I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was on the Rachel Maddow Show last night to discuss what was called ”the truth about the lies about ACORN.” ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been the target of a “dramatically escalated campaign” by conservatives, Republicans and conservative media according to Maddow.
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Maddow spoke to Iglesias, a Republican, about Republican attacks in swing states near election time—including in New Mexico, where Iglesias was the U.S. Attorney before being fired by the George W. Bush administration in controversial circumstances.
Iglesias said that many of the low-income people registered by ACORN would be likely to vote for Democrats, so Republicans both locally and nationally worked to stop ACORN from registering people from voting.
“They were looking at numbers [and] didn’t like the demographic tidal wave that was coming their way so they wanted to engage the machinery of the Justice Department to stop that wave,” Iglesias said.
For the first half of the segment embedded below, Maddow lays out the circumstances that came before Iglesias’ firing—allegations that Iglesias was pressured by Republicans to pursue voter fraud cases in election years and when he did not, a White House push to remove the U.S. Attorney.
Iglesias said there was “tremendous local media attention on what [the media] believed to be massive systemic voter fraud.”
Iglesias said the primary allegations from the Republican Party, both local and national, were that ACORN was “registering people who did not have the right to vote including underage people, including foreign nationals—who are not entitled to vote.”
Iglesias told Maddow that after two years of investigation, including setting up “one of two voter fraud task forces in the country,” and working with the FBI and Department of Justice, “I couldn’t fine one case that I could prosecute.”
