DOJ to monitor WI election; Incredible intimidation in WI; 65 million Christians did not vote; FL ignores DOJ; China's spread of censorship and power; Greenland retreated faster in 1930 than today; Obama ignores Appeals Court, has the power to GPS; Pakistan condemns drone strikes; CA bullet train elicits remorse; GSA Bonuses

IN the words from the column, not mine: The Justice Department announced today that it will monitor elections on June 5, 2012, in the following jurisdictions to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal voting rights statutes: Alameda, Fresno and Riverside Counties, Calif.; Cibola and Sandoval Counties, N.M.; Shannon County, S.D.; and the city of Milwaukee.
Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.
As reported in a previous Water Cooler post Obama Campaign strategist David Axelrod told reporters on Sunday that an "army of lawyers" will be in the Badger state "to protect" the vote during the recall election.  [It's a sad day in America when this news item invokes in me a concern that the DOJ will be the entity which will skew an election.  With hope gone that the Democrats can fairly win the election, here comes the DOJ which dropped solid charges of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in 2008.  The Democrats also, two days before the election, falsely accused Governor Walker of abandoning all responsibility for a college girl when she became pregnant with his child.  It was quickly fact-checked and found to be totally wrong - the wrong student named Walker.] http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/jun/4/picket-doj-monitor-wisconsin-recall-election-tuesd/
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"We're sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote."

Incredibly creepy mail today from the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/06/were-sending-this-mailing-to-you-and.html
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“History shows that some of the world’s most horrific events occurred because the public was disengaged. Either they weren’t aware of what was happening in their country or they just didn’t care.”
Although Huckabee and Andrews insisted the book is “non-partisan” it was pretty clear whom they were looking to engage. Huckabee pointed out the “very startling” statistic that 65 million of the 100 million Americans who did not vote “call themselves Christian believers.” He claimed, “If those 65 million had voted, the election would have been turned.” It was an assumption that those 65 million would have voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin, apparently.
Andrews said there are “two reasons Christians don’t vote.” But before he went there, he raised the spectre of Nazism: “The Nazi Party never had more than 8.5 million members. So literally 10 percent of that country dragged those people into that nightmare. So if 10 percent can do that, certainly 10 percent of us can get together and pull our country into a place our founding fathers intended.” http://www.newshounds.us/huckabee_suggests_a_holocaust_could_result_if_christians_don_t_vote_04022012
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Florida state officials will continue their quest to purge purportedly ineligible people from voter-registration rolls, a representative of Secretary of State Ken Detzner said Saturday, in defiance of objections from the U.S. Justice Department and county officials who say the policy violates two federal voting laws.
On Thursday, T. Christian Herren Jr., the head of the Justice Department’s voting section, said the effort to remove voters appears to violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlaws discriminatory voting practices that disenfranchise minorities. On a list of almost 2,700 voters the state suspects are noncitizens, blacks and Latinos were disproportionately represented, according to an analysis by the Miami Herald, which concluded Democratic and independent voters are the most likely to be targeted.  [Of course, no one will say it: noncitizens, blacks and Lations were disproportionately targeted because they disproportionately commit voter fraud.]
Despite the warning, Detzner’s representative said on Saturday the state intends to go forward with its campaign. “We have a year-round obligation to ensure the integrity of Florida’s elections. We will be responding to (the Justice Department’s) concerns next week,” Chris Cate wrote in an email to Reuters. http://patdollard.com/2012/06/florida-tells-eric-holder-they-will-continue-voter-purge/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ China’s communist regime is negotiating private deals with American film studios and financing the purchase of America’s second largest theater chain, leaving experts and human rights activists fearing the spread of dictatorial soft power and censorship to American shores.
“The Chinese Communist party has a program that they call ‘the Great Propaganda,’ and its aim is to export Chinese social power,” said former political prisoner Dr. Yang Jianli. “Cinema is the perfect way to do that.”
“The Chinese are overpaying, but then again they’re not looking to maximize profits,” said Derek Scissors, a China expert for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “They have a much more complex slate of goals and that is to please the state above all else.”

Censorship has afflicted America’s most recent blockbuster. The Chinese government censored between three and 13 minutes of Men in Black 3 because a memory-wiping device is used on a group of Asians. Chinese officials saw the scene as a commentary on the regime’s censorship policy, according to the Los Angeles Times. http://freebeacon.com/red-star-over-hollywood/
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Recently unearthed photographs taken by Danish explorers in the 1930s show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers.-Taken together the pictures show clearly that glaciers in the region were melting even faster in the 1930s than they are today, according to Professor Jason Box, who works at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State uni.  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/02/1930s_greenland_glacier_retreat/
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 The federal government informed an appeals court on Thursday that it has the right and the power to place GPS tracking devices on the privately owned vehicles of citizens without obtaining a warrant. This is in open rebellion to a Supreme Court decision from January that held that such warrantless installation of tracking devices on cars was unconstitutional.  n a case being heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Obama administration argued that since the Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t specifically mandate the obtaining of a search warrant in all situations, then the justices intended to leave a loophole open — a loophole large enough to mount a tracking device. http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/11591-obama-admin-argues-no-warrant-required-for-gps-tracking-of-citizens--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pakistan on Monday strongly condemned a jump in U.S. drone strikes on its territory, using language that could increase tension between strategic allies already in dispute over military supply routes for NATO that Pakistan has closed. The foreign ministry called the attacks "illegal" and said they violated the South Asian country's sovereignty.  http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/Pakistan_condemns_U.S._drone_strikes.html?cid=32833726
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Buyers' remorse for California's 'bullet train to nowhere'

California voters are experiencing buyers' remorse over a $68.4 billion (£44.4 billion) high speed rail project which critics say risks becoming a "bullet train to nowhere." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9310511/Buyers-remorse-for-Californias-bullet-train-to-nowhere.html

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The federal General Services Administration has handed out more than $1 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses since 2008 to dozens of employees who were under investigation for misconduct. Already under fire for its lax oversight of spending, the GSA gave bonuses to at least 84 of its employees while they were being investigated, according to a Senate analysis. Some were as low as several hundred dollars, while one employee received nearly $76,000 over five years. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/04/151099/report-gsa-handed-out-1-million.html
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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/04/151099/report-gsa-handed-out-1-million.html#storylink=cpy