Another Dirty Little Secret

Over the last few days, Robert Kennedy Jr. has been at the center of a storm of controversy over an essay he wrote in Rolling Stone Magazine. His essay, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" examines the mounting evidence for voter irregularities in the last national election. Greg Palast, a BBC investigative reporter who was among the first to write about the irregularities, gave an interview to Buzz Flash supporting Kennedy's allegations. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, who have also investigated the election, also weighed in. Journalist Thom Hartman reviews responses to Kennedy, Palast and others in an article at Common Dreams.

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of culture and communications at New York University, has also written about voting irregularities in the 2004 election in his book "Fooled Again." Here's a link to a podcast of my "Religious Talk" radio interview of Miller. We also discuss his book "Cruel and Unusual."

It should be noted that voting irregularities are nothing new in American politics. Larry Sabato's Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics provides a good introduction to the dirty tricks and fraud that has been perpetrated by all the political parties in American history.

What was different in 2004 was the magnitude of the problem.