*UPDATE* EXCLUSIVE: Emails Show SC Attorney General Concerned About Absentee Voter Compliance

By: Ben Howe
*Attorney General Wilson’s office has replied to my request for comment which has been added to the bottom of this post.
Last week, the Super PAC of which I am a board member, Carolina Conservatives United, announced our intention to push for South Carolina to come into compliance with existing federal election law as it pertains to absentee ballots and the amount of time overseas troops & citizens have to get their votes counted. Federal law requires a 45 day period, however South Carolina currently misses that mark in a few places, most specifically as it relates to this year with the potential run-off election for U.S. Senator from South Carolina’s seat currently held by Senator Lindsey Graham. As it stands, from the moment the run-off is announced, the military will have a mere two weeks to have their votes counted.

The response has been mixed with some claiming that we are trying to “alter the law” to accommodate our own political wants and further that we are incorrect in our assertion that SC has compliance issues as it relates to the federal law.
In fact, SC Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore took the opportunity to use some good old fashioned political rhetoric to attack our claim saying, “I find it surprising and disappointing that any group claiming to be conservative would ask Eric Holder’s Justice Department to declare South Carolina’s election law null and void.”
I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Moore that Eric Holder’s DOJ is contemptible. For me, that decision came when he lied to Congress about his knowledge that the ATF sold guns to Mexican cartels which got a U.S. border agent killed and then hid behind executive privilege. For Moore, it’s when the military gets their votes counted, but to each his own.

I find it more interesting that Moore also said, “There’s a process for changing our state laws, and this isn’t how it’s done.”
The truth is that filing a complaint to get SC in compliance is a pretty good start and it doesn’t sound like South Carolina’s Attorney General, Alan Wilson, would disagree.
An interesting email exchange has been brought to my attention in which state leaders have been discussing this very issue for almost a year. People including Attorney General Alan Wilson and Solicitor General Robert Cook have been in this conversation which was initiated by Captain Samuel F. Wright (Ret.), the Director of the Reserve Officers Association (ROA).
Apparently it began in March of last year, but the emails that I received started in September. Captain Wright was urging AG Wilson to do something about the fact that absentee voters weren’t getting the federally required time.
From an email in September, Captain Wright says this:

A federal law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) gives military personnel (INCONUS or OCONUS) the right to vote by absentee ballot in primary, general, special, and runoff elections for federal office. This includes the three elections (the primary, the runoff primary, and the special election) held this year in South Carolina’s First Congressional District.
As amended in 2009, UOCAVA explicitly requires each state to mail absentee ballots at least 45 days before any election (including primaries, runoff primaries and special elections) for federal office. See 42 U.S.C. 1973ff-1(a)(8)(A). South Carolina flouted this 45-day rule in 2013. The primary was held less than 45 days after the deadline for candidates to qualify for the ballot. The runoff primary was held less than 45 days after the primary. The special election was held less than 45 days after the runoff primary. Mailing absentee ballots at least 45 days before Election Day is necessary to ensure that those who protect the rights we all enjoy will be able to receive, mark, and return ballots that really do get counted, no matter where the service of our country has taken them.

AG Wilson’s response was quick and to the point:

My understanding of your ‘ask’ of us (from the last paragraph below) is that you would like for us to remind various parties (listed in that paragraph) of UOCAVA’s 45 day requirement for overseas deployed soldiers and citizens? I will talk with our staff about that and someone will be in touch with you.
As a veteran who voted while serving in Iraq I agree with your concerns and appreciate your commitment to the rule of law.

Sounded promising. Solicitor General Cook replied as well:

Yes, indeed that is an excellent point. I think our State Election Commission is very attuned to this requirement but just to be absolutely sure nothing slips through the cracks we will forward this email to the Executive Director of the Commission, who is responsible to get the word out to all the local boards of election and others required to be notified.

Then, after a few more of these replies … nothing.
That is until this past week when Captain Wright, after having learned of our complaint, decided to remind the AG that nothing had happened.

Last year, I discussed this very issue with your twice (at a Federalist Society meeting and a meeting at the Heritage Foundation), and you pooh-poohed and minimized the issue. Yes, this is a big deal, and South Carolina needs to come into compliance with federal law.
Yes, I recognize that making it possible for the brave young men and women in our armed forces to vote will require changes in the way that things have “always been done” in South Carolina. I respectfully submit that this is a small accommodation to make to facilitate the enfranchisement of the brave young men and women who are away from home and prepared to lay down their lives in defense of our country. After all, were it not for the sacrifices of military personnel, from the American Revolution to the Global War on Terrorism, none of us would have the opportunity to vote in free elections.

Amidst AG Wilson’s irritation at being accused of “pooh poohing” the issue, he again seems to acknowledge that the appropriate course of action for South Carolina is to come into compliance with existing federal law. Wilson says (emphasis mine):

When we met last fall I was extremely concerned about the issues you raised regarding the 2013 Special Congressional Election and South Carolina’s apparent compliance issues with UOCAVA. When I returned to Columbia I met with Adam Piper, my Director of Government Affairs, Solicitor General Bob Cook, and our voting rights expert, Assistant Attorney General J.C. Nicholson. The staff, at my direction, expedited a letter addressing this issue to the Director of the South Carolina Election Commission and the South Carolina Adjutant General. In that letter we reminded all interested parties of the importance of UOCAVA compliance and offered our support and counsel on any future compliance issues.

So it seems that at the very least, Attorney General Wilson is on the side of what Carolina Conservatives United is attempting to do, in spite of what Matt Moore and many others who are pretending this is partisan hackery have to say.
The question now, and what I believe had Captain Wright so upset about in terms of inaction, is what will our state leaders DO about this issue? Hopefully some state senators will step up to the plate to make this happen. I’d wager, based on these emails, they’d have some powerful support.
*UPDATE*
Attorney General Wilson’s office offered this reply to my request for comment:
Dear Mr. Howe:
Thank you for your message today.
Attorney General Alan Wilson and this office place the highest priority on protecting the voting rights of our brave men and women who are serving in the military.
As you probably know, the General Assembly has delegated to the State Election Commission the authority over elections in South Carolina. Today, the Attorney General’s Office contacted Ms. Marci Andino, the Commission’s Executive Director, who told us the state is doing everything humanly possible to assure compliance with UOCAVA for this year’s general election. Indeed, Ms. Andino said that no county has ever been late in sending ballots to our citizens who are serving in the military.
The Attorney General’s Office always stands ready to assist state officials should legislation be necessary. In the meantime, we will continue to work in close association with the State Election Commission and the Department of Justice in this matter.
We understand the Department of Justice approves of both the rank choice ballot and electronic submission as means of compliance with UOCAVA.
Again, be assured protecting the rights of South Carolina’s citizens who wear the uniform is of paramount importance to the Attorney General’s Office.
Sincerely Yours,
J. Mark Powell
Communications Director
Office of the Attorney General

Governor Jan Brewer Should Sign the Religious Liberty Legislation

By: Erick Erickson 

It is sad that we, in the 21st century, are at this point in the United States of America.
We should be willing to leave each other alone and have basic respect for one another. We should not wish to impose our views on others or force others to serve us against their will. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, a group of activists nationwide believes that if you do not worship at the altar of gay marriage, your business must be shut down — you must be punished. Sadly, they are also winning in court.
This necessitates legislatures passing religious liberty legislation to protect people of faith against the intolerant forces of tolerance. Such legislation has already passed Arizona’s legislature and I hope Arizona’s Governor will sign it into law.

Despite the left’s obfuscations, no one is claiming that Christians should be allowed to simply not serve gays. No one is claiming that or even arguing that. What we do claim is that a Christian butcher, baker, candle stick maker, florist, photographer, or priest should not be forced to provide goods or services to a gay wedding or risk losing their business on orders of the state.
That’s it.
Because there are gay rights activists in this country who will not allow conscientious objectors, religious liberty legislation has become necessary. The Arizona legislation, like that under consideration in a number of states, would allow Christians to opt out of serving a gay marriage.
You may disagree with their decision, but the government should not force them to do so. Practicing, sincere Christians believe in a doctrine of vocation — that they are to honor God in their work and glorify him through their service. Forcing them to provide goods and services forces them to violate their conscience.

We should, in the United States, be willing to leave each other alone, to go where we are wanted, and do business with those whom we please. But it is clear that is no longer possible. The forces of tolerance, in their intolerance of others’ world-views, intend to make the rest of us care.
Jan Brewer should sign the legislation and preserve the right of Christians, Muslims, and others of faith to opt-out of government forced coercion against their consciences.

A Once Free Nation

by Bob Livingston 
A once free nation’s descent into tyranny occurs one of two ways: either through sudden violent revolution or gradually over decades in fits and starts. America’s has occurred gradually.
Government conquers its citizens with gradualism because few understand it. Gradualism is imperceptible force.
America has evolved into a lawless state. There has been a breakdown of law and order, but only a few can see it. There are many layers of deception and those few who have become alerted see and understand at different levels.
The first trigger of alert is when a few people come to understand that government is organized crime and that government is in all-out war with its own citizens. The central purpose of Personal Liberty Digest™ is to raise the awareness of the people.

The U.S. Congress has, gradually, ceded its authority to the President and to the alphabet soup agencies of government that it created or allowed the President to create. Now the President rewrites laws on a whim, or chooses to not enforce them on a whim. This is the stuff of third-world banana republics. The imperial presidency feared by the Founding Fathers is in full operation. Yet the feckless Congress hardly whimpers about it and the people do little more than shrug their collective shoulders.
Even worse are the regulatory and quasi-military law enforcement agencies. These agencies, staffed by career bureaucrats and headed by statists with “altruistic” motives that always benefit either the cronies and well-connected or the growing government apparatus, create new standards and new regulations and new rules without regard to the Constitution and their effect on the American people.
Often the elites simply do not care how their policies will affect average Americans so long as the fascist system is rewarded or the State is made more powerful. Other times the detrimental effects are simply chalked up as unintended consequences or collateral damage.
Almost any crime can be carried out without overt force or resistance if it is done gradually. Somehow any process of gradualism escapes detection. Gradualism extends false hope and the illusion of reality.
One can poison himself and be dead immediately. On the other hand, we can be poisoned over time with fluoride in our drinking water, by vaccinations and inoculations, by toxins in our foods, and so on ad infinitum.
Gradualism does something else. It confuses cause and effect. As long as a process of currency depreciation is gradual, the people cannot discern the cause nor place the blame on the money printers.

Currency debasement has throughout history always been the method of choice of governments to steal and transfer wealth from the people to the government in subtle and secret ways so that the crowd never catches on.
This is going on now in our lifetime more than at any time in history. Yet there is no revolution. There is no blood in the streets. The propaganda still holds sway. The people still trust the system. The people remain calm.
Not only are the peasants calm, they have been deceived into believing that rising stock markets constitute a sign of prosperity. They can’t conceive that the market is a bubble of fiat currency (nominal dollars) that is in no way reflective of real dollars or real value.
This type of chicanery is a tribute to modern and very sophisticated propaganda that is hiding the destruction of the value of the currency and impoverishing all who hold U.S. dollars as savings and retirement.
There is always a secret and hidden agenda in government finance, now more than ever. The U.S. government has become such a fiat money monster that it has lost control of normal channels of finance. It cannot levy enough taxes for income nor negotiate loans.
The government can least afford to reveal that it is engaged in grand theft by printing money. So it kills the signs and symptoms by suppressing the price of gold and silver and engaging in printing money to fund a government that is essentially out of control.
Time will have its way but at this point it is vital that government mislead and deceive the public in order to continue the present system that could not survive one minute if the people really had a choice by understanding the truth here printed.

Note from the Editor: Round two of the financial meltdown is predicted to reach global proportions, already adversely affecting Greece, Spain and most of Europe. It appears less severe in the states because our banks are printing useless fiat currency. I’ve arranged for readers to get two free books—Surviving a Global financial Crisis and Currency Collapse, plus How to Survive the Collapse of Civilization—to help you prepare for the worst. Click here for your free copies.
The U.S. political system is on a theft binge of consuming the assets of Americans by whatever method it can contrive. It is financial war and the political system is winning, backed by the police power of the State. Any thinking person can clearly see that the U.S. system is collapsing. Better said, it is self destructing in many ways.
The USA Patriot Act was passed without protest because of the people’s fear following the 9/11 attacks on America. The law codified the electronic surveillance and snooping that Edward Snowden’s revelations brought into public light. But the government was already collecting data in a massive operation long before the act was passed.
Once passed, the law was twisted and abused and this abuse sanctioned by the people in all levels of government to the extent that there is no longer any private communication and any communication that is contrary to the government’s message is now considered hate speech or inappropriate speech to be regulated and or persecuted.
The State is currently pushing a homosexual agenda and has the full force of the mainstream media behind it. The message has become so radicalized and nonsensical that an NBC report on an American Olympic skier claimed the athlete lived an “alternative lifestyle” because he had a wife and child, attends church regularly, takes care of his family and goes home at night rather that going partying with friends. In other words, the lifestyle of the majority of Americans is now being cast by the propaganda machine as “alternative” whereas the perverse immoral lifestyle of homosexuality is being cast as the new normal.

The Department of Justice tapped the phone lines and scoured the phone records of reporters and their family members. The IRS stifled the free speech of Tea Party- and Christian-affiliated groups by denying them 501(c)3 status and subjecting them to extra scrutiny not required of other groups—going so far as to seek information on their family members, associations, reading habits and group affiliations.
The Department of Homeland Security has named Tea Party supporters, returning veterans, preppers, and supporters of libertarian candidates as potential terrorists. These messages have trickled down into State and local governments who are now increasingly tightening the screws on American freedoms.
One example is in Campbell, Wis., where, after people across the country began hanging signs from highway overpasses calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama in 2013, the town passed an ordinance prohibiting signs, flags banners pennants and other displays on or within 100 feet of vehicle and pedestrian overpasses.
A couple of weeks after the ordinance was passed, Gregory Luce and a few others appeared on a pedestrian overpass wearing T-shirts that collectively spelled “IMPEACH” on the front side and “OBAMA” on the back. A town police officer ordered them to leave or receive a citation. The group left. Three days later Nicholas Newman appeared on the same overpass carrying an American flag. He was issued a citation for displaying the flag in violation of the new ordinance and fined $139.

The Thomas More Law Center has sued the town on behalf of Luce and Newman. Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, “The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that a bedrock principle of the First Amendment is that government cannot ban the expression of ideas just because some find it offensive.   In fact, the Supreme Court has allowed the burning of the American Flag on the grounds that it is matter of free expression.  So I’m astonished that the Town of Campbell and the police department think it can ban a citizen from displaying the American Flag.”
While nothing would please the progressive and statist elites more than to see court rulings “legitimizing” their efforts to shut off dissent, remove guns from American homes, relieve Americans of any or all of their God-given rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights or place FCC “monitors” in newsrooms, many of these attacks are just window dressing to conceal their ultimate agenda of destroying the American system for the global elite.
Update: Yesterday I wrote about the growing number of bankers, including three from JP Morgan Chase, who have died under mysterious circumstances. Add one more to the list.
Last December, Jason Alan Salais, a 34-year-old information technology specialist with JP Morgan, was suddenly stricken with illness outside a Walgreens pharmacy in Pearland, Texas. Salais died later that evening of myocardial infarction. According to the National Center for Health Statistics and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, myocardial infarction affects one half of 1 percent of the population aged 20-39. That makes three people with ties to JP Morgan’s IT department to die in two months, and the fourth JP Morgan employee overall.
HT: EconomicPolicyJournal.com