US Attorneys Scandal Fallout: Free Kimberly Prude !!!

WillyT

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Sun Apr-29-07 01:23 PM
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US Attorneys Scandal Fallout: Free Kimberly Prude !!!

Edited on Sun Apr-29-07 02:19 PM by WillyT

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...A less well-known casualty of Biskupic's need to prove he was "Bushie enough" to retain his job is Kimberly Prude, an African-American Milwaukee woman who has been jailed for more than a year for the crime of voting.

We now know the Republican Party of Wisconsin had complained directly to Rove that Biskupic was not prosecuting enough Democratic voters in response to Republican claims about vote fraud. White House documents turned over to Congress investigating the firing of eight U.S. attorneys also show that Biskupic's name initially was added to the hit list after that complaint. The fact that Biskupic's name was later removed from the firing list suggests he was able to convince the Bush administration he was morally flexible enough on the issue of politically prosecuting Democrats.

The high-profile Thompson prosecution, which produced a flood of Republican attack ads in the governor's race, would certainly seem to qualify as evidence. To keep local Republicans happy on vote fraud, he could always imprison poor people few would care about like Prude. Prude's case was never even reported in the local media until the New York Times cited it last week in a front-page story about how five years of Republican claims about vote fraud had resulted in "virtually no evidence" of any organized fraud.

Prude's offense was typical of the sort of innocuous mistakes that Republicans turn into exaggerated claims of vote fraud. Prude was convicted in 2000 on a bad check charge. The charge didn't result in any jail time. She was placed on six years' probation. Four years later, Prude attended a rally in Milwaukee to hear the Rev. Al Sharpton urge everyone to register and vote. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and did so. She later sent in an absentee ballot.

When Prude learned from her probation agent that she wasn't allowed to vote because she was still on probation, she actually called City Hall and tried to rescind her vote. She was told that wasn't necessary. But voting has now cost Prude something her original crime involving a fraudulent check never did. As a result of Biskupic's charge against her for voting, she has been in jail for more than a year for violating her probation.

The federal appeals court in Chicago has not yet ruled on her appeal. But Federal Judge Diane Wood at a hearing expressed the same incredulity at Biskupic's charge as other judges on the appeals court did regarding the Thompson case. "I find this whole prosecution mysterious," said Wood. "I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote."

Biskupic, whose sister, Joan, is a Washington Post reporter covering the Supreme Court, has gone out of his way to establish good relations with local reporters. The local media also are compromised by its own hype of nonexistent vote fraud. As a result, the media have been quick to defend Biskupic against suggestions he brought political charges in cases such as Thompson and Prude to save his own job.

Biskupic is given credit -- as he should be -- for announcing publicly he found no evidence of organized vote fraud in Milwaukee, infuriating the Wisconsin Republican Party. But the Republican claims of vote fraud were so lame no one could have prosecuted them with a straight face. They included at least three Republican claims of double voting when the voters were actually father and son.

The heyday of corrupt big-city machines voting graveyards is long over. But a far more dangerous form of corruption exists today when the U.S. Justice Department, in the hands of the Republican Party, begins prosecuting citizens suspected of being Democrats.

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Link: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=130515&ntpid=0

This woman should be set free immediately!!!

:argh: