Here's a welcome announcement from C-SPAN:

I was wondering if the 11:00 pm meant Eastern time, or what it did mean, and just as I was doing that, ka-blam: new email:

So now you know more than I do, and we're not even halfway through.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I have been so busy (doing nothing) that I didn't even notice how long --- and how far down the page --- the most recent open thread is. Ah, life!

Fortunately, Agent 99 sent me a gentle reminder that it's about time for a new one --- and a great pic to get us started.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

UPDATE: We have a live update from the courthouse. You can see it at the bottom of this post

We haven't been covering the CA50 Election Mess as often as in the recent past --- while Brad's been on the road and otherwise occupied --- but we have been keeping our ears to the ground, so to speak. (Yes, they get dirty, but so what? We can hear things coming before they happen. It's cool; you should try it.)

My friends, we have been hearing distant rumblings of great power. To get you up to speed quickly...

The CA50 U.S. House special election between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray was held on June 6, on illegal Diebold voting machines as has been reported here many times. (Click here for a good recent summary of the situation.) On June 13, Bilbray was quickly sworn in to the House of Representatives while thousands of votes were still being counted back in San Diego. (This surprised and angered many voters, especially since a poll taken three weeks before the election showed Busby ahead by 7%.) On June 29, the election was finally certified --- in favor of Bilbray --- by the Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas.

The election was contested on July 29 after Haas refused to allow for a hand count of the ballots, as allowed by California state law. And on August 22, defendants filed a brief in the case to dismiss, stating that because Bilbray has already been sworn in (by the Republican House of Representatives,) the California Court has no jurisdiction whatsoever and the House has exclusive jurisdiction to judge who its members are and the qualifications of those members.

According to an email sent to The BRAD BLOG this evening from attorney Paul Lehto...

So there you have it. This is the stick with which Paul Lehto is trying to beat a corrupted electoral machine back into shape.

Here's Lehto's brief responding to the absurd position [PDF] taken by the defendants in this case.

The judge is set to give his decision on the jurisdictional matter Friday, determining whether or not the case will be tossed out based on the argument of the defendants. The court hearing on this matter begins at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time in San Diego.

UPDATE... Michael Collins at Scoop has more. And now, so do we --- below the fold...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Unconfirmed reports suggest that one Brad Friedman, the partially well-known investigative blogger, staunch Election Integrity advocate and all-around good-guy, (also allegedly "proprietor" of this very blog), may have met with "representatives of several prominent organizations" at a series of events "sponsored" by the DNC in Chicago last weekend.

We have additional "photographic evidence" of these alleged meetings: four photos which, according to usually reliable sources, were made by Friedman's putative girlfriend, Desi Doyen.

The "authenticity" of these photos has not yet been verified, and it may never be. The "chain of custody" appears to have been broken, several "security mitigation procedures" appear to have been ignored, and the "security seals" on three of the four photos appear to show signs of possible tampering. But we will post them below, since they may be of interest to the usual gaggle of conspiracy theorists who have nothing else to work on at this time.

You can click on the small photos below to see larger images.

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

An enormous investigation continues in Great Britain, where eight people were charged with conspiracy to murder on Monday and lesser charges were laid against three others. All eleven of the suspects who were charged Monday appeared in court on Tuesday.

From Monday's account in the Mirror: 11 Charged Over Airline Bomb Plot, police described the alleged evidence as follows (with my emphasis):

As for the charges...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Thus writes Michael Collins in his most recent article, a masterful presentation of the study and its results.

The graphic you see at the top right corner of this post shows how overwhelmingly Americans insist on seeing how their votes are counted; click on it to see a full-sized version. Respondents were asked to choose one of the following:

A: Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes.

B: Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain information about how elections officials count votes.

The blue area represents respondents who chose option "A", the red represents those who chose "B", and the grey area represents those who were not sure. As you can easily see, the blue position was extremely popular for the survey overall. Below we have extensive charts and numerous graphs which show beyond any reasonable doubt that the blue position was extremely popular for every segment of the survey group!

But first things first; here's Michael Collins:

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Your cold and humble blogger presents an assortment of clips from the war in Lebanon --- and on the home front --- since last weekend.

(And NO, I don't expect you to remember this, because some of it happened before they arrested what's-his-name? ... you know ... the guy who claims he ... um ... well ... you know what I mean, don't you?)

Saturday, August 12, 2006

BBC: Bush links Hezbollah and 'plot'

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Still breathless after my appearance on the Peter B. Collins show
I might not be able to write much over the next day or two
The most recent open thread is a few days old
And it's not getting any younger
So ... here you go:

It's Open Thread Blogging At Its Best

Down By The BRAD BLOG
Down by the sea
On the green and yellow blog, baby
That's where I'll be ...

Oops! I almost forgot: I've got something musical for you to read. It's from the New York Times and the headline is kind of preposterous, but it's worth reading anyway. You can find it here ... or if that doesn't work, click here.

PS: I've got one more cold photo for you, here.

Guest bloged by Winter Patriot

If you've never heard a nearly frozen voice coming out of your radio --- or better yet, coming out of a series of tubes --- your chance is coming soon.

Your humble and very cold blogger will be speaking with Peter B. Collins this afternoon, beginning at 5pm Pacific time (that's 8 Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain, and so on). I'll be filling in for Brad (who usually visits with Peter on Friday afternoons) and talking about "the thwarted alleged British-Pakistani simultaneous airline bombing plot".

I've written four articles for The BRAD BLOG about this alleged plot since last Thursday; here are the links in case you missed them the first time:

If you're in (or near) Monterey, Sacramento, Eureka or Phoenix, you can listen via broadcast radio. Otherwise you'll have to tune in to a streaming "tube-cast". Either way, click here for more details.

Peter's shows are archived, so if you can't catch us live you will be able to do so later. I'll keep you posted on that. But if you can join us live, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 888-5PeterB ... that's 888-573-8372. And have a good question ready!

UPDATE: An audio record of my talk with Peter is now available online. In consideration of those readers with slow connections, I've broken the segment up into three files. Each is about 6 megabytes and plays for about 6 minutes. I hope you'll be able to download them without difficulty; I'll check the comments thread in case anyone has trouble.

Here you go:

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Regular BRAD BLOG readers will remember reading about Election Science Institute (ESI) and the report they prepared on the May 2 primary in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) County, because John Gideon blogged about it on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, at the Columbus Dispatch, Public Affairs reporter Mark Niquette and Senior editor Joe Hallett wrote about it too: Cleveland study questions accuracy of Diebold voting machines.

We have a few excerpts below the fold. We also have another piece, written by Mr. Niquette, which appeared on the front page of the Dispatch on Thursday, and in which the Dispatch asked for comments from readers.

I think Mr. Niquette and Mr. Hallett and their colleagues should hear from 6 or 7 green-and-yellow bloggers.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I did quite a bit of reading yesterday (British time) and I want to share some of the highlights (and lowlights) with you.

On the British news scene, everyone seemed to have new and different revelations, all from unnamed sources, and all presented in a manner which (if you'll pardon my French) exuded an aroma reminiscent of a seafood market.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Jill Lawrence, writing in USA TODAY, looks at some hotly-contested races for positions that were once largely ignored: Top vote counter becomes prize job...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Today (Thursday), in Detroit, a federal judge ruled that the illegal covert spying program put in place by the Bush administration is unconstitutional and ordered the administration to stop it immediately. But the administration has given every possible indication of its unwillingness to comply.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The next Ned Lamont is just across the Connecticut border in Massachusetts, where voting rights leader John Bonifaz is similarly taking on the Democratic Party establishment in his grassroots campaign for Secretary of State. Bonifaz, a Democrat who sued George Bush on the eve of the Iraq war on behalf of soldiers, families of soldiers and members of Congress trying to prevent the illegal invasion, squares off against the incumbent, Bill Galvin, on September 19.

But the Lamont connection runs even deeper. Bill Hillsman, the media guru who produced the winning ads for Lamont and Paul Wellstone, is eager to jump into the race on the Bonifaz campaign, which could be the final ingredient that puts John over the top. What John needs now is the financial support to make the Hillsman addition a reality --- and if he can raise $25,000 by August 23, it will happen.

Meeting this goal would lead to Hillsman joining the campaign through the primary and the production of ads that would be used on the air, on the web and as tools for further fundraising success. Please go to John’s web site today to help make this winning combination possible. Your contribution is vital. We must support Democrats who stand up against entrenched interests and stand up for our rights as voters.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I wasn't surprised to see the New York Times banging the terror drums again today. It seems to have become a specialty of the house. My attention was particularly drawn to piece in today's NYT by Eric Pfanner of the Iternational Herald Tribune, which bears this headline: Europe Seeks to Unify Airport Security Rules.

I noticed that headline immediately, because I have good reason to believe it may be misleading...

Nowhere in the article --- or anywhere else that I know of --- is there any indication that "Europe" "seeks" to unify airport security rules. Instead, the article describes what regular readers of The BRAD BLOG --- or of my own nearly frozen blog --- have come to expect: that Britain, represented here by Home Secretary John Reid, is trying to force the rest of Europe to follow it down the garden path that starts with phony terror and leads to totalitarianism.

Based on what we've seen so far, we have no reason to believe John Reid and every reason to be suspicious.