GOP officials have reported that Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses by 34 votes. However, votes in eight precincts will not be counted — and Mitt Romney lost seven of the eight precincts in 2008.

Officials say these eight districts did not report their results on the official “Form E” receipt. Several of the precincts overwhelmingly favored Mike Huckabee four years ago, with three of them awarding Mitt Romney zero votes. An analysis of their 2008 Iowa caucuses results shows:

• Cerro Gordo County’s Mason City Ward 2, Precinct 3. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won with 11 votes; Ron Paul, 10; Mitt Romney, zero (Fred Thompson, 4; John McCain, 5)
• Emmet County’s Estherville Ward 2. Huckabee had 5 votes; Paul, 1; Romney 6 (Thompson, 5; McCain, 4)
• Franklin County’s Geneva-Reeve. Huckabee won 7 votes; Paul, 6; Romney, zero (Thompson, 4)
• Lee County’s Fort Madison 4A. Huckabee won 17 votes; Paul, zero; Romney, 4 (Thompson, 7)
• Lee County’s Fort Madison 4B. Huckabee won 6 votes; Paul, 1; Romney, zero (Thompson, 1)
• Lee County’s Franklin-Cedar-Marion. Huckabee won 26 votes; Paul, 5; Romney, 21 (Thompson, 9; McCain, 9)
• Lee County’s Washington-Green Bay-Denmark. Huckabee won 32 votes; Paul, 12; Romney, 13 (Thompson, 19; McCain, 11)
• Pocahontas County’s Center-South Roosevelt-North Lincoln. Huckabee won 9 votes; Paul, 6; Romney, 2 (Thompson, 2; McCain, 2)

Total: Huckabee, 113 votes; Paul, 41 votes; Romney, 46 votes.

In 2008, Fred Thompson garnered 51 votes in these precincts. John McCain, who did not seriously contest the states, got 72. Three voters preferred California Congressman Duncan Hunter, and there was one vote for Rudy Giuliani.

That means there were 167 evangelical/conservative votes; 41 Constitutionalist votes; 119 “moderate” votes.

Even correcting for Romney’s superior 2008 showing, it seems likely these counties would further skew the 2012 election for Rick Santorum.

Vote irregularities in the Iowa caucuses led to Mitt Romney erroneously being declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, artificially giving his presidential campaign weeks of momentum and depriving Rick Santorum the opportunity to become the conservatives’ alternative candidate.

The original results showed Mitt Romney had won in Iowa by a margin of eight votes. But yesterday, Iowa GOP officials announced a “final” vote total shows Santorum won at least 34 votes more votes than Mitt. The new results will record 29,839 votes for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney.

“Many people were skeptical” on election night, said Gretchen Carlson on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning. But as I noted, absolutely nobody was skeptical about the election night shenanigans. No anchor expressed concern about the series of dubious-sounding voting snafus — including a story about someone absconding with ballots and driving the results around Iowa’s backroads in his pickup truck. Instead, slap-happy Fox News’ analysts played the stories off as a joke and eagerly reported Karl Rove’s scoop that Mitt Romney’s vote had been “undercounted.”

A few days later, a Ron Paul supporter came forward with information that his private record of his precinct’s vote totals did not match the numbers party officials reported. These alone, Edward True said, would have shifted the race from Romney to Santorum.

Even now, eight precincts cannot certify their vote — precincts, as I note, that did not support Romney in 2008. Matt Strawn, chairman of the Iowa GOP, said he had no idea how these votes were lost.

But the problem is worse than that. The Washington Post points out, deep in an piece in yesterday’s issue, that the numbers reported to the party on each voting precinct’s “Form E” did not match the actual vote totals in 131 precincts. That’s seven percent of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts. What’s more, 100 precincts’ Form E returns did not comply with state instructions:

The precinct chair and precinct secretary were both to sign the results verified by witnesses on caucus night. But results for some precincts came in on pieces of paper other than the official forms. Many more had only one signature, or the wrong signature (say, from a county chair). Another 18 documents had no signatures at all.

All were accepted, party officials said.

This article details the caucuses’ problems on a county-by-county basis this year, and at a marco level going back to 1976.

“Does anyone have a problem with that this morning?” Carlson asked. “Maybe we should look into the process.”

Maybe, indeed. Romney’s loss to Mike Huckabee in 2008 derailed his campaign. The news that Romney prevailed, even by eight votes, gave Mitt an aura of inevitability, a sense buoyed by Romney’s long-expected victory in the New Hampshire primaries. Santorum’s “tie,” though endearing in an underdog sense, left him looking like an unsuccessful flavor-of-the-week, Michele Bachmann in a sweater vest.

By the time the news broke, Santorum was mired in fourth place in South Carolina.

Yesterday’s announcement should have breathed life into his campaign. Instead, Rick Perry’s abrupt exit and endorsement of Newt Gingrich kept Santorum out of the spotlight. (Perry, who made a compelling candidate on paper, stepped on viable conservative challengers twice. His announcement deflated Michele Bachmann’s victory in the Iowa Straw Poll, and now his exit buries Santorum’s victory in the caucuses.)

John Stineman, an Iowa Republican operative, said the results reversal “will be a story and Santorum will seize upon it, but it won’t change the current political narrative.”

Gretchen Carlson agreed, “Does it make any difference to the race going forward? Probably not.”

The momentum of a second socially conservative candidate defeating Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses and the mass endorsement of evangelical leaders in South Carolina would have solidified Rick Santorum as the Christian Right’s anti-Romney, especially in South Carolina. Instead, the brilliant but less reliably conservative Newt Gingrich is surging based on outstanding debate performances, and Santorum is hanging on for dear life.

More importantly, a second rejection of Romney in Iowa would have raised questions about his appeal to the GOP base and spelled a much different narrative for the former governor. Conservatives would have rallied earlier. Santorum may not have gained enough support to win, but Romney have been placed on the defensive — where, as his debate performances stretching back to 2008 prove, ul ar particularly ineffective.

The Republican Party’s conservative base has been betrayed twice — once by the media, and once by indefensible behavior from within.

When Eric Holder ordered Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar to begin an investigation of possible wrongdoing in Operation Fast and Furious it was with just one purpose in mind—enable the Attorney General and other DOJ officials to refuse to answer questions or provide documentation concerning the “gunwalking” debacle because there is an “ongoing investigation.” It’s a neat little legal trick the Obama regime has pulled on more than one occasion.

But although Holder used this dodge of his own creation to keep congressional committee members at bay for nearly a year, it appears the OIG report is just about ready to make its long overdue appearance. For Holder and his DOJ minions have telegraphed the fact that they might already have, to put it discreetly, “been privy” to information contained in the document.

And the reason this is a safe bet is that “three of the prime Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms players in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal have been relieved of their duties.”

Two of the three — William Hoover, former Deputy Director of the ATF and Mark Chait, former Assistant Director of Field Operations — had already been shuffled into new positions months ago. William McMahon, former Deputy Assistant Director of Field Operations, had not been part of that occupational shell game, but now joins Chait and Hoover on the sidelines, awaiting the final publication of the report which will publicly determine their ultimate fate.

That Holder was no doubt given advance notice of Schnedar’s findings is as unethical it is unsurprising. The two have been friends and work-mates for many years and are, of course, fellow leftists.

The real questions involve what will happen now. Will the OIG report come out immediately prior to Eric Holder’s February 2^nd appearance before Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee? The timing would allow Holder to dazzle committee members with the honesty and efficiency of the DOJ, having dismissed three individuals who just happened to be mentioned by the Inspector General as bad eggs.

Does Holder hope that the message he is currently testing, that the ATF is responsible rather than really important people at the DOJ — will be enough to convince Republican committee members that the ATF firings over Fast and Furious should suffice, making no further investigation into DOJ misdeeds really necessary?

And most importantly, will Republicans fall for such drivel, or more to the point, consider it the most politically expedient course?

After all, “only” a few hundred people wound up dead as a result of Fast and Furious “walked” weapons. And only two American agents. And besides, Eric Holder is telling everyone that Republican committee members are racists for “persecuting” him. And it is, after all, an election year.

Republicans don’t seem to be making much of an issue of Obama’s utter disregard for the Constitution with his illegal “recess” appointments, do they? Much easier and safer to just sit back and take it. Just ask Senator McConnell.

So will these pillars of political courage let Holder, Obama and the entire DOJ off the Fast and Furious hook, allowing them to get away with murder in the same way they permitted the acting president to make numerous unconstitutional appointments?

We might know in a couple of weeks.

To contact your Congressional representative, use this link:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

 To read more use these links:   

http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-national/breaking-atf-reportedly-relieves-fast-and-furious-managers-prior-to-oig-report?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Related posts:

http://www.coachisright.com/eric-holder-had-plenty-of-experience-with-cover-ups-prior-to-his-work-on-fast-and-furious/

http://www.coachisright.com/contempt-of-congress-or-impeachment-mr-holder-take-your-pick/

http://www.coachisright.com/doj-cover-up-of-fast-and-furious-coming-apart-at-the-seams/

http://www.coachisright.com/eric-holder-and-barack-obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cmens-rea%E2%80%9D-on-fast-and-furious/

This article originally appeared on CoachIsRight.com and is reprinted with permission.

It’s ironic that Obama-Soetoro should have put so many lumps of coal in American’s Christmas stockings this year, since one of them was EPA regulations designed to kill the coal industry itself. However, that was but one of many really evil, dangerous, and destructive acts performed this year by the would-be Marxist dictator currently squatting in the White House. In collusion with his stooges in the Senate and the House, he took some giant steps that shredded the Constitution and moved us to the very brink of totalitarian rule.

On New Year’s Eve, in private, Obama-Soetoro signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), another massive bill, filled with nasty surprises for the American people. The nastiest of all is the provision that allows American citizens to be detained indefinitely, without charges or trial, a provision that is so jaw-droppingly unconstitutional that anyone who voted for it – or signed it into law – blatantly violated their oath of office, and should be removed as quickly as possible.

This NDAA also elicited a string of new lies from the Great Prevaricator. Obama-Soetoro loudly proclaimed he would veto the bill, and then, a few weeks later, signed it. During the signing, he lied some more, claiming he had “‘serious reservations about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.” According to far-left Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the very provisions the “president” so self-righteously claimed to object to were put into the bill at the insistence of his administration. And in fact, it was not the detention part at all that was a problem for our knee-jerk Marxist, but that the power to do it was not given to the Executive Branch. To top it off, B. Hussein issued a signing statement, something he had raged against when he was running back in 2007 and 2008.

A signing statement is claimed to allow the president to not enforce parts of laws that he doesn’t like. No such permission or authority is to be found in the Constitution, and is therefore, completely and totally illegal. Unfortunately for the American people, those in
charge of enforcing the law, i.e., the Injustice Department, controlled by the usurper Obama-Soetoro and the incredibly corrupt Eric Holder, see themselves as above the law, and not subject to ones that don’t fit their plan for the destruction of free, capitalist, sovereign America.

Other outrageous, unconstitutional abuses include executive orders, such as Executive Order 13575, which established the White House Rural Council, whose job is imposing the UN’s Agenda 21 government control of private property, under the guise of “sustainable development,” on the 16 percent of Americans who live in rural areas, and are, by the way, mostly conservative.

Another executive order not covered by the “mainstream media” was 13547, Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes. Again, this is an outrageous power-grabbing end-run of Congress. And again, it’s purpose is to give government more unconstitutional control and to impose “sustainable development,” the heart of Agenda 21.

As a follow-up to this, Hillary Clinton, speaking for the administration, announced on December 16 that the Senate should ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is just one of a number of odious UN treaties aimed at imposing world government and global socialism that Democrats want the Senate to ratify. Every one of these treaties takes away the rights of people and nations to govern themselves, handing over control to an unelected, elitist body of untouchable fascist bureaucrats.

Other treaties supported by Obama-Soetoro, Clinton, and the Democrats, led by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) are the UN Small Arms Treaty, the ultimate in gun control; the Rights of the Child, which takes away parents’ rights to choose how to raise their children; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which pushes abortion and undermines the structure of traditional families.

We can also expect to see a revival of failed “environmental” treaties and protocols, like the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty that would turn fully 50 percent of the United States into inaccessible wilderness, and another 20 percent into heavily restricted “buffer zones.”

In previous columns, I have talked about the failure of the Congress, and particularly the Senate, to do anything to stop the open and continuous destruction of the Constitution by the present administration. The simple truth is that if the American people do not rid themselves of the current crop of treasonous office holders, especially in the Senate where ratification of treaties takes place, the certain destruction of America inevitable, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

by Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

The White House was on lockdown for more than an hour last night after protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement threw smoke bombs over the fence toward the Obamas’ residence.

Secret Service held the estimated crowd of 1,500 OWS protesters with help from D.C. and Park Police. Ultimately, they let the crowd go without arresting anyone.

The Obamas were not on the premises at the time. They and Valerie Jarrett were celebrating the first lady’s 48th birthday at a local steakhouse. (Let’s mooove!)

This is the second violent assault on the White House to be associated with Occupy Wall Street protesters. In November 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired two gunshots at the White House after spending time with the Occupy D.C. crowd. He appears to have been mentally ill. There is no word he stood out from other OWS protesters.

Interestingly, the smoke bomb incident occurred just hours after a grand jury charged Ortega-Hernandez with 17 counts of criminal conduct, including attempted assassination.

As this author has pointed out, the Occupy Wall Street movement would be an ideal place for terrorists to hide themselves.

The assault is only moderately more hazardous and hateful than its other antics, including rape, theft, and indecent exposure amongst themselves. They have similarly chosen to sing, “F— the USA” and put their four-year-old children on the train tracks to make a political point.

Obama echoed OWS talking points in a weekly radio address in October and told two Occupy protesters, “You’re the reason I ran for office in the first place” in November.

When Barack Obama ran for president, he claimed he would restore America’s image abroad by reversubg the belligerent ways of George W. Bush, humbly apologizing for his country’s failures. Those efforts have paid off — just as this author predicted they would more than a year ago. Thanks to a needless Obama apology, thee U.S. taxpayer is expected to spend $1.8 million — and may be on the hook for much more.

In the fall of 2010, Obama called the president of Guatemala to express his “deep regret” for a series of reprehensible experiments that took place — 62 years earlier, with the approval of the Guatemalan government.

From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service oversaw a medical experiment designed to “test the effectiveness of penicillin” in treating syphilis by infecting nearly 700 Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, and mental patients with the disease, then treating them. For most, this meant conjugal visits with infected prostitutes. But the government ended the program suddenly and did not treat the infected.

Neither did the Guatemalan government’s socialist health care system.

As hideous as human experimentation may be, it was a joint U.S.-Guatemalan affair, with the Guatemalan government far more negligent than our own in not treating the victims.

Upon hearing of this, our anti-American president immediately dialed the phone, lachrymose apology at-the-ready. Not only did he apologize; he immortalized the moment with a PR photo. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also offered their regrets.

This author exposed in October 2010:

ABC News‘ Jake Tapper reported, “The study also was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, a forerunner of the Pan American Health Organization, and the Guatemalan government.” (Emphases added.) Reverby wrote, “Permissions were gained from the [Guatemalan] authorities but not individuals, not an uncommon practice at the time.”

Despite the repentance and their own government’s complicity in the crimes, Guatemalan officials were not appeased. “Sorry isn’t enough; we need compensation,” thundered Guatemalan lawmaker Zury Río…

The Guatemalans’ faux outrage over the tests — and demands for reparations from Uncle Yanqui — are hardly surprising. Unfortunately, they may pay off. The Obama administration has promised to launch “a thorough investigation” of the 64-year-old event (two, actually). A voluntary reparations plan may give the president cover to transfer more American wealth to the Global South, as long advocated by his Science Czar John Holdren. (Holdren also played a role in the newest developments – BJ.) Obama has said, “I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it’s Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.”

Big surprise: Guatemalans immediately seized on the apology to sue the U.S. government.

“As a result of these unethical studies, a terrible wrong has occurred. The United States is committed to taking appropriate steps to address that wrong,” the Justice Department claimed in a filing last Monday. “This lawsuit is not the proper vehicle — and this court is not the proper forum — through which the consequences of this shameful conduct may be resolved.”

Obama insisted the Guatemalan government cannot and should not sue over the experiments, saying the Federal Tort Claims Act shields the government from lawsuits over trifles with infecting people with STDs. The Dept. of Health and Human Services announced last week it is dedicating $1.8 million to fighting sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala to stave off the lawsuits and show the United States is making up for its evil ways.

But Fox News Latino reports, “Attorneys for the Guatemalans said the immunity assertion contradicts the apologies made by Obama and his advisers.” They will press forward, probably settling their lawsuit for a higher dollar figure. (Reparacciones para todos!)

Who does Obama have to thank for this lawsuit? Barack Hussein Obama. Just as this author forecast more than a year ago.