A Nation of Law against they own Rules.

The United States' commitment to separation of church and state has defined the nation, from the structure of the schools and the welfare system to the nature of American politics and society. Many citizens mistakenly point to the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of religious practice, as the origin of this separation. Indeed, the Bill of Rights represents a crucial step toward the division of religious institutions from the affairs of the government. Yet, from the days of the early republic, the separation of church and state came about slowly, amid contentious legal, intellectual, and religious debates.

Since the first few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has taken the view that the president has unilateral, unchecked authority to wage a war, not only against those who attacked us on that day, but against all and non terrorist organizations of potentially global reach. The administration claims that the president's role as commander in chief of the armed forces grants him exclusive authority to select "the means and methods of engaging the enemy." And it has interpreted that power in turn to permit the president to take actions many consider illegal. which I will collectively call "the Bush doctrine," the administration has brushed aside legal objections as mere hindrances to the ultimate goal of keeping Americans safe. It has argued that domestic criminal and constitutional law are of little concern because the president's powers as commander in chief override all such laws; that the Geneva Conventions but...

A nation's laws must be upheld? Such simplistic paranoia is at the foundation of the anti-immigrant crowd who cannot intellectualize their belief system. For example take this editorial, A Nation of Laws; its lack of substance prevents any meaningful progress for solving this issue.

What would happen to you if police caught you on video fraudulently voting?
Would cops quickly arrest you and throw you in jail, only to have the District Attorney immediately charge you with breaking the Law(Voterfraud)? Well, see the video above.

What would happen to elected government officials if they were caught doing the same? Absolutely nothing? In fact, our representatives in the U.S. government have become so brazen, that they commit fraud in plain view, on a daily basis, while at the same time trying to pass laws that would further restrict and criminalize the public for doing the same.
This is a clear sign of excessive government, when the government is so large and overwhelmingly powerful that it's agents can abuse the civilian population without any sense of guilt, remorse, or fear - when government officials deny charges of illegal conduct made against themselves as a matter of semantics, and when agents of the government expect and get immunity from any of their actions; actions that would be criminally prosecuted upon any other citizens.
The few standing up for freedom, liberty, and the Constitution, are the only hope for America; the only hope for returning our empire-sized government to it's proper Constitutional levels of national defense, upholding the law, and protecting the rights of the people and individual liberties. There's been a lot of debate at the State Capitol on bills relating to voter integrity. Some lawmakers are pushing for measures such as requiring voters to show a photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot.
Another bill would criminalize anyone who delivers a ballot for someone unable to drive to the polls. With so much emphasis on one vote for one person, you'd think lawmakers would make sure they follow the rules, too.

In this CBS 42 Investigates, Nanci Wilson found many don't. State Representative Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, authored the bill that would require voters to show a photo ID. "It's all about integrity," Riddle said. But the integrity of one person, one vote doesn't apply at the legislature. CBS 42 found many lawmakers vote more than once. During a vote, Riddle votes, turns around and votes again for another state representative. There's so much going on during the vote on the HPV vaccine mandate, you really have to pay attention.

First, State Rep. Mike Hamilton is at his desk. He leans over to vote a second time for his deskmate Dan Branch. Hamilton reaches back to vote for Charlie Howard, then casts a fourth vote for Wayne Smith. He's not the only one scrambling to vote.

State Rep. G.E. West and State Rep. Larry Phillips both lean over to vote for themselves and their deskmates. Phillips votes a third time for State Rep. Wayne Christian.

Donna Howard votes for State Rep. Hubert Vo. State Rep. Jim Dunnam didn't have to leave his chair to cast four votes--one for himself then for Garnet Coleman, Trey Martinez Fischer and Marc Veasey. Sometimes the voting is across party lines. Will Hartnett, a Republican, reaches back to vote for Democrat Rene Oliveira. Democrat Jim McReynolds votes for Republican Kirk England, and Republican John Davis votes for Democrat Rick Noriega. Most voters have no way of knowing if their lawmakers are actually casting their own votes. Even though the legislature is broadcast on cable TV, the cameras change when it's time to vote. But if you're sitting in the third floor gallery, you have a better view. "I certainly noticed. There appears to be far more votes on the tick board than there were people in the room," capitol visitor Laurel Weiss said. Arnie and Laurel Weiss were baffled when they came to see the legislature in action. "It seems very inappropriate and they should do something about it," Arnie Weiss said. Riddle says voting for other members is done out of necessity. "We have a lot of amendments," Riddle said. "We don't have lunch breaks, dinner breaks, restroom breaks." Necessity or not, one thing is clear, they aren't supposed to be doing it. According to the official House rules--written, voted and approved by lawmakers at the beginning of the session--"Any member found guilty by the House of knowingly voting for another member on the voting machine shall be subject to discipline deemed appropriate by the House." So, should lawmakers do it? "No, there's no question," Weiss said. "On face value it appears to be a blatant violation, an affront, of their own rules." It is against their own rules. But the issue is with enforcement. It is the speaker's job to make sure rules are followed. When CBS 42 asked Speaker of the House Tom Craddick's spokesperson about it, she just shrugged her shoulders and said it was up to the House members to decide what do to if there's a violation. Although the practice is widespread, CBS 42 couldn't find any instances of lawmakers being disciplined for voting more than once.

Middle Class Americans : Homeless Without a House Neither a place to Vote.

Bush Asks Americans to Support Bailout but the real question is. Why President Bush and Congress do not support More than a Million people who lost their dreams, their hard work values: Their House?. Where are those fundamental Values? The American Values? We the People?

In a speech to the nation, President Bush calls on Americans
to support the economic recovery plan. Mr. Bush has invited
presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, as well
as top lawmakers, to the White House for economic crisis.

But More than a million people have lost their homes through foreclosure in the last two years, and many of them are still registered to vote at the address of the home they lost. Now election officials and voting rights groups are struggling to prevent thousands of them from losing their vote when they go to the polls in November.

Many of these voters will be disqualified at the polls because, in the tumult of their foreclosure, they neglected to tell their election board of their new address. Some could be forced to vote with a provisional ballot or challenged by partisan poll watchers, a particular concern among Democrats who fear that poor voters will be singled out. That could add confusion and stretch out lines that are already expected to be long because of unprecedented turnout.

Federal election officials say they are concerned that voters are not being properly informed of how to update their addresses.

“Our biggest concern is that many of these voters will stay home or that poll workers will give misinformation,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting.

Todd Haupt, a home builder, lost his home in Josephville, Mo., to foreclosure last year, and said he had since become much more interested in politics. But asked whether he had remembered to update his voter registration information when he moved into his parents’ home in St. Charles, Mo., Mr. Haupt, 33, paused silently. “Is that required?” he said. “I had no idea.”

“I’ve moved three times in the past two years,” he added. “Keeping my voter registration information was not top on my mind because I figured it was all set already.”

Ms. Rodriguez said the commission issued a notice this month encouraging voters to update their registration information before the Oct. 6 cutoff date imposed by many states for new voter registrations. She added that the commission considered issuing a notice this month informing local officials how to handle these voters, but in the end decided not to give poll chal-lengers any ideas on new tactics for singling out voters.

Many of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates are also in crucial swing states like Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Because many homeowners in foreclosure are black, Hispanic or poor, and are considered probable Democratic voters in many areas, the issue has begun to have political ramifications. Political parties have long challenged voters with expired registrations, but the possible use of foreclosure lists to remove people from the rolls — though entirely legal — has become a new partisan flashpoint.

Last week, Senator Barack Obama’s campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to prohibit the Michigan Republican Party from using foreclosure lists to single out and challenge voters. The state Republican Party has denied having any such plans.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, sent a letter last week along with a dozen other Democratic senators to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey asking him to ensure that voters facing foreclosure are not harassed or intimidated at polling places.

In Ohio, liberal-leaning groups are planning to help people in foreclosure and families who are homeless to vote by using a five- to seven-day window starting Sept. 30 when state residents are permitted to register and cast an early ballot simultaneously. The Republican Party has filed a lawsuit in state court to block registering and voting on the same day, arguing that state law forbids it.

Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.

Similar questions were raised two years ago over how to deal with more than a million people who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Some of these voters were never found, while others were able to vote with absentee ballots or at satellite locations outside New Orleans.

“Foreclosure victims are distinctly vulnerable because they are not officially recognized as a group needing voting help,” said Robert M. Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network, a liberal-leaning voting rights group.

Last month, his organization sent letters to the secretaries of state in Arizona, Florida, Missouri and Ohio, asking them to better educate foreclosure victims on their rights. The letters argued that the laws in these states do not bar such voters from voting in their former jurisdictions if their intent is to move back as soon as circumstances allow

On Wednesday, Jennifer L. Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state who is a Democrat, sent out an advisory to all local officials instructing them what to do if anyone who has lost a home to foreclosure shows up at the polls. If the address listed for such voters is no longer valid, and they moved outside the precinct, Ms. Brunner said, poll workers are instructed to send the voter to the polling place that corresponds to the voter’s new address. The voter will then be given a provisional ballot — special ballots that can be counted only after the voter’s eligibility is verified — at the proper polling place, the directive said.

The state requires that election officials send a notice to all registered voters verifying their address 60 days before an election to check the accuracy of the voter rolls. This month, Ms. Brunner ruled that an undeliverable notice will not be grounds enough on its own for a voter to be removed from the registration lists.

So far, election officials in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio have sent out notices to residents in select counties who have filed for a change of address but who have not updated their voter registration.

But the number of people who have moved, through foreclosure or for any other reason, far exceeds the number of people who have notified their election boards. In Ohio, 375,000 people filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service, but when state officials sent them cards asking for updated registration information, only 24,000 responded. In Missouri, where 250,000 people notified the Postal Service of their move, only 22,000 told the election board.

Robin Carnahan, the Missouri secretary of state, and a Democrat, said that she is trying to get local election officials to increase the number of poll workers to deal with any confusion or challenges of voters.

In 2004, a Republican Party official challenged a large number of voters at a largely black precinct in Boone County, Mo., causing a backup. Such challenges can cause long lines at polling places if there are not enough poll workers to pull challenged voters out of line, or if the workers have to consult with higher-level election officials for each challenge.

State political parties have traditionally used the mail to determine which voters to challenge. By sending out mailings to voters likely to be of the opposite party, and then seeing which mailings are returned as undeliverable, they know whom to challenge at the polls for not living at their registered address. Using public lists of foreclosed homes, however, can save money by allowing a party to avoid sending out mailings.

William Nowling, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said that Democratic complaints about foreclosure victims being singled out were baseless.
“We are not using foreclosure lists in any way,” Mr. Nowling said, accusing Democratic groups of engaging in fear-mongering by spreading rumors of such plans. “Our voter integrity efforts are solely designed to fight voter fraud perpetrated by the Democrats, of which there is ample proof and examples, including previous elections where the F.B.I. had to seize and secure ballots in Detroit because ballot boxes were being stuffed.”

Citizenship in sight, but then she voted before the residency was granted. What a terrible and innocent mistake. She was charged with breaking the Law.

Immigrant says registering, then casting ballot were innocent errors, not reason for deportation.

Beth Keathley was so close to becoming a permanent U.S. resident that she could already feel its benefits showering over her: a Social Security number, a cheery new house in central Illinois, an official state identification card. Citizenship would not be far behind.

On the day the Filipino immigrant took part in her first U.S. election last year, she proudly sported an "I voted" lapel pin on her uniform when she showed up for her cleaning shift at a hospital.

But Keathley, who has lived in the U.S. on a marriage visa since 2003, was not a citizen when she voted. When she told an immigration officer about it, she was charged with breaking the law. She lost her job.

It could derail her citizenship, and unless a judge rules in her favor, she could eventually be deported -- uprooting a family that includes her 9-month-old daughter, Sheina.

Keathley's alleged crime -- one that trips up hundreds of immigrants each year -- took place at the secretary of state's facility in Bloomington, where a clerk invited her to register to vote as part of the "motor voter" program.

Immigration laws prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote.

But Keathley said the clerk saw her Filipino passport as part of the application for the state identification card. She figured that if a state employee offered her the opportunity to register, it must be all right.

The state says its employees are prohibited by federal law from seeking confirmation of citizenship before registering people to vote.

And federal officials say the question on the registration form that asks applicants to affirm they are citizens is clear enough. Intentional voter fraud is a real problem, they say, and they have to enforce the laws.

There are no records kept to accurately reflect the size of the problem. But immigration attorneys around the country have seen a steady increase in recent years of deportation cases and declined citizenship due to illegal voting, said Carlina Tapia-Ruano, a Chicago attorney who is the immediate past president of the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Before the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the "motor voter" law, registration took place before a sworn elections official, usually inside a local election board office or voting precinct -- places hard to find for even native-born citizens.

Easier to register

Today, in addition to voter registration materials being available at driver's license facilities and other public agencies, "you can literally be registered while walking down the street," Tapia-Ruano said, referring to volunteers with clipboards full of mail-in forms meant to boost voter turnout.

"You didn't see these cases as much before because it was harder; people had to take more steps," she said. "Now it's easier to register to vote. But the downside is people are getting innocently trapped in this situation."

By the time a flood of political pamphlets came in the mail last year, Keathley was settling into her new life in Bloomington.

It was a far cry from the mostly rural Philippine island of Mindanao, where she worked as a machine operator for a microchip maker that paid her the equivalent of $4 a day. Her impressions of America came from urban television dramas.

"I said: 'Oh, I thought there were no trees in America,'" Keathley recalled, after arriving in Bloomington with her husband, John. "And the snow. It caught me by surprise."

Before long, Keathley was handling the household bills and shopping for a new house with her husband, a customer service agent at a home improvement store. Keathley was issued a work permit and found a $9-an-hour cleaning job at a hospital.

Then she went to get her ID card and ended up registering to vote. The form shows she checked a box indicating she was a citizen; she said she does not remember doing it.

Under a federal anti-discrimination law, state workers aren't allowed to confirm an applicant's citizenship before processing a voter registration form, said Beth Kaufman, spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office.
Our job is to ask whether you want to register to vote, and if the person says 'yes,' we give them a sheet to sign from the board of elections that says: 'Are you a citizen of the United States?' and you check that box 'yes' or 'no' and you sign it," Kaufman said. "We are not allowed to ask anything else."
Some immigrants, confused, leave the question unanswered and still receive voter registration cards, Tapia-Ruano said.

Others knowingly engage in voter fraud, in some cases participating in multiple elections, said Marilu Cabrera, a Chicago spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

"It's very important to understand that if you have a green card, you are not eligible to vote," Cabrera said, adding that her agency comes across such problems after every election and reviews them on a case-by-case basis. "More often than not, we'll deny the [citizenship] case, but they're not put into [deportation] proceedings. If someone shows a clear intent to lie and commit fraud, then, absolutely, they'll be put into proceedings."

The Keathleys' attorney, Richard Hanus, contends that federal immigration law doesn't consider the possibility that such actions are done by mistake. He hopes to convince a judge that Keathley is of good moral character.

"We're talking about a family unit with a child and a woman with no previous criminal behavior whatsoever who has followed immigration laws to the T," Hanus said. "What took place is, at worst, an innocent mistake and not an act that was done in any malicious way."

Her pin said, 'I voted'

Keathley said she got the first hint of trouble at work.

In her sixth month of pregnancy, Keathley arrived at the hospital after voting. A co-worker, also from the Philippines, who knew of her immigrant status noticed Keathley's "I voted" pin and said: "Oh, Beth, you're in trouble now."

Keathley rushed home that night to inform her husband. Both shrugged off their doubts and prepared for her citizenship interview.

Inside a federal immigration office in Chicago, Keathley said, a government official chuckled in disbelief when she said she had voted. The official ended the interview.

Keathley cried during most of the three-hour trip home, she said.

Immigration authorities will not comment on the specifics of Keathley's case.

It will be reviewed by a federal judge next year. While in legal limbo, Keathley has been forced to quit working and lost her medical insurance.

She and her husband are weighing what they will do if she is deported. Besides Sheina, her husband's daughter from a previous marriage, Veronica, 11, is in the picture.

Her husband said the experience has hardened his views on immigration, making him resent on how dysfunctional the systems is..

"Here we jumped through all the hoops ... and we get slammed," he said. "We've done everything the right way."

Keathley lies awake at night filled with remorse.

"I think about how this affects us financially and how we have a baby. I'm losing my job, and we don't have enough to eat," she confided, during a moment when her husband was out of the room. "John says, 'Just don't think about it.'

"I don't know. I want this life