The queen has been de-throned. Maryland made the right choice.

Sorry to see WDS go, he is a real political icon in MD. Franchot is a left wing nut so this is a one and done deal for him-- should maybe the Republican's McCarthy can even give him a run for his money?

Schaefer showed that he lacked the mental fitness for the job, and the Queen would have sold the State to developers. Franchot will serve us well.

How could the Gonzales poll on this race have been so wrong? As I recall, Franchot was "polling" 15% a week or two ago. Gonzales' relationship to the Owens campaign has been established. Was fraud involved, or was it simply poor quality polling?

Or the Mother Hubbard squabble between his two opponents last week.

Or a whole lot of momentum.

You're seriously suggesting the recent barbs resulted in a 21 point boost in 10 days?

You have had a record number of blogs about the election day voting fiasco. And relatively few about former Governor Schaeffer (bless his soul). I suggest you do some more postings about the worst election mess in Montgomery County history.

First election loss in fifty years. Seems a lot of election patterns or anomolies are associated with the auditless evoting machines. I am not a sore loser when I voice my skepticism over the announcement that Schaeffer came in third.

Congratulations to Peter Franchot. It was an amazing race, and an amazing comeback.

Phyllis, you a correct, a lot happened in the last two weeks with the Post and Sun endorsements for Franchot. But it is hard to imagine that Peter climbed 21 points, especially since many of his would-be supporters ended up voting for Owens just to ensure that Schaefer didn't win (after the bogus poll showing Franchot far behind).

Coming soon from Diebold Election Systems, an election experience so realistic you'll swear you actually voted.

The selfish Queen of Sprawl, Janet Owens, had the nerve to think she had "earned the right" to move up and, in her wake, left distruction of one of Maryland's finest people, William Donald Schaefer. But at least she too lost and hopefully will no longer be able to hurt more people! Somebody give her back HER car keys now that she will have to drive herself and is no longer "entitled" to abuse the police department to "protect her"!!

Ms. Owens needs to retire with her millions of dollars and travel now AT HER OWN EXPENSE! Amazing how she can cast insults but when they come back to her she wonders why??? Wake up and smell the coffee, Janet..TIMES UP!!!

Janet Owens is nobody's friend! She uses people and then casts them aside WHEN SHE NO LONGER NEEDS THEM! Hear this O'Malley & Ehrlich: don't give her a job, it's time for her to go!

No one cared about the race much, except insofar as they were looking for an alternative to Schaefer. Want my guess? Post and Sun endorsements, Apple Ballot, and Franchot's TV advertising made the difference. 21 points isn't really all that much when a lot of voters make up their minds in the last few days of the camapign.

And the fraud accusations are ridiculous. The biggest problems were in Montgomery County, which was Franchot's home base. If anything, they would have hurt him. And if fraud had been committed by Ehrlich or his appointees to the Board of Elections, it probably would have been towards helping Schaefer, an Ehrlich ally, instead of hurting him.

Gonzales polls or other polls where the polling person has received money from or given money to one of the names being polled are very unlikely to be honest no matter what the history of the polling person. Q.E.D.

"And if fraud had been committed by Ehrlich or his appointees to the Board of Elections..."

...then you're a Korean astronaut.

Don't cry for Janet Owens. She'll probably be on the payroll of some developer soon enough. Also, to all those who thought Owens did a good job in Anne Arundel, please explain why Schaefer and Franchot received a total of 26,145 votes in Anne Arundel and Owens only received 20,041? Yeah, Owens is SO popular! Maybe she should do us all a favor and go live on Little Dobbins Island.

www.kurtnimmo.com

Senate Puts Another Nail in the Coffin of the 4th

The National Security Surveillance Act, currently working its way through the rubberstamp halls of Congress, is simply remarkable in its fascist depth and breadth. But what is nearly as remarkable is the lack of response and outrage to this bit of authoritarian legislation that effectively kills the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. "[Senator Arlen] Specter's bill concedes the government's right to wiretap Americans without warrants, and allows the U.S. Attorney General to authorize, on his own, dragnet surveillance of Americans so long as the stated purpose of the surveillance is to monitor suspected terrorists or spies," reports Wired.

Not only does the bill allow "the attorney general, or anyone he or she designates, to authorize widespread domestic spying, such as monitoring all instant-messaging systems in the country, so long as the government promises to delete anything not terrorism-related," it also allows "unfettered wiretapping and physical searches without warrants." If you believe the government deletes "anything not terrorism-related" and does not feed this data into its massive and long-standing matrix of snoop databases, I have a bridge to sell you. Our government, unchecked for decades, has kept a staggering pile of data on millions of citizens, particularly "terrorist" Americans opposed to the government.

As noted here on numerous occasions, the government has snooped in earnest on Americans for decades, beginning officially with the creation of the National Security state on November 4, 1952, and authorized earlier in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June of 1952. From the beginning, the NSA and the CIA have worked closely with telecoms, a fact highlighted recently with NSA snooping revelations. Now we are told Verizon executive vice president and general counsel William P. Barr began his career as a CIA "analyst" in the 1970s and went "on to become an assistant legislative counsel for the agency," according to Brian Beutler, writing for Raw Story. "He has also held a number of other public positions since then, including those of domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and even U.S. Attorney General under George Herbert Walker Bush."

When that position expired after Bill Clinton became President in 1993, Barr went to work as general counsel for GTE, the company that would later merge with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications, where he now serves as executive vice president and general counsel. In those capacities, though, he has maintained ties with officials in Washington who have repeatedly called upon his testimony when crafting anti-terror legislation.

That testimony reveals a record of sympathy with the sorts of legally contentious activities the NSA is alleged to be conducting with its wiretapping and data mining programs.

After "everything changed" following nine eleven--that is to say, when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights became even more irrelevant than previously to our rulers--Barr "defended executive-branch war-time actions before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including controversial measures such as: the use of military tribunals to try suspected members of al Qaeda; suspension of criminal justice procedures which, he noted, 'will frustrate our fight against al Qaeda'; and the withholding of operational details by the Attorney General of ongoing criminal investigations. The USA PATRIOT Act ultimately codified powers that closely mirror his suggestions, and he has since gone on record in support of that legislation as well.... President Bush's chief rationale for ignoring FISA has been a contention, strikingly similar to Barr's, that the urgency of terror cases does not allow enough time for the acquisition of surveillance warrants," in other words the Fourth Amendment is a dead letter.

Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter and the Senate Judiciary Committee are in the process of embalming the Fourth Amendment once and for all, as the point here is not to monitor "al-Qaeda," a documented intelligence contrivance, but snoop all opposition to the emergent fascist state.

Let this be a lesson to aspiring politicians-if you cosy up to corrupt members of the opposing party remember to swtich parties before the next primary.

Che, your post has nothing to do with the Maryland elections (although it is quite funny in a nonsensical sort of way). Is this sort of hijacking your way of having a blog without paying for it?

"'And if fraud had been committed by Ehrlich or his appointees to the Board of Elections...'

...then you're a Korean astronaut."

Rufus! How'd you know!

Right on IKE! 57% of the voters in Anne Arundel County voted AGAINST the Queen of Sprawl, Janet Owens. A big thanks to all of them and congrats to the winner! He saved us from her highness!!! Time's Up Queenie!

"Rufus! How'd you know!"

By the leftist rhetoric and the lack of reality, the comments clearly parrot a Kim il-Jung speach.

The trolls appear when bloggers expose the fraudulent evoting system. We need an investigative reporter/journalist to uncover the lobbyists and elected officials that were complicit in the HAVA installed Diebold auditless voting system. There is much more to this story than we are being told.