Faster, Please

From the AP:

Riot police battled voters Thursday, killing one person and blocking entry to polling stations in opposition strongholds in the third and final round of Egypt's legislative elections.

Police fired into a crowd in the Balteem district of Kafr el-Sheik, killing Gomaa el-Zeftawi, a fisherman, and wounding 60 other people, said Mohammed el-Ashqar, a campaign worker for a Nasserite opposition candidate.

In one village, men and women determined to vote resorted to sneaking into the polling station, putting up ladders to climb over back walls out of sight of police barring the entrance and slipping through bathroom windows to get in.

Voting proceeded normally in some towns, but in two villages visited by an Associated Press reporter one the hometown of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, the other of an independent candidate police were blocking voters. In some southern towns, voters were intimidated by lines of police outside stations.

"I'm calling on his excellency, the president, to appoint the members of parliament because no one has been allowed to vote. It would save the money wasted on elections," Sameer Fikri, a would-be voter in the village of Sandoub, said sarcastically.

Hundreds of people lined up in front of a school used as a polling station in Sandoub, 75 miles north of Cairo the hometown of Brotherhood candidate Saber Zakher but they were prevented from approaching by lines of riot police, armed with sticks, rifles and tear gas.

A police lieutenant said "I don't know" when asked why both polling stations in the village had been cordoned off. An AP reporter was barred from entering to ask the judges in the polling stations.

In the nearby town of Bussat, the smell of tear gas hung in the air as angry would-be voters shouted at police blocking the station. "There are no human rights here, only war and destruction," said resident Mustafa Mohammed. Behind the polling station, men and women clambered up ladders over the wall.

The first-round vote and runoff saw little violence, but after the Brotherhood's strong showing, there was a crackdown in the second round and a runoff, with police and government supporters blocking or assaulting Brotherhood loyalists from some polling stations. At least one person was been killed.

"I heard that the police have arrested so many people, especially those who vote for Brotherhood," said voter Ahmed Mohammed Abdel Salam, who supported the Muslim Brotherhood.

Democracy in action. We can either walk the walk and embrace it, or we can keep repeating to ourselves that "they hate us for our way of life" instead of our hypocrisy in supporting an odious, torturing tyrant like Mubarak for the past quarter century. How many more times will we have to learn this painful lesson?

And if the dateline on the above story had been Tehran, Revolutionary Guards had fired on people so desperate to vote they were climbing over walls, and the Mullahs had simply shut down polling stations if they didn't like the results, what would President Bush be saying right now? He made a point of criticizing Iran's election as not much more than a sham. And what would the usual pundits and bloggers from the Hysterical Right say?

Michael Ledeen, are you out there?