Dominion/SmartMatic, it is a Mess, here are Some Top Details

Trying to sort out the voting systems, hardware and software is crazy. Here is some help for you such that you can work your own answers to questions you may have. There is much much more for sure, but this summary is merely a tip sheet for the reader.

Primer: The Texas Secretary of State letter describing the refusal of the Dominion voting system.

The nation’s three largest voting machine manufacturing vendors — Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic — have all publicly acknowledged that they place modems in some of their vote tabulators and scanners.

While the vendors claim that their “firewalls” protect computers from outside interference, many of the nation’s leading technical experts say this claim is bogus.

“Once a hacker starts talking to a voting machine through the modem,” says Princeton University Computer Science professor Andrew Appel, “they can hack the software and make it cheat in future elections.” It’s as straightforward as that.

So, what can we do?

“We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet,” says Kevin Skoglund, the computer scientist who led the 10-expert investigatory team. This means keeping elections technologies disconnected all the time, including on election night.

“We cannot make our computers perfectly secure,” says Andrew Appel. “What we should do is remove all of the unnecessary, hackable pathways, such as modems. We should not connect our voting machines directly to the computer networks. That is just inviting trouble.” More here.

We begin with more details by Sidney Powell (General Flynn’s lawyer and part of the Trump legal team).

The we have this summary from American Oversight, which is a very left leaning group of lawyers but they too have concerns regarding Georgia’s overhaul of the state voting systems.

Last updated: November 16, 2020

In July 2019, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that the state had awarded a $107 million contract to manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems to replace existing voting machines with a new “verified paper ballot system.” As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both Dominion and the state’s former elections company, Election Systems & Software, had connections with Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration. Dominion lobbyist Jared Thomas had been a longtime political and campaign aide to Kemp, who previously served as secretary of state, and another lobbyist, Barry Herron, had worked for Diebold Election Systems, which had originally sold Georgia its electronic voting machines.

Georgia voters had complained about malfunctioning voting machines after the November 2018 midterm elections, even filing a lawsuit aimed at overhauling the state’s election system, including the electronic machines. But critics worry that the new electronic ballot-printing devices from Dominion won’t be much better, contending that hand-marked paper ballots remain the most secure voting method. In fact, the new devices were given a test run in six Georgia counties during the November 2019 election, and ran into a number of issues. And records we’ve already obtained showed that voter check-in devices used “1234” as their default password — an “exceptionally weak security measure.” (State officials have said the passwords have been changed.)

Elsewhere in the state, voters reported long lines and ballot issues, and concerns remain about the hidden costs of the new voting system, the state’s planned purge of 300,000 names from its voter rolls, and security weaknesses in voting equipment. With the 2020 elections looming and the security of U.S. voting systems less than certain, American Oversight is investigating state officials’ communications with Dominion Voting Systems and its subcontractor KnowInk, and is requesting records that could shed light on how the state is working to ensure secure and accurate elections.

***  Glitch-Prone Dominion Voting Software Used in Georgia ... source

Dominion Voting Systems used statement, which obscured company’s council membership, to dispute concerns over voting systems

After allegations emerged that called into questioned the integrity of voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—part of the Department of Homeland Security—issued a statement on Nov. 12 disputing the allegations, saying “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

What the agency failed to disclose, however, is that Dominion Voting Systems is a member of CISA’s Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, one of two entities that authored the statement put out by CISA.

A screenshot taken on Nov. 16, 2020, of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency website shows the members of the Sector Coordinating Council. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)

In addition, Smartmatic, a separate voting machine company that has been the subject of additional concerns, is also a member.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Dominion and Smartmatic had input or were otherwise involved in CISA’s Nov. 12 statement.

The joint statement on the integrity of the Nov. 3 election was issued by the Executive Committee of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC), an Executive Committee representing a coalition of certain state & local government officials and government agencies, and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), a coalition primarily composed of voting system manufacturers that also includes Democracy Works, an organization which promotes the use of technology to increase voter participation.

The statement claims, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” says the statement.

Some of the allegations surrounding the integrity of the presidential election, including by President Donald Trump’s legal team, have been focused on the voting systems provided by Dominion, and to a lesser extent, Smartmatic. Both Dominion and Smartmatic have dismissed concerns over their systems.

Both companies are listed as members of CISA’s Sector Coordinating Council and appear to be actively involved as they are named as “Organizing Members” of the SCC. Among the key objectives of the SCC is to “serve as the primary liaison between the election subsector and federal, state, and local agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), concerning private election subsector security and emergency preparedness issues.”

The Charter states the primary mission of the Council is to “advance the physical security, cyber security, and emergency preparedness of the nation’s election infrastructure, in accordance with existing U.S. law. This mission will be accomplished through voluntary actions of the infrastructure owners and operators represented in the Council.”

CISA’s Reliance on Commercial Vendors

CISA says that it “works to ensure the physical security and cybersecurity of the systems and assets that supports the Nation’s elections,” including voter registration databases, IT infrastructure and systems to manage elections (including counting, auditing, and validating election results), voting systems, storage facilities for voting system infrastructure, and polling places including early voting locations.

In effect, CISA appears to act as something of an interface between commercial vendors and state & local governments.

“CISA is committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of elections—state and local governments, election officials, federal partners, and vendors—to manage risks to the Nation’s election infrastructure,” the agency states on its website.

As CISA notes, they do not have direct oversight or responsibility for the administration of our nation’s elections as that responsibility lies with state and local governments.

“Ultimate responsibility for administering the Nation’s elections rests with state and local governments, CISA offers a variety of free services to help states ensure both the physical security and cybersecurity of their elections infrastructure,” the agency writes on its website.

Dominion Using CISA to Deny Allegations

On Nov. 12, this publication published an article detailing a number of concerns raised about the integrity of Dominion Voting Systems in a sworn Aug. 24 declaration from Harri Hursti, a poll watcher and acknowledged expert on electronic voting security.

Hursti’s observations were made during the June 9 statewide primary election in Georgia and the runoff elections on Aug. 11, 2020, and centered primarily, although not exclusively, around the Dominion systems and equipment.

Hursti summarized his findings as follows:

  1. “The scanner and tabulation software settings being employed to determine which votes to count on hand marked paper ballots are likely causing clearly intentioned votes not to be counted”
  2. “The voting system is being operated in Fulton County in a manner that escalates the security risk to an extreme level.”
  3. “Voters are not reviewing their BMD [Ballot Marking Devices] printed ballots, which causes BMD generated results to be un-auditable due to the untrustworthy audit trail.”

As part of the article, we reached out to Dominion Voting Systems for comment on Nov. 11 about the allegations contained in Hursti’s sworn statement, to which the company did not respond. Our article was published on the morning of Nov. 12. That afternoon CISA published its statement denying any problems with the voting systems.

The next day, Nov. 13, Dominion sent us an email titled “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS,” which cited the joint statement published by the GCC and SCC, of which Dominion is an organizing member.

Epoch Times Photo
A screenshot taken on Nov. 16, 2020, of the “Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council Charter,” dated Feb. 15, 2018, shows both Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic as organizing members. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency uses “EISCC” and “SCC” interchangeably to refer to the Sector Coordinating Council. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)

Nowhere in its email did Dominion disclose that it had any affiliation with CISA, or was an active member of the SCC, one of the issuing councils. The email itself referenced the statement in third-party fashion:

“According to a Joint Statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity, & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): ‘There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.’ The government & private sector councils that support this mission called the 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history.’”

CISA did not respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times about whether it has investigated the claims made in the Georgia lawsuit about Dominion.

Concerns Raised in Georgia Lawsuit

While it remains unclear whether CISA and the GCC/SCC have evaluated concerns raised in the Georgia lawsuit, their public statements categorically deny any problems with the systems.

However, in an Oct. 11 order just weeks prior to the presidential elections, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg agreed with the concerns associated with the new Dominion voting system, writing that the case presented “serious system security vulnerability and operational issues that may place Plaintiffs and other voters at risk of deprivation of their fundamental right to cast an effective vote that is accurately counted.”

Despite the court’s misgivings, Totenberg ruled against replacing the Dominion system right before the presidential election, noting that “Implementation of such a sudden systemic change under these circumstances cannot but cause voter confusion and some real measure of electoral disruption.”

Given the recent timing of Judge Totenberg’s order, it does not appear that any of these issues were addressed by Dominion, CISC, or any of its affiliated organizations or Councils, despite their later statements claiming there were no such issues.

Facebook’s Tool is CrowdTangle for Media and Academia

Ever wonder about the tracking that Facebook uses to prioritize posts, block others or issue warnings? There are some good uses for selection institutions, corporations or agencies for sure….but we remain suspect of Facebook and all social media, and with good reason.

So, take a look at the tool Facebook uses and is exploited by others.

Facebook Acquires CrowdTangle to Access its Performance at ...

Meet CrowdTangle…

When it comes to poll testing used by politicians, CrowdTangle is generally the ‘go-to’ source.

CrowdTangle Search: The top trend graph will show how election or candidate keywords have performed on social over time. Meme search will help with text on image posts so you’ll have broader results from overall election keywords.

Lists: Set up lists for politicians, candidates, local officials, campaign staffers, political Facebook groups, political influencers and journalists. Set up a weekly digest (in our notifications section) for these lists to keep track of what everyone is saying.

Intelligence: See who’s driving more social interactions around their content. Compare candidates in races, political groups and more.

Live Displays: Create an election-themed Live Display to give your team a real-time, multi-platform view of what candidates are saying, what local and national publishers are saying about the candidates, to compare your coverage of the election to that of your competitors, and more.

Check out these Live Displays for these 2020 Elections:

Elections Resources for Journalists

Monitoring social media for misinformation, part two

What is CrowdTangle?

CrowdTangle is a public insights tool from Facebook that makes it easy to follow, analyze, and report on what’s happening with public content on social media.

What is CrowdTangle used for?

Organizations primarily use CrowdTangle to:

  1. Follow. Easily follow public content across Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.
  2. Analyze. Benchmark and compare performance of public accounts over time.
  3. Report. Track referrals and find larger trends to understand how public content spreads on social media.

Some examples include:

  • Journalists using CrowdTangle Search to search across Facebook or Instagram for content relevant to their reporting.
  • Social media managers tracking their own account performance and comparing themselves to the competition in Intelligence.
  • TV producers broadcasting real-time streams of social posts related to breaking news events using Live Displays.
  • Fact-checkers identifying posts that contain misinformation.
  • Researchers analyzing trends across thousands of accounts over time and reporting on how information spreads.

You can also see specific examples within our case studies.

What data does CrowdTangle track?

CrowdTangle only tracks publicly available posts.

The kind of data CrowdTangle shares includes:

  • When something was posted.
  • The type of post (video, image, text).
  • Which Page or public account it was posted from, or which public group it was posted to.
  • How many interactions (e.g. likes, reactions, comments, shares) or video views it received.
  • Which other public Pages or accounts shared it.

CrowdTangle doesn’t track:

  • Reach or impressions on a post.
  • Ephemeral content like stories.
  • Demographic information on users. CrowdTangle can tell you a particular post earned 1,000 likes, but it can’t tell you who liked it, where they are from or their age.
  • Paid or boosted posts. CrowdTangle doesn’t differentiate between paid or organic engagement.
  • Any data or posts from private accounts, or accounts that have put location or age restrictions on their content.

What accounts does CrowdTangle track?

CrowdTangle tracks influential public accounts and groups across Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, including all verified users, profiles, and accounts like politicians, journalists, media and publishers, celebrities, sports teams, public figures and more. CrowdTangle also can track 7 days of public Twitter data via CrowdTangle Search and our Chrome Extension. CrowdTangle does not track any private accounts.

CrowdTangle’s database currently includes:

  • Facebook: 6M+ Facebook Pages, public Groups, and verified profiles. This includes all Facebook Pages with more than 100K likes (new Pages are added automatically via an API).
  • Instagram: 2M+ public Instagram accounts. This includes all accounts with more than 75K followers, as well as all verified accounts.
  • Reddit: ~20K+ of the most active subreddits. Built and maintained in partnership with Reddit.

You can see a table that summarizes the percentage of Facebook Pages active in the last 28 days that CrowdTangle tracks, updated monthly here.

 

More Forced Lockdowns?

Pandemic lockdown has brought Earth’s vibrations to a halt  source

Joe Biden has said he would lockdown the nation based on the science. Question is, what science? Virology experts hardly all agree on the threats and implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Michael Osterholm says COVID-19 testing is in crisis ...

Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert and one of the 13 members of Biden’s new coronavirus task force called for a national lockdown lasting four to six weeks to slow the rise of virus cases across the country. Read here in detail.

Then we have governors that are going to another round of lockdowns: California, New York, Michigan and Oregon and in various forms including just some cities like Chicago. Cancel the holidays they say….close businesses at 10pm, that is when the virus shows up. Yeesh….but let’s go deeper into critical thinking shall we?

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lockdowns. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lockdown, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus. If so, you can make an argument that at least lockdowns, despite their astronomical social and economic costs, achieve something. If not, nations of the world have embarked on a catastrophic experiment that has destroyed billions of lives, and all expectation of human rights and liberties, with no payoff at all.

COVID-19: New York to shut down as it becomes next ...

AIER has long highlighted studies that show no gain in virus management from lockdowns. Even as early as April, a major data scientist said that this virus becomes endemic in 70 days after the first round of infection, regardless of policies. The largest global study of lockdowns compared with deaths as published in The Lancet found no association between coercive stringencies and deaths per million.

To test further might seem superfluous but, for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including in the US, still are under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through a range of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans of gatherings, business and school closures, and extreme travel restrictions. Nothing like this has been tried on this scale in the whole of human history, so one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something.

A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdownsm along with testing and isolation. In May, 3,143 new recruits to the Marines were given the option to participate in a study of frequent testing under extreme quarantine. The study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Of the recruits asked, a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment which involved “which included weekly qPCR testing and blood sampling for IgG antibody assessment.” In addition, the CHARM study volunteers who did test positively “on the day of enrollment (day 0) or on day 7 or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation.”

What did the recruits have to do? The study explains, and, as you will see, they faced an even more strict regime that has existed in civilian life in most places. All recruits, even those not in the CHARM group, did the following.

All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten. Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in 8-hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures. If recruits reported any signs or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they reported to sick call, underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and were placed in isolation pending the results of testing.

Instructors were also restricted to campus, were required to wear masks, were provided with preplated meals, and underwent daily temperature checks and symptom screening. Instructors who were assigned to a platoon in which a positive case was diagnosed underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and, if the result was positive, the instructor was removed from duty. Recruits and instructors were prohibited from interacting with campus support staff, such as janitorial and food-service personnel. After each class completed quarantine, a deep bleach cleaning of surfaces was performed in the bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and hallways in the dormitories, and the dormitory remained unoccupied for at least 72 hours before reoccupancy.

The reputation of Marine basic training is that it is tough going but this really does take it to another level. Also, this is an environment where those in charge do not mess around. There was surely close to 100% compliance, as compared with, for example, a typical college campus.

What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”

And how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of a positive case?

Have a look at this chart from the study:

Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.

I’m grateful to Don Wolt for drawing my attention to this study, which, so far as I know, has received very little attention from any media source at all, despite having been published in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 11.

Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:

  • CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
  • SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
  • ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
  • US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”

No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.

The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.

The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.

[The earliest version of this article misstated the conditions of the control group. They were equally locked down with those who participated in the study. The difference between the two concerned testing frequency and the isolation response. This does not affect this article’s conclusion; indeed it strengthens it: even under extreme measures, the virus spread, and more so with the extra measure intended to control the virus. Nearly all infections were without symptoms.]

Barring District of Columbia or Puerto Rico from Senate Representation

Legislation introduced by Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC6).

Should the Senate be capped at 100 members, the way the House has been capped at 435 since 1929?

Context

Democrats increasingly call for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to become official U.S. states. With 3.1 million and 700 thousand American citizens respectively, their residents have no representation in the Senate or the House.

In November, Puerto Rico residents voted 52 percent for statehood, in a nonbinding referendum. In June, the House passed the Washington, D.C. Admission Act by 232–180, with no Republicans in favor and all but one Democrat — Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN7) — in support.

The Constitution’s 17th Amendment requires the Senate “shall be composed of two Senators from each State.” Republicans say that adding Puerto Rico and/or the District of Columbia as states is just a partisan ploy to add more Democrats to the Senate, not to mention the House. (That said, Puerto Rico’s elected but nonvoting member of the House, Jenniffer González-Colón, is a Republican.)

What the constitutional amendment would do

A constitutional amendment proposal would limit the Senate to states that existed in 2019. In other words, it would block the seating of senators from potential future states Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia — or any other potential future states, for that matter.

That also means it would officially cap the Senate at 100 members. The House has been officially set at 435 members since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, but while the Senate has remained at 100 members since 1959 because that was the last year a new state was added, the Senate has never had an official number of members like the House does.

This was introduced as a constitutional amendment, rather than as normal legislation, because it seeks to supersede the portions of the 17th Amendment; specifically, superseding the portion which says the Senate is composed of two senators from each state, with a new clause saying the Senate is composed of two senators from each state that existed in 2019.

It was introduced on September 29 as House Joint Resolution 97, by Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC6).

What supporters say

Supporters argue that the widespread Democratic support for new states during the Trump era, especially considering how previous pre-Trump proposals didn’t gain nearly as much Democratic support, merely reflects a partisan gambit to pass policies that existing voters don’t sufficiently support.

“From packing the Supreme Court to passing the disastrous Green New Deal, it’s no secret Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and their Washington elites will do anything to reshape the political future of our nation — no matter the cost,” Rep. Walker said in a press release.

“Democrats’ blatant attempts to strategically manipulate and mold dark blue strongholds in their quest to achieve a Senate majority treats Americans as pawns in their pathetic chess game,” Rep. Walker continued. “There is a cap on the number of members in the House and the Senate should have the same to avoid political abuse and hostage-taking of our standards and norms.”

What opponents say

Opponents counter that places such as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia currently experience taxation without full representation — exactly the type of oppression the American Revolutionary War was fought to end.

“The rights to vote, to be equally represented in the governments that make our own laws, and that elections are carried out fairly are the most fundamental and essential elements of democracy,” Commish. González-Colón said during a July congressional hearing. “I represent 89 percent of the inhabitants of the five territories of the United States … Those of us who live in the territories, live in jurisdictions that constitutionally does not have a vote in a government that dictates our national laws and that can, and has intervened, with local laws.”

“D.C. pays more federal taxes per capita than any state and pays more federal taxes than 22 states,” Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC0) said during another July congressional hearing. “D.C.’s population of 705,000 is larger than those of two states,… D.C.’s $15.5 billion budget is larger than those of 12 states… D.C. has a higher per capita personal income and gross domestic product than any state. Eighty-six percent of D.C. residents voted for statehood in 2016.”

Odds of passage

A constitutional amendment requires passage by two-thirds of both the House and Senate, plus three-quarters of state legislatures. And this one has a particularly long road ahead, considering it has not yet attracted any cosponsors.

It awaits a potential vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

***  Washington Dc Map / Geography of Washington Dc/ Map of ...

DS: Legislative proposals to make D.C. a state violate the Constitution in at least two ways.

Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the right to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over the “District” that is “the Seat of the Government of the United States.”

Congress cannot simply change the “Seat of the Government” into a state or delegate its power over the District to the government of a new state.

It took a constitutional amendment to give D.C. residents the ability to vote for president because they are not a state and Congress could not make them a state.

Ratified in 1961, the 23rd Amendment recognizes Congress’s authority to oversee the manner in which the District appoints electors to the Electoral College.

Congress cannot single-handedly eliminate the power this amendment grants only to Congress.

Article I would need to be amended, and the 23rd Amendment would need to be repealed for legislative efforts to be constitutional.

In Adams v. Clinton (2000), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found that legislative efforts to allow for voting representation in Congress were unconstitutional.

The three judge panel made it clear that the Constitution would need to be amended in order for such changes to take place within the law.

Congress itself recognized this in 1977 with a constitutional amendment to grant D.C. representation—it failed to gain the approval of the states.

Constitutional questions aside, proponents pushing for D.C. statehood overlook the fact that D.C. residents are already well-represented.

The Founders reasoned that the whole Congress would represent the interests of the residents of the District of Columbia.

According to Justice Joseph Story, those who lived in the District “would receive with thankfulness such a blessing, since their own importance would be thereby increased, their interests subserved, and their rights be under the immediate protection of the representatives of the whole.”

This remains true today, especially in light of the fact that federal spending often benefits D.C. residents more than those living in the states, whose residents usually receive far less in federal funding per capita than D.C. residents.

In fact, seven of the 10 wealthiest counties in America surround Washington, D.C.

The interests of the residents of the District are already highly promoted, even perhaps at the expense of the rest of the country.

Furthermore, D.C. residents are represented by a second body, the Council of the District of Columbia.

With the passage of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973, Congress ceded a portion of its authority to govern local affairs to a city council.

The council is made up of 13 members and a mayor—each of which is an elected position.

Though the campaign to make the District of Columbia a state and grant it full congressional voting will lumber on, supporters should come to terms with the constitutional and practical impediments outlined above.

If proponents of D.C. statehood want to live in a state and not a district, they have some options that are very close by.

 

When Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was Killed in Tehran

al-Masri, who was about 58, was one of Al Qaeda’s founding leaders and was thought to be first in line to lead the organization after its current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Long featured on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, he had been indicted in the United States for crimes related to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded hundreds. The F.B.I. offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture, and as of Friday, his picture was still on the Most Wanted list.

The F.B.I. wanted poster for Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri.  American intelligence officials say that Mr. al-Masri had been in Iran’s “custody” since 2003, but that he had been living freely in the Pasdaran district of Tehran, an upscale suburb, since at least 2015. Source

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Israel worked together to track and kill a senior al-Qaida operative in Iran earlier this year, a bold intelligence operation by the two allied nations that came as the Trump administration was ramping up pressure on Tehran.

Four current and former U.S. officials said Abu Mohammed al-Masri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, was killed by assassins in the Iranian capital in August. The U.S. provided intelligence to the Israelis on where they could find al-Masri and the alias he was using at the time, while Israeli agents carried out the killing, according to two of the officials. The two other officials confirmed al-Masri’s killing but could not provide specific details.

1998 file photo of Nairobi

Al-Masri was gunned down in a Tehran alley on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Al-Masri was widely believed to have participated in the planning of those attacks and was wanted on terrorism charges by the FBI.

Al-Masri’s death is a blow to al-Qaida, the terror network that orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S, and comes amid rumors in the Middle East about the fate of the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The officials could not confirm those reports but said the U.S. intelligence community was trying to determine their credibility.

Two of the officials — one within the intelligence community and with direct knowledge of the operation and another former CIA officer briefed on the matter — said al-Masri was killed by Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets. In Hebrew, Kidon means bayonet or “tip of the spear.”

The official in the intelligence community said al-Masri’s daughter, Maryam, was also a target of the operation. The U.S. believed she was being groomed for a leadership role in al-Qaida and intelligence suggested she was involved in operational planning, according to the official, who like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Al-Masri’s daughter was the widow of Hamza bin Laden, the son of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden. He was killed last year in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The news of al-Masri’s death was first reported by The New York Times.

Both the CIA and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which oversees the Mossad intelligence agency, declined to comment.

Israel and Iran are bitter enemies, with the Iranian nuclear program Israel’s top security concern. Israel has welcomed the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord and the U.S. pressure campaign on Tehran.

At the time of the killings, the Trump administration was in the advanced stages of trying to push through the U.N. Security Council the reinstatement of all international sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the nuclear agreement. None of the other Security Council members went along with the U.S., which has vowed to punish countries that do not enforce the sanctions as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran.

Israeli officials are concerned the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden could return to the nuclear accord. It is likely that if Biden does engage with the Iranians, Israel will press for the accord to be modified to address Iran’s long-range missile program and its military activity across the region, specifically in Syria and its support for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.

The revelations that Iran was harboring an al-Qaida leader could help Israel bolster its case with the new U.S. administration.

Al-Masri had been on a kill or capture list for years. but his presence in Iran, which has a long history of hostility toward al-Qaida, presented significant obstacles to either apprehending or killing him.

Iran denied the reports, saying the government is not harboring any al-Qaida leaders and blaming the U.S. and Israel for trying to foment anti-Iranian sentiment. U.S. officials have long believed a number of al-Qaida leaders have been living quietly in Iran for years and publicly released intelligence assessments have made that case.

Al-Masri’s death, albeit under an assumed name, was reported in Iranian media on Aug. 8. Reports identified him as a Lebanese history professor potentially affiliated with Lebanon’s Iranian-linked Hezbollah movement and said he had been killed by motorcycle gunmen along with his daughter.

Lebanese media, citing Iranian reports, said that those killed were Lebanese citizen Habib Daoud and his daughter Maraym.

The deaths of al-Masri and his daughter occurred three days after the catastrophic Aug. 4 explosion at the port of Beirut and did not get much attention. Hezbollah never commented on reports and Lebanese security officials did not report that any citizens were killed in Tehran.

A Hezbollah official on Saturday would not comment on al-Masri’s death, saying Iran’s foreign ministry had already denied it.

The alleged killings seem to fit a pattern of behavior attributed to Israel in the past.

In 1995, the founder of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle in Malta, in an assassination widely attributed to the Mossad. The Mossad also reportedly carried out a string of similar killings of Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran early last decade. Iran has accused Israel of being behind those killings.

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and former analyst on Iranian affairs in the prime minister’s office, said it has been known for some time that Iran is hiding top al-Qaeda figures. While he had no direct knowledge of al-Masri’s death, he said a joint operation between the U.S. and Israel would reflect the two nations’ close intelligence cooperation, with the U.S. typically stronger in the technical aspects of intelligence gathering and Israel adept at operating agents behind enemy lines.