I've been watching FOX "News" all morning, and for some reason they've failed to mention the following report that the CIA has criticized the Bush Administration in its latest report on Intel failures vis a vis Iraq. So I guess it's up to me to make sure that you know about it!

From this morning's USA Today:

Full story here. Sssh...Don't tell Fox! We'd hate to rock their rose-colored world.

(Hat tip to emailer Tom O. for the tip)

{Blogged by Brad, yes, still on the road...}

It was a joy to be in-studio yesterday evening with Peter B. Collins up here in Monterey on KRXA 540am. An honest-to-goodness Progressive radio station not owned by a corporate monolith! In fact, I was honored to have been greeted, upon my arrival, by Station Manager and co-owner Hal Ginsberg before spending an hour on-air with Peter, the other co-owner and Program Director and host of their afternoon show drive-time show.

They're new on the airwaves out here, and a very welcome addition. Hopefully more folks will buy up more stations and program them similarly to help give the truth a chance of getting out where the Corporate-run Media are simply failing America.

And I don't say all of that merely because they're interested in carrying The BRAD SHOW on KRXA. (Though such things never hurt!

If you're interested, here's the hour [MP3] I spent yesterday with Peter on air. Includes at least one wingnut caller! Enjoy!

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Last week, The BRAD BLOG reported that one of the co-founders of the self-described "non-partisan" group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), was "boning up on his non-partisan creds" by being employed by the White House to sell George W. Bush's Harriet Miers nomination to the American press and public.

This week, the great "non-partisan" voting rights champion, Jim Dyke, has been promoted according to a report from TIME magazine filed last week. His new job will be to "take up the slack" for Steve Schmidt, "counselor to Vice President Cheney and one of the White House's most aggressive strategists."

Schmidt is suddenly heading to Iraq for the next month, where he will, according to a report today by RAW STORY, be unavailable to take any questions regarding the mounting charges that sources within Cheney's office may have been at the heart of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Dyke will undoubtedly remain as "non-partisan" in his new job with Dick Cheney, as he was in his previous position as press spokesperson for ACVR.

Dyke was RNC Communications Director for years, before becoming "non-partisan" enough to join with the "non-partisan" Mark F. "Thor" Hearne (National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.) to found the new tax-exempt, "non-partisan" "Voting Rights" organization.

As BRAD BLOG reported some months ago, the Internet domain registration for ACVR claims to be located somewhere in Dallas, TX, despite Hearne's residence in St. Louis, Missouri, and Dyke's in South Carolina (when he's not working out of the White House). At the time of initial investigation, Dyke reported to us that the Dallas TX address given for ACVR was that of the company who created their website. He had forgotten the name of the company, despite the website having been created just days before our interview with him.

Why precisely, Dallas, TX, is given as the location of ACVR remains somewhat of a mystery. Along with who funds this shadowy organization of cynical democracy-haters. Our earlier report on their location, at least, was able to unearth a photograph of ACVR's main office, which is undoubtedly populated by very very tiny "non-partisan" Republicans:

Amongst ACVR's "non-partisan" work has been testifying before a U.S. House Administrative hearing, led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) on Election Irregularities in Ohio during the November '04 Presidential Election. At that hearing, held three business days after ACVR appeared for the first time on the Internet, Hearne testified to being a "long time voting rights advocate." He apparently forgot to mention his ties to Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.

ACVR was the only "voting rights" group called to testify at those hearings. As well, they sat on the Advisory Panel, and helped form the ill-fated Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission. Recently, the ACVR released a "non-partisan" report entitled: "Democrat operatives far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression in 2004 than Republicans."

You can read that report, along with their other "non-partisan", tax-payer subsidized news and activities at their website. It's the one with Fox News' Tony Snow currently smiling on the front page.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

{Blogged by Brad from the long --- very long --- and winding --- very winding --- road.}

It was just a few weeks ago that I was exposed as being a "CIA Internet Fake" --- whatever that meant --- by the nutcase Fintan Dunne over at BreakForNews.com. Mr. Dunne still seems to have a problem contacting me, or at least writing me back upon my inquiry to ask him "What the hell are you smokin', son? And can I get some?!"

But I digress. For now comes the news that I'm actually a Zionist disinformation artist secretly taking over the anti-war movement in order to...do...something. In fact, I've read the article twice, and I still can't really tell what I'm actually supposed to be doing in my new secret role, because I can't make much sense out of the article written by Eric Hufschmid. (Seriously, can't these conspiracy theory whack-jobs at least try to make some sense when making these cases?) Other than that, all I can figure is that it's Hufschmid who might well be the disinfo artist he's accusing everyone else in the world to be, and that he seems to hate Jews and he seems to be a Republican (or at least hate anybody who ever supported a Democrat...I guess...good luck if you can make any more sense of it than I).

Anyway, if you can get through his incredibly long and confusing report, you'll see that near the end, I am, along with Velvet Revolution, part of the great big super-secret scam to control the world!

Now if I could just figure out what the great big super-secret scam is, and when I get paid for it, we'll all be in great shape!

Of course, as with the earlier shocking exposé revealing my secret work for the CIA, and my subsequent ridicule of the notion, my similar ridicule of...whatever Hufschmid's premise is...would be exactly what I would do if he really was on to something! I'd try and discredit him with an article just like this one so that the horrible truth revealed via his cunning investigation would be laughed at and subsequently ignored!

So, once again, you --- dear BRAD BLOG reader --- don't know what to believe any more do ya?! And, of course, that's just what us Super-Secret Anti-War Zionist Internet CIA Fakes hope!

Phew...Hopefully, my evil agenda is now safe once again!

Man, this shit is exhausting.

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

The fight for democracy in America --- even as we still scratch our head with continued wonder that a "pro-democracy" movement is actually necessary in the United States of America in 2005 --- continues to be a difficult one. But the fight is well worth it. Even as our victories tend to come in small, but continually accruing pieces.

We're not supposed to be talking about this issue at all, 11 months after November 2nd, 2004...and yet more and more are doing so every day. The Mainstream Corporate Media may not get it yet. But the ranks of great patriots who give a damn about their country continues to burgeon as the noise in favor of an accountable democracy increases every day due to the folks like the good readers of The BRAD BLOG who take their civic duty to heart.

Here are just a few of the latest positive signs in the continuing fight for a free, fair, verifiable and transparent democracy that many would prefer we simply didn't even discuss. We will continue to do so nonetheless. The burden is well worth carrying. The rewards for doing so are well worth the effort.

Debra LoGuercio, editor of Winters Express and columnist in Daily Republic and elsewhere, makes it a hat trick with her third column in as many weeks on our tenuous Electoral System. She was haunted by the siren sounded by our first article on the Diebold insider we dubbed DIEB-THROAT, who alerted us to the Dept. of Homeland Security website where a Cyber Alert was issued last year prior to the election about the vulnerability to hackers in Diebold's central tabulator software. That vulnerability has, by Diebold's own admission, never been addressed.

In her latest column titled "E-voting fraud is an American issue" LoGuercio joins the ranks of those of us who continue to be stunned at the remarkable indifference by the Mainstream Corporate Media to what DIEB-THROAT refered to as "one of the greatest threats democracy has ever known":

Again, read her full column to find out about her response from AP and NBC affiliates when she contacted them about all of this, and see if you can find a way to help swim together with her efforts. It's well worth it, and the support means the world to folks like us who go out on a limb on these matters...even when doing so may be neither popular nor the easiest thing to do.

In the meantime, there are signs that more and more folks are taking notice of what is going on and walking out on that limb as well. C-NET's News.com ran an article yesterday by Declan McCullah headlined "E-voting hobbled by security concerns".

The first couple of grafs:

The article covers both the ongoing concerns, and the internal debates --- even amongst election reformers --- about how and when to produce and count paper ballots...or "receipts" as they are regrettably becoming known in many circles.

On the point of the difference between reformers on these issues, I hope to produce a one-page "Declaration of Democracy" in the next couple of weeks, a page on which we worked diligently at the Portland Election Reform summit. I believe we can bridge the differences between reformers on these matters to get everyone on the same page. I've been working hard on that effort personally behind the scenes, and hope to have something to show for it in the next couple of weeks. Just by way of a heads-up...So that perhaps we may be able to "swim together" on these issues.

A second article from News.com published yesterday over at ZDNet covers a similar discussion on the problems with E-Voting vulnerability and the need to open the software for inspection:

And finally, there it was yesterday...smack dab in the middle of The New York Times: a full-page ad that asks the the too-obvious questions, "Would you trust a bank that refused to issue ATM receipts? Will you trust your democracy to voting machines without them?"

The ad calls for support of Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) H.R. 550 "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005" which we generally support as a good first step towards accountability. (You can send your words of support as well to your folks in congress quickly by using Velvet Revolution's easy Email generator here.)

Here's the very welcome ad, signed by many election reformers. Amongst them, our friend the heroic Robert Koehler (listen to our interview with Koehler at the Portland Summit as broadcast on The BRAD SHOW by clicking here and selecting HOUR 3.)

To read the full text of the ad in PDF format, click it, or click here.

Let's all keep swimming...together...

If you need some added inspiration to keep up the fight for democracy, we'll strongly recommend this great song [mp3], courtesy of Victoria Parks. "It's well worth fighting for..."

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Well, whaddaya know...Despite the unsupported ravings of Republican operatives and cynics hoping to paint "Voter Fraud" as an actual issue of great concern in this country to deflect from the very real concern of Election Fraud, it looks as if an actual case may have been found.

The alleged fraudulent voter: Karl Rove!

Political watchdog organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), announced the latest news yesterday:

Of course, such laws only apply to those who are actually bound by "the rule of law," which, as we all know, ceased applying to Republicans as of January 20, 2001. Just ask Ann Coulter.

In the meantime, we'll remind readers unfamiliar with the issue that Voter Fraud, though it undoubtedly happens in the United States, is far from an epidemic rocking our election system. A recent study by the League of Women Voters in Ohio, for example, of more than 9 million votes in the last two national elections there, found four cases of actual Voter Fraud (voters voting twice, or the spouse of a dead registered voter sending in an absentee ballot for them). More info on the phony hype over Voter Fraud here.

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of votes in America are routinely ignored, thrown out, not counted, or voters are disenfranchised by not being allowed --- by various means --- to cast their vote in the first place.

Nonetheless, we're happy to see all cases of Voter Fraud properly prosecuted. Including that of the the most insidious, anti-American, anti-democracy advocate of them all: Karl Rove. (Though in most states, felons aren't allowed to vote anyway...so Rove's voting rights may not be long for this world anyway.)

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

Who hits zero first?

Latest Bush Approval Rating: 37% (and falling)
Latest Diebold Stock Price: $34.25 (and falling)

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Jim Dyke, the liar who helped found the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), is boning up on his "non-partisan" creds of late by working for the White House to help them push Harriet Miers through the nomination process.

As reported last night by NPR's All Things Considered in a story about some rightwinger concerns about Miers:

Of course, BRAD BLOG readers will remember Dyke from our special coverage of ACVR, the phony voting rights group which claims tax-exempt "non-partisan" status. The group was co-founded by Dyke, former RNC Communications Director, and Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. to help smokescreen the real problems that occurred during Election 2004, and to produce misleading propoganda in hopes of further disenfranchising American voters in the future through insidious new plans to making voting harder, not easier, for mainly Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Conservative readers --- real conservatives, not fake George W. Bush "conservatives" --- would likely admit to being outraged at these senior GOP operatives who are pimping their efforts to further disenfranchise Americans at the voting booth through the incidious work of a front group like ACVR. All the while, as we've pointed out, doing so by sucking off the tax-payer teat with their disingenuous tax payer funded 501(c)3 tax-exempt status.

One would think real conservatives wouldn't look too kindly on that sort of thing. (That assumes, of course, that there are any real conservatives left in America.)

Surely there must be some true conservative law firm or organization out there who feels like filing suit to get at the truth and hold these guys accountable for the fraud they are committing on the U.S. government, no?

Paging Judicial Watch...Your test case is ready...

UPDATE 10/11/05: Non-partisan Jim Dyke now working for Dick Cheney! Info here...

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

I've been so busy with so many things concerning and since the National Summit to Save Our Elections that I haven't had much time to write about it. Thankfully, others have. Including the great Bob Koehler of Tribune Media Services with whom I had the honor of sharing 45 minutes or so on stage at the Summit where we were both able to interview each other. (The BRAD SHOW carried that and more from the summit. The Koehler interview is in HOUR 3 of the archives for last Saturday's show which are now up here.)

More coverage of the weekend was written by DU's "Autorank" and carried by Scoop (only New Zealand is interested in Democracy in America, apparently). Coverage of Day 1 is here, and Days 2 & 3 is here.

As usual, of course, it's Koehler who hits the ball out of the park again after this conference, as he did after the Nashville Conference last April with his now-classic "Silent Screen of Numbers" column. (As well as with his "Citizens in the Rain" column which was spiked by Tribune Media Services and thus never ran other than on the net!)

In Koehler's latest, "Ballot and Soul" he again puts the weekend's events into appropriate --- and chilling --- historic perspective. Here is just a taste:

Please read the whole thing. And thank you, Mr. Koehler, for giving a damn. I wish more of your media brethren did so as well.

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

During my radio debate last weekend with Ann Coulter on the Ron Insana Show --- audio here (exchange in question at appx. 17 minute mark) --- Coulter correctly suggested that evidence needed to be presented in re: allegations about Sen. Bill Frist's potential misdeeds concerning sales of stock he owned in his family's hospital chain before he should be found guilty. While I agreed with that, I remarked that Coulter was more than happy to call Bill Clinton "a felon" and "a rapist" before evidence was put forward in court or any jury had found him guilty to those ends.

Insana followed up on the fact that Clinton was rarely given "the benefit of the doubt" in the media and by Coulter specifically in such matters.

She answered, in part, this way:

That interview, where Coulter sneared that she'd "moved on from Clinton" was October 1, 2005.

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land, a quick check of Ann Coulter's personal website reveals the following two articles in her "Quotations from Chairman Ann" section. The first was written on October 2, 2005 --- the day after her quote above.

And then there's this one, posted just four days prior to Ann's having announced that she's "moved on from Clinton":

Glad to see she's "moved on from Clinton".

At least she's a terrific spokesperson for today's Republican Party! Being, as she is, apparently genetically incapable of telling the truth. But more than adquately programmed to lie and then lie and then follow it up with a lie. And then lie about it.

Book publishers may feel free to contact me if they are interested in a pitch for a new best-seller: "How to Talk to Ann Coulter (If You Must)".

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

In a speech today to a "Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Symposium", Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, lauded himself, John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice for having made "enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority."

Gonzales claimed, without any apparent irony, that "We will not tolerate the infringement of voting rights."

He also seems to have contained the instinct to laugh out loud at his very own words when he said, "The results speak for themselves; you're getting the job done and we are making progress."

Progress, indeed. Here are some of the not-ironic-at-all highlights (or lowlights) from his speech today... (Complete text here)

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was re-indicted today on a second charge related to the $190,000 in corporate money that DeLay is said to have illegally participated in laundering for use in a number of Texas state races from 2002.

Using corporate money to finance campaigns has been illegal in the state of Texas for nearly 100 years. Yet DeLay, who had previously been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges in the scheme, is now being charged with directly laundering the money. All of which, incidentally, Republican apologist Ann Coulter has no problem with.

From this morning's NY Times:

{Blogged by Brad in Portland, OR}

Last week, Iraq War vet Paul Rieckhoff of OpTruth.org wrote a troubling blog item in which he discussed the DoD's lip-service given to supporting the troops, while sending at least 40,000 of them into harms way in Iraq with inadequate body armor. His item includes a link to a shocking video showing a sniper taking a clear shot at one U.S. troop who was lucky enough to have the appropriate armor!

Today, Rieckhoff follows that item up with another which includes an email from another troop currently serving in Ramadi, where 11 have been killed in the batallion within the last 10 days.

Rieckhoff notes:

The email from his friend in Ramadi complains about the lack of side armor on vehicles where troops are now being targeted every day by snipers and IED's, and goes on to say:

He goes on to add that, though they should have appropriate air support for their daily missions, they are not getting getting the air cover they need. And then he closes with this troubling phrase...

We continue to follow OpTruth's advice to "Really support the troops...Listen to them." We wish the DoD, and the American people, would do the same.

{Blogged by Brad from Portland, OR}

Day 1 of the "National Summit to Save Our Elections" in Portland, Oregon, USA, gets some media coverage...In New Zealand's SCOOP...

{Blogged by Brad in Portland, OR}

Just finished my hour on the Ron Insana Radio Show with Ann Coulter...Well, half hour with Coulter. She left at the bottom of the hour for some reason.

Prior to the show, when Ron asked her off air if she would be able to stay for the full hour, she said "Well, I had it down for 30 minutes, so I'll have to let you know at the bottom of the hour if I can stay."

For some reason or another, she was then gone after the bottom of the hour. Hopefully, you can listen and decide for yourself why that may have happened.

UPDATE FROM DAVID: Audio of Brad's debate with Ann Coulter is now available to download [MP3]. The breaks have been cut from this version. Total playing time is about 35 minutes. Or you can listen below, right here...

UPDATE 10/4/05: SpoofNews has some amusing coverage of the Brad/Coulter debate.

UPDATE 10/25/05: Thanks to a BRAD BLOG reader, the entire hour is now available via text transcript!