Over the course of the last several months I have heard numerous antidotes about “conservative” voters turning their backs on the GOP in the upcoming mid-term elections. NBC Nightly News did a story back in August about a registered Republican voter who said she was voting Democrat in the next election because she did not think the current party and leadership was doing enough for her daughter’s generation. She was particularly alarmed by the rising level of spending and little attention to the budget deficits accumulated since 9/11. Then there are the growing numbers of Iraq war veterans returning home and running as Democrats in various state and federal elections.

But the comments posted on the Washington Monthly blog site “Showdown ‘06″ by one self-described “conservative” really gives reason to hope that this year may be the year to turn the tide:

If the Democrats take the disgusting moral hypocrisy of a Republican Party that aids child predators, and use the awareness of that hypocrisy to bring credibility in the public’s eyes to the true concept that the Republican elite are hypocrites on all sorts of issues, than the Democrats can be the majority Party that Rove wishes his Coalition of Hypocrites could be.

And my favorite part:

I’m not a Democrat, and I am a conservative. But because I am a conservative, I will vote Democrat in the coming mid term election and hope that the Republican Hypocrites lose this election in a landslide.

On last week’s “60 Minutes” there was a disturbing story on a growing trend of “street fighting” videos. The typical arrangement is that a group of kids (or adults if they have no shame) pick a fight with each other in some public or private venue while others look on and record the fight on video. The video of the fight is then later sold as part of collection of other fights in video stores or distributed through a number of subscription websites.

But “60 Minutes” covered a new angle to this social problem by highlighting a new trend called “Bum Fight” where people (adults and teenagers) pay the homeless to fight one another or in some way perform a stupid stunt to harm themselves. The story covered a couple of teens in Canada that watched some of the “bum fight” videos and thought it would be fun to kidnap a homeless man and torture him for three days in the woods. The victim died as a result of this torture.

This is the type of phenomenon that requires moral leadership from every level of our governments. There is something wrong with a society that lacks the outrage to end this nonsense, but finds it appropriate to talk at length about what movie starts are sleeping with one another or what an actress wore to the Emmy Awards. Where are the religious leaders that our nation holds so dear on this topic? The lack of action by anyone on this topic only further demonstrates the dichotomy of our selective embracing of Christian values in this country.

For all of the talk surrounding political scandals throughout our government (torture bills, domestic spying programs, flawed intelligence leading up to war, etc.) the single most important topic that the MSM has failed to cover is that of electronic voting equipment.

In the wake of the butterfly ballot system that brought us G.W. Bush and Company, most states have moved to the more “secure and accurate” electronic voting format. Unfortunately, the electronic form of voting is no more accurate or secure than the old paper or punch card systems.

For months now there has been chatter on the Internet about the ease of hacking the electronic ballot systems and the lack of good security methods on the ballot boxes themselves. To make the point of how vulnerable these machines, and Democracy itself, Freedom To Tinker brings us news that the key securing a number of Diebold machines is the same key employed on a number of office furniture desks, filing cabinets and hotel mini-bar systems. What makes this even more frightening is that “replacement” keys are widely available on the Internet:

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.

A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It’s a standard part, and like most standard parts it’s easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop — they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.

Each and every voter in this country should be concerned with this story, regardless of party affiliation.

I think what bothers me the most about Mark Foley is not that he is perhaps a ‘closeted’ gay man, or that he is an elected representative who abused his power and access to take advantage of the innocent, or perhaps even the fact that his leadership covered his problem. My issue with Mark Foley is that he lacked the moral direction that he and his party have so often used to point this country in a direction that it did not need to go, clearly highlighting the absence of real moral judgment and values that we require of our leaders and that this group of leaders has so often ‘claimed’ to have. Take his lack of good moral judgment and couple it with blaming a drinking problem and you have the classic ‘I’m so weak, I couldn’t help myself…’ excuse and you really get my blood boiling.

Do you think God looks at someone with a drinking problem and says, ‘well, I forgive you for all that you did under the influence’, but refuses to forgive a soul who just made stone-cold errors in judgment? Well it does appear that the theocons within the GOP believe that God does react in that way. Remind you, these are the same people who believe that because a man loves another man our entire nation is on a course to hell. The difference is that Mark Foley did not talk ‘dirty’ to another man, he talked ‘dirty’ to underage boys, and he used his position to open that dialog. Gay or straight, conservative or liberal, Christian or Muslim, that is just wrong. There is no moral justification for his actions — period.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) has checked himself into an alcohol treatment center as way of explaining why he pursued a number of male interns while in Congress. From the AP:

“I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems,” Foley said in a statement, Roth told the AP.

Foley, a Republican, abruptly quit Congress on Friday after reports surfaced that he’d sent sexually charged electronic messages to boys working as pages. In the statement, Foley said the “events that led to my resignation have crystalized recognition of my long-standing and significant alcoholism and emotional difficulties.”

“I deeply regret and accept full responsibility for the harm I have caused,” Foley said. He also expressed “gratitude for the prayers and words of encouragement that have been conveyed to me.”

In another example of the duplicity that has become the GOP, Foley has decided to blame something else on his behavior. Just come out and say you are a perv and that you have used the power and influence of your office to cause harm to others.

What is more impressive are the reports over the weekend that the house leadership actually knew of Foley’s problem long before it went public, which has resulted in calls for the leadership (Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner) to resign from within the party.