Left I on the News

In the news:

As part of an ongoing public corruption investigation, agents from the Attorney General's Office today filed numerous theft charges, as well as criminal conspiracy and conflict of interest charges, against 12 suspects, including a state representative from Beaver County, a former House Democratic Minority Whip and four current House Democratic staffers. The investigation has uncovered the illegal use of millions of dollars in taxpayers' funds, resources and state employees for political campaign purposes.

And just what was the activity which has generated all these criminal charges by the Pennsylvania State Attorney General? High on the list: trying to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot in 2004:

Two outstanding examples of misappropriation of taxpayers' resources on petition challenges were the Ralph Nader for President of the United States in 2004 and the Carl Romanelli for the United States Senate in 2006.

The grand jury found that as many as 50 Democratic House Caucus staff members participated in the Nader petition challenge and contributed a staggering number of man-hours. A House Democratic employee testified before the grand jury that "everybody was working on this." It was virtually a caucus wide endeavor and many of the employees spent an entire week on the Nader petition challenge.

If the "Democrats" actually embraced "democracy," they wouldn't be opposed to people challenging them at election time. Why, if they really embraced democracy, they might even throw their support behind instant runoff voting so they wouldn't have to hide behind the "lesser of two evils" scam in order to get elected.

I won't be holding my breath.