In a stunning flip-flop from their pre-election rhetoric, the Bush Administration appears to have begun a new appeasement policy for Taliban rebels in Afghanistan.

The BBC is reporting the U.S. amabassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has announced in a recent Kabul press conference that Taliban fighters who give up their arms and pledge their allegiance would be allowed to go free:

The "wildly successful" war in Afghanistan, where 18,000 U.S. troops are still stationed, began well over three years ago.

Neither Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban regime at the time of the U.S.-lead invasion, nor Osama bin Laden, the purported target of that attack have been either captured or killed as of this posting.

Appeaser George W. Bush, who once claimed that we would capture bin Laden "dead or alive", has more recently stated that he is "truly...not that concerned about him".

Friend and occasional guest-blogger here, Jaime, had this to say in regards to yesterday's item on the banning of the United Church of Christ's 30-second spot by NBC and CBS because it's message of tolerance and anti-bigotry was simply "too controversial"...especially, as the CBS press-release points out, in light of their need to kowtow to the ominous totalitarian fear tactics of an Executive Branch Gone Wild.

Jaime give us a quick look at how the wingnuts over at FreeRepublic.com are displaying their "Christian Values":

By the way, the good folks at Act For Change are submitting a petition to NBC and CBS asking them to air this anti-bigotry ad. Click here to sign their petition.

Think they wouldn't do it? Think again.

Bush/Cheney's 2004 Northeast Regional Campaign Director is indicted:

Please note that Josh Marshall reported way back in October on Tobin and his involvement in the 2002 campaign phone-jamming scandal.

Which, Marshall pointed out back then, meant that the Bush/Cheney campaign knew full-well about Tobin's involvement in the scandal for at least three and a half months before he was forced to resign due to Democrat complaints about his position in the Bush/Cheney campaign.

Still think they wouldn't do it? If they'd go to such lengths for a mid-term senate race, after all...Why would they have stopped attempting to fix elections in 2004, the fight of their lives?

Following up on a report posted here last night concerning the activist Judge in Delaware County, OH who has issued a "temporary restraining order" against the Green/Libertarian Party's lawfully sought recount in Ohio, the BRAD BLOG has learned a few more EXCLUSIVE troubling details about the Republican operatives seeking to subvert the democratic process in the Buckeye State.

The restraining order was issued quietly on Nov. 23rd "without contacting or seeking any input from the candidates or their attorneys." according to a statement issued yesterday on Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb's website.

A continuing BRAD BLOG investigation has learned --- thanks to this posting at the extremist rightwing website FreeRepublic.com --- that the activist judge who issued this questionable order is Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge, W. Duncan Whitney (pictured at right). Judge Whitney is an elected Republican whose term will not expire until 2009.

As previously reported, the lawful request by a presidential candidate (two in this case) for a recount in Ohio has been agreed to by Ohio Secretary of State and Co-Chair of Ohio's Bush/Cheney Re-Elect Committee, J. Kenneth Blackwell. Furthermore, as confirmed today by The Washington Post, the Kerry/Edwards campaign has joined "The Glibs" in filing court papers asking for "a full, fair and accurate recount" and for the restraining order to be immediately lifted.

Judge Whitney, by his order, seems to be overriding the intentions of election laws as duly created by the Ohio State Legislature, prompting this blog to wonder what constitutional legal grounds Judge Whitney has used to declare his apparent "legislation from the bench".

As this information has come in after the Delaware County Courthouse has closed for the evening, the BRAD BLOG has, as yet, been unable to discover that information.

However, according to the FreeRepublic.com posting (copied from a now-expired Columbus Dispatch article) appointed Republican county prosecutor David A. Yost, a legal advisor for the Delware County board of elections (pictured at left), is quoted as indicating that re-counting the votes of American citizens in his Ohio county in order to ensure accuracy is simply too expensive...

I've got many items on the drawing board today concerning GRAND THEFT AMERICA, including many tips, news items, and other developments that I'm currently looking into. I hope to be back with more news on that shortly.

For the moment though, this particular item is so chilling to me that I need to mention it here quickly.

You may have seen this on other blogs today, but if you've ever had any questions about the chilling effect of this Administration and its FCC's latest, intrusive and increasingly-hardline stance on those who broadcast over our public airwaves, please have a look at this item!

NBC and CBS have both refused to air a 30 second spot about tolerance and inclusion --- from the United Church of Christ, of all organizations! --- because it is "too controversial". Apparently, the response from CBS tells us, it is the oblique references to homosexuality that is the reason for the censorship. References, I might add, that are difficult to even notice without a prior heads-up that that's what the ad refers to in the first place!

Most chilling, is this part of the statement by CBS, as quoted in a statement from the UCC, on why CBS is refusing to carry the commercial on either of Viacom-owned CBS or UPN [emphasis mine]...

From the BBC World News (via Raw Story):

Top 10 words of 2004 according to Merriam-Webster:

Perhaps #10 there was looked up by folks wondering what ever came of democracy in America.

Wow...big news day, huh? I knew there was a reason I held off on the siren for the previous two items here (which, by all rights, each might have warranted one of their own!)

Two statements have been released today on the Green Party's Cobb-LaMarche Website in regard to the impending joint Green/Libertarian recount in Ohio.

The first statement reports that a Delaware County, Ohio judge has issued a temporary restraining order "attempting to prevent Cobb from seeking a recount of the presidential ballots cast in that county."

The order, according to the statement, was issued "without contacting or seeking any input from the candidates or their attorneys."

I'm no legal eagle myself, but if true, that fact alone is certainly curious.

The Cobb-Lamarche media director, Blair Bobier, was more direct in a comment included in the release: "It makes you wonder if Delaware County has something to hide. Why else would they try to prevent a recount and issue an injunction without giving the candidates any notice to participate?"

The Green/Libertarian coalition (dubbed "The Glibs" by Olbermann, in a phrase that seems to be catching on) has asked a federal court to take jurisdiction of the matter, and "ultimately dissolve" the temporary restraining order.

I'd the expect the restraining order will in fact be eventually set aside, particularly given Ohio Sec. of State (and coincidentally Ohio's Co-Chair for the Bush/Cheney Re-elect Committee) J. Kenneth Blackwell's point-blank statement on MSNBC last night that "The Glibs'" recount would definitely be moving forward.

But guess who showed up in court today to come to "The Glibs" defense?!

That's right! You may remember them from some of their well-publicized work earlier this year, the Kerry/Edwards campaign --- it was announced in the second statement at the Cobb-Lamarche site --- has filed briefs with the court intervening in defense of "The Glibs"!

Perhaps rumors of the Kerry/Edwards campaign has been slightly exaggerated after all!

Nah...

In any case, they showed up long enough for now to let us know they're still breathing and paying attention, as Jesse Jackson indicated in several interviews over the weekend.

It's also worth noting, by the way, as long as "The Glibs" have already won the American Patriots of the Year Award, that their press spokesman may also now be in line for the 2004 Chutzpah Medal of Honor due in no small part to this statement:

"We welcome the support of the Kerry-Edwards campaign for the recount and we call upon the Bush-Cheney ticket to offer their support for this multi-partisan effort as well."

Touché, Ms. (or Mr.) Bobier! I welcome it as well!

Seeing as how this is clearly a case of yet another "activist judge" outrageously "legislating from the bench", I have little doubt that the Bush-Cheney attorney's limo should be arriving at the courthouse any minute to put their legal money where their faux-outraged political mouth is!

But for some reason, I shan't be holding my breath.

(Thanks to BRAD BLOG tipster Tracy H for the heads-up!)

UPDATE 12/1/04: The Washington Post has now picked up this story!

LATER UPDATE 12/1/04: EXCLUSIVE details have been uncovered by the BRAD BLOG about activist Delware County, OH Judge W. Duncan Whitney! Click here for the new story!

Just in from BlackBoxVoting.org:

UPDATE: Hysterical! Read the report of how BBV served Ms. LaPore this morning in front of a crowd of 200 Florida elections officials at LaPore's "farewell" event. Too brilliant.

Some have been critical (including yours truly on occassion) of Bev Harris' frequently less-than-professional demeanor and flair for the dramatic. But ya know what? Sometimes that's what actual citizens reclaiming their democracy looks like! Bravo, sez me. I wish we could get more folks like her to hit the streets and cause some trouble!

ATTENTION PULITZER PRIZE COMMITTEE: Please prepare nominations for Juan Gonzales and Larry Cohler-Esses of The New York Daily News!

Yes, it's true! Two reporters from a major American, Corporate-Owned, Mainstream Newspaper are actually investigating the results of Election 2004!

Gonzales reports this morning, in a piece titled "Ohio tally fit for Ukraine"(!), that he and reporter Larry Cohler-Esses have discovered yet more anomalies in the Ohio vote count! (All by themselves! And they're not even "disgruntled loony left-wing blogger conspiracy theorists!)

Specifically, Gonzales reports that he and Cohler-Esses have uncovered unusual vote totals in several of Cleveland's black neighborhoods. They studied the precinct-by-precinct totals released by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (see the previous story about them) and found that third party candidates has surprisingly high vote totals! In several cases, candidates such as Constitutional Party's Michael Peroutka mysteriously received tallies as much as 600% higher than even George W. Bush's!

Perhaps even more troubling, is the fact that these numbers demonstrate what ought to make even the most jaded wingnut sit up and take notice:

...And that after 2004's unprecedented GOTV effort in Cuyahoga and Ohio in general, and of course the population increases in the state since 2000.

And Gonzales promises more to come:

In the past week or two, I've encouraged you to express your displeasure about the reporting from some of America's Corporate Media Outlets (e.g. The New York Times here, and Newsweek here).

But now, I'd encourage you to write a "Thank you! And keep up the good work!" note to The Daily News and Messrs Gonzalez and Cohler-Esses! lcohler-esses@edit.nydailynews.com; voicers@edit.nydailynews.com; news@edit.nydailnews.com...e.com&Subject=Thank you for investigating and reporting on Election 2004!" target="_blank">Click here to sent a thank you note to them all!

NOTE: If you wish to have your letters considered for publication by Daily News be sure to include you full name, street address and telephone number. Only name will be included if they publish it.

(Hat tip Emailer Susan E. for the link!)

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports today that the Cuyahoga County Election Board certified election results in the county Monday and will now be passing them onto the state for final certificaiton.

Before doing so, the Election Board heard two hours of testimony concerning the 8,552 provisional ballots (34% of the total) which were rejected. Witnesses also testified that due to the questions about these ballots and other "systematic problems", the certification was being completed too quickly.

After the rejected ballots were tossed, remaining provisional ballots showed a 9,242 vote gain in Kerry's margin over Bush in the states largest county.

The Plain Dealer described some of the testimony about the questionable rejections of a number of those provisional ballots as detailed in a three-part analysis by Dr. Norman Robbins of Case Western Reserve University who also served as a volunteer with the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition:

Vu also mentioned that he plans a study of the 6,000 voter registrations delivered by a different Get-Out-The-Vote group after the registration deadline had passed. Voters, in that case, likely went to the polls on Nov. 2nd assuming they were properly registered.

(In regards to that last item --- and really all of them! --- I'd be pleased if someone could explain to me why it is that we do not have same-day voter registration at the polls in the country. At least in the majority of states.)

Perhaps running on recount-juju from their soon-to-be-recounted-Ohio efforts, the heroes (and real American patriots!) of the Green and Libertarian Parties are moving West!

As announced earlier today on Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb's website, the two parties have now filed for full recounts in both Nevada and New Mexico!

There has been some strange numbers in both of those states as well as the oft-reported anomalies in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere. So I'll try and do a better job of covering the oddities in NV and NM soon.

In the meantime, feel free to stop by and say thanks for the continuing heroic efforts with a Green Donation at their website, where --- for their current graphic alone --- they deserve a few bucks!

As I mentioned this morning when I beat up on Olbermann a bit, he had a very good report today on his blog about the latest goings on over the weekend in Ohio. He mentions a bit of the potential "news" that Jesse Jackson may or may not have made at a news conference in Columbus on Saturday when he mentioned that "John Kerry supports a full investigation...I talked with John Kerry last night, and he supports the investigation."

And a further nugget, one of several from the report, was this:

(Note to Mr. Olbermann: It's a blog you're now writing. So please be kind enough to link to the stories you cite so they can be easily and independently perused. Thank you.)

The number mentioned by Jackson above also reminded me of a piece of recent email I received from someone in Warren "Lock Down" County. Here's the relevant passage:

To verify the general 28% figure used above, here are the Warren County vote totals for 2000 and 2004 directly from the website of Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (who --- did I mention? --- was also completely coincidentally the Co-Chair of Ohio's Bush/Cheney Re-Election Committee):

2000 Bush: 48,318 Gore: 19,142
2004 Bush: 66,523 Kerry: 25,399

Yup, nothing to see here...Keep moving, New York Times and all the others...Much Christmas shopping to get done...

Perhaps the singular best expression against Post-Election Pussy-whip that I've seen since November 2nd. Please go read it. Especially if you're one of those namby-pamby, whining, hand-wringing, "oh, where did we go wrong" Democrats who have played into your opposition's abusive victimization culture.

I ain't playing that game (in case you haven't noticed) and neither should you. For any number of reasons as expressed on this blog over the last month.

Here's the closer, but I really recommend you read the whole thing:

Help stop the abuse. Stop playing the victim. If that's what you're doing. (Not that any true BRAD BLOG readers would ever fall into such a pathetic little trap of a mindset. Leave that to the pussies over at the DNC...and get back to work! We've got a democracy to save here dammit!)

"You can't be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series."
-- Jessie Jackson, Columbus, Ohio, 11/28/04.

First off (with apologies to Bill Maher)...NEW RULE: Media accounts referring to Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the man responsible for ensuring a fair election and accurate vote count in Ohio, must always be identified as well by his other job description --- Co-Chair of the Ohio Bush/Cheney '04 Re-Election Campaign.

Any story or writer that refers to the currently and appropriately besieged Mr. Blackwell at this point, without pointing out that not-trivial fact is being misleading in their coverage. I would include myself guilty as well at that and will endeavor to improve in the future.

That said, AP refreshingly updates its Ohio coverage today with an update on Jesse Jackson's rallies there over the weekend along with other late related items from the Buckeye State. That report, surprisingly enough, is being re-run by the bulk of the major media outlets! Good for them!

But look closer.

The same AP story is re-run under the headings "Challenges to Ohio ballots mount" in the version at CNN.com, "Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On" at The NY Times website, at MyWay.com, and at Yahoo. And finally, "Ohio Election Still Contested" at the Fox News website.

Guess which one of those sites alone decided to leaves out the critical final paragraphs that referred to Blackwell as Ohio's co-chair for Bush/Cheney!

All but the Fox News versions include these last four telling grafs:

Over at Fox News, however, their online reprint of the exact same AP story conveniently drops those final paragraphs from the story!

Clearly it wasn't a space issue. There are no other stories on the webpage, so an extra few paragraphs wouldn't have cost anything or have otherwise been a problem.

It was --- rather obviously, even for Fox --- an editorial issue from the continually Republican "Fair and Balanced" Fox News Network. How pathetic.

If you're interested in the substance of the story itself --- and I hope you are --- please click on one of the more reliable of the link options I've given you above.

UPDATE: The headline of CNN's posting of the AP story changed last night at some point from the "Challenges to Ohio ballots mount" that I previously noted, to "Activists continue to challenge Ohio ballots". You "activists" out there are welcome to make of that what you might.

UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: This is the 1000th BRAD BLOG item posted since starting up on Jan. 24, 2004. Not sure why that fact matters, but I thought I'd mention it. My fingers are not yet tired.

I'm happy to admit, along with everyone else on this particular beat these days, that we're all glad to see Keith Olbermann, currently the virtual-sole voice in the corporate media, willing to seriously follow the troubling stories of voting irregularities in Election 2004.

That said, while he's been doing a fine job of helping to keep the story out there, I believe he has largely screwed the proverbial pooch when it came to his blog story on Saturday in regards to the reporting of Wayne Madsen.

Madsen, "a self-styled investigative journalist", as self-styled investigative journalist Olbermann referred to him, has claimed in two different articles, so far, (Here, then with a few more specifics here) that there was an extensive and sophisticated vote rigging operation at play in Election '04.

The operation, Madsen alleges, was funded by Saudi and other overseas interests via a sophisticated web of Bush-friendly banks, trusts, holding companies and corporations. The starting point for all of this, he reports, is a $29.6 million check of which Madsen claimed to have been given a copy.

On the ground, the scheme is reported to have included the use of retired FBI agents posing as active FBI and/or Homeland Security Dept. agents in Ohio, Florida, Texas and California supplying false security/terror-related information to local election officials leading to "lock downs". These "lock downs" supposedly then allowed the "agents" and/or cyber technicians unfettered access to central tabulating computers where vote tallies could then be goosed to achieve the desired outcome. The goal in Ohio and Florida, of course, being to take the states for Bush and in Texas and California to prop up Bush's number to receive the popular majority that would supply the "broad national mandate" you have likely heard the Bush Administration wildly overstating at various times in the last four weeks or so.

Despite having been sent many notes about Madsen's articles over the last several days, I have yet to mention them on this blog at all until now. I've been attempting to get independent verification or confirmation for such stories before I add them to what I consider to be a rather solid body of evidence here indicating "electile dysfunction" of various possible magnitudes. In other words, I've been trying to confirm these stories as well as possible before reporting on them here, since so many have come to use this blog as a trusted reference source over the weeks since November 2nd.

Madsen's public reporting so far had, to my mind, contained a few too many vagaries as of yet to be added to the preponderance of evidence being compiled here. At least not until I was able to either get more specifics, or speak to him directly with some of my questions. That's precisely what I did yesterday in a thirty-minute or so phone call...