Suspending Elections

You know the old saying: you aren't paranoid if they really ARE out to get you.

Officials discuss how to delay Election Day

Is this a call for a legitimate contingency plan, or a blatant, cynical attempt to ensure power? Tough to say, actually, but it is certainly either evil, or simply wrongheaded.

"U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland Security Department spokesman said Sunday.

Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election could be postponed started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset.

Newsweek reported that Soaries expressed concern that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission such power."

Don't you just love the way right-wingers insist that the Federal Government has too much power - but now they complain that it doesn't have the power to suspend elections?

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network want to attack within the United States to try to disrupt the election."

Hmmmm. So if Osama Bin Laden attempts to disrupt the election, they are going to make sure he accomplishes precisely that: They will do what he WANTS them to do, and disrupt the election.

After all, what could be a greater "disruption" than postponing or cancelling it?

John Kerry should use this nonsense to show some REAL Presidential leadership, which has been sorely lacking from this White House. Kerry should give a public address saying something like, "No damned terrorists are going to delay national elections in the United States for so much as one day. And I am confident that should a terrorist attack occur just before or on election day, Americans will climb over the rubble to get to the polling places... and they will do it in record numbers."

Not only would such a statement simply be right, but Kerry saying it would certainly tighten the elastic on George W. Bush's shorts.

And perhaps everytime we hear "terrorists want to disrupt the election," the rank-and-file (that's you and me) should respond with, "Well, that must mean that the terrorists want to keep Bush as president."