Department of Labor

Threats of voter disenfranchisement continue with a fresh report coming out of Michigan. Apparently, the Michigan GOP and its lawyers are thinking of using the foreclosure crisis to it’s electoral advantage.

via The Michigan Messenger:

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed. . . .

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

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This was a strange speech, y'all ... it's not often that the Presidential nominee gets upstaged by his VP pick. But I think that happened tonight.

John "McSame" McCain claims that Obama believes he is the "anointed one" to save our country at our hour of need. Yet Senator Obama said last week that this campaign is not about him. It's about us. And pray tell, what did John McSame tell us tonight?

He told us that he's the better choice to be President because he was a prisoner of war. That being a prisoner of war made him love America more, which means he's the better man to be President than Barack Obama ever will be. I've never quite understood that logic, but I guess it's because I'm not a Republican.

McSame also LIED to us tonight. Not just once. Several times. I'll lay out some of the BIG ones for ya:

McSame told us that "I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them."

REALITY: Obama Will Cut Taxes, McCain Will Raise Them

• "The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables.

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Judith Ezekiel PhD, a professor at Wright State University, has shared with me her letter to the editors of the Dayton Daily News, Springfield News-Sun, and Xenia Gazette about congressional candidate Steve Austria's blatant copying of his Labor Day column from a Department of Labor publication and the Wikipedia:

Plagiarism is theft.

As a professor who has taught writing and research methods for thirty years, I can assure you that the article “126th Anniversary of Labor Day Celebrates American Workers,” supposedly penned by Steve Austria, is a spectacular example of plagiarism. Turnitin.com shows it at 59%, but a line-by-line comparison shows that the entire piece is either copied or paraphrased from a Department of Labor document.

This intellectual theft exposed by blogger Jeff Coryell (ohiodailyblog.com) is so blatant that according to the rules endorsed by educational institutions around the world, were he a student he would not only flunk the assignment but probably go up for disciplinary action. In many universities, he would be expelled -- particularly if he tried to justify it as does his campaign manager; according to your article, the latter said that “a citation was inadvertently missed” and that there was “no intention to deceive anyone.” In fact, dozens of citations were “missed” as were quotation marks, and pretending that this column was on original piece written by Austria is the definition of deception.

My 11-year old son knows better. How can I impress upon my students and my children that stealing words is as serious as stealing property if our public figures do not respect one of the basic principles of modern education?

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