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A reporter friend of mine always joked that the biggest thing you had to do as a reporter was listen as someone got themselves in trouble.  Bob Delaney has lots of people listening. Rich has been all over this story.  From a link Rich provides

St. Clair County Clerk Bob Delaney acknowledged Thursday that 1,297 military ballots were mailed out two weeks after a deadline set by federal law, including 223 absentee ballots sent out to troops overseas.

Delaney blamed the missed deadline on his decision to wait on an appellate court ruling on whether Constitution Party candidates may remain on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Delaney, a Democrat, said if he had mailed out the ballots before the court ruling had come down, putting the Constitution Party back on the ballot, “I would have had to redo the whole thing again” — at a cost of $2 per ballot, Delaney said.

“I thought it was the safe way to wait,” he said. “I was trying to be prudent. I was trying to be wise.”

You may have thought that, but that would make you an idiot.  A really big one. As I pointed out yesterday, unless a court enjoined you from mailing the ballots, you didn’t have a choice.  Complying with federal law on voting is not an optional activity.  It’s never prudent to violate voting rights laws.  It may cost you extra money if the Illinois Court had ruled in favor of the Constitution Party, but that’s the cost of being in the voting business.

Rich points the ISBE might not have entirely clean hands, but Delaney is the person primarily responsible and this would seem to me to be an offense that could easily get you removed from office.

Worst analysis ever:

Pretty similar, but there’s a payoff at the very end that’s worth it in the second.

This is a really moving story told by a Council Member in Fort Worth Texas.

Visit the Trevor Project for more

While my mother is conservative, homophobia in its strongest forms was not in our home.  She had friends who were gay and viewed them as they are–normal people.  One friend likely died of AIDS largely in secret because Central Illinois was just not the place that gay men were out 20 years ago. 

My mother had a strange history with gay men–she married one in her second marriage (I wasn’t born yet).  He was a Naval Officer and she was his unwitting beard.  While in Morocco he was discovered by the Military Police. They came and got my mother and sister and packed up their stuff and they never saw him again.  While she was hurt and bitter, it later taught her how difficult and unfair that was. 

As a kid, I didn’t bully other kids–but I am guilty as many if not most of us at my age of teasing and laughing at guys who weren’t traditionally masculine. I can never take that back, but I can hope that young people today learn better and I certainly raise my children that way. 

Cruella De Vil: Any way you want. Poison them, drown them, bash them on the head. Got any chloroform? I don’t care how you kill the little beasts. Just do it, and do it NOW!

Get me those puppies!

Sorry, it was just too easy.  Quinn is getting a lot of press making fun of the ad and while I tend to have a far more complicated view of animal rights (I don’t see why we can’t slaughter horses if we slaughter hogs) it’s  a legitimate issue.  Just because it sounds like a parody doesn’t mean it’s not a valid issue.  Is it as clear cut as Quinn makes it in the ad?  No, but it’s also not the first political campaign ad to be a bit sensationalistic.

That said, it’s not my fault the Republicans didn’t nominate Kirk Dillard.

I am interested to see how Brady is going to respond to this.  Most of the ways I’ve imagined it so far don’t do much good. Imagine, “I only want to allow dogs to be gassed when…”

UPDATE: Aaron has a slightly different take–I’m not sure the pure emotional strategy isn’t the best, but he has some good points about this being an example of responding to the wishes of an individual constituent.

Photo Credit: Birdwatcher  Thanks!

Dorf did a great job putting the comments in context:

And, of course, the site gets listed as a source.  Not much, but for a small state blogger, hey!

Chicago Board of Elections:

Thought I’d do the last segment first, didn’t ya!

Sigh

Hey NUTSUCKER LOVER show me where in the Commerce Clause it states that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution DEMANDS I HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE. You can’t can you little NUTBAG LOVER. You NUTSUCKER, BAG LICKER’S are going to find we are feed up with you little pussy coward asses, NUTBAG LICKING, dope smoking, can’t shower, basement dwelling little COWARD’S. SEIU THUG’S? What an oxymoron. (S)PECIAL (E)D (I)DIOT’S are (U)S. Bash the face of any Union pussy that screws with YOU is my motto. You Procrap’s wanted a WAR and YOU got it. We will find you and destroy you as we destroy any THREAT to this GREAT COUNTRY.

The thing that still baffles me about these is the use of caps.

I’m also trying to decide if that’s an actionable threat…your thoughts.

For the old inhabitants of usenet-one guess on what service provider the IP is from.

The woman is completely nuts.

Whether it be just affecting a segment of the population, a demographic, certainly not in its entirety all over our country, Americans will not stand for this because Americans are smart enough to know Sharia law, if that were to be adopted — allowed to govern in our country, it will be the downfall of America. And too many Americans are onto this already and are starting to rise up and send that message to our federal officials and say, no, we will not put up with any hint of Sharia law being any sort of law of the land.

One might note the First Amendment if some wingnut brings up Sharia Law.

Or one might point out that is a ridiculous idea and that danger of Sharia Law being imposed in the United States is far down the worry list around alien invasion with Galactus showing up to gobble the planet up.

The appropriate answer when Eddie Vrdolyak asks you to do anything is to flip him the bird.

Joe Berrios doesn’t think so, however.

Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Berrios, who also attended the luncheon, said he distributed coats at two sites in the city for the charity.

“Eddie asked me to be a part of it, so I went out there to meet with them,” said Berrios, who is running for Cook County assessor.

It’s awful and stupid:

SPRINGFIELD — The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

The misspelling turned up on touch-screen machines in 23 wards overall. Whitney’s name is spelled correctly on the machines’ initial screens showing all of the candidates’ names, but it is misspelled on review screens that later show a voter his or her choices, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections.

“This is a difficult situation. We’ll make the best of it. But the important thing is the name is spelled correctly where it counts, and that’s where people are making the selection,” Allen said.

Allen said there is not adequate time to reprogram and test machines before Nov. 2. He predicted about 90 percent of the ballots cast that day will be on paper ballots, where Whitney’s name is spelled properly.

The city election board plans to post a “candidate-neutral” list at polling places, showing the correctly spelled names of all candidates on the ballot, Allen said.

The snafu, however, has Whitney contemplating legal action to force a fix.

“I don’t want to be identified as ‘Whitey.’ If this is happening in primarily African-American wards, that’s an even bigger concern,” Whitney told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I don’t know if this is machine politics at play or why this happened.”

“In any event, whether it is or not, this has to be disconcerting to a voter, and I wonder how this will impact the vote.”

But Rich, you aren’t getting a whole lot of black votes anyway.

And it really shouldn’t be that hard to reprogram the machines.

Rich has the overblown story on military ballots not going out in time in Illinois.

It appears that some local offices did not send out military ballots on time with a 45 day deadline for them before the day of the election.

Rich takes issue with the way the story is explained by WLS, specifically this bit:

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the state of Illinois missed the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to members of the military and other overseas American voters as part of a new federal overseas voting law.

Rich rightly points out that the County election authorities (County Clerks) are responsible for sending the ballots out so the State Board of Elections (and yes, they have the worst web site in the world) is not at fault and pointedly critiques both Kirk and Brady overreacting and blaming the state for screwing up.

Most of that I agree with, but part of the issue is how the Justice Department addresses the issue which is a fairly fine, but important legal point.  When the federal government is concerned about a federal right and has to address whether a state or locality is at fault, the state and local governments are unitary in nature and in terms of Constitutional Law, the state is responsible for political subdivisions established under it.  So in federal lawsuits over voting rights, it may be the state delegates the responsibility to the local government, but the state is still the responsible party.

That may seem a bit pedantic, but it explains the language from the Justice Department.  That does not give WLS a pass though because they should have added the local context and how the State of Illinois is addressing the problem and how limited it is to local County Clerks.

All that said, Bob Delaney is a moron.

St. Clair County Clerk Bob Delaney said 1,297 overseas military ballots — many of them connected with Scott Air Force Base — didn’t get sent out until Oct. 4, primarily because he was waiting for a decision on whether the Constitution Party would be allowed on the ballot.

Under the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) act, ballots are supposed to be sent 45 days before the election in order to give troops time to fill them out and return them for counting.

Delaney said it wouldn’t have made financial sense to send out two versions of the ballot if the Constitution Party had won its case.

“This is not just like sending out your grocery list,” Delaney said. “I really don’t care what the Department of Justice thinks.”

It’s especially problematic because there Scott in St. Clair.  There’s no excuse given he’s not dealing with a small issue or something surprising, he should have been prepared for this for months.  It’s inexcusable. If the Constitution Party had won, then the Courts would have had to establish the  correct remedies, but that doesn’t mean Delaney can simply ignore federal law.  He’s up for election in 2 years, but if he doesn’t get an attitude change and quick, he may not want to stick around given what the Department of Justice is likely to do to him.

Excellent follow-up on the Kirk story regarding his voter ‘integrity’ progject.

And another conservative group with a strong interest in voter fraud efforts was set to host a training meeting for Republican lawyers in Chicago on Tuesday night. The Republican National Lawyers Association, a group closely aligned with the Republican National Committee, hosted an event at the Union League in Chicago, where they provided training to “ensure that the elections are open, fair and honest.” The training focused on “early voting, grace period voting, absentee ballots, Election Day legal issues, canvassing, and recounts” according to an online invitation to the event. Last night, they were scheduled to host another event at the Doubletree Hotel & Conference Center in Bloomington, IL.

The Illinois GOP website also noted the RNLA events on their website, which Brady wrote that the state GOP was “hosting.” In a tweet, Brady connected the voter integrity program with the Kirk campaign. There’s another event scheduled for this upcoming Monday, which will also take place at the Union League Club, according to the website.

TPM is doing great coverage and showing what good investigative journalism can do.  One problem with blogger triumphalism is that  most of us cannot do this all of the time and a professional organization like TPM can do some real digging.

Voter fraud issues — along with the fallout over the controversy of the Justice Department’s handling of the civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party — have been the RNLA’s bread and butter. The group sends out Vote Fraud Alerts, a member of the organization recently wrote about America’s “voter fraud epidemic,” and the organization has taken a critical view of the community organizing group ACORN, a now-defunct organization that was a piñata for voter fraud issues.

The problem is there isn’t an epidemic, as I’ve discussed before. There are areas that are problems–but even the ACORN example misses the mark because ACORN was notorious for running voter registration drivers with a quota system for the people they hired to register voters.  ACORN didn’t vet the signatures until, ironically, the last couple years before it collapsed this year and there was a relatively high rate of registration fraud as employees made up fake people to register.  There’s no evidence that these people voted–in fact many of the names were laughably stupid along the lines of Mickey Mouse and were often caught because the addresses didn’t match or conflicted with other people.

For this article

Let me suggest you go look at Baxter’s work in Ohio for John Edwards and his crack work in getting the Coffee Party off the ground.  There is no worry about Baxter Swilley.  Don’t believe me–find a Democrat to actually support your story.

Seriously don’t know how I missed this:

“The more the merrier,” said Brady when asked his stand on guns. He said he “strongly supports” the 2nd Amendment and concealed-carry provisions in regard to firearms.

“I think law-abiding citizens should be able to protect themselves,” said the senator.

I tend to not go into gun laws much because there’s a lot more nuance than it’s easy to get through in the typical blog post.

This, however, deserves a simple response.  What a dumbass.

Hat tip Shady Bill Brady