Florida Sentinel Bulletin

This election, the issue of voter disenfranchisement was front and center in several key states across the country. One of the most-controversial moves in the case of voter suppression and the potential robbery of democracy occurred in the battleground state of Ohio.

Republican Secretary Of State Jon Husted’s decision to change the rules just days before the election was “a flagrant violation of a state elections law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley on Tuesday.

On November 2, Husted issued a directive to local election officials to reject certain provisional ballots from voters who didn’t follow explicit instructions of identification on the ballot application.

Judge Marbley ruled that Husted violated a state law that instructs poll workers to fill out the ballot application; the directive would have put the onus on the voter to fill out the form. Husted also violated a federal court agreement that would protect provisional ballots from rejection due to poll worker error.

Some people are really having a difficult time facing the reality of a Black president, so difficult in fact, citizens from 20 states  — and counting — have filed petitions at We The People on WhiteHouse.gov to be granted permission to leave the union.

The people are from: Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, Michigan, Colorado, New Jersey, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, Arkansas, and Oregon.

According to the terms of participation for “We The People,” as of October 3, 2011, petitions that meet the listed criteria become searchable on WhiteHouse.gov once — and if — they reach 150 signatures within 30 days. If that is accomplished, for President Obama to actively consider a petition, it must reach 25,000 signatures within the remainder of the same 30-day period.

The White House reserves the right to change the time limit and number of signatures required.

Bottom line: while it’s understandable that many conservatives have an aversion to these little things called “facts,” President Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America.

They need to either deal with that or get a passport.

WASHINGTON  — Retired Gen. David Petraeus began an affair with his biographer in 2011, two months after he became CIA director, a friend and former top aide said. The case has brewed an uproar in Congress over FBI investigative tactics and the fact lawmakers weren’t told soon enough about the probe rocking the intelligence and law enforcement establishment.

Petraeus, who resigned last week as the nation’s head spy, and his family are said to be devastated over the affair, especially his wife Holly, who “is not exactly pleased right now,” said Steve Boylan, a friend and former Petraeus spokesman who spoke to Petraeus over the weekend.

Petraeus, 60, quit Friday after acknowledging the affair. He has been married 38 years to Holly Petraeus, with whom he has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.

Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, is married with two young sons.

Meanwhile, information has emerged about a Florida woman who allegedly received harassing emails from Broadwell which led federal investigators to discover Petraeus’ sexual indiscretion with Broadwell.

A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman as Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, and serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military’s Central Command and Special Operations Command are located. Staffers for Petraeus said Kelley and her husband were regular guests at events he held at Central Command headquarters.

A group of Los Angeles pastors are protesting the foreclosure proceedings on a number of churches, to be executed by a Black-owned bank that was created to serve a once-segregated Black population.

Broadway Federal Bank started in the 1940s to provide financial services to the Black community.

The bank had over 12% of its loans and other assets in delinquency or foreclosure, and seven repossessed churches on its books.” The bank can no longer take on additional church clients. The church pastors have promised to stand up to the bank.

WASHINGTON  — The accused East Coast Rapist says he doesn’t know why he couldn’t stop attacking women for nearly two decades.

“They were objects,” Aaron Thomas said in a series of telephone interviews from his jail cell in Virginia’s Prince William County. “Whoever came down the street, an object. … It’s awful. It’s scary. … I don’t know why I couldn’t just stop.”

Thomas said that he doesn’t think he is crazy, but that he knows something is wrong with him.

“I did so much, I can’t remember,” he said, adding that it all blends together.

Thomas, 40, is expected to plead guilty this month for the Halloween abduction of three women in 2009 in Prince William County and a Loudoun county rape in 2001. He faces the possibility of several life terms in prison.

Thomas is the son of a Washington police officer who later committed suicide. Family members described a troubled childhood that included a two-week stay at a psychiatric facility in Georgetown after setting a girl’s hair on fire. He later spent the first three years of high school in an Upper Marlboro treatment center.

Just a few years ago, two dozen Black war veterans’ graves were hidden behind decades of weeds and trash in the Town of Rye until community members came together to clean the cemetery up.

Now a local New York organization is heading efforts to fully restore the town’s only African-American cemetery and turn it into a site honoring the history of the people buried there.

Building Community Bridges wants to preserve the graves of the 22 black war veterans who saw combat in the Civil War, Spanish-American War and World War I and II, along with almost one hundred other African-American graves in the cemetery. The organization will research the history of the people buried there and install kiosks that provide that information to visitors.

Pictured: The gravestone of Robert Purdy (1820-1890), an escaped slave from Louisiana who served during the Civil War and is now buried in the African-American cemetery in the Town of Rye.

WASHINGTON  — David Petraeus, the retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair.

The affair was discovered during an FBI investigation, according to officials briefed on the developments. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It was unclear what the FBI was investigating or when it became aware of the affair.

Petraeus’ resignation shocked Washington’s intelligence and political communities. It was a sudden end to the public career of the best-known general of the post 9/11 wars, a man sometimes mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate. His service was effusively praised Friday in statements from lawmakers of both parties.

Petraeus, who turned 60 on Wednesday, told CIA employees in a statement that he had met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday and asked to be allowed to resign. On Friday, the president accepted.

Well, GOP presidential loser, Mitt Romney, may not have been given the opportunity to fire Jim Lehrer and Big Bird, but he did manage to show his expertise — in a way that only Mitt can — in debt reduction.

Following his impromptu swan song after being blindsided by an election loss of historical proportions to incumbent, President Barack Obama, Romney canceled the failing campaign’s credit cards, leaving staffers stranded.

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

FORT PIERCE — A partial recount gave Rep. Allen West a slight bump Sunday in his fight to remain in Congress, but not enough to mandate a full review of ballots or to end threats of lawsuits from his campaign.

St. Lucie County’s limited recount revised downward the totals for both West and the unofficial winner in the race, Democrat Patrick Murphy. Because Murphy lost more votes in the recount than West, it was a net gain for the Republican incumbent, though his margin of loss remained just above the threshold to order a full recount.

Neither side left the supervisor of elections’ office happy. Murphy’s campaign noted even a partial recount wasn’t necessary under state law. West’s campaign objected to the three days of early-voting ballots that were recounted, the absence of a full recount of early votes and the county’s refusal to turn over some other documentation requested.