Attorney targeted for protecting Native American votes.
Attorney targeted for protecting Native American votes.
“For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor,” the L.A. Times reports. “By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department.” So why was he targeted for firing?
Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans.
At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger’s office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.
Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver’s licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes’ photo IDs.
The Times adds, “About three months after Heffelfinger’s office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.”
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Do the right thing.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:26 amThe Times adds, “About three months after Heffelfinger’s office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.â€
This keeps up, some may put up the chanupa.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:28 amWounded Knee is not a well healed wound.
People can be pushed only so far.
Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:30 amSo targeted because he tried to help dirt-poor native Americans on reservations? Boy if he had helped the filthy rich, then GOPers would have loved the guy.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:30 amThe pattern of the Bush GOP is unmistakable, from Florida, to Ohio, to a myriad of other cases of voter suppression, they will do almost anything to suppress voter turn-out for key demographics. Most often these are groups that would benefit from a government that works for all citizens, rather than just economic elites.
It gets more obvious by the day, and yet the MSM still refuses to cover any of this in any meaningful way.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:39 amSomeone left this anonymously on my blog:
Conspiracy Theory:
Feb 2005 - Hizzoner, St Paul Mayor Randy Kelly is
probed by 2 FBI investigations as he announces re-election.
The publicity is not good.
Mar 2005 - US Attorney Heff gets put on the US Attorney General death list.
Nov 2005 - Hisdishonor Randy Kelly is kicked
out of town with the largest loss by an incumbent mayor in the
history of St. Paul.
Jan 2006 Citizen Kelly goes to Washington
to beg for a job and get revenge, he is well connected with
the Bush people.
Feb 2006 - US Attorney Heff feels the pressure and “resigns”.
Please visit the Schapira blog, What we know so far …
“… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!”
May 31st, 2007 at 2:47 amchortle:
What do you think “the right thing” would be?
May 31st, 2007 at 2:49 am“Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.”
When Bush fires someone, it will make national news. So far, no-one has stepped up and claimed responsibility, including President “Not me!”
May 31st, 2007 at 2:54 amchortle:
What do you think “the right thing†would be?
Comment by Jake
Ahhhh, Another troll with trouble seeing the difference between right and wrong.
Find breaking the law amusing, do you?
Go back and hide in your “Ignore List”**skip**”Ignore List”**skip**”Ignore List”**skip**”Ignore List”**skip**”Ignore List”**skip**………
May 31st, 2007 at 3:04 amFor the record:
http://thinkprogress.org/ 2006/ 09/ 30/ president-bush-fired-colin-powell/
May 31st, 2007 at 3:09 amIn other national news, President Bush fired two top members of his economic team including Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill:
http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/ 2002/ 12/ 07/ politics/ main532180.shtml
May 31st, 2007 at 3:13 amBush also fired Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0508
May 31st, 2007 at 3:19 am#12 it’s just mike, not michael, parker.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:54 amIf Bush fired them, you know they were competent.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:30 amJake, what war did you pretend to be a veteran of last Memorial Day? I I know you’re a republcan with an atrophied sense of reality but do you really think you can be a 27 year old veteran of the Korean War?
May 31st, 2007 at 7:46 amThis is an example of the way the Gonzales and related investigations have brought things to attention which would otherwise be ignored. This was only a local story when it happened, but it turns out that there were lots of these local disenfranchisement stories, and that there was national coordination. I’d be interested in knowing about Kiffmeyer’s national connections.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:01 am“He was captured trying to further jihad” - Comment on Think Progress attempting to justify the unconstitutional torture of a Guantanamo detainee resulting in suicide.
If that is in fact the definition by which persons are to be arrested by our government without due process or any other constitutional protections, then we can expect to see a vast number of arrests within our own government itself right away, if Wayne Madsen, who has been investigating covert operations for well over a decade is even marginally correct in his findings, a very small sample of which follows: “Rather than being charged and prosecuted for treason against the United States for his role in an illegal plot to entrap President Carter’s brother Bill Carter in a phony business deal, Ledeen was rewarded with a consulting job for the State Department and Pentagon in the Reagan administration, a position from which he was free to continue his anti-American activities with fellow traitors from the Henry Jackson staff. While the traitors in the Washington office of Jackson and Ledeen in Rome were conspiring against President Carter, George H. W. Bush, Carter National Security Council staffer Robert Gates, and William Casey criminally conspired with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s government to keep 52 hostages held in Tehran captive in return for a shipment of weapons. A meeting between Casey, Gates, and Bush and Iranian agents was held in Paris on October 19, 1980, in what became known as the “October Surprise.”
The deal was worked out using the auspices of the Sun Shipyard in Chester, PA, which had a close link to the CIA since the shipyard’s building of the Soviet submarine raising ship, SS Glomar Explorer, under cover provided by Howard Hughes’ Summa Corporation, in 1973. As WMR has previously reported, the CIA arranged a pre-election weapons shipment, unknown to President Carter, to Iran on the SS Poet from Chester, PA to Iran. The Poet was later disposed of along with its American crew by U.S. intelligence or those in its service.”
And, about the $51 million dollars of our tax money which under Reagan was covertly spent printing up Jihadist textbooks glorifying terrorism, and then distributed through our clandestine services to hundreds of madrassas, the building of which was also covertly funded with our tax money, in Afghanistan:
If “furthering” terrorism is the standard upon which we dispense with every American principle, rule, right and obligation of law, then the next arrests must be of thousands if not tens of thousands of criminal amoral elected and unelected theives on our own U.S. soil and within our own U.S. government, who have deliberately plotted to create terrorism, not just further it, purely for motives of their own profit and consolidation of their own not only wholly unconstitutional but heinously traitorous tyranny, directly at the expense and to the destruction of everything which the United States itself, and the vast majority of Americans themselves have always believed in, fought, stood, and still stand for. Republican “leaders” need look no further than their own mirror to behold creators of “the terrorists”.
It’s time they turned themselves in to save actually patriotic Americans any further expenditures of our money (which they have also allowed to be debased in an intentional massive fraud against our Constitutional rights), in order to prosecute them under our American Constitutional Law, and when found guilty, thrown into the Halliburton camps and shiny new prisons they so eagerly advocated be used without Equal Protection, Due Process, Right of Habeas Corpus or any other foundational principle of law, for anyone whom they arbitrarily presumed to decide in their disgustingly backward “Family Feud” “Survey Says” junk-food mentality isn’t interested in “going along to get along”, straight down the road to the nazi totalitarian dictatorship America most recently defeated in WWII, and which is now represented by the globalist corporatist puppets Cheney and Bush and their lackeys.
The “clash of civilizations” is not one of terrorists, but rather one between those who are unable to do anything other than “follow orders”, and those who understand that such a mentality is the most profoundly unamerican, unpatriotic, and cowardly way for any human being who purports to respect freedom for themselves or for others to act. We support our troops, who are obligated under the dual constraints of duty and duress. We fully support and acknowledge the right of every state and all nations and peoples to coexist peacefully.
We cannot and we will never support those who merely wave our flag, yet whose every action betrays them not to be supporters of America, Peace, Freedom or any actual Rule of Law, but rather to be perpetrators of the most anti-American, anti-Human, and anti-Freedom mentality, policys, and actions. Fomenting terrorism to profit from the resultant increase in conflict, sales of weapons, and human suffering caused thereby, and used as a pretext to destroy freedom, and further used to profit from the manipulation and
May 31st, 2007 at 8:15 amexploitation of resources and access to them, must not and cannot be permitted by any party, individual or group claiming to support legitimate human values or openly representing any unpeaceful or harmful intent.
Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.
Comment by Jake
Too bad you 28%ers didn’t fire Bush the first time he stole the election.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:28 amA little OT, but not much:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clinton Says No to Indian Country
Candidate Refuses to Meet with the First Americans
May 30, 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below is a copy of the press release we sent out today in response to Senator Clinton’s refusal to meet with tribal members from across America at Prez on the Rez:
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton today became the first and only candidate to refuse an invitation to speak at a first-ever candidate forum in Indian Country. The forum, called Prez on the Rez by its organizers, the INDN’s List Education Fund (ILEF), will be August 23, on the reservation of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in Cabazon, Calif. Senator Clinton was invited to Prez on the Rez more than six months ago.
Kalyn Free, president of the Tulsa-based ILEF, said, “Hillary Clinton’s willingness to ignore Indian voters on the campaign trail has made it clear that she lacks the courage to change lives in Indian Country.”
“I’m both disappointed and astonished that Senator Clinton has turned her back on American Indians. By refusing to participate in this historic event, she lost an opportunity to inspire an entire generation of American Indians to engage in the democratic process. Sadly, that reflects the hollowness of her rhetoric and the narrowness of her vision,” said Free. “Just as tribes are gaining recognition for building political power in key states throughout the country, Senator Clinton is ignoring the needs - large and small - of Indian People. We demand a president who truly cares about who we are, who has the courage to change the shameful state of life in Indian Country and throughout America, and who has the vision to build a society all Americans can be proud of. I’m disheartened to say that Senator Clinton has proven she is not that leader.”
Free said Senator Clinton made “starting a conversation” about strengthening the middle class, making healthcare more affordable, and bolstering the lives of children and families, the centerpieces of her campaign. On each of these counts, reflected in a staggering array of statistics, Indian Country falls far behind the rest of the nation, yet her proposals - detailed over the past two weeks - reflect the priorities of her campaign: they ignore Indian Country entirely.
On Memorial Day, Senator Clinton declared expanded healthcare coverage “a moral imperative,” and proposed a solution involving investments in modernizing medicine and eliminating waste in the industry. While these improvements may cut costs for the majority of Americans who already have access to adequate healthcare, it will do nothing for the 30 percent of Indians who lack health coverage and the millions more whose reservations lie far from the modern medical facilities Senator Clinton hopes to improve. The waiting list for new “priority” healthcare facilities in Indian Country is nearly 60 years. Tribal citizens need champions that are not afraid to increase funding for tribal health programs. The need for this health funding is staggering: life expectancy of Native Americans is nearly six years less than any other race or ethnic group in America and 13% of Native deaths occur in citizens under 25, a rate three times higher than the average U.S. population.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported in 2003 that “American Indian youths are twice as likely to commit suicide. Native Americans are 630 percent more likely to die from alcoholism, 650 percent more likely to die from tuberculosis, 318 percent more likely to die from diabetes, and 204 percent more likely to suffer accidental death compared with other groups. “In a plan Senator Clinton outlined the following day, the Democrat proposed strengthening the middle class by protecting workers, reining in federal spending, punishing corporations that move jobs overseas, and supporting higher education. Yet outsourced jobs can hardly account for the 46% unemployment rate in Indian Country, where one in four live in poverty.
Clinton’s indifference to Indian Country extends to the women and families that comprise its future. Free argues that Clinton should take a look at the lifelong disparities that face American Indians as they age, both on and off the reservation. A recent publication issued by Amnesty International reported one in three American Indian women will be raped at some point in their lives, a rate that is more than double that for non-Indian women. “The crisis of children and families in Indian Country continues to limit the opportunities for American Indians to build a better future, while Senator Clinton’s willingness to ignore the state of Indians ensures the continuation of a terrible status quo,” Free said.
Contact Information
May 31st, 2007 at 9:30 am~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: kalyn@indnslist.org
phone: 918.583.6100
web: http://www.prezontherez.org
You know, this voting skullduggery is an odd way for a party with a pernanent majority to act.
“Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.” - Jake the Fake.
He did, Jake, in 2001, at the beginning of his term, like everybody else. No one had a problem with it.
May 31st, 2007 at 9:49 am“Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.” by Jake
He already did. He fired them all when he first took office. Don’t you think it would look a little suspicious if he fired them all again and started putting political hacks into their positions? Bush only felt it necessary to start firing US Attorneys when they saw that their efforts to steal the 2006 election were going to fail. So, they decided they need to up the ante.
May 31st, 2007 at 9:55 am#3 Jake
Too bad Bush didn’t simply fire all the U.S. Attorneys.
Yeah, too bad. It would have made it easier to cover his tracks and hide all the schemes that Rove had been working. It’s too bad they’re all getting exposed now. Too bad that the country finds out how the elections were getting rigged. Too bad that the country finds out how federal prosecutors were being pushed to bust Democrats and punished for prosecuting Republicans. It’s just too bad when people find out that the justice system that they assumed was impartial with regard to a person’s political party was being set up to persecute citizens on the basis of their party affiliation. It’s too bad when word gets out that some immature, inexperienced little partisan hack was put in charge of hiring and firing career Justice Department lawyers on the basis of their ‘Bushieness’: Not Bushie enough? You’re out.
Bummer, eh?
May 31st, 2007 at 10:41 amThese people don’t stop.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm