Mark Crispin Miller, author of the new book FOOLED AGAIN, which makes the case that Election 2004 was stolen, and so will be the 2008 Election unless something is done --- and quick! --- responds in a letter to the editor to critical coverage by both Slate's Farhad Manjoo and Mother Jones' Mark Hertzgaard.

Manjoo has written numerous articles for Slate pooh-poohing the theory that anything went particularly wrong in the 2004 Presidential Election and recently wrote a critical review of Miller's new book. In his foolish review of Miller, Manjoo embarrasses himself by suggesting that he --- and the rest of the media --- would bother to give a damn about the mountain of demonstrable problems in our democracy if only John Kerry or the mainstream Democrats bothered to complain about it. He thus sets aside any responsibility that he might have as has a watchdog for our democracy...unless instructed to do so by some politician or another. Shameful.

In Hertzgaard's long feature article at MoJo, he claims to have done "some reporting of [his] own" to look into the claims made by Miller and others who have been investigating the mountain of problems from last November. And yet, the work Hertzgaard turns in --- while it looks and reads a whole lot like reporting --- contained damned little of it. What it did contain was little more than half-baked. His recurring tactic in "reporting" on each of the "irregularities" he chooses to examine can be summed up this way: "Folks who challenge the election claim this, but those who disagree say that, therefore, that proves there's nothing here to worry about, folks!" It's really ludicrous and atrocious, --- as many astute MoJo letter writers point out --- and just one of the reasons I haven't bothered to highlight his article until now.

We won't comment on Miller's book itself, since we've yet to read more than just the excerpts from FOOLED AGAIN as published recently in Harper's. But we did read the two articles by Manjoo and Hertzgaard and came away less than impressed as you can tell. Most disappointingly so in MoJo since we like them, and indeed have an article upcoming ourselves in their January '06 issue.

Miller's money quotes from his full letter:

The Marine Corps Reserve Colonel whom freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH) claimed she was quoting last week when she delivered his "message" on the floor of the U.S. House that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do" has disavowed that statement and denies having made it to Schmidt.

The comment was directed to 37-year Marine colonel and combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). says she got his comments wrong.

Schmidt's comment on the floor of the House has caused a firestorm of debate since they were uttered, forcing the recently-elected Congresswoman to apologize and retract them shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, Schmidt has a long working relationship with Bubp. Schmidt has worked alongside him advocating for far-Rightwing and Fundamentalist Christian causes together over the years as reported by Max Blumenthal.

Cincinnati Enquirer has more on the fallout in wake of Schmidt's comments pointing to some of her statements, during her swearing in just a few months ago, that she would never do such a thing...She must have just been kidding.

And one more point on the shameful Schmidt --- a report from BluegrassReoprt.org [linked fixed] yesterday suggests that "Mean Jean" may also be flaunting a few laws and House rules on her own website.

We're shocked...shocked...to see such behavior by a Republican...from Ohio.

Firedoglake has more on the pride of Clermont County...

UPDATE: Chickenhaw Rush Limbaugh calls Murtha a "useful idiot" and questions his "hawk" credentials. Media Matters has the deets and the audio.

LATE UPDATE: Josh Marshall has more on Schmidt who is now, apparently, playing the victim card! Not kidding. Amongst "the attacks from the Left" that she claims to be getting, she also says, "There's no way that I remotely tried to impugn his character." heheh...

The Marine Corps Reserve Colonel whom freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH) claimed she was quoting last week when she delivered his "message" on the floor of the U.S. House that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do" has disavowed that statement and denies having made it to Schmidt.

The comment was directed to 37-year Marine colonel and combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). says she got his comments wrong.

Schmidt's comment on the floor of the House has caused a firestorm of debate since they were uttered, forcing the recently-elected Congresswoman to apologize and retract them shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, Schmidt has a long working relationship with Bubp. Schmidt has worked alongside him advocating for far-Rightwing and Fundamentalist Christian causes together over the years as reported by Max Blumenthal.

Cincinnati Enquirer has more on the fallout in wake of Schmidt's comments pointing to some of her statements, during her swearing in just a few months ago, that she would never do such a thing...She must have just been kidding.

And one more point on the shameful Schmidt --- a report from BluegrassReoprt.org yesterday suggests that "Mean Jean" may also be flaunting a few laws and House rules on her own website.

We're shocked...shocked...that such behavior would occur from a Republican from Ohio.

I didn't get to read this NY Times article from Saturday until just now. Gentelmen...start your shredders...

But before anybody gets too excited about all of this, remember: this word is coming out of the Bush Justice Dept. which means it will all depend on who gets ahold of the case --- the crime-fighting career professionals or the Bush appointees. Notice this passage from the same article:

Given just some of what we already know about the corruption and cronyism at DoJ and their willingness to follow the marching orders from above, it would be little surprise if Cullen's "prediction" comes to pass.

The oft-cited pollster Mark Blumenthal, who writes about all matters related to polling and its methodology on his Mystery Pollster blog, has posted the results of his analysis/investigation into what he feels may have gone awry in the Columbus Dispatch polling just prior to the November 8th election in Ohio.

We've previously reported on the final results of the five initiatives on the ballot in the Buckeye State two weeks ago - four of them part of an Election Reform package --- and the "staggeringly impossible" disparities, as we described them, revealed by those results when compared to the results of the Dispatch's final pre-election polling. To catch anybody up who hasn't seen the numbers, here's one set of them:

ISSUE 3 (Revise campaign contribution limits)
PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

Blumenthal deserves kudos for his serious and detailed investigation into both the Dispatch survey's "long and remarkable history of success," as he describes it, and where he feels they might have gone so astoundingly wrong this year for the very first time. He points to a few changes in the methodology for the poll; the Dispatch didn't use the precise text of the initiatives in its survey; included an "Undecided" option for the first time; an examination of the data seems to show the poll occurred at a time that the electorate was in the process of changing its opinions on the issues; and finally that many voters found the text of the actual ballot initiatives to be long and confusing leading them to take the safer vote of "No" when they were not clear about what they were actually voting for.

Where he doesn't deserve credit is in his approach which presumes from the start that there must be something wrong with the polling itself --- but not the Election Results --- to explain the unprecedented disparity between the polling and the final results of the actual election.

As a pollster himself, he surely knows that it's quite simple to construct a poll in such a way that one can get back results which match just about any pre-determined outcome an unscrupulous pollster may hope for. Similarly, as with Blumenthal's earlier efforts to examine the disparity of Exit Poll Results vs. Final Election Results in last November's Presidential Election, his approach presumes from the get-go that the polling, not the results, are incorrect...and now we just need to figure out why.

Fair enough, in general. No doubt the articles we've written about the Ohio '05 election results, as well as the one from Fitrakis and Wasserman at Free Press, tend to presume that the election results are suspect, more so than the polling or its methodology.

The difference, however, is that while we welcome the search for reasons why the Dispatch's historically accurate poll might suddenly have failed for the first time in such an unprecedented matter, we have as much or more reason to be skeptical of Ohio's Electoral System which has been documented as full of unquestionable corruption and all-sorts of top-to-bottom malfeasance. Particularly over the last year or so since the Presidential Election.

In other words: Sure, we can, and should, go looking for reasons why the Dispatch poll might have failed so mightily for the first time in its history, as others (including Blumenthal) did with the Exit Polls from November '04 which also --- just a coincidence, we know --- failed so hugely for the first time in their history. We can likely find anomalies to somewhat explain what might justify a pre-determined conclusion that Election Results are right and Pre-Election Polling must be wrong. But why would Blumenthal, or anybody else, have reason to believe that scientifically run polls with methodologies developed and honed over decades, run by pollsters with (theoretically) no dog in the hunt, should be less reliable than an Electoral System being run on newly developed, newly introduced technology employing secret software that nobody inspects for validity or integrity? All of which is run on machines which have a tremendous and documented known failure rate and are run by partisan officials with not just a stake in the outcome, but whose very livelihoods (in the case of the recent Ohio initiatives, as well as last November's election) are at stake in the final results. ...

Boston Globe highlights the abject failure of the Republican led Congress to perform their oversight duties, pointing to --- amongst many other examples --- the 140 hours of sworn testimony taken on Bill Clinton's Christmas cards versus just 12 hours taken about Abu Ghraib.

Pre-empting the partisan issues involved here, the Globe points out that the Democratic-controlled House in '93-'94 held 135 "oversight" or investigative hearings during the Clinton Administration, while the GOP House was only able to muster 37 such hearings last year with Bush in the White House.

In the meantime, Kevin Horrigan in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlights the "transcript" from one of those rare hearings...

(Hat-tip to RAW STORY for the Globe link and to my father for Chicken Little.)

Stephen Oravecz of Mahoning Valley's Tribune Chronicle notices that there were a few problems in Ohio's ‘04 Presidential Election, and more problems persist still today...

Fadiman is a wonderful filmmaker, citizen and human being, by the way, who we've come to know since first meeting her at the Election Reform Conference in Nashville earlier this year. We've also been interviewed for the documentary mentioned above. Whether we'll make the final cut will remain to be seen

Oravecz also discusses the still un-reported recent non-partisan GAO report confirming the problems with Electronic Voting Machines that we've tried to make noise about (to little, but somewhat growing, avail) of late:

Also, an editorial in yesterday's Star-Gazette in New York references the GAO Report.

And in this week's Rock River Times, in Illinois, Senior Editor Joe Baker notices as well.

So that's one paper in New York, and another one called "Times". We guess we're getting closer...

Keep sending those cards and letters, people! The wingnut (ironcally enough) Townhall.com makes it very easy for you to do so! And yes...as you can see above...it matters!

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's press release says the November 8th election was "a great success" and "a great day for Ohio voters."

And, what do you know? Diebold agrees!

The story on the ground in Lucas County, OH, however, seems to tell a very different story. More than just the 14 voting machines left in a hallway unattended for 10 days at the University of Toledo as reported by Joshua Boak in the Toledo Blade (so much for that secure chain of custody!), dozens of investigations are now underway in Lucas County for all number of problems that occurred on Election Day two weeks ago according to another Blade report, this one from Boak along with Jane Schmucker...

Note, that the investigation will begin after the results are already certified.

And a few more troubling items from the same article...

And finally, let's not forget that Lucas County is where Bernadette Noe, the head of their Board of Elections and Republican Party --- as well as the wife of indicted "CoinGate" hustler Thomas Noe - reportedly was found to have been instrumental in gaming the November ‘04 Presidential Election in that county.

The toon above was posted at HuffPo by Mamet, the day after the recent party at Arianna's (see this link about the party, if you didn't read it already, for a bit of additional trivia re: my relationship with Mamet who was also there that night.)

As well, if you missed it earlier this week at BRAD BLOG, HuffPo has cross-posted my followup article to my original piece on "The Staggeringly Impossible Results of Ohio's '05 Election" Please see the HuffPo version of the follow-up to enjoy the postings of a few always-amusing anti-democracy troll commenters there.

I will have an additional update tomorrow on the Ohio stuff as well, btw. Stay tuned...

Some fan mail this morning asks "on what planet did you learn English?"...

Our answer...The same planet on which the sender apparently learned to cherry-pick the information he chooses to read and use as the basis for an argument. Sigh...

++++EXAMPLE: If this emailer went to a restaraunt and ordered a steak and the steak involved was to be served medium-well as he ordered it, we suppose he'd have no problem when the steak was delivered to his table completely uncooked. After all, he got his steak and there is "EXACTLY ZERO DIFFERENCE" between what he asked for and what he received.

++++FURTHER EXAMPLE: Using the emailer's bullet-proof logic, if we were to refer to him as "a stupid prick," but he was really just stupid and not a prick at all, it would mean the "EXACT SAME THING!!"

(P.S. For other material the emailer chose to not notice from Murtha's original resolution --- above and beyond the stuff he chose to not notice in even the text he did quote in his impressive email --- see this previous item for the complete text of both Murtha's resolution, and the phony GOP resolution cyncially created to play politics with our troops instead of supporting them.)

In what can only be described as a cynical and partisan last minute stunt by the Republican-controlled House of Representative, GOP leaders have announced a sudden vote this evening on the "Murtha Resolution" which had called for the immediate phasing out of troops in Iraq and a deployment of a "quick-reaction U.S. force" of Marines in the region should trouble arise.

The GOP-modified version of Murtha's resolution, which had given numerous reasons for his call for a pull-out has starkly changed both the language and meaning of the original resolution in hopes that Republicans can force Democrats onto the record voting in favor of, or against, "immediate termination" of forces in Iraq.

The BRAD BLOG has obtained PDF versions of both the original Murtha Resolution [PDF] as well as the 3-line GOP-Amended version [PDF] version being put forward by House Leadership for the last minute vote this evening.

Congressman Murtha (D-PA) is a long time Iraq war hawk, strong advocate of the military and a combat veteran of both the Vietnam and Korean conflicts. In an emotional statement yesterday, he had called for the pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq.

After the preamble in Murtha's original resolution, which gives numerous reasons to support his call for troop withdrawal, the following statement is made:

The GOP revision, however, includes no preamble, and states that all troops will be removed immediately. This is it, in its entirety:

The AP has more on the all-out political melee now occuring on the House floor...

MORE... Debate/Vote scheduled for 7pm ET ... C-Span's live coverage here. (thanks for link to DaveF of Bare Knuckle Politics!)

As the State of California appears to now be bending over backwards in an attempt to give their elections to Diebold as reported earlier today, a lawsuit has been quietly filed in North Carolina by the http://www.eff.org\">Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to ensure that Diebold must play be the same rules as other vendors and that they abide by state law which they have been attempting to skirt through court filings.

Today EFF announced that they were going to court to prevent Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. from evading the North Carolina law which requires Voting Machine Companies to place their source code into escrow with the state. Diebold, one of America's largest Voting Machine Companies, apparently doesn't want to and has recently received a court-waiver to allow them to avoid doing so.

From EFF's press release issued today...

(Hat-tips to both John Gideon and David Edwards for alerting us to this story.)

Election reform advocates had hoped Diebold touch-screen voting machines would be permanently decertified in the country's largest "voting market" (as Diebold likes to refer to it) after a massive test of their AccuVote DRE machines earlier this year revealed a 20% failure rate. But a more recent test, secretly held at Diebold Election System's McKinney Texas headquarters, apparently in violation of California state law, has resulted in what appears to be a last minute about-face from California's Republican Sec. of State, Bruce McPhereson. The latest news has now thrown everything into doubt in the state concerning the future of electronic voting here.

Miriam Raftery of RAW STORY has the full skinny. Something smells very rotten in the state of California.

The original co-sponsors of legislation in the House of Representatives to require "paper records" on Electronic Voting Machines and many other security measures and improvements to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, have sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to other members citing the landmark report recently released by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the myriad security problems found after a year-long investigation into those machines.

In a letter from last Wednesday obtained by The BRAD BLOG, Congressmen Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Tom Davis (R-VA) asked colleagues to join them in support of H.R. 550, known as the "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act".

In their letter, the congressmen point out several of the key findings in the GAO report leading off with a quote from it that reads ". . . computer programs could access these cast vote files and alter them without the system recording this action in its audit logs.” [emphasis in original]

The legislation, which currently has more than 150 bi-partisan co-sponsors, has been languishing for some time as House Leadership has kept it from coming up for debate on the House floor or committee mark-up. H.R. 550 is currently "pending" in the House Administrative Committee, according to Holt's Communications Director, Patrick G. Eddington, but it has received "no debate, mark-up or hearing" as of yet. He added, "no Committee has specifically addressed H.R. 550."

H.R. 550 was introduced in April of this year. It was a reintroduction of a predecessor bill, H.R. 2239, which was first introduced in 2003, but was similarly never debated or voted on in any House committee.

The House Administrative Committee is chaired by Ohio Republican Bob Ney who held hearings last March on "Ohio Election Irregularities" in which he called only one witness from any "Voting Rights" group. That group, the self-proclaimed "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights, had been formed only days before the hearing, and as reporting by BRAD BLOG has revealed, was formed by two high-level Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives. Ney is also reported to be currently under investigation by the DoJ for his involvement in the ongoing Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Amongst several other points cited in the letter from the GAO reports's findings: Ballot definitions on Electronic Voting Machines may be altered so that "the votes shown on the touch screen for one candidate would actually be recorded and counted for a different candidate."; Programming errror in a Pennsylvania county resulted in an undervote percentage of 80% in some precincts; An "unknown number of disenfranchised voters" as documented by California voting officials; Election monitors in a Florida county discovering a "flaw" in an Electronic Voting Machine ballot that allowed "ballots to be added to the canvas totals multiple times without being detected."; An Electronic Voting system in Ohio added nearly 4,000 votes for Bush in just one precinct during the '04 Presidential Election.

Though the GAO report was non-partisan, requested by the Chairmen and ranking members of three different U.S. House Committees, and was released last month after a year-long investigation along with a rare bi-partisan joint press release which lauded it, not a single wire service or mainstream American newspaper to date, that we know of, has devoted a single paragraph reporting on its release or the information contained within.

The complete text of Holt and Davis' letter to colleagues follows [emphasis in original] ...