Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) is continuing his negotation, on behalf of more than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the release of documents related to the Bush Administration's plans for War in Iraq long prior to the beginning of hostilities, according to new letters written by the ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG.

After the revelations in Spring of 2005 from the so-called Downing Street Memo and other related documents --- a series of secret memos created by British officials documenting Bush Administration efforts to "fix" the "intelligence and facts...around the policy" of going to war with Iraq no matter what --- Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were filed by 52 House Members [PDF], including Conyers, for the release of documentation of Administration Iraq policies going as far back as the day after the 2000 Election.

The original FOIA requests were filed [PDF] with both the Departments of Defense and State, in June of 2005 after the disclosure in May, by Sunday Times of London, of the initial memo. Both federal agencies have largely stonewalled in response to the request. Correspondence from the agencies have claimed that the House Members must first agree to pay large fees for the requested material on the grounds that they do not meet FOIA standards which allow such fees to be waved.

The Dept. of Defense has estimated [PDF] the fees chargeable for answering the FOIA request would be approximately $110,000. The State Department has not yet given a similar estimate, but has also informed the members that they would have to agree in advance to such payment.

FOIA, however, allows such processing and copy fees to be waived in cases where the information provided will be widely circulated to the public and will "contribute significantly to the public understanding of activities or operations of the government."

Several communications from both DoD and State have suggested that since the requests for information did not come formally from a U.S. House Committee, the members' request does not meet the standard required for waiving fees or expediting the release of the information.

Conyers' disagrees...

How will the poor Fox "News" Bush dead-enders cover for their man now that their own poll is out showing Bush at all-time lows with just a 33% approval rating. That number includes a full 20% drop in Republican support from one year ago!

Just over a month ago, when CBS released their poll pegging Bush Approval at 34% the Fox Wingnuts bent over backwards to dismiss the poll as untrustworthy:

"This is not representative of the --- of the population of the country in any way, shape, manner, or form. Nor is the fact that Bush has 34 percent. ... You just know that's not possible. It simply isn't possible," Rush Limbaugh said on February 28th, when the poll was released.

Brit Hume on Special Report said, "[T]here's good reason to be skeptical of this CBS poll. It's wildly oversampled Democrats."

Sean Hannity spun with, "The first thing we find out that nearly two to one they polled Democrats."

And John Gibson joined the dead-enders-in-denial with, "Of course, it's weighted with more Democrats, so you've got to take that into account."

The CBS poll put Cheney's approval rating at 18% at the time, by the way. The Fox "News" poll, though it asks about the approval ratings of Condi Rice and Don Rumsfield, seems to have failed to poll on Cheney's approval rating for some odd reason. Go figure.

(Hat-tip to MediaMatters.org for tracking Fox "News" and their lack of touch with reality on this matter last February.)

In the latest amongst a spate of lawsuits being filed against Electronic Voting Machine Companies around the country, the Oregon Sec. of State has announced today that they have filed a complaint against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for breach of contract in failing to provide the state with disabled-accessible voting machines, as promised, in time to meet the January 1, 2006 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadline.

The complaint, filed yesterday on behalf of the state of Oregon in Marion County Circuit Court, is downloadable here in full [PDF, 8 pages].

In a statement just issued by the office of Bill Bradbury, Oregon's Sec. of State, he said, "I'm disappointed in ES&S. They agreed to provide us with voting machines, they didn't follow through on that agreement, and that failure directly punishes people with disabilities."

The press release goes on to explain the history of ES&S's broken commitment to provide disabled-accessible electronic AutoMark voting systems to the state in what seems to echo problems that ES&S and several of the other electronic voting machine vendors are now having in meeting contractual obligations all around the country. The problem in Oregon is just the latest to come to light, as the voting machine vendors have been snatching up any and all available agreements with states, in light of Election Officials' attempts to comply with various mandates set forth, and funded by federal tax dollars, in the disastrous HAVA legislation of 2002. John Gideon, has written several articles on the epidemic recently for BRAD BLOG; two them are here and here.

As the Oregon Secretary of State's release explains:

In addition to failures to meet such obligations as simply providing hardware and software as promised to states and counties, companies such as ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, have failed across the country to provide hardware and software that actually works and actually counts voters votes accurately as they intended to cast them.

HAVA was passed in 2002 by Congress after efforts led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) --- and funded by Diebold lobbyists including Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano --- convinced lawmakers that the bill would correct perceived problems revealed with voting systems during the 2000 Florida Election debacle.

The bill, which cleverly includes a provision requiring at least one disabled-accessable voting device in every American polling place as of 2006 --- a provision which has led jurisdictions to believe they must upgrade their voting equipment to use poorly designed, secretive and hackable electronic voting devices --- has been an unmitigated disaster so far.

The Oregon lawsuit is just the latest in a growing array of suits filed by voters and election officials around the country in light of HAVA implementation that has seen officials scrambling, apologizing, making excuses and, in many cases, left to come up with alternate plans to carry out impending primary elections in 2006. Voters, in the meantime, have been largely ignored, left hanging, and crossing their fingers in hoping that somehow their vote might be counted accurately this year --- or even counted at all. Unfortunately, given the way most of the new voting systems work, there is little or no way for those voters to have even the slightest clue whether or not their vote will be counted at all.

Amongst just some of the lawsuits and other legal proceedings now underway in light of HAVA implementation around the country...

In addition to the state and county suits, a class action Securities Fraud complaint has been filed by shareholders against Diebold for, amongst other reasons, failing to disclose known problems with their electronic voting systems. Additional legal proceedings are currently in the works in several other states as well, The BRAD BLOG has learned, and so far we've only had two of 50 state primaries in 2006, the first year that HAVA kicks in in full. Both primaries so far, in Texas and Illinois, revealed massive electile dysfunctions as machines failed, tabulations were found to be inaccurate, and final results were delayed due to numerous equipment problems.

Stay tuned to The BRAD BLOG for (unfortunately) virtually exclusive continuing coverage of America's 2006 E-Voting Meltdown...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

ED NOTE: This "Daily Voting News" was posted yesterday, but due to a software "glitch", it was somehow overwritten by another post. We're reposting it here. Good thing we had a paper trail backup!

The Allegheny County Pennsylvania suit brought by voters and PFAW against the county, state and federal government will be heard beginning next Tuesday in Pittsburgh. Summit County, Ohio's election director has predicted failure of the voting machines in their primary on May 2. A recount of ballots in Kane and DuPage County Illinois has been asked for partially because some voting machines were shut-down early due to the polls running out of paper for the DRE vvpat printers. Sequoia is over two months behind in delivering Advantage machines to New Jersey counties. In Indiana, MicroVote has been given until May 2 to make their uncertified equipment meet all state requirements or counties will not be able to use it in the primary...

The Progressive Patriots Fund, a Political Action Committee of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), has released a new video ad, critical of George W. Bush's warrantless domestic spying program.

The video, directed by Bob Newhart Show alum and former Friends director Peter Bonerz is in support of the Senator's Censure Resolution and features a twist ending.

-- The video can be viewed online here.

The organization has issued a press release touting the video's premier last night in Texas. That release follows in full...

It's been a looong day. Up at 7am in a strange city, meetings all morning, a drive across the state to do an hour of radio in Sacramento in studio with the delightful Christine Craft, another hundred or so miles down the road towards home with an hour and a half long conference call at 75mph, before a motel stop finally at 10:15pm and a phone-in radio appearance on Crane Durham's rather ironically named, "Nothing But Truth" radio program broadcast out of my old hometown of St. Louis.

Exhausted but ready to discuss matters of Election Reform and Integrity, which I can speak about, at this point, in my sleep (and sometimes do).

But Crane wanted to talk about something else --- the War on Iraq --- during my first appearance on his show. What I didn't know, was that apparently tonight was "Tuesday Night Fights" on Crane's show, when he invites a guest on who he perceives will disagree with him. Tonight, he found one in spades.

-- Have a listen [MP3] (We might suggest it'll be worth it.)

"I feel like Foreman after Ali," the host would say later after I'd left..and most of his usually supportive callers agreed he had lost. Except for the one who said Crane delivered a "coop de grace" (pronounced as spelled).

-- Follow-up callers after I left [MP3] (Also worth a listen. Broken link now fixed.)

To Crane's credit, he admitted defeat. "The decision's been made, and I lost that debate," he said graciously to the callers who hated to agree with him. He is, therewith, the first wingnut, perhaps in recorded history, to have admitted to defeat --- out loud. For his graciousness in that regard, we give him many props.

He invited me back after the show to return on another night, heavily promoted, for a full two hours. He'll need it.

In what appears to be the only known case of the Democratic Party itself (to our brain-addled knowledge anyway, since we've been on the road for the last several days for last minute super-secret meetings that have left us exhausted for the moment), the Alaska Dems and the DNC Alaska Communications Director have announced a lawsuit is being filed to demand the state release election records from 2004.

Yes, they are still trying to figure out what happened in 2004. And in America 2006, apparently such info can only be obtained (perhaps) by going to court!

The complete press release issued today is posted in full below, but here's a recap on this mind-numbing story up until now:

In December 2005, the Dems asked the state for the election data files from the '04 election. They were told that they couldn't have that information, because the state's contract with Alaska made that information a "company secret" of Diebold's!

After complaints to the state, and the state's consultation with Diebold, the state agreed to release the information, but only after informing the Dems they'd have to cover the cost of (and this is a direct quote from their letter), "manipulating the data" before releasing it!

Finally, before the data could be released --- "manipulated" or otherwise --- the state's top security official announced they would not release the information after all because it was a "security risk."

Oh, how I wish I was making this shit up. But I'm not.

So, now the Dems up there are showing a rare bit of spine and going to court to get at that highly secret and super dangerous information otherwise known as "how American citizens voted in an election two years ago."

Why are they so interested in this info in the first place? Here's a graf or two from the release (which you should read in full below for full impact!):

UPDATE 4/19/06: The entire complaint, filed as #3AN-06-7035 CI, is now available here [PDF]. Coverage from today's Alaska Daily News is here.

The entire press release from the Alaska Dems follows...

Abramoff, DeLay, Cunningham, Enron, Tyco, Jones Day, Sun Cruz...What more could you want in a Parody Music Video?! (Well, Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia maybe? We'll go ahead and give 'em credit for all of the above due to their inclusion of Jones Day. It's the least we can do.)

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG commenters --- and perhaps video brain-children? --- Bill Stark and Renu Parker)

We've just added a new text-only "BRAD BLOG Classified" adstrip on the left (below the "Premium Ads") for individuals who might like to advertise, make noise, or otherwise get their message out for less than half the price of a normal BlogAd here at The BRAD BLOG!

In addition to getting your message out to hundreds of thousands of readers each week, it also happens to be a great way to support our work here since donations continue to be very few and far between.

-- Click here to create your own BRAD BLOG Classified Ad now!

On the other hand, if you'd like to make a regular old donation, we certainly welcome that as well! Why not put some of that great tax break Bush gave some of you to a cause that he'd be thrilled to see you support! Us! Here's a form to make it easy for you to make a one-time only, monthly subscription or snail mail donation. And thank you for all the continued support!

David Swanson updates the sitch in Crawford, TX this morning where, as we reported yesterday, 14 anti-war protestors who are part of Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" Easter protest were arrested last night...

Lonestar Iconoclast has more coverage and a bunch of fresh photos from yesterday.

Still more details, video of the arrests, and our LIVE audio interview last night with Cindy Sheehan after the arrests are all here...

As David Swanson at AfterDowningStreet.org reported minutes ago, there have been 14 arrests in Crawford, TX where Cindy Sheehan and supporters are again camping out in the original location where they took up camp last Summer.

Though Cindy's sister and Daniel Ellsberg were amongst those arrested, Cindy and ersatz Camp Casey organizer U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright have chosen to not be amonst those arrested this time around so they can continue to run the camp.

I've just spoken with Wright, and have arranged for Cindy to appear with us in person on The Peter B. Collins show on KRXA 540am, in Monterey, CA and elswhere, during my normal weekly Friday guest appearance on his show.

I'll be on tonight beginning at 5pm PT (7pm Crawford time, 8pm ET) and Cindy should be joining us at the bottom of the hour for a live update with the latest.

===

UPDATE: Just completed the live interview with Cindy, straight from Crawford, TX... Here are the MP3's in your choice of length...

-- Peter B. Collins Show: Segment with Cindy & Brad [MP3]
-- Peter B. Collins Show: Complete Hour with Brad on Election Stuff and more, includes live Cindy interview. [MP3]

FURTHER UPDATE: "Crawford is now our home too," says Ann Wright after the arrest, along with a promise to dog Bush wherever he goes. As Cindy pointed out in the interview above, and the Lone-Star Iconoclast ably reports, the folk arrested in Crawford on Thanksgiving last year still have not been formally charged. It seems the folks of McLellan County, TX would rather not have their new, unconstitutional ordinance disallowing protestors from camping on the side of the road, get tested in court.

See Scott Galindez' video coverage of the arrest at TruthOut.

Before I register my complaint here with Matt Taibbi's otherwise excellent article on the background of "Mr. Republican" Jack Abramoff and "The secret history of the most corrupt man in Washington," as published in the April 6th edition of Rolling Stone, I'll point to this smart graf amongst many such smart grafs in a very well-researched and informative piece:

Taibbi's piece covers in detail some of the many scams that Abramoff and the rest of the nationwide Republican Network of dishonest, opportunistic players who now comprise the power structure of the Republican party --- or the "vast rightwing conspiracy" as Hillary correctly described it. It's an ugly, but accurate portrait of those who have hijacked all that America was supposed to have stood for while an otherwise distracted and/or media-whipped public was trained to look the other way --- or otherwise give the benefit of the doubt to some very very bad guys who have earned no such benefit.

Those bad guys now run the country, its government, its corporations and its media virtually in its entirety. And more shamefull still, they've got goons played for suckers who are so daft and gullible that, to this day, they run around and play apologist for these people who --- I guess they don't realize it --- are fucking them hard up their own asses with their own hard-earned money and blindly offered good-will. You'll find many of those dopes repeating Fox "News" and Limbaugh-isms over Thanksgiving dinners everywhere, and otherwise plying their foolish and self-destructive trade wherever they can. A stroll through some of the most trollish comments left here at The BRAD BLOG reveals these people have left only the dimmest of connections to Reality as it exists in 2006 on the planet Earth.

With those accolades for Taibbi's work now out of the way, allow me to point to this earlier graf in his piece (emphasis added)...

"Lurking in the background" must be MSM code for: Reported by BRAD BLOG but otherwise ignored.

We're glad to see Taibbi pick up on some of our reporting as he writes...

...But it would certainly help to keep such bad guys from affecting so much corruption and damage for so many years before they actually get busted, if Taibbi would be kind enough to point out some of the sources --- independent, alternative, "blog" or otherwise --- who have been trying to blow such whistles for so long.

With appropriate credit and recognition from the mainstream, as we opined a several weeks ago, reporting such as ours and many others would likely have the effect of stopping the bad guys before they manage to wreak quite as much havoc on our once-great American democracy.

We'd hope that even the usually independent-minded Rolling Stone would keep such important points in mind by choosing to give appropriate attribution where possible in their future reporting. As we've said before: It matters.

The E-Voting Train Wreck continues...

This from a statement released today by the Indiana Secretary of State (to get just a tiny idea of what this statement is in reference to see the "Train Wreck" article linked above...and just about every other damn thing we've been running here at BRAD BLOG for the last God-knows-how-many weeks/months/years)...

The Indianapolis Star begins their coverage this way:

NOTE TO NATIONAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Please pay no attention whatsoever to any of the above. It's just a small local story. Nothing of interest. No pattern here here that effects our country as a whole in any way. All is well. Please enjoy your Easter Holiday break! Thank you.

Mike Rogers at PageOneQ, a gay online news site, has an interesting and amusing exclusive today based on our own exclusive last Tuesday featuring Ann Coulter's Felonious Florida Voter Registration Application.

The particular angle that PageOneQ focuses on today, came up briefly during a short appearance I made on The Stephanie Miller Show yesterday morning. The three-minute MP3 can be downloaded here or listened to below...

This part of the story is largely an amusing curiosity, of course. Not unlike Coulter herself. Though in truth, she is far more dangerous to America and it's values than a mere "amusing curiosity". Which is just one of the reasons why we follow her destructive antics from time to time here at The BRAD BLOG. To that end, I may have more substantive news and/or opinion on her alleged Voter Fraud Felony soon.

That's the oath next to the signature of Ann Coulter, who, on 6/15/05 filled out her Florida Voter Registration Application Form --- as obtained Exclusively by The BRAD BLOG (posted in full at the bottom of this article) --- after purchasing her new $1.8 million house at 242 Seabreeze Ave. in Palm Beach County, Florida in March of 2005. The "Warranty Deed" (also obtained by The BRAD BLOG) for the house was signed over to Coulter on March 30th, 2005 by the previous owners, Eric Stonestrom and his wife, Lucinda Pascale Stonestrom.

In February of this year, Jose Lambiet of the Palm-Beach Post reported that Coulter, the extremist Republican columnist and author, seems to have committed Voter Fraud by registering and then voting in a Palm Beach, Florida precinct in which she does not live. She registered to the vote, for reasons which still remain unclear, at the address of her realtor Suzanne Frisbie.

Coulter has maintained, when asked about the incident during recent public appearances, that the report is a lie and that she doesn't even live in Palm Beach.

Lambiet has since characterized those denials by Coulter as "absolutely a bold-faced lie."

Various information obtained by The BRAD BLOG, however, would seem to back up Lambiet's account which shows that the liar in the matter is, in fact, Coulter.

The radical darling of the GOP speaking/fundraising circuit did, in fact, purchase a house at 242 Seabreeze Dr. in Palm Beach, Florida as reported publicly by the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's website and confirmed by several different sources including the "Warranty Deed" signed on March 30th, 2005.

Meanwhile, Coulter's official Florida Voter Registration Application Form received from the office of the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor confirms that she specified "999 Indian Rd" as her "Legal Residence" --- despite never having lived there.

The Indian Road address is that of Coulter's Real Estate agent and her husband David.

Coulter's signature on the form is next to an "oath" affirming the information on the form is true, and acknowledging that she understood she could face a third-degree felony conviction, a $5,000 fine and/or five-years imprisonment for providing false information on the form.

"She never lived here," Lambiet reported Frisbie as confirming about the address Coulter used on her registration form. "I'm Ann's Realtor, and she used this address to forward mail when she moved from New York," said Frisbie.

The BRAD BLOG was unable to reach Frisbie for additional comment for this article since obtaining Coulter's actual Voter Registration form. We were told during a call to Frisbie's residence (where Ann Coulter does not live) that the real estate agent was on vacation until April 20th.

While Republicans have been going to great efforts since the 2004 Election to suggest there is some sort of Voter Fraud epidemic in this country (as distinct from Election Fraud via electronic machines, registration database purges, corrupt Secretaries of State in Ohio, etc.,) very few such cases of Voter Fraud are actually known or documented. Nonetheless, phony GOP-run front groups, such as the tax-exempt "American Center for Voting Rights", have been distributing propaganda around the country to suggest such an epidemic in order to force state legislation to require Photo ID at the polls. As well as to smoke-screen from the very real problem of Election Fraud which has succeeded in disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters in recent elections. Critics have charged that the type of Photo ID legislation being pushed through statehouses around the country, at the behest of the national GOP, would disproportionately disenfranchise millions of Democratic-leaning voters and --- as a two Federal courts and the majority of the U.S. Dept. of Justice's Voting Rights Act unit have recently affirmed concerning such a law in the state of Georgia --- would amount to little more than a modern-day poll tax.

White House political operative Karl Rove played along with the misleading meme of a Voter Fraud epidemic over the weekend by lauding Republican attorneys for their "work on clean elections" in 2000, 2002 and 2004. He charged that "We have...an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today," in reference to "ballot integrity" --- a code word used to suggest a problem with Voter Fraud in the country.

We certainly do have "an enormous and growing problem" with our elections, but, as John Gideon discussed in a must-read BRAD BLOG Guest Editorial on Sunday, it's not due to Voter Fraud. Nonetheless, that hasn't apparently stopped Coulter from committing same, or anti-democracy GOP operatives across the country from reportedly running Voter Registration schemes where Democratic voter registrations are changed to Republican or destroyed all together or simply never turned in to county officials. The state of California announced one such investigation into GOP Voter Registration Fraud late last week. Also, three GOP officials have been indicted so far in a "phone-jamming scandal" to hamper DNC get-out-the-vote efforts in 2002, and that investigation now seems to be reaching into the White House as reported by AP yesterday.

But back to Coulter who was recently given 30 days by the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Arthur Anderson, to explain her reasons for committing an apparent third-degree Vote Fraud felony. If a satisfactory explanation is not given, Anderson has said the case will be referred to the state attorney for possible prosecution.

Clint Curtis, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress in Florida's 24th District is no stranger to the matter of Voting Fraud in the Sunshine State. As originally reported by The BRAD BLOG in December of 2004, Curtis has alleged his opponent, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), asked him to create vote-rigging software in 2000 when they both worked for a software firm in Oviedo, Florida while Feeney was also speaker of the Florida House.

In a statement released recently, Curtis commended Supervisor Anderson for taking action in the Coulter matter. Curtis noted the irony of the situation that "many Floridians...still recall Ms. Coulter calling our elderly voters 'hapless' and our statutory recount process 'a subterfuge for fraud, error and outright theft' during the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election."

The Palm Beach County appraiser's record shows that Coulter purchased her swanky Palm Beach crib in March of 2005 and then filled out her Florida Voter Registration Application shortly thereafter. The form is dated "6/15/05" next to the signature and is stamped as having been "RECEIVED JUN 23 2005."

It should also be noted that according to the Connecticut Voter Registration records available via Lexis/Nexis, Coulter's voter registration in that state, where she has previously lived, is still listed as "Active". The "Voting History" section of that listing, however, shows that she last voted in CT in 1996. Both the CT and FL voter registrations list her birthdate as 12/8/1961.

Here is Ann Coulter's complete Florida Voter Registration Application Form in full, along with her Palm Beach County "Voter History" record, as received from the office of Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Arthur Anderson via a public records request...