Jesse Jackson to be on Countdown Tuesday Night

According to Keith's latest blog: www.bloggermann.com

Some highlights: November 29, 2004 | 11:25 p.m. ET

NEW YORK - We have been inviting Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to appear on Countdown since we began to cover the voting irregularities story on November 8th. It struck me as not quite coincidental that he finally joined us the same day the Ohio GOP issued what might be the first Republican recognition of any kind that there are questions about the vote - a news release with the gaudy headline “Democrats Struggle to Justify Unnecessary Recount / (Jesse) Jackson swoops in to fuel conspiracy theories even Kerry lawyers admit are baseless.”

Re: Blackwell's appearance on Countdown last night:

"We had already gone way past our scheduled length of the interview, and were throwing out other political stories, when I had to choose between two last questions to which I wanted Secretary Blackwell’s official answers. Judging by email response to the show, a lot of people would have asked the one I didn’t - about the still inexplicable “terrorist threat” lockdown of vote-counting in Warren County.. . . but my thinking in the heat of the moment was that Mr. Blackwell would respond to questions about Warren County much in the way he veered off from my earlier question about what the Ohio GOP news release termed “a costly $1.5 million dollar recount…” . . Then came what I expected we’d have heard again if I’d asked about Warren: “Ohio has a delicately balanced bi-partisan system that counts votes at the local level. I have nothing to do with counting the votes.”. . . So, instead, I went for a straight yes-or-no on the latest ‘sources say’ story from the many and varied internets: did he, or did he not, meet with President Bush, in Ohio, on election day. . .We had no expectations that this interview was going to produce a “Eureka” moment and we were correct.

"For the record, Jesse Jackson is scheduled to join us Tuesday night on Countdown, with the caveat that his day planner is notoriously fluid - so if he’s not there, don’t assume he’s been - I don’t know - fired."

From same post re Blackwell - nice to see somebody make note of it.

<snip>

As to the audit of the perception of conflict of interest in Blackwell’s other role as Honorary Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Ohio Campaign, he seemed less definitive. “We have a bi-partisan system in Ohio where the Hamilton County Chairman of the board of elections, Tim Burke, is also the Democrat chairman of the Democrat party in that county.” I’ll pause the quote here to note that said party does business as the Democratic Party and the Republicans’ obsession with that little ‘ic’ has always seemed peevish to me, even when it’s coming out of John McCain’s mouth.

<snip>