Editor & Publisher published a comment today from the Executive Producer of Fox "News'" O'Reilly Factor on their having run a title under video of Rep. Mark Foley --- three different times, in two different segments --- which labeled the now-disgraced, now-former Republican Congressman as a Democrat:

The BRAD BLOG orginally broke the story of Fox's egregious "error" last Tuesday.

We followed up with a report on AP having done a similar thing the next day, though they had the journalistic integrity (unlike Fox "News") to issue a correction statement when the problem was found.

Yesterday ran we ran another follow-up on O'Reilly and Fox's failure to publicly correct or even acknowledge the "error," indisputably closing any further debate on whether Fox is actually a news organization. It isn't. We included links to videos of both The Daily Show's and MSNBC Countdown's coverage of same in that last report.

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

UPDATE 2/8/08: Fox now shows presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain also as a Democrat! Screenshot...

Some good reporting from The Tennessean today on what appears to be some voter registration fraud, possibly tied to the Republican National Committee.

You'll note that Tennessee, a state which had previously been represented by outgoing Bill Frist and thought to have been a shoe-in for Republicans, is now an exceedingly tight race, with the Democratic candidate for that Senate seat, Rep. Harold Ford, beginning to pull ahead...but just barely...A few votes in a single state, at this point, could make the difference in control of the Senate this year.

With that in mind, and what we know about GOP willingness to game elections every which way possible --- extra-legal or otherwise --- please note the following tea leaf from today's Tennessean today...

A campaign mailing received by a hundred thousand Florida voters today would seem to indicate that the corrupt, and apparently desperate U.S. Congressman from Oviedo, Florida, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), is willing to do everything within his power to lose his congressional race this year against challenger Clint Curtis.

"Don't send smut to my mailbox," the New Smyrna Beach, Florida. mother says in a video report at Florida's WFTV Channel 9, "It's not really something I want my 9-year-old walking out to the mailbox and bringing to me and asking me questions about."

The mailing, of dubious taste, is the latest chapter in Feeney's bizarre smear campaign against his former colleague, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional opponent Clint Curtis.

We highly recommend the article at the WFTV Channel 9 website (which also includes a video of their coverage on tonight's evening news.)

In the mailing --- sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters in Florida's 24th Congressional district and featuring a poorly-doctored photograph of Curtis dressed as Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner --- Feeney claims he's attempting to "alert" voters that Curtis has been endorsed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

So far, Feeney's bizarre attempts to garner support have included a rudimentary smear website named "Crazy Clint Curtis," featuring doctored photos of Curtis and other dubious claims, and a blogsite repeating those claims citing "evidence" that actually seems to belie the strange assertions. (e.g., See our coverage of on Feeney's odd 9/11 conspiracy theory.) The smear blog, however, has no indication that it's paid for by the Feeney campaign.

The disingenous references to Hustler in the mailing, including a doctored cover from the salacious magazine, are in reference to an article of ours [PDF - WARNING: Includes graphic photos from death scene!] on the mysterious death of Florida Inspector Raymond Lemme, which the magazine ran some months ago.

Lemme, as we originally reported at BRAD BLOG, was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia hotel room during the course of investigating Curtis' whistleblower claims against Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, Florida, software firm with top-security state and NASA contracts.

Curtis had worked as a programmer at YEI while Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist.

Feeney was also the Speaker of the Florida House at the time when Curtis claims YEI had employeed illegal Chinese aliens (spying on America), overbilled the state on contracts, and had requested that Curtis create a vote-rigging software prototype at the behest of the Congressman. The charges of Chinese spies and state overbilling have since been confirmed, by both state and federal investigations and reports.

Hustler ran a sidebar with our article written by someone named Mark Johnson. That sidebar, titled "Vote for Clint!" describes Curtis' early plans at the time to run for Congress and urges readers to support the effort at www.ClintCurtis.com.

Feeney's new mailer, however, looks like it may have done little more than succeed in angering Florida families and voters who had never even heard of either Feeney or Curtis before. The mother in the report indicates that it has led her to not vote for Feeney this November.

Adding to the poorly timed association of sex and politics --- in light of the recent revelations of sexual improprieties by Feeney's Florida GOP House colleague Mark Foley --- it looks like another triumphant disaster for Feeney.

From WFTV's report:

The article and video (both of which we couldn't recommend more!) go on to say that Feeney claims our Hustler article about Lemme's death charges that "Feeney was involved in a suspicious death in Georgia."

Since we actually wrote that article, we can tell you that no such allegation was made of involvement by Feeney in the death of Lemme. WFTV should correct that point for the record. (NOTE: We've contacted the WFTV reporter, Josh Einiger, who did an otherwise very good job on the story and he says he'll be attempting to correct the inaccuracy on their website shortly. Apparently, he was just repeating what Feeney, and the mailing, had incorrectly claimed.)

Hey Tom, in the next mailing, why don't you include photos of yourself posing with a bunch of Congressional pages? Voters in the 24th need to know how much you care about our nation's youth!

So Fox "News" labelled an apparent sexual predator as a "Democrat", despite the indisputable fact that the man, disgraced Congressman Mark Foley, is a Republican.

As THE BRAD BLOG originally reported the day before last, Fox did so three different times during Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor and have never admitted this outrageous misreporting. They simply disappeared the issue on the subsequent rebroadcasts of the program after they were caught having done it.

The next day the Associated Press --- who appear to be a real news organization --- did something similar. However, they did the right thing within hours, and admitted the error in subsequent corrected versions of their original article, which had labelled the REPUBLICAN Mark Foley as a Democrat.

Everyone in the world, it seems, has now picked up on the story of Fox's outrageous "error." (Including Comedy Central's The Daily Show and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann --- both videos now linked below.) Everyone, it seems, except for Fox. To our knowledge, Fox has not taken responsibility or accountability in any way.

For now, we'll presume that's the end of this particular story, which sheds additional light (as if any further was needed) on the absurd claims that the Fox "News" Channel is actually a "news" organization. It is not. It is a Propoganda Ministry beyond the reach of the accountability and responsibility under which any self-respecting and true news organization would normally operate.

We can only imagine the uproar from the "conservative" community, and the heads which would have been forced to roll had the situation been reversed and CNN, or anybody else in the media, labelled a Democratic sexual predator as a Republican. Three times. Without apology or correction.

As mentioned, both Stewart and Olbermann ran with the story yesterday. Here are links to each clip, both courtesy of Crooks & Liars...

Countdown with Keith Olbermann video clip...

Daily Show with John Stewart video clip...

UPDATE 10/6/06 3:49pm PT: O'Reilly Executive Producer now says 'no on-air correction necessary.' Full details...

More VoterAction.org lawsuits and complaints are now being filed to stop the use and/or purchase of electronic voting systems around the country. On Wednesday, two more. One in California, another in Wisconsin.

In Alameda County, CA a suit was filed to stop of the use of Sequoia Voting Systems touch-screen DRE's, alleging the county "has not performed independent, expert security vulnerability testing on its new Sequoia voting equipment. The group claims such testing was a prerequisite stipulated by county supervisors before the county would issue payment for the system." ...

Of course, we've heard such reports during Primary Elections around the country already this year (see this one, where the Diebold touch-screen voting machine gave a voter a ballot for the wrong election, noticed only because he happened to be an eagle-eyed talk radio political reporter.)

Now, this just in yesterday from "bonobo", a blogger at dKos, on the first day of Early Voting on the same unreliable, hackable Diebold touch-screen voting machines, but this time in Franklin County, Ohio. And, again, from someone who happened to be politically involved enough to notice the "error"!...

It looks like AP picked up on Fox's "error" yesterday in labelling Mark Foley as a Democrat!

From Josh Marshall today...

Indeed Josh would appear to be correct. As of a quick Google search moments ago, there were still several articles indexed as showing Foley as a "(D-Florida)":

The stories listed by Google above now seem to have corrected the text in their online versions. No clue how many actually made it into newsprint that way.

Several of the outlets who ran AP's original "Foley is a Dem" version now have this correction notice at the bottom of their articles:

To our knowledge, no such admission has been issued by either O'Reilly or Fox "News", despite having run the most egregious version of this "error" (three times in total) during the initial primetime broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor last night as we originally reported just after it aired. They simply scrubbed the "error" by removing that title card during the later re-broadcasts of the program (the ones with the smaller viewerships).

(Hat-tip Joseph Cannon)

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed BRAD BLOG commenter "Fred T" notes that Hastert is also labelled as a Democrat in the AP story listed in the Google search graphic above!

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

Just amazing. Fox's O'Reilly Factor just covered the Mark Foley (R-FL) issue in two different segments, one of them with a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter.

Never mind the content of either segment for now. Incredibly, during a total of three different cutaways to video footage of Foley, he was labelled at the bottom of the screen eachtime as "(D-FL)" !

Three different times. In two different segements. Each cutaway about 15 seconds or more. Showing Foley as a DEMOCRAT. Amazing.

Just an accident? We report, you decide.

UPDATE: Here's quick video clips two of the three times that Foley became made an honorary Fox "Dem"...

-- CLIP 1: Windows Media Player version...
-- CLIP 2 (Coulter): Windows Media Player version...

UPDATE 11:30pm PT: Though we didn't see the first evening rerun, several folks have reported that Fox "News" scrubbed the "error" by running the video during the late-night rerun of O'Reilly with no text on the bottom of the screen during those sequences. Also, please note we originally had the date of 6/3/06 on the screenshot above, instead of the correct 10/3/06. Once we noticed, we had so many folks linking up to this item, we couldn't get back in to the site at all to make the correction until now!

UPDATE 10/4/06 2:04am PT: Confirmed! We just watched the second late-night rerun of O'Reilly, and indeed, the evidence goes down the memory hole as Fox removed the mis-labelled chiron entirely from their later broadcasts without explanation! BTW, we watched both full segments this time, including the one with Florida's own alleged Queen of Voter Fraud, Ann Coulter who swears up and down that Hastert just couldn't have known anything about Foley's problem, he just couldn't have!

Screenshot from the rebroadcast, where the "(D-FL)" has been excised from all three video cutaways, is below...

UPDATE 10/4/06 2:13am PT: Heheh...Bob Johnson over at dKos may have the explanation for what happened at Fox today...

UPDATE 10/4/06 1:46pm PT: Now AP also labels Foley a Democrat!...

UPDATE 10/4/06 3:03pm PT: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asks a fair question about this today...

UPDATE 10/4/06 7:15pm PT: Looks like Olbermann covered the story tonight, natch. (No credit to yours truly, however...go figure...sigh) ... Also, John Stewart this this on The Daily Show as well. Both videos now linked here...

UPDATE 10/6/06 3:49pm PT: O'Reilly Executive Producer now says 'no on-air correction necessary.' Full details...

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

UPDATE 2/8/08: Fox now shows presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain also as a Democrat! Screenshot...

Could this be the first dirty trick in Ohio's 2006 Election? If so, we also expect it won't be the last.

Former Hocking County, Ohio, Board of Elections Deputy Director turned 2004 recount whistleblower Sherole Eaton, and Paddy Shafer, campaign manager for Green Party Gubernatorial candidate and Ohio journalist Bob Fitrakis, contacted us over the weekend with some interesting news.

It seems that Absentee Ballot Applications with an election date of November 7, 2000 are showing up all over various public libraries in Ohio. A typo? Apparently not. The forms are old ones, but for some reason are being made available, along with old Voter Registration forms --- from 2004 --- in all sorts of locations!

Here's a sample from one of the photos they sent in over the weekend:

While all of this could simply be an innocent mistake, we'll remind you that this is Ohio, Election Snakepit and Dirty Tricks Capitol of the World since dethroning the previous world champ, Florida, but just by a hair, as of 2004.

The "innocent mistake" theory seems more unlikely since it seems to have been found in so many locations, as described by Shafer and Eaton (see a full letter from Eaton below), who told us she never saw even a single such occurrence while serving as an election official during the entire 2004 Bloodbath in the Buckeye State.

"Innocent mistake" or not, remember: Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell rejected thousands of Voter Registration forms in 2004 because they weren't on heavy enough paper stock. So would he flinch for a second at tossing out "old" Voter Registration forms received today? Or refuse to send an Absentee Ballot because it failed to specify the correct election date? Especially, when he points out on his official SoS website, that such applications require "A statement identifying the election for which you are requesting an absentee voter's ballot?"

As well, the rules for such applications have changed as the Ohio legislature has imposed new, draconian laws in their never ending attempt to keep people from being able to vote. The last four digits of the voter's Social Security number is now required on Voter Registration forms, but was only optional on the 2004 forms. Just another reason that Blackwell may be able to use to reject an application at his whim.

The official SoS site tells voters that they may pick up Voter Registration forms at "public libraries" on the page answering the question "How can I obtain an Ohio voter registration application?" So does the SoS have the responsibility to make sure that such applications are properly made available in such places?

Blackwell, of course, is also running for Governor, even while overseeing the completely fair and impartial adminstration of his own election as SoS. (The good news, when last we checked, he was some 20 points behind his Dem opponent, Ted Strickland.)

Eaton has more details, and warnings for all Ohioans in the following letter she sent to us last night...It's posted in full below...

This via AmericaBlog from Drudge...And note, if it's correct (Drudge isn't always, as you likely know) this if from the Washington Times, the White House organ! Not the Washington Post!

Holy crap.

UPDATE: We hear that Olbermann is reporting that Michael Reagan is calling for same! That's Michael Reagan, the White House organ! Not Ronny Reagan!

Holy holy crap crap.

LATE UPDATE: The Washington Times editorial --- "Resign, Mr. Speaker" -- is now up in full. Could this be the all-out implosion that seems like it should have come years ago? Should be an interesting coupla days/weeks...

LATER UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in on Republicans eating their own... "Pressure grows for G.O.P. Over Foley Scandal"

ED NOTE 11:49pm PT: Well, it hadda happen. A story at The BRAD BLOG that needs retraction! It's an unfortunate first in our going-on-three years here. Hopefully a last. But so it goes. We're pulling the following story (leaving it below in full, along with a note where we went wrong) so nobody accuses us of trying to hide anything. When we're wrong, we're wrong. And unless further info appears, it would seem that we worked too quickly in our research here and were, infact, wrong. We most certainly regret the error and regret slurring Ms. Hoke, albeit accidentally, by reporting that she was an attorney for Bush/Cheney '04! She appears to have been representing the Green and Libertarian parties in the Ohio 2004 recount instead. Further explanation below, if you're interested...

Signs (along with the desperate and shameful campaign smear website and smear blog he created) that Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) may be in trouble down in Florida in his race against whistleblower-turned-opponent Clint Curtis in the 24th district congressional race?

This today from from the Orlando Sentinel (who had previously endorsed Curtis' primary opponent, before Clint thumped him 2 to 1 in the recent election):

Also, as it's been reported that the House GOP leadership was informed about Rep. Mark Foley's predatory behavior with minors in the Congressional page program months ago and apparently took no action, it's fair to ask what Feeney, as both a Deputy Whip in the House and a fellow member of the Florida caucus, knew about Foley's behavior and when he knew it.

Feeney's campaign, by the way, has received money from Foley in the past, according to this report from MyDD.

Like his colleague Foley, Feeney has enjoyed trumpeting his own work in the House to create legislation to protect children from predatory behavior. Like Foley, (and those Feeney hangs with from DeLay to Abramoff to Ney to Cunningham to Jeb and George W.), he's never been big on transparency or honesty either. So we expect he'll do whatever he can to dance, dodge and otherwise obfuscate on this matter as usual, unless someone holds his feet to the fire.

We'd love to be proven wrong, but we're not holding our breath.

Oh...and this from The Hill last week, in response to Feeney's "crazy" campaign smear sites:

...

Bobby will be on Your World w/ Cavuto on Fox "News" momentarily. We'll UPDATE this item with a video and/or transcript later today if we can catch it.

We'll hope it's less of a hatchet job than Cavuto delivered the last time he interviewed Kennedy, after Kennedy's first Rolling Stone story on these matters.

Have things changed? We'll see. But we wouldn't bet any money on it. Especially after Cavuto's shameful performance last time.

UPDATE: Good thing we didn't bet money. Cavuto actually let him get out a complete sentence or two without cutting him off! What in the world has gotten into Fox?

Kennedy discussed the Emergency Paper Ballot initiative proposed last week by House and Senate Dems (for which not a single Republican would sign on, reportedly amid threats to add disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws as retaliation for the bill - more on all of that soon), the ease of hacking these systems by both parties, and some news: He said he'd now be interested in running for the U.S. Senate seat from NY should it open up! The seat was once his father's, and to our knowledge it's the first time he's publicly stated he'd be interested in running!

FURTHER UPDATE: Video now available below, with a huge hat-tip to the democracy-lovin' folks at Solar Bus!

-- Windows Media Player version...

Holy shit...They may even be losing Fox "News"!...

Welcome back to Planet Earth, Shep!

(Hat-tip Joy Williams!)

From Mercury News Thursday (Sorry, been running behind for some reason)...

And here's more...

See the full story, for more...it gets even worse.