Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman report that the first felony convictions of two Cleveland poll workers stemming from Ohio's stolen 2004 election "confirm that the official recount in that contested vote was, in the words of count prosecutors, `rigged.'  The question now is whether further prosecutions will reach higher up in the ranks of officials who may have been involved in illegalities throughout the rest of the state."

Fitrakis and Wasserman, who reported the following information in The Free Press, have been in the forefront on 2004 Ohio voting fraud from the beginning.  John Kerry shamefully conceded to George W. Bush in the midst of widespread evidence of vote corruption in numerous states, specifically in election-deciding Ohio.

After Kerry's concession it was the Green Party, of which Fitrakis and Wasserman are prominent members, that took a forward step for democracy and financed the recount effort in Ohio.  That state held the balance in the Electoral College.

Fitrakis and Wasserman, along with Steve Rosenfeld, are the authors of "What Happened in Ohio?" that has just been published by the New Press.  Fitzrakis was an independent candidate in the 2006 Ohio's gubernatorial election and was endorsed by the Green Party.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela made two remarkable speeches at the United Nations just four days apart on September 16th and 20th.  In the typical fashion of the mainstream media most every substantive point that Chavez made was ignored, which comprised most of his speaking itinerary, focusing on global economics and how to correct the increasing appalling gap between rich and poor internationally.

In the typical fashion of the tepid "excuse me" current Democratic Party, where the style favored by Joe Lieberman along with Fox pundits Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity is preferred to that of heretics such as Jim Hightower and Al Franken, two leading figures of what sadly passes these days for Republican Party opposition surfaced to denounce Hugo Chavez in conveying a warped interpretation of U.S. unity.

Perhaps it was understandable why Congressman Charles Rangel of New York City and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco sharply denounced certain Chavez remarks.  

They should have been greatly embarrassed since it took a leader of a South American nation to make the case that certain bona fide Democratic Party progressives used to make in what looms as an increasingly distant and scarcely observable past.