I’m sure Republicans are shocked, just shocked:

Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged yesterday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list.
Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American. About 8 percent of Florida voters describe themselves as Hispanic, and about 11 percent as black.

In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican.
Elections officials of Florida’s Republican administration denied any partisan motive in use of the method they adopted, and noted that it had been approved as part of a settlement of a civil rights lawsuit. ‘This was absolutely unintentional,’ said Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother. ‘The matching criteria were approved by several interested parties in the lawsuit, and the court. I don’t know how it got by all those people without anyone noticing.’

David Sirota and Judd Legum on cronyism in Iraq:

Fact: Halliburton has overcharged taxpayers for food, accepted kickbacks for oil subcontracts, and spent taxpayer money renting rooms at five-star resorts in Kuwait. But instead of expressing outrage the government’s top watchdog, Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, last week parroted the company line, saying he believes Halliburton’s problems ‘are not out of line with the size and scope of their contracts.’ He then accused the press of overemphasizing the connections between the company and its former CEO Dick Cheney, even though Vice President Cheney still collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation, owns company stock options, and had his office ‘coordinate’ Halliburton contracts in Iraq. Why is the government’s top independent watchdog deliberately sugarcoating taxpayer ripoffs? Because he, like other Bush administration officials charged with overseeing expenditures in Iraq, is anything but independent.

Gay couples in New Jersey register for domestic partnerships for the first time:

Hundreds of same-sex couples gathered to register domestic partnerships on Saturday, the first day of a new law in New Jersey that gives gay partners some of the same rights as married couples. More than 200 people attended a morning ceremony marking the law going into effect. Many arrived hours early, sitting on the municipal building’s steps or on lawn chairs while filling out domestic partnership applications. `This is a very great day in New Jersey’s civil rights history,” said Mayor Fred Profeta. `The civil rights achieved today are very important — don’t anyone doubt that.’

Meanwhile, Bush continues campaigning on his stillborn Federal Marriage Amendment:

“What they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do,” Mr. Bush said. “This is America. It’s a free society. But it doesn’t mean we have to redefine traditional marriage.” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic whip, said Democrats would not mount a filibuster against moving to a final vote on the amendment as long as Republicans agreed not to offer changes to the proposal…If Republicans accept the Democratic approach, the Senate would face a vote as early as Wednesday on the amendment.

…Senate Democrats said they calculated that more Republicans would join them on a vote against the proposal itself rather than a procedural fight where Republicans opposed to the amendment might side with their leadership. But some Republicans might still prefer to force a procedural vote, which could allow them to try to paint Democrats as obstructionists while decreasing the margin of defeat.

South Africa approaches a national steel strike:

A national strike is looming in the steel industry as the six trade unions and the Steel and Engineering Federation of SA (Seifsa) failed to break a two-week-old wage deadlock on Tuesday. The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) is demanding increases of between 10 and 12 percent, while Seifsa is offering 5.7 percent to 6.7 percent for skilled and unskilled workers respectively. According to the agreement reached between the two parties last year, had inflation remained above five percent, increases would have been inflation plus one percent. However, CPIX (consumer price inflation minus mortgages) came in at 4.4 percent leading trade unions to reopen wage negotiations. Numsa spokesman Dumisa Ntuli warned that the union was on a ‘collision course’ with Seifsa and a ‘massive national strike is inevitable’. ‘They have not improved the wage demand. We are marching forward for an ultimate strike action,’ Ntuli said in a statement.”

Human Rights Watch highlights the tragic irony of Thailand’s hosting of the International AIDS Conference:

Thailand’s brutal anti-drug crackdown is jeopardizing its human rights record and its success against HIV/AIDS, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok from July 11-16. A government anti-drug campaign resulting in as many as 3,000 killings has driven drug users underground and away from lifesaving HIV prevention services…“It’s a scandal that Thailand is hosting the International AIDS Conference while it persecutes people at high risk of HIV,” said Jonathan Cohen, researcher with Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS Program and one of the report’s authors. “There are proven methods of addressing drug addiction and HIV/AIDS, and murder is not one of them.”

Although drug dealers are the stated targets of the war on drugs, drug users not charged with dealing have been persecuted and driven into hiding, which prevents them from reaching needle-exchange programs and other HIV-prevention services. Many injection-drug users face the risk of HIV infection from the sharing of blood-contaminated syringes. In the past, health experts have praised Thailand’s leadership against AIDS since the country’s successful “100 percent condom” campaign in the 1990s. That program prevented an estimated 200,000 HIV infections by providing condoms and HIV/AIDS information in brothels and health clinics. But the war on drugs has reversed many of those gains…On December 1, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared “victory” in the war on drugs. In addition to almost 3,000 unexplained deaths, thousands had been forced into drug treatment in military-style boot camps. Surveys showed that many who enrolled in drug treatment were not even drug users, but people who feared arrest or murder if they did not participate in the program.

Bringing new meaning to the word “inadvertent”:

Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon. It said the payroll records of ‘numerous service members,’ including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25. The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush’s claims of service in Alabama are in question.

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report shreds the CIA’s WMD intelligence:

In a long-awaited report that goes to the heart of President Bush’s rationale for going to war against Iraq, the committee said that prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and his desire to have nuclear weapons, were wildly off the mark. ‘Today, we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence,’ Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the panel, said at a briefing on the 511-page report.

Mr. Roberts said the committee had found no evidence that intelligence analysts were subjected to overt political pressure to tailor their findings. And the senator praised the men and women in the intelligence field as ‘true and dedicated professionals.’
But he said the committee’s investigation of many months had also concluded that intelligence analysis and conclusions about Iraq’s weapons had been warped by ‘a collective group-think’ that caused ambiguous evidence to be elevated to the level of conclusive evidence. ‘It is clear that this group-think also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well, all of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein had active w.m.d. programs,’ Mr. Roberts said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. ‘This was a global intelligence failure.’

The day before their joint convention, thousands of members of UNITE and HERE voted yesterday to merge into UNITE HERE to better fight for their rights:

“Today, we made history! We are coming together to be stronger,” said Carlos Maldanado, a cook at the Holiday Inn City Center in Chicago and a UNITE HERE member. “We do the same kind of work and we want the same things: dignity and a shot at the American Dream for all of us.”

“UNITE and HERE represent the same people, mostly women, a majority immigrants, and substantial numbers of African-Americans. We share the same priorities: to organize the unorganized and to restore the American Dream for hundreds of thousands of workers in North America,” said President Wilhelm. “This merger is about organizing and about combining two great Unions to be able to do so on scale.”

Time to get myself a new T-shirt.

The estrangement of Britain’s Labour party and its Labour movement continues:

About 750,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since Labour came to power, a Trades Union Congress report has said. The UK gives less support to industry than any other European country, and has become the ‘weak wildebeest’ of European industry, it claims.This would remain the case while the British workforce was “easy to flog and easy to sack”, the TUC said. But the government defended its record, saying subsidies were not the best way forward for UK industry.

And Tony Blair’s union threatens to withhold its cash:

Labour faces a £1.5m election blow and the threat of a first big affiliate severing ties with the party, as a trade union revolt gathers pace over the direction of Tony Blair’s government.
The T&G transport workers union, Mr Blair’s own union, headed by leftwinger Tony Woodley, is poised to follow the GMB general workers union and withhold some £750,000 from Labour’s election coffers in protest at pro-business policies. The GMB yesterday snubbed Downing Street and the Labour hierarchy by rejecting a request for £744,000 and deciding to contribute nothing to the central campaign. Kevin Curran, its general secretary, raised the possibility of a split during a private meeting in central London of the union’s central executive meeting.

Criticising plans to expand private sector involvement in public services, the two-tier workforce and sidelining of improved employment rights in the European treaty, he warned of a “watershed moment” in relations. “I could not ask GMB members to maintain their relationship with the Labour party if midway through the third term of a Labour government there was still no sign of the party addressing the concerns of GMB members,” said Mr Curran.

A vote on the Federal Marriage Ammendment approaches:

Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado and the Senate author of the proposal, said the Senate would begin debate Friday and move toward a vote by the middle of next week. He and others said the most likely scenario would be a vote to cut off debate, which is also known as a cloture vote and requires 60 votes. Should supporters fail to reach that level, the amendment would be dead for the year. The amendment itself would need 67 votes to pass.

…Spokesmen for Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards said they did not know whether the candidates would be in Washington for the debate and votes next week. ‘We’re not going to do our travel schedule based on political gamesmanship on the Senate floor,’ Stephanie Cutter, the campaign’s communications director, said. She noted that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards both have said they support gay rights, oppose gay marriage, and oppose the amendment. ‘You don’t amend the Constitution to roll back rights,’ she said. But Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards are getting some pressure to attend the session from opponents of the amendment, who want to defeat it by the widest possible margin. ‘The larger the margin the stronger the message that the politics of discrimination will not work,’ said Steven Fisher, communications director for the communications director for the Human Rights Campaign.

The ammendment will fail. Democrats know it. Republicans know. George Bush knew it before he ever pushed for the goddamn thing to appease his base. That doesn’t make this cynical exercise in bigotry any less sickening, however, and a ticket serious about progressive change should take this opportunity – especially given Edwards sub-optimal record on gay rights – to cast votes against hate.