Republican Campaign Against Likely Democratic Voters Begins
Steven Rosenfeld writes for Alternet: "Across the country and on the Republican National Committee website, a handful of GOP office holders and party officers are trying to discredit recent voter registration drives and record-setting turnout by Democrats in 2008 primaries, saying efforts seen as benefiting Democrats are rife with "voter fraud.""

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What Patriotism Is, and Is Not
Michael Winship, for Truthout, writes about false accusations against Obama's patriotism, "Chances are, many of the perpetrators of this nonsense think they're being patriots, saving us from Obama and ourselves. And goodness knows, there's a long history of this kind of guttersnipery in American politics. As Obama pointed out in his Monday speech on the nature of patriotism, 'Thomas Jefferson was accused by the Federalists of selling out to the French. The anti-Federalists were just as convinced that John Adams was in cahoots with the British and intent on restoring monarchal rule ... the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic.'"

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On Black Patriotism
Eugene Robison writes for Truthdig.com: " Anyone who took U.S. history in high school ought to know that one of the five men killed in the Boston Massacre, the atrocity that helped ignite the American Revolution, was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks. The question the history books rarely consider is: Why? Think about it for a moment. For well over a century, British colonists in North America had practiced a particularly cruel brand of slavery, a system of bondage intended not just to exploit the labor of Africans but to crush their spirit as well. Backs were whipped and broken, families systematically separated, traditions erased, ancient languages silenced. Yet a black man—to many, nothing more than a piece of property—chose to stand and die with the patriots of Boston.

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Single Moms' Poverty Spikes After Welfare Overhaul
Allison Stevens of Women's eNews reports, "Some 15 million US women live in poverty, according to 2006 Census data collated by the Washington-based National Women's Law Center. Poverty rates are especially high among women of color, older women and single mothers. Black and Hispanic women are about twice as likely to be poor than white women. Roughly one in five elderly women are poor, as are one in three single mothers."

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Vendor Misinformation in the E-Voting World
Dan Wallach, for VoteTrustUSA, writes: "At this point, the scientific evidence is in, it's overwhelming, and it's indisputable. The current generation of DRE voting systems has a wide variety of dangerous security flaws. There's simply no justification for the vendors to be making excuses or otherwise downplaying the clear scientific consensus on the quality of their products."

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Playing the Fear Card
Dan Kennedy for the Guardian writes: "Be afraid. It's not just a warning - it's a campaign slogan. For Republicans, fear is a cudgel with which they've bludgeoned their way to victory since the Reagan era, and it's acquired an extra emotional wallop since 9/11. Will it work again? Even though Barack Obama has a lead of as much as 15 points in the national polls, don't be too sure that it won't. After all, Michael Dukakis led the first George Bush by 17 points in the summer of 1988. That fall, Dukakis collapsed under a vicious assault on his patriotism, his toughness, even his mental stability."

FOr his complete commentary, click here.