Unlike last year, and the year before, we're unable to muster up anything clever or ironic with which to kick off the new year. We are without explanation for the unusually somber tone of the evening at year's end. Perhaps it's the news of the last few days which have left us feeling less than giddy. At least for tonight.

Instead, we'll hope the coming year will be overflowing with mirth for us all, and that you'll join The BRAD BLOG in our one simple wish for 2007...

It was only June of this year when Tony Snow blithely commented on behalf of the White House, upon the news that the 2500th American troop had been killed in Iraq, "It’s a number."

There is a certain warped and tragic sense of unavoidable poesy in the announced death of the 3000th fallen U.S. troop coming, as it does, today --the last day of 2006. Yet I can't help but be reminded that as awful as that "number" is, it comes nowhere near expressing the full pain, suffering, horror, mutilation, and unbearably high cost to humanity that this administration --- and their supporters --- have wrought on this world via their tragic arrogance and folly.

The 3000 "number" includes only American troops killed in Iraq. It doesn't include the number of those, thousands over, who have been injured for lifetime. It doesn't include American contractors who have also been killed. It doesn't include Americans killed in Afghanistan. Neither does it include the troops and citizens from other countries who --- for reasons good or bad --- were deployed to the region after having bought into the mercilessly cruel confidence game that these Administration cretins --- and their supporters --- have perpetrated on the people of this planet. Most disturbingly, however, the "number" 3000 doesn't even begin to include the uncountable --- and mostly uncounted --- hundreds of thousands of citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan who were born with the unfortunate trait of having being born where they were born, only to end up in the deadly literal crossfire ordered by people who neither know them nor give a damn about them.

"River" at Baghdad Burning, one of the citizens born with that unfortunate trait, has been chronicling the misery of such citizens from Iraq for the past three years when the power is on, and she is able to access an Internet computer and she has the stomach to share her pain with the rest of the world. She now shares the same sense, expressed by the White House via Snow, that these landmark statistics "simply represent numbers." The irony would likely be lost on this White House.

A few days ago, "River" reminded us once again of the real cost of this sham war. And as cold-hearted as her thoughts may seem, they are yet another wake up call. Yet another one most likely to be ignored by the desperate fanatics whose simple-minded sense of self-importance has left the rest of the world --- likely for generations --- with the burden of cleaning up behind their crushing cruelty, unforgivable arrogance, and indescribable incompetence.

I believe "River" offers a glimpse of what we all will be forced to come to cold, hard grips with in the year --- and years --- ahead...

I'm not sure if I'm exhausted from putting together the final part of The BRAD BLOG Year in Review 2006 or if simply being reminded of all that's gone on over the past year on these pages is enough to tucker me out all over again.

Either way, I couldn't be prouder of what we've done. Whatever it was, it was never enough, but I do believe that at least we helped move the ball forward. From helping to expose the criminal corruption in our government, to further exposing the failure of our once-great fourth-estate, I hope that we've had a direct positive affect on each of them.

Here then is the last entry in this thing I call "Year in Review" since it's not necessarily a "Best of" (too much to figure out what was "best") or a "Highlights" (since sometimes the lowest lights were the highest and vice versa), so we'll call it a pu pu platter of the year that was as seen on these pages. It's also, by the way, your last chance to tip the piano player before calling it a year, not that we won't nag you about that again in the near future.

As much as this joint has overtaken my life this year, it has been anything but a solo effort. I cannot adequately express my indebtedness to several folks whose tireless efforts manning the blog with loving care and expertise at various times and for various lengths over the past year have made it possible to keep things going here. They also allowed me to keep going by allowing a few stolen moments here and there to look at things like sunshine and trees. So my less-than-adequate year end gratitude goes out to John Gideon, David Edwards, Agent 99, Winter Patriot, Alan Breslauer, Desi Doyen, Emily Levy and Czaragorn for all of the gas they've put into this engine over the past year via extraordinary work in often less than ideal circumstances on a rather regular basis. Thank you is not enough, but it will have to do.

As well, thanks are due to many of those who have contributed once or twice or more via Guest Blogs on these pages this year including Joy and Tom Williams, Joseph Cannon, Jim Cirile, Rebecca Abrahams, Eric Brewer, Harvey Friedman, Steve Huff, Daniel Borchers, Sibel Edmonds, Stephen Heller, Warren Stewart, Michael Collins, Tova Andrea Wang, Dan Field, STOP George, Chris Floyd, Jeeni Criscenzo and if I left anyone off, I do apologize. Blame Canada.

Thanks also to all of those folks --- sources, whistleblowers or just random tipsters --- who have taken the time to send hot leads or, even more, put yourselves on the line by entrusting me to treat your information with the respect and attention it deserves along with confidentiality that many of you require for all number of reasons. To those whose tips I missed due to a still-out-of-control inbox, my apoligies. Please resend and let's see if I catch it this time!

Finally, I thank you, The BRAD BLOG readers at the end of another year. Whether it's the "6 or 7" of you who stop by with daily devotion for a tasty morsel with your morning coffee, or the millions more who blow by only long enough to pick up an occasional "sirened" hot headline. Thank you for stopping by, supporting our work, and even more so, for spreading the word and making noise.

All of that, and I haven't even been given an award. Oh, well. As the band plays me off for another year, a reminder that Part 1 (Jan - Apr) is back here, Part 2 (May - Aug) is back here, and Part 3 (Sep - Dec) of The BRAD BLOG Year in Review 2006 follows in full...

We had a few thoughts late last night on Saddam's execution. Today we have a few more, as Josh Marshall reminds us why he's likely both the best blogger and best writer in the business...

Hat-tip for the pointer to the above to Joseph Cannon, who aptly adds:

And while we're hat-tipping to the much beloved Cannon, we'll point to his brief, yet enlightening summary today of how the United States handcrafted its own, ultimately self-defeating, legacy named Saddam Hussein.

Of course, most of those who have spent the last 6 years mindlessly salivating to the sound of their master's voice will be unlikely to take the time to read it. Lest they take notice of anything to upset their creepy and cultish devotion to the notion of an infallible America. But the rest of us, with intellectual curiosity and honesty intact, can at least learn a thing or two about this whole nightmare having been the work of the self-same criminal crew who --- as the last of their "papier-mache grandeur" flakes away, for now --- cling pathetically to today's barbaric murder of Saddam as some sort of "victory."

Sadly --- and shamefully --- it is anything but.

I don't know whether it's apocryphal or not, but it's been said that criminals, after their arrest, tend to fall asleep in their holding cell, while the innocent stay awake, yelling and screaming in protest.

This from RAW STORY's coverage of today's hanging of Saddam Hussein...

If you watch only one funeral this weekend, we recommend James Brown's. CNN was carrying it a good deal, MSNBC a bit less, and Fox "News" a lot less than that (even while they have plenty of time to run Saddam's gallows video on a loop, and ran the Saddleback Christmas service several times in full, as if it was news, on Christmas Eve and Day.)

But since we didn't find any of the awesome performances from the Godfather's funeral yet up and online, and have yet to run an 'In Memoriam' for him, let's take the satirical way out. Imitation being the highest form of flattery and all. At right, Ed Murphy's hysterical tribute, from his early golden SNL days, to the once and forever Godfather of Soul.

After an unexpected item or two of unexpected breaking news, we continue with Part 2 of our 3-part BRAD BLOG Year in Review 2006, highlighting some (but by no means all) of the most notable moments over this extraordinary year here in our own little corner of the world. A world which seems to have grown just a bit larger, if the following headlines are any indication.

For those who think we've grown quite big enough and thus don't think we need your support, well, we wish that was the case. So once again we include a shameless plea for your support via donation as you would be stunned as to just how few folks actually send such support given the number of readers we've had over the past year, and the arguably positive contribution we've made towards the betterment of our nation. If you can help, we (that actually means "I") would much appreciate it.

With that out the way, Part 1 (Jan - Apr) is back here, and Part 2 (May - Aug) follows below...

"The Americans want him to be hanged respectfully," one of Hussein's attorneys points out, according to AP, apparently without even a hint of irony.

The oxymoron aside, for our part we don't have much to say about all of this, other than how brutally disgusting it is, how Osama still runs free, how well more than the number of Americans killed on 9/11 have now been killed in Bush's appalling revenge plot on behalf of his father, and how neither Americans in general, nor certainly the troops on the ground, are any safer due to Bush's appalling failure as a U.S. "President."

Iraq War veteran Jon Soltz, co-founder of VoteVets.org, an advocacy group representing vets of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, issued this statement earlier today:

For George W. Bush, however, who lives in the safe confines of his well protected mobile bunker, his presiding over this barbaric ending to the life of a barbaric man is ultimately just another shameful chapter in an already tragic-beyond-description tale.

Congratulations and Happy New Year, Mr. Bush. You got your man.

UPDATE 7:50pm PT: The deed is done. Good luck washing all of that blood off your hands, Mr. Bush. Only you could turn a despicable man like Hussein into a martyr. By year's end, in a few hours, the 3000 mark may be passed for dead U.S. troops in your war. Though, as Baghdad Burning points out so movingly today, 3000 Iraqis are lost in an average month. So I guess it's no biggie. You've had quite the reign, sir.

In a ruling issued this afternoon just prior to the Holiday weekend, the presiding Florida Circuit Court Judge William L. Gary denied the plaintiffs motion to allow review of the source code for the paperless touch-screen machines used in the contested U.S. House race in Florida's 13th district between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan.

Jennings, and a number of Florida voters and Election Integrity organizations, had filed suit asking for a revote and to allow them to review the software used on the voting machines made by Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S), after some 18,000 votes seemed to have disappeared in the race to fill the U.S. House seat vacated by former FL Secretary of State Katherine Harris. The state has previously certified Buchanan as the winner by a 369 vote margin.

Gary's terse ruling [PDF], issued this afternoon denying the motion to compel the company to turn over their source code, states that ES&S has a right to keep their software hidden from review by both the Jennings camp and voters, supporting the company's "right" to keep their "trade secrets" protected.

An audit of the machines was previously conducted by a panel convened by the state. The various plaintiff groups had roundly criticized both the make-up of the panel and the procedures used during the testing, characterizing it as an "exercise in futility." The panel was led by a known hard-right Republican partisan and included the state's own official responsible for voting machine certification. No independent Election Integrity advocates were included on the panel.

That audit --- to nobody's surprise --- revealed no problems in the hardware or software as tested. But the plaintiffs have argued that only an independent investigation of the source code used on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines might reveal reasons for the inexplicably large undervote rate in the race, more than 12%, only found on Sarasota's paperless touch-screen systems. Absentee paper balloting in the county, and on voting machines in other counties which make up the FL-13 district, revealed no such anomalous undervote rate. Undervote rates on paper absentee ballots in the same race, in the same county, were just over 2.5%.

Neither the Buchanan camp, nor anyone else, has been able to give a credible explanation for the disparity.

Gary's ruling denying Plaintiffs' motion to examine the voting machine source code finds that:

The plaintiffs had been requesting a revote for the election in the Florida circuit court. Jennings has filed a contest in the U.S. Congress, under the Constitutional provision which allows the House to determine the seating of members. When the new Congress convenes in January they must decide whether to seat Buchanan as is, seat him provisionally, seat Jennings instead, or leave the seat vacant, essentially forcing a Special Election in FL-13, or take some other action.

It's been quite a year. An exhausting one at that. Even gathering up some of the "Best of" stuff from The BRAD BLOG this year turned into a much taller order than we had planned on. So tall, in fact, that we're breaking it into three bite size pieces, to be posted over the next several days, for your reviewing pleasure.

It turned out to be an impossible task to choose "Best of" stuff from this extraordinary year, so we decided to focus only on this year's Exclusives and Breaking News for the most part. Mind you, even at that, as regular readers will quickly see, what we have room to remind you of here is very much just tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. Though even just the basics, in review, make for one helluva story --- about which someone should write a book or two some day (we wonder who that someone might be).

Anyway, until that big book advance comes through, we remind you again at year's end that we appreciate whatever BRAD BLOG DONATION you may be able to make to our continuing efforts. We also remind you that 2007 could be even more spectacular by kicking it off with a monthly subscription (as always, optional, and available via the blue form on the right of every page.)

So here now, Part 1 (Jan - Apr) of our 3-part look back at a few of the most notable stories in The BRAD BLOG Year in Review 2006...

We've been accused from time to time of being, variously, a "CIA Internet Fake" or a Karl Rove plant or whatever other nonsense folks may dredge up here in Freedom of Speech land. Unfortunately, neither the CIA nor Rove nor "the Jews" have ever paid up. (Please see our blue donation form on the right of every page. We'll take whatever we can get. Even via PayPal. We're not proud.)

On that note then, NYPost reports on some of the companies who are paying bloggers in hopes of good reviews...

While we have little interest in either the Speed Channel or the PGA, we've spent the bulk of the Christmas quiet time backing up, reformatting and restoring a hard drive on our ailing computer and still have yet to either finish, or fix the problem that seemed to be there in the first place.

So with that in mind, if Office Max --- a fine, upstanding company, if ever we saw one --- wishes to help out, we certainly could use both a new monitor and, at least, one new computer.

Given the lack of donations The BRAD BLOG seems to receive, along with Office Max's reputation for offering only the best goods and services available at some of the most reasonable prices in the industry (now offering fast, free delivery on most orders over $50!), we believe it'd be the perfect fit!

At least until "the Jews" come through with the big money as promised.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Below is a sampling of statistics and fun comparisons contained within the newly released 2006 Injustice Index, which is part of the The Drum Major Institute For Public Policy's 2006 Year in Review:

See more fun stats and the entire Year in Review at the Drum Major Institute.

Tech Mag PCWorld named E-Voting #3 on their list of "The 21 Biggest Technology Mistakes of 2006"...

We've come a long way, baby.

And we also take year-end great pride in that folks look back on Princeton's Diebold Virus Hack as one of the seminal moments in this whole sordid affair. (The machine used in the research was a DRE/touch-screen system supplied to VelvetRevolution.us by a BRAD BLOG source and we then gave it to Princeton for their now-infamous study.)

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they attack you.
Then you win.

Gerald Ford 1913 - 2006

The Orlando Sentinel sends me a Christmas gift. While it's not exactly that I may have asked for, this being the charitable season I'll look the other way and be thankful for what I got. Particularly as the Sentinel (or the Slantinel as some in the Sunshine State aptly refer to it) has never been particularly democracy-friendly.

Here then, a few highlights from their weekend editorial entitled "Drop touch-screens - Our position: It's time to pull the plug on the failed experiment of electronic voting"...

We hinted at this last week when Florida's corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) expressed his obnoxious indignation over the democratic (small "d") Congressional election challenge filed by Christine Jennings (D) against Vern Buchanan (R) in the FL-13 U.S. House race. This is the contest in which the perpetually election-challenged state of Florida certified Buchanan as the winner by 369 votes, even though some 18,000 votes seem to have disappeared altogether on Sarasota County's paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines.

The challenge brought Feeney slithering out from under his rock to charge that Jennings' Constitutional request that Congress not seat Buchanan --- who appears to have "won" only due to failures in Sarasota's voting equipment (which even ES&S's own "expert witness" admitted on the witness stand during a hearing on the election contests filed by both Jennings and voters in Florida) --- amounted to "total political dictatorship."

At least that's what Feeney told the Orlando Sentinel at the time.

What he doesn't seem to have told them is that he too is the object of a similar Constitutional challenge in Congress by his own opponent, Clint Curtis, in the race for U.S. House in Florida's 24th district.

Curtis, who originally exposed Feeney's alleged attempt to create touch-screen vote-rigging software back in 2000 (a story broken by The BRAD BLOG in 2004 and followed in detail ever since), campaigned to unseat Feeney this year for the first time, but was declared the loser. Curtis disagrees.

Warren Stewart at VoteTrustUSA covered both the Curtis and Jennings challenges on the Thursday before XMas weekend, along with a posting of the complaints filed by both candidates (Curtis' complaint here, Jennings's complaint here, both in WORD format) as filed in Congress. We've yet to review either complaint or discuss them with either candidate personally, so we'll refer to Stewart's coverage and the actual complaints for the moment and let you people do some work for a change.

The Orlando Sentinel, however, picked up on the story of Curtis's challenge on Xmas Eve in a brief post in their "This Just In" section. Here's the full item...

Stay tuned, indeed...The saga continues...