It isn't difficult to find Republicans in Orange County, but finding new, unregistered-to-vote Republicans these days is a struggle, even in a Republican stronghold. Desperate to register new Republican voters, a group of brainiacs hired by the Orange County Republican Party hit upon a scheme to improve their success rate: they tricked Democrats and Greens into registering as Republicans.

The recruiters visited shopping centers and college campuses and were paid $10 a head for newly registered Republicans in a district represented by U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat, prosecutors said. Voters were asked to sign petitions for lower taxes or stricter sex offender laws, then tricked into signing voter registration cards, Orange County prosecutor Anthony Rackauckas said. ... County Democratic Party officials said they have filed more than 500 verified complaints of fraud in the drive.

A dozen recruiters have been charged with felonies for falsely completing affidavits of registration. The OC Republicans have been up to other dirty tricks in the Sanchez race, as recounted here.

The Justice Department quietly abandoned its felony prosecution of former FBI agent Denise Woo, who had been accused of helping espionage suspect Jeffrey Wang. Wang has never been charged, but Woo -- who believed Wang to be innocent -- was accused of "disclosing the existence of a national security wiretap on Wang's home telephone, revealing to Wang the identity of the FBI's confidential informant and lying to FBI agents."

Those charges, carrying a ten year mandatory minimum, were dismissed when Woo agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of revealing confidential information. She was fined $1,000 and placed on probation -- quite a light sentence for an agent who (according to the government) was assisting a spy.

Woo's attorney, Carolyn Kubota, explains why Woo was prosecuted in the first place: "Denise was made a scapegoat for the government's absolutely bungled investigation of Mr. Wang." Wang suggests that the FBI retaliated against Woo for arguing that the investigation of Wang was unwarranted.

I have tried to ignore Amy Sullivan's return to her rather inane fixation on Democrats and religious voters, but Kevin Drum wrote an annoying post so here I am again. Kevin wrote:

So let's get real: It's true that Democratic politicians are uniformly respectful toward religion, but it's equally true that the Democratic Party responds to liberal concerns, and that means it's more sympathetic than the Republican Party is to a whole raft of positions that even some moderate believers view as anti-religious. Maybe Democrats should do something about this, maybe they shouldn't. We all have our own take on that. But it's not as if the problem is just a figment of Amy Sullivan's imagination.

Do what Kevin? Because there is only one thing that will satisfy "values" voters enough to put them in play for Democrats -- he knows it, Amy Sullivan knows it, you know it. Abandon a woman's right to choose. And not only will Democrats not do that, it would boggle the mind if they even contemplated it. It would be political suicide. The Democratic Party would cease to exist. If the repeal of a woman's right to choose is your number one issue - then you should be a Republican really. And nothing is going to change that. So now, what is the correct political response to the Republican Party's marriage to the Religious Right? I'll tell you again on the flip.

After her incredibly divisive remarks to the New York Times, Ellen Tauscher has the unmitigated gall to say this to the Washington Post:

"I have a lot of respect for Jack Murtha, but I remain shocked that he is talking about making a run for majority leader," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Calif.), a Hoyer supporter and a leading Democratic moderate. "I don't understand it. I'm not supportive of it, and it's having a deleterious effect on what I think and hope will be a huge win on November 7."

Some people have no shame. Ellen Tauscher looks to be a budding Joe Lieberman when it comes to hypocrisy and mendacity.

Forget what I think, take a look at the Cook Report. This could be 1994 redux:

With the election just eight days away, there are no signs that this wave is abating. Barring a dramatic event, we are looking at the prospect of GOP losses in the House of at least 20 to 35 seats, possibly more, and at least four in the Senate, with five or six most likely.

If independents vote in fairly low numbers, as is customary in midterm elections, losses in the House will be on the lower end of that range. But if they turn out at a higher than normal level, their strong preference for Democrats in most races would likely push the GOP House losses to or above the upper levels.

On to Congressional Quarterly:

Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong faces re-election next week. The rape charges against the three former Duke lacrosse players continues to unravel. Nifong says neither he nor members of his staff have interviewed the accuser yet and Kim Roberts, the second dancer, told Good Morning America on Monday yet another version of events that evening:

... Roberts said she told the woman, "Get out of my car, get out of my car."

"I push on her leg. I kind of push on her arm," Roberts said. "And clear as a bell, it's the only thing I heard clear as a bell out of her was, she said -- she pretty much had her head down, but she said plain as day -- 'Go ahead put marks on me. That's what I want, go ahead.' ''

Roberts said the comments "chilled me to the bone, and I decided right then and there to go to the authorities."

Yet, Nifong tells the Associated Press he stands by his decision to prosecute. The only thing he's sorry about is having talked too much to the media. Then why is he talking to them again now?

Right, there's an election next week.

You can comment here, or over at the TalkLeft Duke forums.

The Bush administration hasn't worried about congressional oversight for the last six years. Now it expects to be free from scrutiny by the special inspector general for Iraq. The special IG recently reported that the military hasn't kept track of hundreds of thousands of weapons meant for Iraqi security forces. That's the sort of embarassing news that Republicans are hoping to silence.

The special IG office, which since 2004 has kept watch over how U.S. taxpayers' funds are being spent rebuilding Iraq, is scheduled to close at the end of fiscal year 2007, next Sept. 30. Its expiration has prompted concerns that new and continuing investigations into waste, fraud and abuse by Iraqis and American contractors will recede into the shadows of the federal bureaucracy.

About a hundred investigations are underway, and there's no sensible reason to think that waste and fraud in Iraqi expenditures will end soon. Republican support for closing the office can only be based on a desire to conceal malfeasance.

In response to the NYTimes Endorsement of Ned Lamont, Lieberman's team freaks out. Among the lowlights:

The fact is, as the Times itself reported last week, Joe Lieberman has openly and frequently challenged the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war -- just not in the shrill and hateful terms that the Times and the blogger extremists confuse with strong leadership.

Um, does Joe mean the article so poorly written that it required a corrective article the next day?

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut has used the phrase “stay the course” several times in discussing the war in Iraq in recent years, echoing a key phrase of the White House, contrary to an article published Tuesday in The New York Times.

I'll be in Washington, D.C. with a bunch of liberal and conservative bloggers on election night, courtesy of CNN.

CNN’s Internet reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton will host the first “CNN E-lection Nite Blog Party” at Tryst, a Washington, D.C. hotspot for young politicos. The party will gather many of the top political bloggers from across the country to blog together. Some of their analysis will appear in segments on-air and in reports online, including on CNN Pipeline, CNN.com’s premium live video news service.

We'll be blogging the results and news tidbits live -- it should be a lot of fun.

Atrios, Christy of Firedoglake, John of Crooks and Liars will also be there.

This is a shame. Students for a Sensible Drug Policy reports that on Friday, a federal judge granted the Bush administration's motion to dismiss an ACLU and SSDP lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions.

SSDP says it's more important for people to contact Congress and demand the repeal of this harmful and unfair penalty that has denied educational opportunities to nearly 200,000 would-be students.

The judge's ruling is here (pdf).

Via Wonkette, what's Cheney destroying now?

Spotted on 10/19, by an eagle-eyed Wonkette reader: The Mid-Atlantic Shredding Services truck making its way up to the Cheney compound at the Naval Observatory.

My good friend Ed Kilgore of the DLC is a terrific writer, a good Democrat and a smart and reasonable man. But I have always felt frustrated with his refusal or inability to distinguish between partisan politicking and pragmatic governance. He writes:

E.J. Dionne, explains the larger meaning of this collapse of GOP support among independents:

President Bush's six-year effort to create an enduring Republican majority based on a right-leaning coalition is on the verge of collapse. The way he tried to create it could have the unintended consequence of opening the way for an alternative majority. . . . The strategy pursued by Bush and Karl Rove has frightened most of the political center into the arms of Democrats. . . [T]his approach created what may prove to be a fatal political disconnect: Adventurous policies designed to create enthusiasm on the right turned off a large number of less ideological voters.

In other words, the Rovian politics of polarization, along with the failed policies it produced, are in ruins. And the long-term choice facing Democrats after this and (if we win) the next election is whether we pivot to a governing agenda that restores the confidence in progressive government that was becoming evident during the Clinton years, or go down the same road to perdition the GOP has followed, with disastrous results for their party and the country.

Why does Ed equate partisan politicking with ideological governance? It is the basic mistake of the DLC and many other Centrists and it tears at the fabric of our Big Tent for no good reason. I'll explain again on the flip.