Matthew Comments

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

There's been a lot of talk in Wisconsin about voter fraud and what needs to be done to prevent voter fraud. I'd like to address what the real voter fraud is and what it is not. There has been no substantial voter fraud proven in this state in recent memory. No statistically significant voter fraud has even been alleged. The accusations that are tossed around have more to do with someone standing too close to a polling station when they hand out literature than with someone actually voting in an illigitimate way. One couple in a recent election voted by absentee, then again at the polling station. They were caught easily. The system worked. The fraud that is used to justify so-called voter reform is not a problem. It's not just fear of getting caught that deters voter fraud today. In modern America, voter fraud is by-and-large a very inefficient way to influence an election. You have to find a group of people who are willing to commit crimes, you have to subvert the system a

History is still in the process of deciding on "W" Bush's legacy, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates put another nail in the coffin of Bush's foreign policy legacy. Speaking at West Point recently, he said: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it." Of course, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush charged the U.S. into two such wars simultaneously. And when Rumsfeld left his post, VP Dick Cheney hailed Rumsfeld as the greatest Secretary of Defense in American history. Hmmm. Gates is the one who belongs in a short-list of the greatest appointed public servants of our time. Appointed by Bush to save his administration's defense strategy, he stayed on with Obama to attempt to bring our nation's defense situation back from the brink. That is a tough job which he has navigated well.