While talking out of one side of their mouth about courting the African-American vote and protecting voting rights (they like to cite reports from lobbyists associated with dictatorships in Congo who try to eliminate all but their own political party), the Republican National Committee (RNC) is paying legal bills for those charged with voter suppression.

Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party quietly has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.

At the time, Tobin, of Bangor, Maine, was the RNC's New England regional director, before moving to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant already have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Tobin's indictment accuses him of specifically calling the GOP consultant to get a telephone firm to help in the scheme.

"Zero tolerance," huh? I guess that means for anyone but themselves. A tip for Ken Mehlman, the head of the RNC: You're not credible if you're paying the legal bills for those who suppress the vote. Don't you believe they should be punished? Apparently not, or you wouldn't be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their lawyers.

Every person who is legally eligible to vote should be allowed to easily cast a ballot and have it counted, this guy tried to stand in the way (and probably did with some success), and they pay for his defense? They say they support voting rights - but it's only because it's good public relations (Democrats however, understand it's one of the most basic American principles there is). They're obviously willing to say one thing while protecting those criminally accused of doing just the opposite.