisan and required bribes and shenanigans even to get that single party to pass it).

Shapiro pointed out that deciding to leave the rest of the bill standing minus the mandate could be the worst possible outcome: insurance companies would be forced to insure the highest risk individuals (can’t turn anyone down) but have no way to force healthy individuals into the pool to mitigate their costs. Insurance companies would go bankrupt. And that would mean the only option left standing would be government healthcare—or socialized medicine. Costs would be higher. Care would be less. Choices would be limited. All our fears would be realized.

So let’s hope the court (particularly the unpredictable Justice Kennedy) can see the facts and rule justly.

And if for some reason that doesn’t happen, we must, absolutely must, vote Obama out of office before this catastrophe gets institutionalized.

Stand for Truth

Yesterday the news was dominated by the sad tidings of the death of Andrew Breitbart. I had been unaware of his previous heart attack and was stunned to hear of his death at the young age of 43. I pray for his family, who will most miss him. But I pray also that we will be able to continue progress in a way he pioneered.

Andrew Breitbart, file photo

I don’t remember exactly when I became aware of him, but I became more aware when he and crew came to Houston following the 2010 election to record the stories of voter fraud and interference committed unilaterally by the Democrats. I wasn’t recorded (my challenges were minor compared to many), and I didn’t meet him. But there were people on video at his site that I had seen and met at trainings provided by King Street Patriots’ True the Vote project.

Catherine Engebrecht, head of King Street Patriots, wrote a touching newsletter to honor him yesterday. Among the many remembrances yesterday, this was one of my favorites:

When faced with the challenge of expressing your heart it is often said that words do not do justice. Andrew Breitbart knew how to use words for justice; the impact his words have had on our country is truly immeasurable.

When history folds in on our generation, and our children speak of who we were, they will speak better of us because of Andrew and God willing, they will still speak freely, because of the war Andrew fearlessly fought for so many years.

My friendship with Andrew began in 2010. We'd been sued, we'd been slandered, we'd been all but silenced. Why? A simple miscalculation. We thought that a citizen's volunteering to uphold election integrity would be a good thing; a thing no one could find fault with. How could you be against True the Vote? What we know now that we didn't know then is that in present day America if you tell the truth, and if that truth threatens power, then you will be attacked. Not debated. Attacked, intimidated, smeared, destroyed. Then we met Andrew.

He said "let me be your rodeo clown". In rodeos there are bulls, bull riders, and rodeo clowns. When a bull rider gets thrown he is at the mercy of the animal until the rodeo clown, the bravest one in the arena, shows up to distract the bull long enough to turn its attention to the clown. If there is a hit to be taken, the clown takes it for the sake of the bull rider. Let me be your rodeo clown, let me take the hit, so you can come back to ride another day. What is the measure of a man who would willingly take the hit, over and over and over and over again, so that truth could ride one more day?

There are many depraved, godless, evil animals out there right now, writing and saying horrible things. I can assure you those things are not true. None of them. Andrew sought the truth, supported the truth, told the truth. The more these animals spew, the more they out themselves as the pitiful lot that they are.

Andrew spoke often of and dearly loved his family, he was passionate about his country and countrymen, he knew the stakes of the battle he was in and even still he warred on without reserve.

Today our country lost one of its greatest patriots. Our hearts are broken - but our resolve is redoubled. 2012 is for you, Andrew.

Onward - Catherine Engelbrecht

There was a Facebook page created to honor Breitbart, OneMillionBreitbarts.  I really like the sentiment in this explanation paragraph (found by clicking about):

When I first heard that Andrew Breitbart had died suddenly of natural causes early Thursday night, March 1, 2012 (at the wildly young age of 43) I went through the same set of emotions most Conservatives probably experienced: disbelief, shock, anger, followed by an enormous sense of sorrow: Sorrow for his unfairly shortened life... Sorrow for his wife, Susie, and the four children he left behind… But more than anything I felt an enormous sense of emptiness and sorrow for our country. Because in the length of time it takes for a heart to stop beating, America lost more than a media pioneer, personality and political ‘showman’ (through he was all of these): it lost perhaps the Right’s strongest voice and most powerful advocate for Capitalism, Conservatism, and the United States Constitution. My next thought was: Dear God, there’s no one to take his place. But that’s not entirely true. Because while there is no one person who could ever take Andrew Breitbart’s place on the political platform, there are millions of us who have been touched by his spirit and his passion… to help complete his mission to return America to its former greatness. And that’s why we’ve created this page: to enlist one million people—to fill Andrew Breitbart’s shoes and continue his work. This is more than simply a cute idea to get “likes”… it’s a movement that’s just getting started, one that will give voice to a man who fought tirelessly for us all. Stay posted… keep sharing.

I clicked like, to see what comes. I want to believe that the many media outlets Andrew Breitbart set up to get the truth out will continue, and will keep paving the way for more and more truth. It's a mission worth continuing. I believe (and I think Breitbart believed this) as a people, when we see clearly what is true, we will make the right decisions for preserving our blessed nation under God.

Verify the Recall

If you’re among those of us who want to take action to protect our country, this is a call to action.

I’m assuming you’re aware that there is a recall election going on in Wisconsin, to recall Governor Scott Walker. He stood up to the labor unions, and they don’t like that. This is in addition to an attempt last summer to change the outcome of elections that left unions out of favor in the state senate. The outcome of that onslaught was a net loss of two for Republicans, but leaving them in the majority. So there is an additional attack on four state senators: Wanggaard, Galloway, Fitzgerald, and Moulton.

Are you aware of the Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the system? That is happening in Wisconsin. If the unions who are pushing for recalls can dump literally millions of signatures onto the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, they can make it impossible for the GAB to verify the signatures—which opens the way for fraudulently forcing the recalls.

In step the volunteers from King Street Patriots, whose project True the Vote has attempted to prevent fraud in elections across the country. (I was trained by them as a poll watcher, which I have done several times now.) They have an additional project called Verify the Recall. Mark Antill and a small team of other volunteers in Houston, TX, have developed database capabilities to verify the signatures quickly and accurately.

The verification has already taken place for the four state senators. Verify the Recall does not work for any candidate, nor even contact them. The purpose is simply to allow for the possibility of verifying that the system is just. Nor can they expect the Wisconsin GAB to simply accept the information from an outside party. But those candidates who want to can use the Verify the Recall results to question specific records to challenge whether there are adequate signatures (when/if the results show there may be too few eligible signatures).

The recall verification is going on this week for Governor Walker’s signatures.

Here is where you come in. The actual entering of data requires many many volunteers. So far more than 16,000 unique volunteers from around the country have stepped up. If you want to join this volunteer force, go to www.verifytherecall.com. What you do is sign up. They will shortly send you a login ID. Then you can go to the site and login to volunteer to enter data. You can do just a page or two, or as many as you have time for. (Mark Antill says, "One hundred minutes for one hundred records; that's all we ask.)

You will see a scanned page of signatures, and you will enter the data, as you discern it, into the form. At least two other people will enter that same record (each name is a record), so there can be comparisons to identify the most accurate information. Then the data is compared to voter rolls and other state data to verify that the person signing is an actual person, and actually lives in the jurisdiction, and that there are no duplicates.

Do not put this off. They are trying to get Governor Walker’s recall petitions entered by this weekend, so that the miraculous software can do its thing in time for the governor's deadline at the end of February.

I’m assuming that Verify the Recall will continue to be useful as unions and others use recall petitions elsewhere in the country, so stay tuned. You can sign up for updates by email or Facebook.

Voter Suppression, Really?

I’ve written here several times about poll watching in an effort toward free and fair elections, including just last week, plus here, here, here, here, and here. But today I’m writing once again, this time in response to an inflammatory piece in last Friday’s Houston Chronicle: “Partisan tactic could suppress voting,” by Judith Browne Dianis and Christina Sanders.  

First, these authors call Texas’s new Voter ID Law suppression. In the past, including last week’s election, voters could use utility bills, banks statements, paychecks, and their voter registration cards to verify their ID for voting purposes. So a voter’s name must appear in the voter roll book (must be registered), and must show that their address is still what is listed in their registration—thus the utility bills, etc. But it has been possible (and has happened—did indeed happen at my poll watcher trainer’s location last year) that a voter can come in with these documents and vote in someone else’s name. Then the real voter—identified by photo ID and voter registration card—can come in later in the day and find that they cannot vote, because the voter roll shows a signature in their spot. That voter has now been disenfranchised. That actually happens. The new Voter ID Law will prevent that. 

Does anyone get disenfranchised for being unable to get an ID? The law has gone out of its way to specify various ways to prevent any such disenfranchisement. So far it has been impossible to find a single legal voter unable to obtain a photo ID, what would be needed to cash a check or just about any other private transaction. Whether a person drives or not, having a photo ID is something people use almost daily. The law specifies how to handle homebound situations where travel to get ID is difficult. So the law simply does not disenfranchise a single legal voter. It prevents disenfranchisement. 

Then the authors accuse people like me, volunteer poll watchers, of intimidating voters. They seem to be confused; voter intimidation is what the New Black Panthers have done, well documented but not prosecuted by this administration’s Department of Justice. The piece words the accusation this way: 

To complement the voter suppression efforts, tea party-affiliated groups such as the Houston-based King Street Patriots have vowed to send individuals to observe activities at polling places, which could intimidate voters. Hundreds of volunteers have pledged their time to travel to polling stations, question the rights of fellow Texans to cast their ballots and disrupt polling-place activity if they deem it necessary. The idea of tea party volunteers storming polling places evokes strong images of Jim Crow-era voter suppression. 

I didn’t live in the South during the Jim Crow era; I don’t know what evokes those images. But it would take a huge imagination to assume what poll watchers do is in any way related to voter suppression. And the authors must know this. 

Let me just say that I did not, and was trained not to, disrupt polling-place activity. There is no “storming.” One or two poll watchers (maybe up to four at a very busy polling place) show up with credentials in hand, have these signed by the election judge, then place themselves where they can observe unobtrusively as possible, and have no interaction at all with voters. Usually this begins during the set-up before the polling place opens. Voters won’t much notice the poll watchers; they will just look like they have a job to do that doesn’t include interacting with voters.  

There is no voter intimidation taking place. There is no interaction with voters; poll watchers can be ejected for even talking with a voter. They do not generally make eye contact with voters; they are standing or sitting where they can see the voter rolls or the machines. They never stand near a voter in the booth except possibly when a clerk or judge is helping a voter. Then the poll watcher does not watch how the voter votes, but only verifies that the worker is not touching the machine or influencing the voter. Poll workers influencing voters while assisting voters was one of the most common violations in 2010; there were hundreds of such incidents. Unwatched poll workers were used to committing this violation without consequence. 

Poll watchers are overseeing the process, making sure the rules are followed, so that the votes cast are legal and that no legal voter is disenfranchised. Any polling place that is carrying out a free and fair election has that verified by poll watchers. 

Poll watchers are not a new part of the law. In Texas each party is allowed two poll watchers per polling place. Each person on the ballot is allowed two poll watchers per polling place. Any group advocating a position on an issue on the ballot can provide two poll watchers per location. That could become quite a crowd. The reason it doesn’t is a matter of volunteers. Poll watchers, unlike election judges and clerks, do not get paid, so interested parties need to feel the need to verify the election enough to recruit volunteers. The effort to cover all polling places, even those with no previous complaints, shows that the effort is toward verifying free and fair elections, not suppression of legal votes. 

The authors argue that this is a partisan effort. No. King Street Patriots, which they identify, willingly trains anyone from any party. Oddly, the only ones taking them up on it are conservatives. But they are not attached to the Republican Party. KSP has helped train election judges, who are sent by the parties and certified by the county. So far only the GOP has accepted KSP trained judges, but the training would be the same for either party. Neither party has sent KSP-trained poll watchers. So far all poll watchers sent by KSP have been sent by the signed request of candidates on the ballot. I think historically both parties have a dark history of voter fraud, but in recent elections the guilty have been almost exclusively of one party, the one against being watched. 

The authors claim, “Voter fraud is not a problem in Texas. You are far more likely to be killed by lightning than to see a prosecutable case of voter fraud.” Notice the careful wording. It’s not that voter fraud isn’t happening, or even known. It’s that it has to be prosecutable. In order for that to happen, there must be eye witnesses. The witnesses need to turn in incident reports swearing that they observed the fraud. There has to be a poll watcher there to do the witnessing, which these authors are insisting shouldn’t be there. And then there has to be a justice department willing to prosecute when the evidence is there.

In 2010 King Street Patriots found, just in Harris County, some 20,000 fake names on the voter rolls—because they looked. And then they turned in some 800 incident reports following the November 2010 election. Only some of them are prosecutable as fraud; many are simply observed violations of procedure. A likely outcome in a serious case is probably an election judge making numerous purposeful violations being removed from employment in future elections. 

Look at the incident of someone using a utility bill and voting in someone else’s name. It isn’t possible to find out who that illegal voter was; the real voter is disenfranchised, but unless he has a suspicion of who might have snatched his utility bill (maybe a family member, or maybe a stranger with access to the mailbox), then how can there be a prosecution? 

I refuse to be intimidated just because someone accuses me of storming a polling place to disrupt and suppress voting like some Jim Crow bigot. I know the truth, and I know I am working toward free and fair elections. And now I know that these authors and the organizations they represent (Advancement Project, and League of Young Voters Education Fund) are against truth and free and fair elections.

Practice at the Polls

What would election day be without a threat that the police were coming to remove me? It seems to be becoming tradition. But, still, I have reason to believe things are getting better. 

Yesterday was a good practice day for poll watching. Turnout was low on an off year, although within the city, where I served, the mayor’s race and city council positions were on the ballot. I was sent in mid-afternoon till closing to give a second pair of eyes to an area that was having some difficulties. I wasn’t given details, just that things were confusing. 

The presiding judge was experienced, had been running the place for nigh onto twenty years. Not used to poll watchers, however. She wasn’t sure there could be a second poll watcher (there can be two from each party and two from each candidate on the ballot). 

The presiding judge (PJ) was an elderly woman, 77 she told me later. Not all elderly people are equal. She was energetic and trim—despite suffering an encounter with a city bus this past weekend, which she described to me later in the day during down times. But much of the difficulty at the site was related to her belief that she knew what she was doing and asserting her authority without actually knowing the laws and procedures. She confided to me during down time that the training they gave (her party?) turned out to be all different from how things really are. 

She was going to place me at the far corner of the room, where I wouldn’t be able to see much or hear anything. So I said, no, I’d just take this spare chair and place myself where I needed to be. I wasn’t able to see the voter roll books from where I was, but I could get up and look as needed, and I could hear everything. 

This was a mostly Hispanic area. The alternate judge (AJ) was at a disadvantage. The PJ and clerks (one of whom was the PJ’s very helpful and effective son), as well as the other poll watcher all spoke Spanish. I don’t look like I speak Spanish, so they probably didn’t realize it, but many of the encounters between voters and clerks were in Spanish, so that was handy. 

Most of the conversations were about names and addresses. And many (more than half) of the voters were at the wrong polling place. In Harris County (Houston area), there are two weeks of early voting at a few dozen voting places. Voters can vote at any location during early voting. But on election day voters must vote only at their precinct’s polling location. This particular location had been available to everyone for two weeks of early voting, but was there on election day only for a single precinct. That apparently caused a lot of confusion. So the clerks spent much of the day trying to help people figure out where they should go to vote—something they probably couldn’t have spent time on during a busier election.  

But there was no attempt to allow voters to vote illegally at this location. As a poll watcher, I am there to verify their good faith efforts, just as I would report attempts at illegalities. So for anyone working to have free and fair elections, having poll watchers there is to their advantage. 

We missed a couple of things. When ID address doesn’t match the address in the voter roll book, the voter is required to fill out a statement of residency. Then their vote is counted only after their eligibility is verified. Last year we ran out of those forms, we had so many such voters. Yesterday we didn’t use any SORs. But I know of two voters that should have used them. There were so many issues about wrong addresses for this polling place, it didn’t immediately sink in what we were seeing. So when we realized (after the voters in question had left) and brought it to their attention, the clerks were determined to do it right if it came up again. It didn’t. 

That’s the kind of thing that experience helps with. I’ve had more experience now. So have those clerks and the other poll watcher. We’ll all be better prepared during a more critical election next year. Other poll watchers got training and practice this year too. And poll workers got more used to having poll watchers on hand. 

OK, about the police threat—it happened again at the close of the polls. The other poll watcher left ten minutes before the polls closed, not sure why. But I was there to observe, so I didn’t worry about it. But the PJ said, now that there were no voters, I had to leave. She claimed twice to have called the county, with differing answers, neither of them accurate, and once claimed the police were on their way to remove me. But I knew what I needed to do. The AJ and clerks knew and accepted me. So I went about my business, verifying numbers on the machines, etc.  

Somewhere along the way the PJ saw that I wasn’t interfering in any way, and she had no support from the other workers in her efforts to keep me away. Plus, of course, no police actually came. A while later she came to me and apologized. She reminded me of the pain she was in from her accident, and said she saw she had been rude and asked if I forgave her. Next year, if she’s there again, she’ll expect a poll watcher to observe the closedown.  

This is a huge improvement over my adventure last year. So, I hope I’m getting better experience ahead of serious need. And I hope judges and clerks at all the various polling places are getting better with practice as well. Because the goal, as people who love our freedom, we all want a free and fair election.

Free and Fair Elections

A couple of evenings ago I went to learn about signing up to be a poll watcher again for November’s election. I did it last year. Houston has kind of been ground zero for attacking the voter fraud issue. But it’s expanding to a state near you, so I thought maybe you’d like to know what’s going on. 

A couple of years ago, 2009, some friends in Houston met in a pub, complaining as they had often done, about the direction their beloved country was going. But this time it was no longer enough just to commiserate. This coincided with the rise of the Tea Parties and 9/12 groups, which was good. But this small group wanted to do more to take action. 

King Street Patriots was born. The name comes from King Street, a historic location in Boston. The Boston Massacre took place there; the original Tea Partiers crossed it to get to Boston Harbor. So it has historic meaning, outside either party, and historic to all of America instead of a single locale.  

One of the projects that came out of this group of self-proclaimed patriots was True the Vote, an effort to bring about free and fair elections. That first year there were only a dozen people in Harris County (where Houston is located). They worked hard and learned a lot. They studied voting law, and learned what they could do. At any polling place it is expected there will be a presiding judge, an alternate judge, and a clerk or two or three to check in voters and verify their ID. And there can be poll watchers, nonpartisan observers there simply to observe and report what happens. Think Jimmy Carter in Haiti, but not famous, just volunteer citizens at every polling place. 

So these 12 people covered (incompletely, to say the least) the 835 polling places in Harris County that first year, for an off-year election. Most of the violations they observed were small but common, things like failing to ask for ID, officials accompanying people to the voting booth (allowable under certain conditions) and telling voters who to vote for (never allowed), sometimes setting it up for them (touching the machine is never allowed) and telling the voter to push the button.  

Much of the time conscientious volunteer poll workers were willing to follow the rules but were inadequately trained. King Street’s True the Vote project has helped recruit and educate presiding judges and alternate judges as well since then. 

Last year, when I learned about it and stepped up to be trained, there were 700 or so volunteers, which is a good step up from a dozen, but not enough to put a team (at least two, to avoid the problem of “your word against mine”) in each in the 835 locations. We’re handling an off-year election this year, which is good practice and preparation. Then next year KSP is hoping the have 3000 volunteers in Harris County. The not-big-enough crew, however, uncovered 750 documented election irregularities, and were able to turn over the evidence and testimony to authorities—something that usually doesn’t exist, which is why prosecuting voter fraud is so difficult. 

This is not just a local story. True the Vote has trained people across Texas and in 25 other states. Anyone interested can go to the website, TruetheVote.org, and see if there is something going on in your area. You can get training online, which may not be adequate, but it’s a good start, in a good year to practice—so that next year, when it is more critical, we have a chance to ensure free and fair elections. There will be at least ten two-hour training sessions starting Wednesday, September 28, and October. The training is free. Allow yourself two hours to see if this is something you can do. 

One of the efforts of True the Vote has been to clean up voter rolls. Last year they uncovered a plot in Harris County to load voter rolls with fraudulent registrations. There were some 25,000 new registrations for only 7,000 actual voters. A “community organization” called Houston Votes was charged with voter registration fraud—entirely because of the work done by True the Vote. They requested voter rolls, public information, and tediously went through them, documenting patterns that looked wrong, and followed up with authorities. 

They have a third attack, through the legislature. Following up after what they uncovered last year, they were able to lobby for legislative change in this year’s legislative session. Of the 22 points they advanced, 18 were made into bills; 6 were penned into law. One of these bills was that, if a presiding judge wants a peace officer at the polling place, that must be a licensed peace officer, not a group like the Black Panthers, the group who showed up at polling placed and thuggishly intimidated and physically threatened any volunteer they didn’t want there—and they accused the innocent volunteers of disturbing the peace. And then they lied to police about what had happened, making it impossible for the actual police to allow for free and fair elections. 

There have been numerous lawsuits against KSP and True the Vote volunteers. There are attacks going on now. But, because of the excellent training, and the discipline of the volunteers, every accusation is always dismissed for lack of evidence. Training makes a big difference. And it is becoming more obvious that the opponents are against free and fair elections—and against any civic-minded volunteers who step up to make them happen. 

I’d like to tell some of the adventure stories from last November. Andrew Breitbart recorded many of them. I had a little adventure myself, although not of the level worth video, but still maybe worth telling. I think I’ll save that for another day. 

For now, let me just make this point: being there and watching is likely to make someone think twice before acting against the law. Being there means we will probably see nothing or very little done wrong. And that is the outcome we want. Good old boring adherence to law—don’t you love it!