A Circuit Court Judge upholds California’s ban on the purge-in-a-box known as electronic voting:

The ruling freezes a bid by four California counties and the American Association of People with Disabilities to avoid having to find alternatives to their electronic voting systems come the November presidential elections. Those groups had asked for a temporary restraining order against Secretary of State Kevin Shelley’s decision, which would prevent them from using their e-voting machines. Shelley’s “decision to decertify touch-screen voting machines and to withhold further certification until he is satisfied that manufacturers and counties have complied with specific conditions is a reasonable one,” Judge Florence-Marie Cooper stated in the ruling.

Liza Featherstone on theRNC protests:

The city is desperately trying to prevent these actions from happening. The G-8 meeting in Georgia set a bad example, as protesters were banned from Sea Island, and the surrounding area was practically under military occupation–Humvees, police and military uniforms were everywhere. As a result, only a few hundred protesters showed up. In New York City it would be impossible to prevent protest, but local officials are doing their best. So far, only the Labor Day march, which is organized by major unions, has been granted a permit. The Parks and Recreation Department has refused to issue UFPJ a permit for a rally in Central Park, ostensibly out of concern for the vegetation. Every major city newspaper, including the right-wing New York Post, has objected to the city’s decision. Most New Yorkers agree with UFPJ spokesman Bill Dobbs, who says, ‘It is a public park. It’s not a grass museum!’

Ken Lay surrenders:

enneth L. Lay, the former chairman and chief executive of Enron, turned himself in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Houston today after he was charged on Wednesday in a sealed indictment by a federal grand jury examining the financial fraud that led to the collapse of the onetime energy giant. The charges are the culmination of almost three years of investigation against Mr. Lay, who has said he has done nothing wrong. The indictment was delivered by prosecutors to a federal magistrate and is expected to be unsealed today, when the specific charges will become known. “Nice of you all to show up this morning,” Mr. Lay told reporters after he showed up at F.B.I. headquarters at dawn, according to The Associated Press.

George Bush still at large.

Lest I be accused of celebrating too excitedly the Edwards pick, this February Doug Ireland op-ed (dredged up by Sam in the midst of his well-deserved vacation) provides a good reminder of what in Edwards’ record should give pause to those still in the other America:

“The Edwardses were solidly middle class” when Johnny was growing up, according to a four-part profile of the North Carolina senator in his home state’s most prestigious daily, the Raleigh News and Observer. It’s true that for a few years as a young man Edwards’ father worked on the floor of a Roger Milliken textile mill. But Edwards p?re (a lifelong Republican, like his reactionary boss) quickly climbed upward, becoming a monitor of worker productivity as a “time-study” man — which any labor organizer in the South will tell you is a polite term for a stoolie who spies on the proletarian mill hands to get them to speed up production for the same low wages. Daddy Edwards’ grassing got him promoted to supervisor, then to plant manager — and he finally resigned to start his own business as a consultant to the textile industry. As a Boston Globe profile of Edwards put it last year, the senator never “notes that his father was part of management”…

…If there was real depth to Edwards’ rhetorical populism, one would expect to find it in “Real Solutions for America.”…On a number of important matters — example: federal corporate welfare — the “solutions” Edwards’ speeches describe as “bold” involve . . . appointing a commission. Sometimes, the pamphlet contradicts Edwards’ reality. Example: “Some tax lawyers make millions through flimsy letters telling clients how to shelter their income. Edwards will stop these abuses,” it claims. But in 1995, Edwards — already a multimillionaire — set up a professional corporation to shelter at least $10 million in legal earnings from having to pay Medicare taxes on them, saving himself some $290,000, according to the News and Observer, which quoted a top specialist from the American Institute of CPAs as labeling this trick “gaming the system.”…As a senator, Edwards voted to deploy the “Star Wars” national missile defense as soon as possible — but you won’t find this controversial position in Johnny’s feel-good pamphlet.

As I said yesterday, Edwards claim never to forget the lessons of his humble roots is a start. It’s not, contrary to his claim, something working Americans can take to bank. What all of us can take to the bank, however, is the certitude that four years with Edwards working under Kerry would be a tremendous improvement over four years with Cheney working under Bush. And it’s no coincidence that many of those most loudly questioning the weight of that difference are, like those four men, living quite comfortably in the Bush economy. Unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards are yet to do enough to convince those living in the other America and silently wondering whether to cast a vote that theirs is worthwhile, and Kerry’s failure to do so for fear of scaring off NASCAR Dads and Soccer Moms makes the work of mobilizing underrepresented voters that much more difficult.

Salim Muwakkil reports on the war against hip-hop:

“Police Secretly Watching Hip-Hop Artists” read the headline of the Miami Herald article…”Miami and Miami Beach police are secretly watching and keeping dossiers on hip-hop celebrities like P. Diddy and DMX and their entourages when they come to South Florida.” Police officials told the Herald they photographed rappers as they arrived at Miami International Airport and staked out hotels, nightclubs and video shoots. The reporters explained that dozens of major and minor rappers are listed and tracked in a “6-inch thick” binder supplied by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Rap artists and others associated with hip-hop culture have long complained of being targets of police harassment. New York, the birthplace of hip-hop music, has become the de facto center of hip-hop intelligence. A special NYPD unit is dedicated to hip-hop surveillance, according to The Village Voice. Police officials downplay the reports. They insist hip-hop cops are a small part of the intelligence division’s gang unit and that they simply try to preempt the kind of violence that seems to follow hip-hop artists. But the NYPD’s response sparked more questions: Why is hip-hop associated with gangs? Why the intelligence division?

Those preemptive strategies apparently are being adopted by police forces in other cities. The Herald noted that the NYPD hosted a three-day “hip-hop training session” in May 2003 attended by officers from “other major cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta.” Miami officials said they were compelled to do a crash course on hip-hop after realizing their city was becoming a favorite destination. But just like their big-city mentors, Miami cops’ actions are being driven by stereotypes. “A lot of, if not most, rappers belong to some sort of gang,” Miami Police Sergeant Rafael Tapenes told the Herald. Law enforcement conflates gangs and hip-hop because young black men are at the core of both—the same black youth who have had problems with American law enforcement since the days of the slave patrols.

Tampa just witnessed the end of a six-month long picket of a local mall by Blacks outraged by its policy – now lifted – of not allowing patrons wearing “gang clothing.” It doesn’t take a training session to figure out who was being let into the mall and who was being forced out.

Human Rights Watch warns that sanctioning the Janjaweed alone will not stop the killing in Darfur without sanctioning their enablers in government as well:

The U.N. Security Council should take immediate steps to protect civilians in Darfur and impose sanctions on Sudanese officials as well as government-backed militias, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Security Council members ahead of a resolution on the crisis in Sudan?s western Darfur region. A draft resolution proposed by the United States considers the situation in Darfur to be a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. The text calls on the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed militias it has armed and supported. It also imposes travel and arms sanctions on members of the Janjaweed, but fails to extend these sanctions to the government officials backing these militias. “Disarming the Janjaweed would be a crucial step in protecting civilians in Darfur, but Khartoum has flagrantly broken its earlier promises to neutralize them,” said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “The Sudanese government continues to use these militias to carry out ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Now the Security Council must be prepared to intervene with more muscle.”

Over at the American Prospect, Howard Meyerson points to the Edwards pick as the closest to directly democratic process in recent memory of the selection of a VP. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Dubner argues that Republicans are looking at Kerry-Edwards but seeing Reagan-Bush:

After a high-profile rejection by former President Gerald Ford during the Republican National Convention in July 1980, Ronald Reagan settled on the moderate George H.W. Bush, his main rival in the primaries…The question immediately posed to the duo: How would they overcome the differences that had marked the primary season?…Bush attacked Reagan’s campaign planks as “false promises,” even “Jimmy Carter–type promises.” Reagan’s economic plans amounted to a “no-growth proposal.” Reagan, in return, decried Bush’s “bland generalities” and said that he could not recall Bush “ever being specific about anything.” As the bitterness deepened, Bush savaged Reagan on issues such as the disposal of nuclear waste and challenged “whether the governor is giving a lot of thought to some of the things he’s saying and whether he’s really prepared to handle some of these problems we’re going to face in the ’80s.” The campaign constantly referenced the upcoming decade, seeking to portray Reagan as too old to adjust to new realities….

In comparison, the Kerry-Edwards primary looks more like a genial footrace than the Reagan-Bush wrestling match of 1980. The only genuine barb was on Edwards’ relative experience; Kerry, at times, questioned whether one Senate term was enough to base a run for the presidency. After Kerry’s most derisive offhand remark — “When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don’t know if John Edwards was out of diapers” — he called Edwards to apologize, according to The New York Times. More often than not, the two highlighted their similarities on trade, economic, and foreign policy. Unlike in 1980, there will be no “voodoo economics” for the Bush-Cheney campaign to seize upon to mock the Kerry-Edwards ticket — although they will doubtlessly try.

The New Haven Board of Alderman just unanimously approved a legislation supporting Community Benefits Agreements, tying authorization for business to expand to commitment to progressive change in relationships with employees and with the surrounding community. An important victory for the social contract movement and for New Haven.

New tragic news:

The proportion of the world’s new H.I.V. infections occurring in Asia has risen sharply in the past two years as the epidemic has outstripped efforts to stop it, the United Nations said in a report released here on Tuesday. The size of the increase surprised United Nations health officials, who said that one in four – or nearly 1.2 million of the estimated 4.8 million new infections in 2003 – occurred in Asia. That figure rose from one in five, or about 910,000 of the 4.4 million new infections in 2001. Worldwide, the rate of new infections of human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS, in 2003 was the highest of any year since the epidemic was recognized more than two decades ago, the report said. Since 1981, more than 20 million people have died of AIDS, 2.6 million of them in 2003.

Good news. from Friday:

The first clinical trial of generic AIDS drugs in a simple 3-in-1 pill has found that they work as well as brand-name drugs, researchers are reporting today. Because of patent problems, brand-name drugs for first-line treatment do not come in 3-in-1 pills, and medicines that are deeply discounted for poor countries by their makers usually still cost more than generics.

Old bad news:

…the United States has refused to let the $15 billion that President Bush has committed to fighting AIDS in the third world be used for generic drugs, arguing that there is not enough proof they are effective.

How the Senate was won:

The former head of a Republican consulting group has pleaded guilty to jamming Democratic telephone lines in several New Hampshire cities during the 2002 general election. Allen Raymond, former president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC, waived indictment and pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Concord on Wednesday. Judge Joseph A. DiClerico Jr. released Raymond on his own recognizance pending sentencing in November. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, which prosecuted the case, said an investigation into the telephone jamming continues.

State Democratic Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan had noted that some of the local races were close and that phone-jamming could have affected the outcome, but there was no way to know. Democrats had pushed for an investigation for two years. ‘There is, short of murder, not much that is more horrific in America than purposely trying to stop people from voting,” said Raymond Buckley, vice chairman of the state Democratic Party. He said the jamming was obviously an organized effort, taking place across the state. He expects to see more charges. ”Somebody hired them, somebody paid them to do this crime,” Buckley said. ”I do not believe this investigation should stop until every single person who had knowledge of this and paid for this is prosecuted.”

Another reason to like John Edwards:

Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has made a public vow: If John Edwards is chosen as John Kerry’s running mate, the chamber will abandon its traditional stance of neutrality in the presidential race and work feverishly to defeat the Democratic ticket. “We’d get the best people and the greatest assets we can rally” to the cause, he says.

Other business leaders in Washington have been less public and less precise, but no less passionate. Reviewing the candidates in the Democratic primaries earlier this year, a Fortune 100 chief executive who is active in Washington told me that Mr. Edwards, the North Carolina senator, “is the one we fear the most” — more than John Kerry, more than Dick Gephardt, more than Howard
Dean.

Of course, Tom “Why aren’t we outsourcing faster?” Donahue’s claim of the Chamber’s traditional neutrality is about as accurate as Rupert Murdoch’s announcement of the Vice-Presidential nominee. But it easy to believe that, as the article goes on to argue, the combination of policy concerns and visceral fear of trial lawyers makes many in the overclass particularly anxious. Especially those who’ve devoted their careers to arguing, in the face of all evidence, that rare, captivating narratives like Edwards’ – rather than those of Bush or Cheney – represent the majority of the uber-wealthy. Whereas Edwards best reconciliation of his childhood poverty and his wealth was this:

The answer is … the answer is, the life that I have lived is the dream that’s being shut off for so many Americans every single day. I was brought home … I was brought home to a mill village in Seneca, South Carolina, to a little two-room house. My father had to borrow the money to get me out of the hospital. I grew up, from the time I was very young, the same way that most people grow up in this country. Working hard, working hard trying to build a better life for myself, for my own family. And you’re right, I’ve done very well – but the problem is, the problem is – most Americans, including all these folks up here, and most of these folks in the audience – they are not doing fine. George Bush is taking very good care of people who are doing well. The problem is he’s shutting off opportunity from all those people who are struggling every single day. I’ll tell you, I’ll say this to every, single, person in the audience. I grew up the way you grew up, I come from the same …I grew up the way you grew up, I come from the same place, I spent twenty years in courtrooms fighting for you, against big Corporate America, against big insurance companies…I will never forget where I come from and you can take that to the bank.

That’s a start.