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It's Up to You, New York: 'BradCast' 3/21/24
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Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
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Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continue; GOP Project 2025 would ban Paris Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for salmon...
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Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
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Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
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Biden touts climate jobs boom at SOTU; Feb. obliterated global temp and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

Federal Oversight Agency Continues Refusal to Notify Election Administrators About Known Failures in E-Voting Systems...
By Brad Friedman on 11/13/2007 11:57am PT  

By Brad Friedman from Richfield, Utah...

If there's a more ineffective federal agency than the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), we're unaware of it.

The EAC was created in 2002 by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), in large part to oversee federal certification and maintenance of e-voting systems for the entire country. One of their key mandates was to be a "clearinghouse" for information concerning such systems. Though they have been twice reprimanded by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) for their failure to set up such a clearinghouse of information concerning known problems with voting systems, another news report over the weekend confirms that they are more determined than ever to avoid any such responsibility.

Incredible comments given by EAC spokesperson Jeannie Layson and EAC Chairwoman Donnetta Davidson to the Daytona Beach News-Journal underscore the agency's hellbent efforts to avoid any and all responsibility for alerting election officials to known failures of electronic voting systems made by private corporations such as Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, and others.

The BRAD BLOG has chronicled the short, but storied, history of the EAC's failures, compromised nature, and unwillingness to do their job over the years, but the latest comments --- and subsequent lack of action --- as reported yesterday by M.C. Moewe in the News-Journal are nothing short of astonishing...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Says Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner and Media Mogul Would Have been 'Incarcerated' by FDR, 'Slapped' by Patton...
Far-Right Fox 'News' Host Calls for 'Support the Troops' Protests...
By Brad Friedman on 11/13/2007 11:57am PT  

By Brad Friedman from Richfield, Utah...

In what may be one of his most ironic public statements to date, far-Right Fox "News" commentator Bill O'Reilly charged last night that Dallas Mavericks owner and media mogul Mark Cuban's "arrogance is horrifying."

He then went on to call the billionaire blogger Cuban "anti-American" and noted, approvingly, that "during WWII President Roosevelt might have incarcerated" him and "General Patton would have slapped the tar out of him."

Why? Because Cuban's cable television network, HDNet, is distributing Brian DePalma's new film Redacted, apparently.

That, and Cuban laughed at O'Reilly last Friday, along with thousands in the crowd, at the keynote address we reported on from the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

After Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur, had earlier noted in his address that while he might feel O'Reilly was "a moron," for the various attacks the news commentator had unleashed upon him, he had thought better than to blog that point, noting that the written word hangs around forever on the Internet.

When The BRAD BLOG, who was present at the speech, later asked him during the Q&A if he felt O'Reilly's attacks have been a "net plus or minus" in regard to Redacted, the amused Cuban said that he was "very grateful" to O'Reilly, who he called his "new best friend" for all the attention he'd brought to the otherwise small film release.

We covered the brouhaha late Friday.

Last night on The O'Reilly Factor, the Fox "News" host shot back, promising still more publicity for the film, by calling for the public to show up outside theaters showing Redacted with signs reading "Support the Troops." O'Reilly claimed that he will personally be at theaters holding up such signs, charging that "Mark Cuban has a grudge against his country" and that he is somehow "putting our troops in danger."

At the end of the segment, O'Reilly promised that he would "have more information about what we're going to do and when we're going to do it...coming up."

His "Talking Points Memo" tirade (video below) charges that "subsequently the effort became extremely difficult," after opposition to the Iraq War was brought by "the far-left." He then went on to include a quick, out of context video clip from Cuban's BlogWorld address. He did not show the part in which Cuban said he was "very grateful" to O'Reilly, or that he considered him his "new best friend."

Here's O'Reilly's "outraged" comments from last night's The O'Reilly Factor on Fox "News," along with a discussion with a Republican and a "Democratic" analyst which follows. (Thanks to Alan Breslauer for the video!)...


UPDATE: Cuban blogs on the ridiculous O'Reilly situation, in a piece which begins "I've grown to love Bill OReilly. Seriously. If there is anyone who can publicize a political movie, it's Bill and I truly appreciate that about him."




By Brad Friedman on 11/12/2007 8:31pm PT  

"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have."
-- Teddy Roosevelt, Republican (later Progressive), 1903

A late Veterans Day thanks, from The BRAD BLOG, to those who've served. We pledge to do all we can to continue the fight for that square deal, which each of you have earned in spades. We are indebted.




By Brad Friedman on 11/12/2007 11:10am PT  

From an article in Fortune out today, on Al Gore's work with venture capitalists and the environment. He refuses to close the door on a White House run, even now...

Is there a chance he'll jump into the race? "It's a luxury to be able to focus on what you are most passionate about all the time," he says. When asked to elaborate he adds, "Casting about for words to describe this with precision is less productive than just saying that what I'm doing feels like the right thing to do." So the answer is probably not, though like any good politician, he's left the door open.



Observations from the First 'BlogWorld & New Media Expo' in Las Vegas...
By Brad Friedman on 11/12/2007 3:38am PT  

By Brad Friedman from somewhere in Nevada...

"The disconnect from reality was complete," writes Power Line's John Hindraker, in a post aptly headlined "In Another World."

That phrase, along with the headline of his post, featuring paranoid musings from his time on several panels in the "Political Track" at last week's BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, is perhaps the only point on which he and I can most certainly agree. That, and this phrase of his: "Disconnects this total can survive only inside an echo chamber."

Nailed it, John.

Perhaps out of necessity, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of the ample cowardice that seems at the core of their very political ideology these days, the wingnuts have created their very own version of reality, smack dab here in the middle of the United States of America. They couldn't take over the real America, at least not entirely, and at least not yet, so they've created their own country, replete with its own set of (ever-shifting) moral and ethical values, its own monetary system, its own set of political ideology, its own President, and its own media network including the crown jewel: its very own cable news channel.

In their Imaginary Land, a covert CIA agent who put her life at great risk for decades in service to her country, in hopes of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Iraq and Iran, is nothing more than "a glorified desk jockey."

The most massive government spending increases in the history of civilization, and the most severe violations of personal privacy in the history of our country, are neither "big government" nor "big brother," they're just the unfortunate necessities of "a post 9/11 world."

George W. Bush is not the irresponsible man who led the deception of the country into an optional and failed and corrupt (beyond all measure of any long-forgotten "outrage" of a UN Oil for Food "scandal") war in Iraq, he is a Churchillian Warrior set to take on the next great challenge in Iran, which threatens the very core of our existence.

These are not points of debate or disagreement. They are acknowledged facts. Those who believe otherwise, no matter the evidence, are little more than whacko moonbats from the lunatic leftie fringe. And George W. Bush's own father never said he has "nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our [CIA] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors," no matter what the video which doesn't exist has to say about it.

But yet, when their well-constructed, insular world and alternative reality are forced to meet with the real world and real reality, heads begin to spin, self-delusions falter, and their scramble back to the Green Zone of their collective imaginations can't happen quickly enough.

Such was the case last week at BlogWorld, where I was honored to speak on a number of panels with several excellent bloggers from both the progressive and wingnut 'spheres. Most of the wingers with whom I met and/or traded barbs --- including Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Rob Nepell (NZ Bear of Truth Laid Bear), Mary Katharine Ham (of Townhall), and Dean Barnett (of The Weekly Standard) --- were genuinely polite, courteous, and cordial, at least in person.

Hinderaker was the exception, but perhaps that's to his credit. If his comments during the panel on which we spoke together ("Political Blogs and the Political Press: From Antagonists to Co-Players?"), along with his shamefully lazy blog coverage of same and his generally off-putting demeanor are any indication, Hinderaker has no interest whatsoever in anything or anyone that doesn't fit into his well-guarded perception of "reality." At least he makes few bones about it...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Dallas Mavericks Owner, Media Mogul, Blogger is 'Very Grateful' for Fox News Anchor's Attacks on His Production Company's New Brian DePalma Film, 'Redacted'...
By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2007 6:58pm PT  

Blogged by Brad Friedman, from BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas...

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, several television networks and, in fact, a blogger, is "very grateful" to Bill O'Reilly, the Fox "News" media personality who has been attacking --- and even threatening --- him mercilessly, of late.

I'm sitting in at Cuban's closing Keynote address at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Vegas (I have been at the conference to speak on political blogging on a number of different panels) and I just asked him, during the Q&A, whether he finds O'Reilly's attacks "to be a net plus or net minus" for his various business interests and enterprises.

After first replying that O'Reilly's attacks didn't much matter, and that they had very little effect either way, I followed up to ask specifically about Brian DePalma's upcoming film, Redacted, which Cuban's network, HDNet is releasing shortly.

"When it comes to a specific project like Redacted," Cuban responded, "which is a small movie, it's grown bigger and bigger by the day. So I'm very grateful to him."

"Bill O'Reilly is my new best friend," he added, to laughter from the crowd which was made up of bloggers and industry-related folks of all political stripes.

I'll try to get the audio or video posted on that point later if I can, as an update. As the room is filled with several thousand bloggers, I suspect it should be easy to find shortly. (If anybody beats me to it, feel free to link it in comments, as I'll be off grid for the next several hours!)

P.S. As his address was in the same room where I had just finished up my final panel of the conference, I had the opportunity to chat with him quickly as we were trading places on the stage, and was able to thank him for HDNet's breathtaking Dan Rather Reports investigative exposé on touch-screen voting technology. I encouraged him to keep going along those lines and support Rather's work in this regard. He agreed that it was an amazing report, and in turn, he thanked me for The BRAD BLOG's coverage of same.

So he's a billionaire who pays attention.

The most understated bio I've perhaps ever seen: On the big screens next to the podium where he was speaking, the title card read simply, "Mark Cuban, Blogger".

UPDATE 11/13/07: O'Reilly lashes back at Cuban. Details & video here...




By Brad Friedman on 11/8/2007 8:24am PT  

We'll presume he wasn't just trying to be ironic --- on both points...





By Brad Friedman on 11/8/2007 12:01am PT  

Blogged by Brad from Vegas, here for BlogWorld Expo...

Late last night I posted a sampling of some of the early problem reports coming in from Tuesday's election and noted that, as has been the pattern we've noticed, the early reports from the media, on the day of any election, tend to downplay problems with voting systems. That, in no small part, is because the media rely, at first, on information from Election Officials who have a vested interest in downplaying any problems as little more than a "glitch" here or there.

I also noted the breadth of actual Election Day problems with voting systems tend to come a day or so (or even longer) thereafter.

Based on John Gideon's "Daily Voting News" roundup tonight, I'd say the assessment was spot on. If nothing else, please just click that link, and browse down the headlines he has listed tonight, covering stories across the country on problems that occurred Tuesday.

And then remind yourself that this was an off-year election, with very low turnout in most places around the country. What could possibly go wrong when the real voting begins in early 2008 and beyond?

What the hell are we thinking?

(NOTE: I may be off-grid for much of the next day or two at least. So watch for brilliant Guest Bloggers to swoop in and take my place in driving you mad.)




Letter Calling for Action Sent to Constituents After Kucinich Resolution to Impeach Cheney is Referred to Committee
Says 'Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office'
By Brad Friedman on 11/7/2007 1:43pm PT  

As reported in full by David Swanson, in the wake of yesterday's wild ride (and game of chicken) on the House floor concerning the privileged resolution filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the Impeachment of Dick Cheney.

The following is from a letter sent to constituents today by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where the matter has been sent again. Wexler is calling for the committee "to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months."...

I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband. That is why I voted against the motion to table debate on H.Res. 333. Along with only 85 other Democrats, I opposed tabling the measure and supported beginning immediate debate and a vote on the Cheney impeachment resolution. The vote on tabling the Kucinich resolution was rejected, and the House subsequently voted to refer the matter to the Judiciary Committee.
...
The American people are served well with a legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we bring begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration; and, if it is determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached and removed from office.



Mixing it Up With the Wingnuts (and the Not-Wingnuts)...Please Stop by and Say Hello if You Can Make it to Sin City!
By Brad Friedman on 11/7/2007 7:35am PT  

We've come a long way, baby. I guess. The world o' blogging, I mean. At least since I was accidentally sucked into the vortex back in early 2004.

Apparently, we now even rate our own "trade show," as the very first "Blog World & New Media Expo" is scheduled for this week at the Convention Center in Las Vegas, where I've been invited to speak.

So what do we have to trade exactly? I'm not entirely sure, but I suppose I'll find out this Thursday and Friday, when I'll likely be trading barbs, at least, on several panels in the show's "Political Track," along with such exemplary wingnuts as Hugh Hewitt, John Hindraker, and oh, so many more that the cat will no doubt be dragging in.

On the other hand, I'm happily looking forward to meeting many of the fine not-wingnut bloggers out there that I've known as little more than email addresses for many years. This from BlogWorld's blog item by the expo's director, Rick Calvert...

This is a great line up if I do say so myself! Hugh Hewitt, Jerome Armstrong (MYDD), John Hinderaker (Powerline Blog), Jeralyn Merritt (Talk Left), Glenn Reynolds (The Instapundit), Joe Sudbay (America Blog), Ed Morrissey (Captains Quarters), Sean-Paul (The Agonist), NZ Bear (TTLB), Pam Spaulding (Pam's House Blend), Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Brad Friedman (Brad Blog), Mary Katherine Ham (Townhall.com) Nate Wilcox, Dean Barnett (The Weekly Standard), Professor David Perlmutter, Michael Medved, Roger L. Simon, Kevin from Wizbang and more.

Now I know what you are thinking. You normally wouldn't find half of these folks hanging out with the other half and that is exactly what makes it such a great line up! One thing they can all agree on is blogging beats the MSM any day of the week.

Register Now and join us for some some great discussion, some great debate and a few fireworks.

Panels I'll be participating in (if I can get there in time) and at which I hope you'll stop by if interested:

Thursday 11/8, 10:15am-11:45am
The Power of the Political Blogosphere - Professor David Perlmutter, Hugh Hewitt, Dave Nalle, Pam Spaulding, Taylor Marsh, Brad Friedman

Thursday 11/8, 2:45pm-3:45pm
Blogging to Effect Non-Partisan Grass Roots Change - Rob Neppell (N.Z. Bear), Brad Friedman

Friday 11/9, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Political Blogs and the Political Press: From Antagonists to Co-Players? - Professor David Perlmutter, John Hinderaker, Mary Katharine Ham, Brad Friedman

The Expo's homepage is here, the full conference schedule is here. Wish me luck. And please come by if you can!!!




Voting Machines Failures Reported (So Far) in Indiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, & Maryland...
UPDATE: Naturally, Ohio Joins the Group of States with Voting Failures...
By Brad Friedman on 11/7/2007 5:35am PT  

Voter turnout was light in many parts of the country yesterday. Ironically enough, that's the good news.

Alternet ran a preview of voter suppression issues of concern in yesterday's elections across the country. Sure enough, the author, Steve Rosenfeld, wrote in during the early evening to let us know there were problems concerning Photo ID issues popping up in pockets around the country, and that he'd have more soon. Our own Alan Breslauer touched base as well with several reports he'd been getting from around the country.

John Gideon's "Daily Voting News" yesterday pointed to some of those issues that had been reported in the media as of yesterday afternoon around the country. GOP voter suppression, through specious claims of Democratic "voter fraud" and the invented "need," therefore, for disenfranchising photo ID laws and challenges at the polls, is at the top of the Republican strategy for '08. Naturally, it was taken out for a test spin yesterday.

(Speaking of spin, don't miss wingnut Mychal Massie's despicable retread diatribe --- including the mandatory quotes from GOP "voter fraud" fraudster, John Fund, who wrote the book on it, literally --- in the wingnut WorldNetDaily. His tragically misguided piece, headlined "Vote fraud: Democrats' meal ticket" gives you just about all you need to know. Read it once, save yourself a thousand or so near-identical reads between now and November 2008. But we digress...)

The other major prong of voter disenfranchisment is, of course, the machine issue. Problems in that area, in particular, tend to reveal themselves in the days after elections. Early on election day such problems are frequently downplayed in the media, who tend to turn to Election Officials for information despite the inherent conflict of interest such officials have in hoping to portray their elections as "successful."

In the early hours, then, hints of such breakdowns are reported as little more than computer "glitches" "hiccups" "snafus" and "snags" (though "kinks" makes it debut today, see below) until later on, when the true extent of the voting system failures --- and that's what they are, not "kinks" --- become known.

With that in mind, here are just a few of those e-voting glitches, hiccups, snafus, snags, and yes, kinks, from around the country so far yesterday, as culled from Gideon's DVN last night...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Company Recommends 'Rescheduling Elections,' Calling Voters to 'Re-Vote' as Part of Memory Card Failure Procedures; We Recommend Suing the Bastards...
ALSO: Voter-Supression Tactics in Play Around the US Today...
By Brad Friedman on 11/6/2007 4:22pm PT  


A good report from a couple of days ago from the I-Team in Cleveland, Ohio. Unfortunately, they tend to run such reports just before Election Days, when it's too damned late to do a damn thing about it.

Nonetheless, some very good stuff here. Of particular note are the points from Diebold's recommendations which "appear to border on the absurd," that should voting machine memory cards be lost, "elections must be re-scheduled." Or if they fail, as our recent story concerning Diebold's admissions about memory card failures in Florida pointed towards, the company says "all voters will have to be called in to re-vote."

Heckuva voting system guys. Check out the report, above right.

NOTE: Discussion of suing Diebold comes up in this piece yet again. Along with the same concerns, as heard elsewhere, about "the Catch-22" of suing voting machine vendors. Namely, counties are afraid to sue the company they rely on to run their next election! The counties and the vendors are "joined at the hip," as the I-Team report points out. Call it a soft form of extortion, really.

If you haven't already, please sign VoterAction's petition calling on Congress to "conduct a full investigation into the dangers associated with the privatization of our public elections and to determine whether certain US voting systems companies have committed crimes under federal and state anti-fraud laws."

For an early look at concerns, largely of voter-suppression issues, around the country, Alternet has a very good state-by-state preview this morning.




Kucinich Proposal Eventually Referred to House Judiciary Committee for Further Action, Study...
UPDATE: Judiciary Committee 'Suprised' by Minority Move, Plans to 'Continue to Consider' Matter...
By Brad Friedman on 11/6/2007 3:25pm PT  

Wasn't able to follow things live, as David Swanson did, so still trying to unravel what specifically happened today on the floor of the U.S. House, where Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) used a "privileged resolution" to try and force a vote on his measure to begin Impeachment proceedings of Dick Cheney.

But as best as we can tell, and if we're reading this correctly, it seems the Republicans are playing a very interesting game of chicken here. From RAW:

Although the roll call vote had initially appeared to favor Hoyer's motion to table, Congressional Quarterly's Ed Epstein told CSPAN that Republicans had switched their votes at the last minute in an attempt to embarrass the Democratic leadership, who is not keen on seeing further action on the impeachment resolution.

"Midway through the vote, with instructions from the GOP leadership, Republicans one by one changed their votes from yes --- to kill the resolution --- to no, trying to force the chamber into a debate and an up-or-down vote on the proposal," reports the Washington Post.

And then from WaPo...

At one point there were 290 votes to table. After the turnaround, the final vote was 251-162 against tabling, with 165 Republicans voting against it.
...
Democrats countered by offering a motion to refer the proposal to the House Judiciary Committee for further study, effectively preventing a debate on the House floor. That motion passed by a largely party-line vote of 218-194.

So, in trying to summarize: While the Democratic House Leadership had initially tried to table Kucinich's resolution to Impeach Dick Cheney, the Republicans voted against that, presumably after making some sort of calculation (an incorrect one, in our opinion, but it's just our opinion) that a debate on whether he should be Impeached would somehow benefit Republicans. They would seem to share that calculation with the Democratic House leadership.

The effort to table discussion of the matter thus failed. But Hoyer's next attempt to dispatch with the measure (for the moment) was his call for a vote to send the matter to Committee for further consideration, instead of debating it on the floor of the House.

Which, if we've got our analytics correct here, means the ball gets tossed over to HJC Chairman, John Conyers for now...

UPDATE: Statement just in from a U.S. House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman, in response to the referal of the Impeachment resolution to the committee...

"The Committee has a very busy agenda - over the next two weeks, we hope to pass a FISA bill, to vote on contempt of Congress citations, pass legislation on prisoner re-entry, court security and a variety of other very important items. We were surprised that the minority was so ready to move forward with consideration of a matter of such complexity as impeaching the Vice President. The Chairman will discuss today's vote with the Committee members but it would seem evident that the committee staff should continue to consider, as a preliminary matter, the many abuses of this Administration, including the Vice President."



See a Great Film! Help Support The BRAD BLOG! Everybody Wins!
By Brad Friedman on 11/5/2007 6:55pm PT  

NOTE: THIS PREMIUM OFFER HAS NOW ENDED. THANKS TO THOSE WHO CONTRIBUTED! WATCH FOR MORE IN THE NEAR FUTURE!

Our new Premium offer for a signed-by-the-filmmaker DVD version of the terrific documentary, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, ends today (Tuesday)! Donate $50 or more to BRAD BLOG now to get yours shipped out right away! Or see this post for more details, a trailer for the film, and how to get a two-for-one premium gift out of your support of The BRAD BLOG!

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By Brad Friedman on 11/5/2007 6:35pm PT  

Sent in from a reader, as purportedly published in the Charlotte Observer...

To The Editor:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has been unable to extract a yes or no answer from Mr. Mukasey, Bush's candidate for attorney general, about whether waterboarding does or doesn't constitute a form of torture. Why not do what the C.I.A. would do to get him to answer the question and that is, waterboard Mr. Mukasey himself so he could find out about it firsthand? Wouldn't that speed things up?

Yours truly,
Bernie Hargadon




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