Inside Politics

Kerry lashes out

Sen. John Kerry, in a speech yesterday, charged widespread disenfranchisement of Democratic voters in the 2004 presidential election.

The Massachusetts Democrat, President Bush’s challenger in November, spoke at Boston’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast, where he charged that “thousands of people were suppressed in the effort to vote.”

“Voting machines were distributed in uneven ways. In Democratic districts, it took people four, five, 11 hours to vote, while Republicans [went] through in 10 minutes — same voting machines, same process, our America,” he said.

Mr. Kerry also compared the democracy-building efforts in Iraq with voting in the United States, saying that Americans had their names purged from voting lists and were kept from casting ballots.

“In a nation which is willing to spend several hundred million dollars in Iraq to bring them democracy, we cannot tolerate that too many people here in America were denied that democracy,” he said.

Sore losers

Some Democrats, sullen over their defeat in the presidential election, have argued that inauguration festivities should be canceled, unless the war and worldwide weather patterns improve markedly by Thursday. But Barbara Pleskow of Weston, Conn., may have set a new standard for sore losers with her letter published in the New York Times yesterday.

“A truly wonderful way for Laura Bush to go down in history for all time would be as the first lady who wore a ‘used’ dress for the inaugural ball, thus paying honor to the young people who are dying in her husband’s misbegotten war,” she pontificated.

Pentagon vs. Hersh

The Pentagon yesterday criticized a magazine article that said the United States was mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets.

“The Iranian regime’s apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled ‘The Coming Wars,’” said the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence DiRita.

Mr. Hersh’s article, published Sunday, was “so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed,” Mr. DiRita said.

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