Federal Proecutors?

Pesky civil servants getting you down?
Think that poor black people don't deserve a vote?
Never fear! There is a solution. You can just have your attorney general fire your prosecutors.

That's what George Bush in effect did when he asked A.G. Gonzalez to ''clamp down on voter fraud''. One might wonder at this whether there is a widescale problem with voter fraud in the US. If they have to fire lots of people, there must be a lot of people casting votes who shouldn't be right? Not quite; on closer examination you begin to realise that 'voter fraud' is another neat label with which to mask what is actually going on.

Fraud in this case means clamping down on poor people voting. It means blocking voter registration drives to the point that the league of women voters had to suspend their registration efforts in Florida. It means trying to introduce harsh voter identification laws in stats like Arizona in an effort to stop people who would not vote for the Republicans from voting. Quite why a driving liscence was considered to be a pre-requisite for casting a vote is still unclear.

That Bush does not want his top aids to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee about this matter is indicative of somebody who has been caught once more in the act. The anti-democratic, and quite possibly illegal action is shameful, and should have the full scrutiny of the other branch of government brought to bear upon it.