Homeland Security -- Or Job Security?
(So Why Does Bush Want to Cancel the Elections, Anyway?)
by Tamara Baker

July 12, 2004 -- SAINT PAUL (apj.us) -- You can damned near set your watch by BushCo.

No sooner do we have the results of a new Newsweek poll showing that picking Edwards has given Kerry a boost (), then we suddenly have Tom Ridge going into Chicken Little Mode over some vague terror threat that Congressmember Jane Harman, of the House Intelligence Committee, has already shot down as bogus -- yet this bogosity is being used by Generallisimo El Busho (tip of the hat to Ted Rall) as a pretext to cancel the 2004 elections ()!

Ahem.

In 1864, when Washington, DC, was within five miles of Confederate General Jubal Early's attacking troops (), President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, did not even dream of cancelling, or even postponing, the 1864 elections.

Here's a bit of what Ol' Abe had to say on the subject, taken from the National Park Service Web site:

"We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."

This should be borne in mind, when the current occupant of the White House, whose own 2004 election campaign is foundering as he slips below 50% in the polls, starts talking about cancelling our elections.

Note that Bush didn't talk about this when it still looked like he would win 2004 in a walk. Of course not. It was only when the election started to go south for him that he suddenly decided that elections were a danger to democracy.

What is this really about for him?

Homeland security?

Or could it be Bush's job security?