Patterico's Pontifications

2/9/2012

Another Project Veritas Video About Voter Fraud

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:18 pm



In this video, James O’Keefe’s pranksters set out to register Tim Tebow and Tom Brady to vote:

The gag is that the undercover tricksters just come in and grab handfuls of voter registration forms (20 in one case), and then register the two famous quarterbacks to vote. Time and time again, they ask if any kind of ID is required to register Tebow and Brady to vote. The dialogue is peppered with funny references to the reasons Tebow and Brady can’t get the forms themselves — Tebow was in a car accident recently, while Brady happened to be assaulted in Minnesota and is going through a lot of depression. None of the middle-aged women catch the references.

It’s all very amusing, but as O’Keefe well knows, underneath the humor there is a very serious problem here. Any time human beings can commit fraud, human beings WILL commit fraud. Period. If you don’t agree with this statement, you are hopelessly naive and I have no interest in talking to you. What’s more, the easier you make the fraud, and the tougher it is to catch and punish, the more you will get. Again, this is beyond rational dispute.

When combined with Project Veritas’s last video, which showed undercover cameramen obtaining ballots using the names of dead people, the holes in our system are clear. Any fraudster need only go to a polling station, grab dozens of absentee ballots, turn them in with no verification of identity, and they are registered. Then, anyone can vote absentee by claiming they are sick — or, as in the previous video, they can simply go to the polling place and place their vote there. (Mediaite claims that there are checks that would prevent this. But the “no voter ID” crowd probably wants to remove those checks as well.)

If this can happen, it does happen. I know people who want to avoid any and all checks on voter fraud are fond of telling us that voter fraud is rare. They point to the relatively small number of convictions for voter fraud as their proof.

Bollocks. By that logic, Wall Street didn’t deceive anyone. There have been hardly any criminal convictions coming out of the subprime mortgage debacle. I guess nobody committed any fraud then.

If you care about election integrity, you should care about ensuring that there are checks on rampant fraud. Unfortunately, so many who claim to favor election integrity are really only interested in favoring their own side.

That’s why the certain reaction of the fringe left to this video will be to, once again, strain to find ways that O’Keefe is breaking the law. Don’t counter his message; attack the messenger. Smear him. Claim he committed crimes whether he did or not. Go after the man on a personal level. This is what the scumbags on the fringe left always do, and you can bet they will do it again with this video.

Kudos to O’Keefe’s crew. This is an important video that should be distributed far and wide.

UPDATE: I originally said the previous video “showed undercover cameramen obtaining ballots using the names of dead people.” I knew that they hadn’t voted but was sloppy in my wording. What they actually did was obtain ballots — but they didn’t vote. Thanks to daleyrocks for pointing this out.

Austin Teacher Charged with Giving Morning-After Pill to Student

Filed under: Abortion,General — Patterico @ 7:18 am



In Austin, a teacher gives one of her students the “morning after” pill — and it doesn’t work out so well:

Steinberg, who also was a math teacher at LBJ, gave the pill to a 16-year-old student who was crying in her class about Jan. 26 because she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, [an arrest] affidavit said.

. . . .

The student did not have a prescription for the medication, which is required for females younger than 17, the affidavit said.

The student and her boyfriend then gave Steinberg money for the medication, the affidavit said.

. . . .

Later, the student texted Steinberg and said she was nauseous, light-headed and experiencing back pain, the affidavit said. The student also said she was frightened, the affidavit said.

Steinberg texted back “this was normal, and to take a hot shower and relax,” the affidavit said.

Dr. Steinberg — oh, I mean NON-Dr. Steinberg — has learned her lesson:

Steinberg “expressed anger at (the student), blaming her for getting in trouble,” the affidavit said.

Or not.

Steinberg has been charged with a felony. I say: good. Will abortion advocates agree with me?

Somehow I doubt it. I am thinking this is going to be one of those instances where abortion advocates support an action they would never support in any other context. Normally, rational people say that you don’t give a child prescription medication that could have serious side effects unless you’re a doctor. But abortion advocates will no doubt see this as different: a horrible situation caused by a draconian law, blah blah blah.

The same thing happens with informed consent laws. Want to make a doctor tell his patients what the gall bladder surgery really entails? What the potential risks are? What the patient is truly about to undergo? Excellent. Want to make sure abortion doctors do the same? OH MY GOD YOU CAN’T DO THAT IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL YOU ARE A TROGLODYTE. Is the response.

It’s OK if you’re supporting abortion.

So. Let’s wait and watch to see if this becomes a big story. And if it does, how the pro-abortion crowd (yes, I said it) responds. A new right to have your child’s teacher become a doctor dispensing potentially harmful medication? I bet they’re for it.

RELATED: Or perhaps they are just counting on the Obama administration’s mandate that healthcare plans provide the morning after pill — a requirement that could force religiously-affiliated hospitals to provide medication that they consider to be immoral.


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