It's a D@#! Shame

A Nation's Voices: Concern and Solace, Resentment and Redemption CHICAGO, Jan. 19 � Clearly the Blind Faith Cafe was not named with today's political climate in mind. On the eve of the inauguration of a president who won office after one of the most contentious and divisive elections in memory, a more apt name for a vegetarian restaurant in the Democratic-majority suburban town of Evanston, Ill., might be the Who-Do-You-Think-You're-Kidding Cafe. "We'll have an inauguration that a lot of people are not excited about, and it's just like it's a cartoon," said Joanna Baker, a 39-year-old executive search consultant and yoga enthusiast, who was eating a barbecued seitan salad and worrying what a Bush presidency would mean for abortion rights and other issues she cares about. "It's like it's not really real." At the next table, another Democrat, Dr. Ken Moses, a 58-year-old psychologist, gave a wry grin while describing how he was adjusting to the White House transition. "I happen to be a therapist that deals with nothing but profound losses," Dr. Moses said. "The issue of disappointment and how to deal with it is my trade." Here in the Chicago area, and across the country in Miami, Denver and Boston, there is a sense that the nation has been through an extraordinary upheaval, and many people have been left a little stunned. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/20/politics/20VOIC.html?pagewanted=all

Black America Isn't Buying

News Analysis: Selling Point Is a Sore One On Saturday, African-Americans will be prominent among those protesting at Mr. Bush's inauguration, even though he has chosen for his cabinet the first black secretary of state and a widely respected black educator. Ask black politicians about the appointments, and they quickly change the subject to Florida, where, they assert, antiquated voting equipment and unfriendly electoral officials in minority precincts illegitimately tipped the outcome to Mr. Bush. "A majority of African-Americans think that the election was stolen," said David Bositis, an analyst of minority voting at the Joint Center for Economic Studies, a think tank here. The bitterness that many black voters and their white allies feel toward the president-elect was on vivid display as the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed Mr. Bush's choice of former Senator John Ashcroft as attorney general. With attention centered on Judge Ronnie L. White of the Missouri Supreme Court, an African-American, and Mr. Ashcroft's success in blocking his nomination as a federal judge, the session was supercharged with racial tension. Studies by the Joint Center found that Mr. Bush's favorable rating among black voters dropped from 43 percent in May 1999, when he was pondering a run for president, to 29 percent at the end of September 2000, when the campaign was nearing a climax. The more African-Americans saw of Mr. Bush, said Mr. Bositis, who designed the polls, "the less they liked him." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/19/politics/19ASSE.html?pagewanted=all

There's a Will but is There a Way?

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - Say Goodbye to Chads But a few things have to happen before that vision of national e-voting becomes a reality. For one, the states need to certify Internet voting systems before they can be used in official elections. And before certification can take place, the states need to develop certification standards. Such standards don't exist at the moment, although industry executives say California and Florida are in the process of creating Internet voting standards. In addition, the Federal Elections Commission and the National Association of State Election Directors "are in the process of developing standards," adds Mark Strama, VP of government affairs at Election.com. The Internet-voting companies themselves are working with government officials to develop those standards. http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/column/0,4712,2672615,00.html

Democrats Facing Difficult Choices in New Congress In a sign of the tugs and pulls within their party, Democratic senators who initially signaled that they were likely to support Mr. Ashcroft have since tempered their remarks, caught by surprise by the intensity of the opposition from liberal interest groups. Strategists note that Southern Democrats, who are usually considered centrists, rely heavily on black votes to win elections, creating pressures on them to oppose Mr. Ashcroft. Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, has been warning senators that they ignore the strong feelings of the party's base at their own peril. Noting that Mr. Ashcroft once said, "There are two things you find in the middle of the road, a moderate and a dead skunk, and I don't want to be either of those," Mr. Jackson said, "I'm in agreement with him on that quote � the only thing I'm in agreement with him on." He lambasted the Senate as "the only group in town talking of bipartisanship." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/politics/15DEMS.html?pagewanted=all

Ashcroft Battle Likely to Focus on Race Issues The most visible sign of the importance of these issues will come on Thursday, when Justice Ronnie White takes the witness chair to testify against Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. White, the first black member of the Missouri Supreme Court, was denied a federal judgeship in 1999 when Mr. Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri, waged a successful campaign to depict him as "pro-criminal" and soft on the death penalty. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/politics/14ASHC.html?pagewanted=all