Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Various sources are reporting that a Halliburton subsidiary may take over the U.S. ports for Dubai Ports World.

ThinkProgress noted that AEI scholar Norm Ornstein mentioned the Halliburton possibility on last night's PBS Newshour. On Hardball, Richard Wolfe mentioned Halliburton.

In an article published by Time, Daren Fonda explains an existing business relationship between Halliburton and another UAE owned company that is providing services for U.S. Navy Ships.

Halliburton denies the rumors.

From today's St. Petersburg Times...

The flipping machines used in the Pinellas County, FL election were paperless touch-screens made by Sequoia Voting Systems --- the same paperless "Edge" touch-screen systems whose purchase and future use in New Mexico was recently banned in the state in light of a lawsuit where many voters complained of the same type of "vote flipping" on the machines during the 2004 Presidential Election.

Those are also the same machines which lost more than 12,000 votes in Bernalillo County, NM in 2002.

On the other hand, this is Florida, after all. So, as Pinellas County, FL Supervisor of Elections communications director, Nancy Whitlock says, there's nothing to worry about:

We feel much better now. It was just "a glitch."

(Hat tip John Gideon! See today's 'Daily Voting News' from John for much more, including fresh e-voting disasters in Texas and everywhere else!)

We hope to have much more on this tomorrow...but for now, this from the Star-Telegram today:

See this previous report for scores of additional e-voting problems reported yesterday, just after Texas' first Primary Election since adding loads of new electronic voting machines this year. (Keep an out for today's 'Daily Voting News' to be posted here shortly...where we expect there will be many more such reports.)

(Hat tip to BRAD BLOG perennial "Dredd" for the link!)

If you haven't read already what's happening down in Florida to Leon County's Election Supervisor/Hero Ion Sancho, see this article from yesterday.

On Tuesday, Fred Grimm of the Miami-Herald wrote a tremendous editorial in support of Sancho worth reading in it's entirety. It's slightly out of date, since it says that two of the three Voting Machine Companies certified to do business in Florida have refused to do business with Sancho (all three have now done so, as we reported yetserday). Nonetheless, Grimm offers tremendous support to the heroic Sancho. His editorial starts this way:

The piece goes on to outline a letter of support sent to Sancho from David Wagner, a University of California computer scientist on California's assessment team which confirmed Sancho's findings of hackable Diebold voting machines. (That report, amazingly, was actually used as a basis to certify Diebold in California anyway!)

Wagner says, "Our report found all of Ion Sancho's concerns were valid and, in fact, worse than anyone realized...This is incredible how he has been treated...He's the leader everyone else in the nation has been watching."

Grimm concludes by quoting Wagner this way:

The Florida Secretary of State, who has threatened [PDF] punishment of Sancho (and possible removal from office) if he doesn't do business with one of the three Voting Machine Companies certified to do business in Florida --- all three of whom have now refused to do business with him --- can be emailed with your opinions of their treatment of Sancho and their disregard for reliable, accurate and transparent elections at this web page.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

In preparation for a May 2 primary, election officials in Summit Co., OH began testing their new ES&S optical scan voting machines. The Akron Beacon Journal announced today that ES&S has isolated the problem to a memory card made by one of their contractors.

The article also reveals that the county is not doing the testing themselves.

Why would a county that has to conduct elections on their own equipment allow a consulting company hired by the Secretary of State, do the testing?

The article goes on to explain the memory card problem in more detail:

Unanswered questions abound. How many other ES&S customers have these bad memory cards? How many of these other customers will go into elections without knowing that their memory cards are bad? How many of the problems with ES&S machines in Texas on Tuesday are a result of bad memory cards? Does ES&S have any Quality Control at all?

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Tavis Smiley interviews former U.N. Inspector Scott Ritter who has a new book out titled "Iraq Confidential : The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Official Site, Amazon page).

Ritter puts together the evidence of an Iraq intelligence conspiracy by connecting the dots with known facts and media reports. The Administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are all implicated in falsifying intelligence for the purpose of creating regime change in Iraq.

Ritter alleges that the United States purposefully undermined the authority of the U.N. by voting for sanctions against Iraq that would be lifted when inspectors could verify that all weapons of mass destruction had been removed. Officials in the Bush #1 and Clinton administrations admitted that the sanctions would never be lifted regardless of the removal of Saddam's WMDs. The official policy of the United States was to impose permanent sanctions until Saddam was removed from power. The U.S. policy effectively undermined the credibility and authority of the U.N. Security Council.

Scott Ritter goes on to explain that Iraq under control of Saddam Hussein was never a direct threat to the security of the United States. All disputes could have been solved with focused diplomacy. Ritter says that no American lives needed to be lost over the fabricated threat that Iraq posed.

Ritter points out the Neo-conservative group that gained power under President Reagan as the primary driver of this conspiracy to manipulate the CIA and intelligence data about Iraq's WMD, undermine the United Nations, and the remove Saddam Hussein at all costs.

The Neocons are still in power and the conspiracy outlined by Scott Ritter continues to control U.S. foreign policy today.

Texas held their first round of Primary Elections last night since adding new electronic voting equipment to loads of counties around the state. It was one of the first Primary Elections to occur since the Help America Voting Act (HAVA) kicked in this year.

If today's 'Daily Voting News' by John Gideon is any indication, America is in for one hell of a mess this year. Take a look at just a few of the headlines from just the Texas section of today's DVN...and keep in mind that usually the real problems held in 'E-Lections' don't even begin to surface until some time after Election Day...

We have a feeling it's gonna be a very long year...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Abu Dhabi TV which is located in The United Arab Emirates broadcasts this report on prisoner abuse by "Iraqis and Americans" in Iraq.

Amnesty International found crimes so severe that they are considered "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." They also found that American forces have detained 14,000 Iraqis.

Iraqis that have been released are almost never given an explanation for their detention or compensation. In the video, one Iraq can seen being released decrying his imprisonment as "terrorism! terrorism! terrorism!"

Today, the United States Department of State released a report claiming human rights violations by The United Arab Emirates and the Iraqi Police. The report even hinted at abuses by the U.S.

Ion Sancho is fighting back.

Sancho, the Election Supervisor of Leon County, Florida who exposed a number of security flaws in Electronic Voting Machines made by the Diebold corporation of North Canton, Ohio, today launched legal "breach of contract" proceedings against the company. The action has been filed on behalf of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections office.

In a conversation moments ago with Sancho, he confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that "we filed a breach action this morning, pursuant to a contract which notifies Diebold we are pursuing all available options."

The breach concerns Diebold's refusal to deliver their latest operating system for the optical scan voting systems which had previously been used in Leon County --- until Sancho discovered an alarming security flaw in the system at the end of last year.

"According to our contract with Diebold," Sancho explained, "we have to give them 30 days notice. And so we are requiring them to answer by March 21, as to how they intend to repair the breach."

The only two other Voting Machine Vendors, ES&S and Sequoia Voting Systems, have now officially refused to do business with Leon County and Sancho in the wake of a series of security evaluations held last year in the county on actual Diebold equipment. With the state threatening Sancho with legal action themselves if he is not able to implement a voting system which requires with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), Sancho had been forced to attempt to do business again with Diebold.

The most infamous of the security evaluations held last year by Sancho was a "hack test" in December of Diebold's optical scan voting system. That mock election test revealed that election results could be completely flipped on Diebold's optical-scan system without a trace of the hack being left behind.

With all three companyies now refusing to do business with him, and pressure being applied from Diebold as well as state and local officials to do "do something about Sancho" - he now finds himself with no other choice but to fight back against Diebold, and face this "titanic clash" head on...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The Bush Administration has ordered investigations into who blew the whistle leaked information about NSA domestic spying and information about secret CIA prisons.

Employees of the CIA and other agencies have been questioned and forced to undergo polygraph testing. The Justice Department has warned that journalists may also be prosecuted under Federal espionage laws.

This video is a segment from Monday's MSNBC Countdown. Craig Crawford discusses the chilling effect this attack has on the ability to report information about the government. In effect, we are quickly getting to the point where only official information released by the government can be reported by the media.

You may also want to take a look at this video at C&L where David Gergen rails against the Bush Admin. for being worse than Nixon about secrecy and the press.

Meant to post this yesterday...From Reuters...

A bit alarmist, perhaps, for our personal taste (though we've misunderstimated the amount of needed "alarm" in the past), Chris Floyd covers the state of American Democracy and the Rise of the Machines in Russia's Moscow Times.

Chris, of Empire Burlesque, who has popped up from time to time as a friendly BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger, covers some of our Diebold/California coverage in his article. So we have no complaints. And couldn't be prouder.

If only American Media would cover the fall of American Democracy as closely as the Moscow Times does. Remember what the Wingnuts like to say: The world is watching.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Senator Pat Roberts convinced Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee to vote to kill an investigation into the NSA domestic spying scandal. Instead of an investigation, Republican Senators Hagel, Snow and Dewine agreed to create a new subcommittee that would oversee future domestic spying by the NSA.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller said that "this is an unprecedented bow to political pressure from the White House."

Today, Tom DeLay faces his first primary battle for re-election down in Texas since being indicted on money-laundering and conspiracy charges.

Tonight, he'll be back in D.C. at a fundraiser held by lobbyists. Smartly done.

Over the weekend, an ES&S IVotronic touch-screen voting machine was stolen from the house of an election judge. That, despite the water-tight security that American Election Officials are known for across the globe. (Just ask Linda Lamone in Maryland.)

To be clear, however, all four of the counties in DeLay's 22nd congressional district, use Hart-Intercivic machines and not ES&S machines. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that we can't help but think about Tom DeLay, Elections, Voting Machines and Theft all at the same time. Oh, well.

They were abruptly removed from the air last week, and replaced with yet another Christian radio station.

This week, Air America Phoenix is fighting back to rise from the ashes, perhaps as soon as April if you can help with money and/or noise.