Andrew Breitbart was a name everyone knew, but Chip Gerdes was not. Chip and Andrew together were a tornado of creative energy. Chip was the creative force behind so many news stories, breaking scandals and more things to advance the cause of liberty than people will ever know. The news that Chip died today is devastating. Gateway Pundit has this write up.

Chip Gerdes (L) blends in at SEIU rally

Chip was responsible for this ambush interview of Eric Holder reported at PJ Media when he emerged from the scandal ridden DOJ Voting Section.  Chip understood political theatre, narrative, and why America was a great country.  He will be missed.

The Benghazi scandal is easy to understand, and that’s what makes it so dangerous for the White House. Simply, the Obama administration’s narrative — that al-Qaeda was on the run, that Hosni Mubarak had to go, and that the Arab Spring was a good thing — was proven false when four brave Americans were killed.

Because the administration was a slave to their own narrative, rather than aggressively fighting al-Qaeda, rather than recognizing the $50 billion investment in Mubarak’s stability, and rather than realizing that the upheaval they sponsored in the Middle East empowered Muslim Brotherhood radicals, they lied repeatedly about Benghazi.

They lied to win re-election, the most vile sort of lie.

Now three whistleblowers are coming forward to testify about the administration’s incompetence and lies in the days following September 11, 2012.

I know a thing or two about being a whistleblower. I appeared on the Huckabee show this weekend (see video below) and explained how simply telling the truth is the way to shield yourself from the sinister deceptions from places like the Huffington Post and the George Soros-funded Media Matters. They can try to smear you, but the truth of your testimony will rise above their smears.

Not only is Benghazi simple to understand, it is revealing: does President Obama care more about the Benghazi families learning the truth regarding why their loved ones died, or does he care more about his own political power?

If his administration continues to lie, obstruct, and unleash attacks on the whistleblowers, we’ll know he just doesn’t care about the Benghazi families.

We will also know Obama will have at last become the thing the bright young activist most loathed — a president who will lie to the public about Americans dying overseas. After all, that’s the central Vietnam narrative of the Left: America, the imperialist nation which callously sends men to die and then hides the truth from the American people.

Pay attention to the people behind Benghazi. Many outside the Beltway don’t understand that policy is driven by the usually nameless inside the government. Day-to-day decisions, drafts, and management of matters is not done by a president, or even by his direct reports. It is done by thirtysomethings like Ben Rhodes:

Ben Rhodes

Something is happening in Colorado, and you better pay attention. Colorado Democrats, with the active help of some Republican county election clerks interested in shirking work, have devised a revolutionary plan to remake future Colorado elections.

The plan is simple: ballots are automatically mailed out to every single person on the voter rolls. Ballots are even mailed to people listed as “inactive” voters at their last known address. Ballots are then voted and returned by mail.

No more polling places.

No more voters actually demonstrating an interest in participating in an election. The government will decide that for them, and scatter millions of paper ballots into the U.S. mail.

In 2016, this system will be an invitation to fraud. It will be unmanageable. And it will be a model to pass in other states controlled by Democrats.

Despite the effort of some senators, this proposal will almost certainly become law because the GOP doesn’t have the numbers to stop it. Election-integrity champion and Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler is trying to explain how this proposal will breed fraud, but Democrats don’t care.

This bill is about power, not good government. If it passes, Colorado will likely remain blue for years. Those who doubt that don’t understand how important process is to election outcomes. Cleta Mitchell, an election-law expert, recently spoke to the True the Vote national summit on the topic: ”Process, process, process,” she told the audience.

Process is what the Left cares about, so much so that they are pouring $100,000,000 into the “Democracy Initiative,” a plot to permanently reshape American politics by altering election-process laws.

The conservative and GOP response? Next to nothing. It will probably include more money for radio spots the weekend before an election and more tweets.

The Left understands they can reshape the country on issues of immigration, abortion, taxes, business regulation, defense, terrorism, and health care by reshaping election-process laws. This is why they oppose voter ID, citizenship verification, and purges of dead voters. This is why they propose early voting, welfare agency voter registration, same-day voter registration (which gave us Al Franken), felon voting, and counting illegal aliens for redistricting purposes to subsidize Democrat legislative seats.

When you control election-process rules, your ideas need not appeal to a majority of people to obtain power.

I’m proud to say that PJ Media covers election law issues better than major daily papers like the Houston Chronicle.  Consider an article by David Saleh Rauf.  

David Saleh Rauf

Rauf covers the story of a bipartisan bill in the Texas legislature designed to cut down on ballot harvesters – people who go out and collect scores of absentee ballots from people, a notorious source of fraud.  Rauf writes (inaccurately):

The proposal – House Bill 148 by Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale – would cap the number of ballots that an individual can mail in any election to 10. Republicans argue the bill is needed to disinfect a mail-in voter system they say is rampant with fraud, in large part, because of crooked vote harvesters who get paid to go door-to-door collecting ballots and then doing what they see fit with them. . . .From the House floor, Democrats warned the bill could be unconstitutional, that it may run afoul of the Voting Rights Act and that it ultimately could have a chilling effect on the ability of some elderly and disabled to cast ballots.

Really?  Violate the Voting Rights Act? 

Why do reporters at dead-trees outlets swallow any myth about the law that the Left dangles in front of them?  The answer is simple – mere mention of the Voting Rights Act is designed to frighten legislators and introduce race into any debate about election process laws.  In the past, it has served to clear the decks of any opposition to what Democrats want.

But the Voting Rights Act in no way affects the Texas legislation at issue (apart from the preclearance obligation under Section 5, an obligation that may be ended shortly by the Spreme Court.)  The Voting Rights Act prevents states from engaging in racial discrimination, not age discrimination.  It does not reach protection of the elderly or disabled.  So if a state wanted to limit the vote in state elections to everyone under 60, or only make an absentee ballot available to those under 50 in all elections, it could do so.  It would be stupid policy, for sure, but the elderly and disabled are not protected classes in the Voting Rights Act or 15th Amendment.

Doubt it? Then read the law.

But no matter. Precision isn’t important if Rauf and the Houston Chronicle can lend a hand to the Democrats in the Texas legislature.  One thing is for sure, voter fraud is widespread when it comes to harvesting of absentee ballots.  And thankfully Texas is trying to do something about it.

One of the reasons that President Obama won the 2008 election is because Catholics overwhelmingly voted for him.  A prominent pro-life Catholic who told other pro-life Catholics it was acceptable to vote for Obama was Douglas Kmiec.

Kmiec announced his support for Obama on Easter Sunday 2008, no less. Kmiec didn’t just endorse Obama on the most important Christian day of the year. He also lured more Catholics to Obama’s cause by eroding their moral instincts against an avowed long-time pro-abortion politician. He told them it was fine for a pro-life Catholic to vote for Obama.

For this transgression, Kmiec (as far as I know) has never atoned.  From Deacon Keith Fournier, an ex-friend of Kmiec’s at Catholic Online:

He did much more; he became the leading “apologist” of sorts, attempting to convince other Catholics to support the candidate. He did so in the face of candidate Obama’s expressed opposition to defending the Rights of our first neighbors in the womb.

Doug wrote a book entitled “Can a Catholic Support Him?” In the afterward of the book he wrote: “Barack Obama has my vote. Your only duty is to cast your own in good conscience. As a Catholic and as an American, you may do so in perfect freedom. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”.

For fooling the flock about Obama’s sinister approach to the unborn, Kmiec was awarded the ambassadorship to Malta.  After an unconventional tenure as ambassador, Kmiec resigned in 2011 and is now a law professor at Pepperdine.

This week, Obama addressed Planned Parenthood, going so far to close his address by saying “God bless you.”  This is an organization responsible for hundreds of thousands abortions a year.  Obama’s attendance was timed to coincide with the Kermit Gosnell trial — a wicked saga so gruesome that I can barely contemplate the facts.

The immigration bill pushed by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and other members of the Gang of 8 is advertised as a comprehensive reform to secure the border and strengthen the immigration laws before allowing legalization.

Nonsense.

An actual read of the massive bill reveals it as radical legislation which will transform the rule of law and the political future of the nation.

Democrats are desperate to pass the legislation because they long to transform 11 million illegal immigrants and their families into Democrats.

The language of the bill doesn’t do what the proponents say. Instead, the provisions are a witch’s brew of lawlessness, executive discretion, and legalistic trickery crafted by the organized, open-borders left.

Examples of the deception abound.

1. Legalization and Border Insecurity

The bill provides for legalization in six months as soon as the secretary of Department of Homeland Security does another worthless Washington, D.C., review of border security. Almost anyone who has been in the United States illegally since as recently as December 2011 is eligible to legalize. This exposes the public- relations lie of rewarding only those who have put down “roots” in the United States.

Even the last mass amnesty in 1986 required applicants to have been in the United States almost five years.

Proponents say the bill will make us safer because we will know who is here. But the Boston bombers were already living here legally and were operating in plain sight.

In fact, in the bill aliens are eligible for legalization even if they were found by an immigration court to have filed a phony asylum application (page 66). Current law prevents them from obtaining any immigration benefits after they file a phony application.

The bill does not even require DHS to interview those who apply for legalization (page 105). The bill makes it a rubber-stamp approval.

The bill is supposed to protect aliens who live “in the shadows.” But aliens who have been through the court system and were ordered deported but refused to leave will benefit from the bill. (page 75). The bill allows some aliens who have been deported to return and get legalization.

The bill even encourages federal-court lawsuits and gives federal judges broad review powers over individual applications if the DHS dares to deny an alien’s application. This is a prize for the immigration bar who helped draft the bill. Similar to the 1986 amnesty, this provision will weigh down the courts for decades.

Yesterday I testified to the House Judiciary Committee on mismanagement at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.  This topic has been covered at PJ Media so many times, it is impossible to post all the links.  (Some here and here.)  The most dramatic moment yesterday came when Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) (and fellow alum of USC Law) schooled University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos on the South Carolina voter ID law.  The video provides an example how Republicans can confront a dishonest leftist narrative.

Notice the claim that the federal court blocked the South Carolina law.  (Gowdy response: “Who won? Who won?”)  The court didn’t “block” voter ID because of the merits of the claim; it blocked it because it was late in the game, too late to implement for the fall election.  Now the law is in effect.  South Carolina won.

Gowdy’s questions relate to the fact, first reported at PJ Media, that career attorneys were overruled by AAG Tom Perez on South Carolina voter ID.  They wanted the law approved under Section 5. Perez wanted the law blocked, and did so.  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has asked for Voting Section Chief Chris Herren’s memo.  DOJ has, so far, has not provided it, at least not through official channels.

See my testimony along with fellow PJ Media contributor Hans von Spakvosky’s testimony here.

Project Vote Deputy Director Amy Busefink is busy lobbying the Texas legislature on election-integrity issues — trying to stop Texas from checking to see if Texas voters are registered in multiple states.  She recently organized a letter of various left-wing groups trying to stop legislation before the Texas House Elections Committee. Members of the Texas legislature shouldn’t take Busefink seriously — she has a history of participating in voter fraud.

Busefink enters her plea in court to voter fraud.

Busefink sent a letter on April 8, 2013, to the Texas House Elections Committee asking them to block a law that would require Texas to check to see if Texas voters were registered in other states.  Texas has multiple counties where more voters are registered than people are alive. She falsely claims in the letter that government videotaping of early voting would “be a violation of federal law because it could be considered a form of intimidation or coercion.”  Nonsense.  Voter intimidation requires more than cameras.  Billy clubs, for example, might suffice.

Busefink was silent, of course, about the New Black Panther Party standing in front of polls in Philadelphia. Perhaps because they supported the same candidate she did. Busefink entered an Alford plea to voter fraud in Nevada.  That means she admitted she could not contest the multiple voter-fraud charges against her.

Committee chair Geanie Morrison should invite Busefink to Austin to testify about why it is a confirmed voter fraudster is so interested in blocking legislation to crack down on voter fraud in Texas.  Americans with any common sense know the answer already.  Joining the voter fraudster Busefink on the letter to the Texas legislature included a hodge podge of liberal groups: the Texas State Teachers Association, Progress Texas, Public Citizen, NARAL-Pro Choice, SEIU, and the strangely named “Entity.”  Were the leaders of these groups aware of Busefink’s history of voter fraud? I’d wager the answer is yes. They just don’t care.

Drudge is laying waste to the White House’s narrative on sequester cuts by streaming live the absurdist celebration taking place inside the White House, a first it seems for the Drudge Report.  Video from the event is live at the top of his page.

I am a subscriber to the Macon Beacon, a small weekly paper from east Mississippi.  Why? The Beacon was instrumental in memorializing institutional voter fraud and race discrimination by the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee which became the basis for United States v. Ike Brown, the first case brought under the Voting Rights Act to protect white victims of discrimination.  I continue to take the Beacon because of the fine journalistic work of its editor, Scott Boyd.  I wrote in my book Injustice:

Published by Scott Boyd, the Beacon had been fearlessly and relentlessly covering Brown’s antics for years. While the national media was primarily interested in questioning the Bush administration’s decision to bring the case in the first place, the Beacon diligently memorialized crucial political events and reported the straight facts.

The Beacon is not available online (P.O. Box 32, Macon, MS, 29241; maconbeacon@aol.com) so I’ve clipped and posted the unbelievable story of a mobile home swindler below.  Actually, the story is perfectly believable to readers of the Beacon. 

Unfortunately, a sort of lawlessness continues to infect Noxubee County, Mississippi.  Jury tampering, murder, bootlegging, assaults in the public library and tragic yet routine car accidents fill the pages of the Beacon.  Even a man crossing the nation in a horse wagon managed to get run over by a semi while passing through Noxubee County.

This week’s edition features an ingenious swindler who sold the same mobile home multiple times to different people.  The ticket to the scheme?  A bucket of paint.  She sold the mobile home, then repainted it, so the first owner couldn’t find it, then sold it to someone else.  Again, a clip: