ThinkProgress: Bob Woodward Still Has Never Heard Of The Voter Suppression Tactic ‘Caging’

[tbyg52]

Earlier this week, Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Jeff Leen hosted an online chat at washingtonpost.com. One of the participants asked Woodward and Leen how pervasive the voter suppression tactic known as “caging” is. The investigative reporters had no idea what it was:

Washington, D.C.: Don’t you have a duty to report criminal activity to the appropriate authorities?

How pervasive is “caging”?

Bob Woodward and Jeff Leen: We publish what we can find and document. Many times over the years government authorities have pursued the information we have dug up and launched their own investigations. But we’re trying to serve the readers, and we do not act as police or prosecutors. And please send us an e-mail explaing what “caging” is.

Woodward and Leen aren’t the only Washington Post reporters who are clueless about caging. In a washingtonpost.com online chat with congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman in May, a questioner asked “why Congress didn’t jump on Monica Goodling’s testimony about caging.” Weisman’s response: “So what is this caging thing?”

More:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/22/bob-woodward-still-has-never-heard-of-the-voter-suppression-tactic-caging/

[MADem]

1. He's an overrated fucker. His last decent work, with a co-writer,

was just after the Nixon era.

[jimshoes]

2. Playing stupid works for a while

I suppose, but sooner or later it catches up to ya.

[Kahuna]

3. He's a pod person now. I saw him on a panel with Bernstein on

presidential abuses. Woodward could clearly see and state the flaws in Nixon, vindictive, sneaky, etc, but couldn't see how the same attributes apply to bush. Said, bush is not the same as Nixon. Nixon was a baaad human being, unlike bush who is just misguided. Bernstein looked at him like he had two heads. Bernstein let the panel know that he thought bush was a baaaad character.

[JDPriestly]

4. I suspect that Woodward and Bernstein's stories of their roles

in Watergate leave out some important details about how they got Deep Throat to talk and just what their relationship with Deep Throat was. Why did that guy choose to trust these young reporters? I bet either they knew more about him or even more likely he knew more about them than has been admitted.

There is a controversy about Woodward's relationship with Haig.

Bob Woodward has a big credibility gap as it applies to his missions to the White House when he was in the Navy in 1969. He says he was a "courier," doing no more than carrying packages for Admiral Moorer. When asked when he first met Colonel Alexander Haig, he says it was in 1973.

But that is not the truth.

Unlike Woodward, SILENT COUP uses on-the-record sources to show that Woodward acted as a briefer for Admiral Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, going to the White House to brief then Colonel (later General) Alexander Haig of the National Security Council.

SILENT COUP has not one, but three on-the-record, named and taped sources who claim that briefing Haig is exactly what Woodward was doing on his details to the White House Situation room.

http://www.counterpunch.org/colodny07072005.html

Mark Felt may have been Deep Throat, but that does not put an end to the questions about Woodward.

[Cha]

5. Rec'd!

"Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked “do not forward” to a targeted group of eligible voters. A more aggressive version involves sending mail to a targeted group of voters with instructions to sign and return an acknowledgment card. The campaign then creates a list of those whose mail was returned undelivered and challenges the right of those citizens to vote — on the ground that the voter does not live at the registered address."

Thanks..I hadn't heard of it, either..but that doesn't mean anything. Now, I have.

This seems like an awful lot of damn work and mailing..does this mean people should carry proof of where they live when they go to vote?

The m$$$$m will supress this info.