In the wake of a Fourth of July week....

There has been so much going on, that I haven't had a chance to really update this blog. So I thought I would comment on some of the top stories that occurred over this Fourth of July weekend.

I'll start with Ken Lay's death. I'm not sure what to say about Ken Lay's death. Here was a man who took a small energy trading company named Enron, grew it into the seventh largest company in the U.S., before spectacularly flaming out with Enron's bankruptcy and causing billions of dollars of losses for both investors, and Enron employees who had their retirement savings tied completely to Enron stock. According to CNN, Lay was found guilty "on 10 counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of the company he founded." He was to be sentenced on October 23, 2006.

Former Enron Chairman Ken Lay arrives at Federal court in Houston, April 24, 2006. Lay, who was convicted last month of fraud and conspiracy for his part in the Houston-based company's collapse, has died of a heart attack at his vacation home in Colorado, a Houston television station reported on Wednesday. (Tim Johnson/Reuters)

There is one thing I would have to wonder about. What secrets did Ken Lay know about Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force? According to the CNN story, Enron and its executives donated more than $600,000 to George W. Bush's campaigns for Texas governor, and president. In the 2000 election, Lay gave Bush more than $100,000, allowing Bush to easily outspend and defeat Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination. This sort of money buys presidential access, so I would not be surprised if Lay was intimately involved in Cheney's Energy Task Force. What did he know?

I can't even speculate on that.

North Korea fired ballistic missiles in a Fourth-of-July firework's test. You could say this is a little North Korean saber-rattling to the United States and the world, saying, "We're still here! We're still a threat!" I'm not even sure as to why the North Koreans launched their missile tests on July 4th, America's Independence Day. Were the North Koreans expecting to frighten the U.S. into agreeing to one-on-one talks with North Korea on their nuclear program, rather than the six-party talks that the U.S. has been advocating?

Graphic on North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile plus information on the missile's range.(AFP/File/Martin Megino)

So now that the North Koreans have launched their long-range missile tests, what is the Bush administration's response? To be honest, I doubt there is anything the Bush administration could do--besides flapping their mouth. The Bush administration has isolated the United States with their "go-it-alone," American-style imperialism--which includes their disastrous war in Iraq. The Pentagon doesn't have the resources to fight both a war in Iraq and a war in North Korea. The North Koreans have faced decades of economic sanctions to varying degrees, and they have somehow been able to survive. Any talk of economic sanctions will have to involve the cooperation of China and Russia--and so far both China and Russia are refusing to accept economic sanctions against North Korea. So there is little that the Bush White House can do regarding North Korea.

And now there is this squeaker of a story on the Mexican election. From CNN.Com:

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- A final count gave conservative Felipe Calderon a razor-thin victory Thursday in Mexico's presidential election after four days of uncertainty.

Felipe Calderon, presidential candidate for the National Action Party (PAN), smiles during celebrations at the PAN's headquarters July 6, 2006 after the Federal Electoral institute announced he had secured the most votes in last Sunday's election. REUTERS/Andrew Winning (MEXICO)

Leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claimed that there were irregularities in the vote count and vowed to fight the results in court. He called for a demonstration by his supporters Saturday in Mexico City, where he was the popular mayor before seeking the presidency.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, won 35.89 percent of the vote compared with 35.31 percent for Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party.

The difference between the two candidates was just 0.58 percent, or about 244,000 votes out of about 42 million cast, based on the institute's figures.

The Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) gives a press conference in Mexico City. Conservative Felipe Calderon won Mexico's presidential election by a razor-thin margin, according to official results posted, which Obrador said he will challenge in court.(AFP/Luis Acosta)

And there is some talk of voting irregularities. This is from The Washington Post:

Calderon led by one percentage point after preliminary counts. But on Wednesday, Mexico's electoral commission began an official count of tally sheets attached to sealed packets of votes from all 130,000 polling places in the country. Lopez Obrador called for a vote-by-vote count, but Luis Carlos Ugalde, head of the electoral commission, said it was against the law to open any package unless its tally sheet appeared to be altered or damaged.

On Thursday, in the Colonia Caracol neighborhood behind Mexico City's soccer stadium, teams of vote counters battled each other under bare fluorescent lights in one of the country's 300 counting centers. Their final results helped explain why Lopez Obrador's standing had been improving: The populist candidate's total jumped from 110,685 during the preliminary count to 118,246 after the official count, which came after 70 suspicious packets were opened and their ballots counted.

And this irregularity was reported from The New York Times:

Mr. Lopez Obrador said the election had been riddled with irregularities and the official count could not be trusted. He and the leaders of his Party of the Democratic Revolution complained that, during the official tally on Wednesday and Thursday, local election officials had ignored demands that boxes of ballots be recounted from polling places that they thought had unusual results.

Aides to Mr. Lopez Obrador said he would argue in court that a recount was needed because poll officials had tossed out large number of ballots--904,000--because they could not tell the intention of the voters. These null votes could be enough to change the results of the election, they said.

Mr. Lopez Obrador is also likely to point out that, in the few cases where election officials did recount votes during the official tally, mistakes had been found. Many of those mistakes hurt Mr. Lopez Obrador and benefited Mr. Calderon, they said.

A member of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) carries a ballot box for a recount in Mexico City. Mexico's leftist candidate took a thin lead that plunged to a fraction of a percentage point, as a recount of the presidential election's vote tallies neared completion(AFP/Luis Acosta)

So what does this mean? We could have a situation in Mexico that is similar to the U.S. presidential election in 2000, where the presidency was decided by a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court that picked conservative Republican George W. Bush to be president in a close election that was fraught with its own voting irregularities regarding Florida "butterfly" ballots. The 2000 election left the U.S. electorate polarized, where half the country still believes that George Bush and the Republicans "stole" the White House. With the Mexican election this close, and reports of irregularities and fraud surfacing, will the Mexican courts be forced to choose a president? A president who will be accepted as legitimately elected by only half the country--regardless of who is chosen? Continuing with the NY Times article:

[The] decision will likely fall into the hands of the Electoral Tribunal, a court of seven magistrates who are nominated by the Supreme Court and approved by the Senate for 10-year terms. Created 15 years ago to review complaints about state and federal congressional elections, its powers were expanded in 1996 to cover presidential elections, and its findings are final.

The tribunal's decisions have made sweeping changes on the political landscape. In the last 10 years, the court has annulled gubernatorial elections in the states of Tabasco and Colima, and it has imposed multimillion-dollar fines for illegal campaign financing.

But challenges to presidential elections are unprecedented in Mexico, so this, like many parts of electoral law, will be tested for the first time.

Legal scholars say there is nothing in the election law providing for a recount, but there is nothing prohibiting it either. The tribunal has the power to order any number of ballot boxes opened to make its decision.

There's more to come on this Mexican election.