If you think I was wrong...

My prior post explained how in a older, but now removed web page of the Soros group discussed using felons to vote to increase chances of Obama winning the Presidential election. Well, here is a story which broke after my post.

Here you go. Someone is pushing this agenda. I hope they fail.

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Washington Post
Groups Push to Restore Va. Felons' Voting Rights

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 17, 2008; B01

RICHMOND -- Civic and social organizations are teaming with Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to try to add thousands of nonviolent offenders to the voting rolls in time for the November election, a move that has angered Republicans who say the effort is designed to help Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Under Virginia's constitution, people convicted of a felony automatically lose their right to vote for life, which has resulted in an estimated 300,000 residents being disenfranchised, even though they are not in prison.

But a Virginia governor can restore a felon's voting rights. Under a process set up by former governor Mark R. Warner (D) , felons convicted of nonviolent crimes can apply to have their voting rights restored if they have a clean record for three years after their sentence has been completed. People convicted of violent felonies, which in Virginia includes selling drugs, have to wait five years.

Earlier this year, Kaine (D) promised that his administration would expedite a review of applications from nonviolent felons who submit their papers by Aug. 1.

The former inmates would be able to register in time to vote in the November presidential contest between Obama (Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive GOP nominee. The felons also would get their rights back to sit on a jury and hold public office.

"The whole name of the game is once they get out and once they serve their time and they have demonstrated they want to get into mainstream society and be good citizens, it's just fundamental to that, they have their civil rights restored," said Bernard Henderson, deputy secretary of the commonwealth, whose office is charged with processing the applications.

Only Virginia and Kentucky require an act of the governor to restore voting rights to felons. The vast majority of states, including Maryland, automatically restore voting rights after a sentence is completed. The District allows felons to vote upon release from prison. Maine and Vermont even allow felons to vote from jail.

The Kaine administration's efforts come as a coalition of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, have launched an ambitious drive to get convicted felons information on how they can apply to have their voting rights restored.

The groups have taken out newspaper ads, spread the word through churches and gone door to door, urging felons to apply to Kaine.

"A lot of felons operate under the miscomprehension that loss of their voting rights is permanent, so what we are doing, is saying, 'No, no, no, there is a way,' " said Gwinnett Hagens, executive director of Democracy South, a Virginia Beach social justice organization that is reaching out to tens of thousands of unregistered voters in Hampton Roads.

Henderson isn't sure how many applications to expect but said, "It is going to be a challenge for us if we get absolutely swamped, but we will divert staff to do this."

Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia branch of the ACLU, and other activists say the campaign to register more felons is a civil rights issue, not a political one.

"Virginia's situation is extremely punitive, and we are working within the system to get as many folks as possible their rights restored," said Adisa Muse, director of the Virginia Voter Restoration Project.

Although they don't dispute Kaine's authority to grant pardons and clemency to criminals, some GOP legislators are skeptical of the efforts this year to get felons onto the voting rolls.

"I don' t know a lot of young Republicans who end up being felons," said Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). "Clearly the groups that are soliciting these felons to get their rights restored are predisposed to be in support of Obama, and I am sure this registration effort is designed to help their candidate."

The effort comes as Obama, who views Virginia as a key battleground state this fall, is trying to register tens of thousands of new voters in the state this summer.

Some political strategists say former inmates are the largest block of unregistered voters over age 18 in Virginia. The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that supports criminal justice reform, estimates that 20 percent of Virginia's black population is ineligible to vote because they are in prison or have a past felony conviction.

Amy Brundage, an Obama spokeswoman, said there is "no organized effort to target ex-offenders" in Virginia. But some Obama workers are providing information to felons about how they can get their rights restored.

"If you are in areas where there are large numbers of unregistered voters, one of the reasons you see that is they are ineligible because of felony convictions," said Kristin Szakos, co-chairman of Charlottesville Area Obama Volunteers, adding that canvassers carry "restoration of rights" forms.

Kaine, one of Obama's national co-chairmen, maintains that his decision to quickly process the applications this year has nothing to do with the presidential election.

"We follow the same basic protocol for nonviolent individuals who have been finished with whatever their sentence," said Kaine, noting that Warner restored voting rights for about 3,500 nonviolent offenders when he was governor.

Del. William R. Janis (R-Goochland) said he thinks the "election is clouding every decision the governor is making."

"There shouldn't be a wholesale, automatic restoration of voting rights to a class of felons for the sole purpose of swelling the voting rolls prior to the November elections," Janis said.

But Henderson, who said he is so far receiving only about 35 applications each week, notes that many of the applications come from felons seeking to have their gun rights restored. A court, not the governor, has to restore that right, but many judges want felons to first get their voting rights back.

Gun owners are considered a vital part of the GOP base in Virginia.
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So, if you thought I was mining for BS to post, here is proof I was just reporting what I had found.

Be afraid people, be very afraid.

Praire Rats do not need protection....

Feds plan to study prairie dogs for possible endangered status
By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

A week after a Colorado state agency refused to ban shooting white-tailed prairie dogs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will study the rodent to determine if it should be protected as an endangered species.

The decision was a vindication of efforts frustrated in 2004 to have the prairie dog protected, said Josh Pollock, conservation director for the Center for Native Ecosystems, who called the decision a “victory for sound science.”

The decision to study the white-tailed prairie dog population “opens a valuable opportunity for the scientific community to study for two years and find out what kind of population is out there in the ground.”

The decision to study the white-tailed prairie dog won’t have any effect on the Colorado Wildlife Commission’s decision last week to reject a proposed ban on prairie-dog hunting.

“Unfortunately, the white-tailed prairie dog is largely unprotected in the places they still live,” and the only federal action that would change that is listing the rodents as an endangered species, Pollock said.

The federal agency’s decision, however, didn’t sit well with Club 20, the Western Slope lobbying and promotional organization.

“We’re more concerned about the decline of the subspecies called the American farmer, which the prairie dog is contributing to,” Club 20 Executive Director Reeves Brown said.

Prairie dogs destroy pasture and damage herds, said Carlyle Currier, a Collbran rancher who said studies by Colorado State University show that cows thrive less in pasture that is infested with prairie dogs than in those without the other rodents.

Eastern Colorado ranchers battled designation of the black-tailed prairie dog as endangered by counting them themselves and finding hundreds of thousands more than were counted by environmental organizations, said Dave Whittlesey, a Delta County bison and elk rancher.
“I think the case will be the same here,” he said.

White-tailed prairie dogs are found across the western half of Wyoming, western Colorado, the eastern portion of Utah, and a small portion of southern Montana.

The white-tailed prairie dog is a stout rodent, 13 to 15 inches long and weighing one to three pounds. It has a short, white-tipped tail, large eyes, a blackish brown cheek patch above and below each eye, and a tan-brown pelt. It’s genetically different from the black-tailed prairie dog, which has a black-tipped tail.

White-tailed prairie dogs are generally found at elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet in desert grasslands and shrub grasslands.

Prairie-dog varmint shooting is a “decent part of our business,” said Wes Stout of Gene Taylor’s Sporting Goods in Grand Junction, who noted also that sport shooters like the 90-day period from April to June in which they can’t be hunted on public lands. That allows the animals to maintain their numbers, he said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will accept comments and information until July 7. Comments can be submitted electronically via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov, or they can be mailed or hand delivered to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R6-ES-2008-0053; Division of Policy and Directives Management; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222; Arlington, Va. 22203.
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What's next? Protection for Feral and Stray Dogs & Cats?
I always get a kick out of people who believe that the world is made out of Rainbows and Puppy's.
Perhaps someday this people will become educated in facts and not emotion.

What are we paying taxes for?

I wonder what crimes American Citizens can get away with if this is the standing our Federal Government for illegal immigrants?



Maybe it is because the illegals are sending so much money out of our country untaxed that our Federal Government has become so poor to do their job.

This is getting to the point of me thinking our government is doing more to screw its own citizens than to help us.

Can anyone explain to me what is going on here?

Our closest to a dictatorship? Errors with that.

I heard Sen. Barbara Boxer say that we are now the closest to a dictatorship in our history.

Well, she cannot be more wrong. Maybe in her world it is, but in mine, it is not. In dictatorships people are usually living in a country with far less crime, and doesn't have the problems we experience here in our country. Why is this? Quite simply countries which are under the rule of a dictator are SO under the control of that dictator, no one can get away with anything. If our current government is the feared "Big Brother" of the book 1984, they really suck at it.

If our government was so powerful, why are there groups like MS 13 running around on our streets? Our government cannot even stop the Hells Angels or the Sons of Silence from anything they do except an occasional bust now and then. But personally, I would rather have the last two mentioned running around our country than the first.

If you look to North Korea, you will see a dictatorship. And even with them, there have been worse. At least for what we know, Vlad Tepes or Idi Amin are not in North Korea. In terms of Hitler, North Korea seems tame. So, if we are close to, or part of a dictatorship, where are the mass killings and complete loss of freedoms?

Barbara can take this hyperactive imagination and use it on something else. If President Bush is a dictator, he is the weakest and lamest dictator this world has ever seen.

When Bill Clinton was in power, he killed more Americans against their will. Anyone remember Waco? Our soldiers were not drafted. Our soldiers signed up freely without any guns to their heads. When we have the Stalin-esque tactics of putting our soldiers in harms way without guns and the threat of death if they turn back to our lines, I will agree with her, but this is not our way, nor has it ever been.

Isn't amazing that if anyone on the right said statements like this they would be forced from office, or out of any public job they held within days, but on the left it is par for the course. People, do your homework. Do not fall for this kind of BS. It is part of why I changed parties and while it continues, I will never go back.