I'll be appearing tonight (Friday) for a Q&A following the 7:20 showing of Dorothy Fadiman's new documentary Stealing America: Vote-by-Vote, at the Laemmle's Music Hall in Beverly Hills where the film will be playing for through the 21st (see the website linked above for where and when else it's playing around both CA and the rest of the country). I'll also be sticking around to introduce the 9:50pm showing.

LA Times had this to say in the lede graf of their review today:

And from an earlier capsure review, posted by the Times earlier this month (a reprint from NY's Newsday), the wrote:

Sounds good to me! If you're in the 'hood, please come on by tonight and say hello! [DISCLOSURE: I'm in the film itself, though only briefly. So don't let that keep you from checking it out!]

Eric Shawn, on behalf of Fox "News," on behalf of the RNC, continued their disingenuous and misleading "voter fraud" series over the weekend. As usual, they highlight phony fears of Democratic "voter fraud," naturally, while noting that there are "increasing cases" at what "some consider an alarming rate."

Again, and predictably, they recycle the same old, previously debunked ACORN bullshit in the latest segment. Prepare to hear more of the same, always mentioning ACORN by name, non-stop between here and November.

Trouble is, there are a few important points that Fox seems to forget to note when they join the Republicans in their misleading swiftboat campaign against ACORN. And then there's that one, rather notorious case of voter fraud felony that, for some odd reason, they seem unwilling to discuss in their continuing "investigative reports"...

[Update 8/15/08 5:05pm PT: The offending death threats discussed below, though not all of them, have now been removed by Townhall.com, and the writer's Townhall blog has had all comments scrubbed as well. So O'Reilly should therefore know about it all now, and can report on it next time Townhall's Amanda Carpenter joins him to dishonestly bash "far-left" blogs. Our cached version of the webpage still shows the offending more-than-month-old comments, as does the graphic at the bottom of this article.]

On Wednesday night, Fox "News'" Bill O'Reilly continued his dishonest and deceptive attacks on websites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, which he misleadingly describes as "hate sites" featuring "vicious far-left attacks" as based on selective reader comments he's discovered posted on those sites.

In the latest of his continuing segments with "Internet Cop" Amanda Carpenter, of the rightwing website Townhall.com, O'Reilly pointed to a number of objectionable comments at the two sites, from "far-left kooks," before tepidly lauding both HuffPo and Daily Kos for having removed some of them, presumably after they were brought to the attention of site moderators.

"Where is that rocket propelled grenade launcher when you need one," O'Reilly displayed on a chyron, and then "Let's hope the dissidents aim is good!" Both of the quotes are purported to be from a "Blog Posting" at HuffPo, according to the Fox "News" graphic, posted in regard to a group of Iraq War Veterans who support the war effort.

Failing to note any distinction between actual articles posted by contributors to the two sites versus comments from anonymous and pseudonymous users, O'Reilly accuses "bloggers" at the two sites of posting "despicable" material, even though it's unknown whether the commenters in question are actually rightwing posters, or even O'Reilly supporters, writing under a pseudonym. The entire segment is posted at left, as recorded yesterday by The BRAD BLOG's Alan Breslauer.

"These people are out of control and that's where they live," O'Reilly notes indignantly before tossing it to Townhall's Carpenter for comment.

"It's a good step that they are moderating the comments section more, and we've applauded that," Carpenter says in reply, before noting the "deeper issue...of posting blogs" critical of the Iraq vet group, which is reportedly going back to the war-zone to report on the country's status following George W. Bush's "troop surge."

But O'Reilly and Carpenter clearly have been protesting a bit too much, as it turns out Carpenter's own website is guilty of the same --- and even far worse --- "vicious" attacks, and potentially even illegal ones, including death threats issued against Barack Obama and "traitorous liberals."

Despite the mock outrage of the Fox rightwingers, The BRAD BLOG has been pointed, by a reader, to a number of out-and-out (and repeated) death threats issued by "bloggers" at Carpenter's own Townhall site.

The multiple threatening comments are posted on the Townhall blog of rightwing radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, and include death threats against the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama. They were posted on July 10th of this year at Townhall and, as of this posting on August 14th, still remain on the popular rightwing website which requires registration before commenters are allowed to post...

In one of the smartest pieces we've ever seen on his show, tying so many of the Bush Administration's unprecedented crimes together in a single bound, Stephen Colbert offers an out for all them, in one fell swoop. His comments come on the heels of the remarkable statement, made by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to the American Bar Association in a speech this week, that "not...every violation of the law, is a crime."

Yes, that's what he actually said. Here's what Colbert said in reply last night...

UPDATE: If you have any problem viewing the above video, RAW STORY now has it up in a different video format, along with a few additional details, as well.

I'll be jumping in again today (Wed.) to host KPFK/Pacifica's "Special Election Year Coverage" hour from 2p-3p PT (5p-6p ET).

My guests will be...

• PHIL LINDSEY of ShowMeTheVote.org to discuss the latest in the case of his arrest while trying to vote last week during Missouri's state primary, and
• DEAN LOGAN, L.A. County's Registrar of Voters, to discuss concerns about the polls here in November, as well as what happened to cause my own votes to be flipped by the voting system during last June's state primary election.

KPFK is heard at 90.7FM in Los Angeles and 98.7FM in Santa Barbara and streams live on the net at KPFK.org. Please tune in, stream in, and call-in at 818-985-5735, if you like.

Post-Show Update: Thanks to both Phil Lindsey and Dean Logan for joining me today. It was a very good and informative hour, if I say so myself. So informative, in fact, that someone called in to complain after the show that I wasn't tough enough on Logan. Okay. You can decide for yourself if I was, or wasn't, or if he even deserved it this time out. The archive follows. I appreciate that he showed up and took questions. We've got to work with election officials, folks. Period. Even as we hold feet to the fire.

(Appx. 1 hour) MP3 Download or listen online here...

Apropos of our article on Friday describing the "Rovian dirty tricks" that FL-24 Congressional candidate, Clint Curtis, alleges his primary opponent, former State Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, has been using to mislead local voters an article in today's DeLand-Deltona Beacon highlights again Curtis' criticism of his opponent as no more than a Democrat In Name Only (DINO).

"Running as a Democrat." A telling phrase, that.

While Kosmas claims to be against the war, it turns out she co-sponsored a resolution, adopted on March 21, 2003, while in the Florida legislature that pledged "support of President Bush in his stand against Saddam Hussein".

Unfortunately, Kosmas isn't the only hand-picked Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) candidate being put up this year almost solely on the basis of the DCCC's short-sighted conjecture that they can win in a previously "red" district because the candidate either has lots of their own money, or is damned-near a Republican.

Curtis, the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)-endorsed candidate, has been courageously opposing head-on the hopelessly corrupt Republican incumbent Tom Feeney for years. (See this clip from Uncounted to get an idea, or this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage page.) Yet, he's been fighting an uphill battle trying to raise money to defeat the DCCC's candidate, the wealthy real estate developer, Kosmas, ever since he told them he'd vote with his constituents who put him in office, rather than as per the directives of Nancy Pelosi.

Yesterday, our buddy Howie Klein - who knows more about on-the-ground politics and the real positions of Congressional candidates than anyone we know --- decimated the DCCC for their drive to put "Democrats" in office, at any cost. The "Stalinist" effort, as he describes it, to put such candidates as Kosmas in office (whether or not they end up voting with Republicans more often than Democrats!) has been the basis of the DCCC's "Red to Blue" program launched under the previous DCCC chair Rep. Rahm Emanuel and still in play under its new chair, Chris Van Hollen....

Congratulations to filmmaker David Earnhardt and crew! See below for the press release, just out today from Starz, announcing that his seminal election integrity documentary, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, will be premiering on several of the pay cable net's outlets beginning on August 28th.

"Think your vote counts? Think again," the announcement trumpets, before describing the film as "A searing indictment of the election process as it affected both the 2004 and 2006 Elections...And could affect the outcome of the 2008 Election."

The beautifully structured film will screen multiple times on both Starz Edge and Starz Cinema from August through early October (see currently scheduled showings here).

No Starz? No Problem!...

We, of course, have been singing Uncounted's praises for quite some time here at The BRAD BLOG --- even though we're prominently featured in it, we highly recommend it nonetheless --- and we'll take this opportunity to again remind readers that Earnhardt has been kind enough to offer hand-signed DVD versions of the film available as a premium here only for our readers.

So if you'd like your very own collectors' edition of Uncounted (and we think you'll want to share it with alot of folks once you see it!) we'll get one out to you right away in exchange for a contribution to The BRAD BLOG of $50 or more. You can check out a teaser, and clips from the film, at the official Uncounted website.

(Snail mail donations are also welcome; see the blue box on the right of every page here for our address. For other related premium offers, helpful in keeping our work going, please see this page. As always, your support is greatly appreciated and much needed! It will also help us with gas money to get out to the Democratic Convention next, where we're sure the Dems will just be delighted to see us, after having refused us press credentials. But, of course, we've got a Plan B. Wish us luck! And thanks in advance for any help you can offer!)

The complete news release, announcing Uncounted's premiere on the Starz network, follows below...

Just in from Conyers' office...

For Immediate Release: Monday, August 11, 2008

Conyers Announces Review of Allegations of Bush Administration's Forged Iraq Intelligence

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) today announced plans to review allegations that senior Bush Administration officials ordered the forgery and dissemination of false intelligence documents as reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ron Suskind, in his new book, "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism."

"Mr. Suskind reports that the Bush Administration, in its pursuit of war, created and promoted forged documents about Iraq," said Conyers. "I am particularly troubled that the decision to disseminate this fabricated intelligence is alleged to have come from the highest reaches of the administration. The administration's attempt to challenge Mr. Suskind's reporting appears to have been effectively dismissed by the publication of the author's interview recordings and transcripts. I have instructed my staff to conduct a careful review of Mr. Suskind's allegations and the role played by senior administration officials in this matter."

A number of issues raised in Mr. Suskind's book to be reviewed include:

• The origin of the allegedly forged document that formed the basis for Bush's 2003 State of the Union assertion that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger;
• The role of this document in creating the false impression that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had a working relationship with Iraq;
• The relationship between this document and other reported examples of the Bush Administration considering other deceptive schemes to justify or provoke war with Iraq, such as the reported consideration of painting a U.S. aircraft with UN colors in order to provoke Iraq into military confrontation;
• Allegations that the Bush Administration deliberately ignored information from Iraq's chief intelligence officer that Iraq possessed no WMDs;
• The payment of $5 million to Iraq's chief intelligence officer and his secret settlement in Jordan, beyond the reach of investigators;
• The September 2007 detainment and interrogation of Mr. Suskind's research assistant, Greg Jackson, by federal agents in Manhattan. Jackson's notes were also confiscated.

##110-JUD-081108##

Having made all too precious-little headway in overcoming the failures of the U.S. corporate mainstream media --- see these comments from over the weekend on that point --- I guess I need to "go overseas" to see if we can make any headway from over there instead.

I'm now honored to be contributing to the UK's Guardian from time to time. My first column, posted today, picks up on the anthrax case, and the dismal, one-sided case made for the guilt of the now-deceased Bruce Ivins, by both the FBI and the mainstream corporate media outlets in this country, which were all too happy to pass on misleading report after misleading report from those prolific "unnamed government sources."

As with Iraq WMD, Valerie Plame, Torture, Secret Prisons, Spying on Citizens, the U.S. Attorney Purge, Election Integrity, and so many other almost-all-but-lost landmark issues from over the past seven years or so, it has been the remarkable efforts of the citizen media that managed, at least a bit, to mitigate the corporate media-propelled "conventional wisdom" in this entire sorry matter.

Please feel free to put in a good word over there for me.

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If you're not already signed up for those services, it takes two seconds for each of them, and then you can remain logged on, so you never have to log back in. Thanks for taking that extra coupla seconds! It matters! And helps the issues we cover --- frequently covered nowhere else --- get seen by a huge new set of eyeballs!

The corporate media still just don't get it. The topic came up at the end of an interesting discussion on Salon Radio Friday between Salon's Glenn Greenwald and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen.

At the end of their conversation about ABC News' appalling inability to either retract their false 2001 stories tying the anthrax attacks to Iraq (at a very crucial moment, during this country's build-up to war there), Rosen, who picked up on Greenwald's call for accountability there, notes the media's reluctance, particularly the networks', but all of them, to examine their horrible performance prior to the war, and in the subsequent seven years since.

Those failures, the corporate media seem to argue, are all "ancient history" now.

"Because in the minds of most of the people who work in big league journalism in New York and Washington," Rosen explains, "they have done this to death. And they're way past the point of examining their own performance in the run-up to the war."

"From my point of view," he adds, "they haven't even started."

"The watchdog press died under Bush," Rosen charges. "We may have a watchdog press again some day, it could be reborn. But it died."

As you may expect, we concur with that assessment. Yet, as bad as things are right now, had it not been for the citizen media of the blogosphere, including folks like Greenwald, we shudder to think how much worse it all might have been. And that's saying quite a bit.

"It's like we're on the other side of the Moon from them on this particular issue," Rosen concludes in regard to his big media colleagues, in a phrase reminiscent of thoughts we've had so often over the last many years. Which of us is/was living on the dark side of that Moon?

The answer seems pretty clear these days, and that's the point at which we pick up their discussion below. It's just the last couple of grafs, but they are well-worth the quick read...

A mother of a late Friday disclosure. From the Times tonight, in an unbylined story, for tomorrow's papers...

Remember two weeks ago when Nancy Pelosi said, on ABC's The View: "I thought that Impeachment would be divisive...If someone had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story"?

I do. Hey Nancy, ITMFA!

UPDATE 8/10/08, 12:30pm PT: Pelosi admits not even having read the Articles of Impeachment filed against George W. Bush

What a disgrace. And once again, it's a citizen who tries to do the media's job for them, by asking her about those Articles, as filed by Kucinich, against Bush.

"I didn't read it yet!," the Democratic House Speaker tells the citizen when he hands her a copy of the Articles, as submitted into the Congressional record, and voted by the full House to be deferred to the Judiciary Committee.

She didn't even read them?! And yet she has the temerity to go on national television, on ABC, to say that she's unaware of any crimes he's committed and that Impeachment shouldn't be done "unless you have the goods that this President committed a crime"?! Amazing. Here's the video...

(h/t AfterDowningStreet.org)

[UPDATED: Florida Democratic Party responds to this report. See bottom of article for details.]

A Democratic candidate running in a contested primary for the U.S. House seat representing Florida's 24th Congressional District has filed an official complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), alleging that his opponent has been making illegal and deceptive campaign calls from within the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) offices, on party phone lines.

In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG blasting his opponent, Clint Curtis described the tactics being used by the Suzanne Kosmas campaign as "the worst example of Rovian dirty tricks."

Curtis, a Florida computer programmer turned well-known vote-rigging/anti-corruption whistleblower (see BRAD BLOG's years-long coverage of Curtis here) has filed a complaint charging that paid campaign staffers for his opponent in the August 26th Democratic Primary, former state Rep. Kosmas, "have been contacting Democratic primary election voters and fraudulently identifying themselves as calling on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party," according to the campaign's press release.

"The callers then go on to solicit votes for Kosmas in the Aug. 26 Democratic primary," the Curtis camp alleges.

The press release is posted in full at the end of this article, with a link to download the complete FEC complaint. Also at the end of the article is the full text of an email sent to Curtis and campaign manager Jerry Halberg, from a Curtis campaign staffer who also serves as a local Florida precinct captain. The precinct captain claims to have received one of the deceptive phone calls.

The email notes that the Caller ID recorded showed the call as having come from "KOSMAS FOR CONG" with the phone number 407-365-7808. A call made by The BRAD BLOG to that number this afternoon, was answered by someone identifying the number as belonging to "The Campaign for Florida of the Florida Democratic Party."

The Curtis campaign press release, issued yesterday, details the main points of Curtis' complaint to the FEC:

"The unlawful calls continued even after the Kosmas campaign was notified of the problem," the release continues, with Curtis adding, "Her campaign was given the opportunity to rectify the violations prior to the submission of FEC charges but apparently chose not to."

The Curtis campaign says photos taken of the Democratic Party offices in Oviedo reveal how the evidence of FDP support for Kosmas was "scrubbed" after they complained. Photos said to have been taken on July 31, before Curtis complained to both the FDP and the Kosmas camp, show campaign signs for Kosmas plastered throughout the local Democratic Party facility. After the initial complaints on Aug 3rd, as the following photos purport to show, the signs were removed...

This story is unfrickin'-believable. Or maybe it isn't. It took place in Thor Hearne country, after all. And though she didn't get arrested and thrown in jail, a similar incident happened to the Missouri Secretary of State during the 2006 election.

A voter in Kansas City on Tuesday --- one I happen to know, because he's an Election Integrity advocate in the Show Me State --- was arrested and sent to jail after he refused to show a driver's license at the polling place before attempting to vote during the state's Primary Election.

The voter is Phil Lindsey of ShowMeTheVote.org and he posted the details of his harrowing tale over at DemocraticUnderground.com, where he posts as "galloglas," after being released on Tuesday night.

He told me, via email late last night, that he's been in close touch with MO Secretary of State Robin Carnahan following the incident, and that both local media and folks such as nationally syndicated radio host Thom Hartmann have been in touch with him since the story broke last night. He was surprised, but pleased, that the incident has received so much coverage already. [UPDATE: Local Fox affiliate now covering here, for example.]

Never mind that requiring a voter to show a driver's license in MO before he or she can vote was found unconstitutional in 2006. Never mind that he showed the pollworkers a perfectly legal and proper precinct-issued voter ID card when he went to vote. Never mind that he had even called to check with the local Board of Elections before going to vote, to make sure that the ID would be acceptable. Never mind that he even brought a copy of the MO law to show the pollworkers who had demanded a driver's license (much as they had done, illegally, in a previous election he'd voted in).

The cops were called, and he ended up going to jail anyway. The charge on the citation: "Did knowingly cause a disturbance/disorderly conduct to wit: acts in a violent or tumultuous manner toward another, placing such person(s) in fear of safety by refusing to show proper I. D. when voting"...

Unfortunately, I've been gone all day today, with appointments beginning at the crack of ridiculous, and now, going on about 3 hours of sleep, I'm on deadline for an article elsewhere at the moment. So I'm way behind in reviewing the summary of claims released by the FBI today in the Bruce Ivins anthrax case. They say he's the one, and he acted alone, in the largely circumstantial case put forward today.

For the moment then, I'll simply refer you, without comment, to the NYTimes' initial coverage today, which I was able to check while on the roll.

Likely of much more value are both the actual released documents themselves, and (undoubtedly more valuable still) expert Glenn Greenwald's early, cursory review of their "selective release" in which he does have a comment or two about the NYTimes' report. Beyond that, his caveat, as he began looking through the case today, seems worth sharing:

Beyond that, as always, I've got an open mind and will share any thoughts --- either way --- that I may have on things, as determined to be of note. Your comments on the information released today, especially since you guys may be way ahead of me, are always welcome.

UPDATE: This NPR article, as recommended in a late update by Greenwald, is very well done, as it offers replies from Ivins' attorney Paul Kemp, offering rebuttal to the main points in the one-sided case put forward today by the FBI.