Not since Indiana Jones, has one man made such a bold statement about men's haberdashery! In a stunning photograph, flashed across the AP wires today, a well-known and well-connected GOP lobbyist by the name of Jack Abramoff has put the once-ubiquitous headware for men, known as the fedora, back on the nation's front pages!

Attaboy, Jack! The BRAD BLOG thanks you for waking up a fashion-stultified nation! The country relies on forward-thinking media icons like yourself to help keep our nation --- and our nation's capital --- from suffering under the oppressive malaise brought on by an all-too-timid crop of girlyman fashion mavens in DC!

Once thought to have been relegated to the fashion basement, the new statement by Abramoff is rumored to have caught a great number of DC lawmakers off-guard! Those who might have otherwise thrown out their old chapeau's are now rumored to have begun to "hold onto their hats" indeed!

Hooray Jack Abramoff! Thanks to you, the fedora is back! We think we'll buy ourselves one today! If you'd like help in buying a few more, please see this! We'll be happy to help any way we can! It's the least we can do to say thanks!

UPDATE: Fashion-maven Wonkette weighs in...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

This morning, lawyers for super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff revealed a plea deal where Abramoff will plea guilty to fraud charges in a Florida fraud investigation. In return for the deal, Abramoff agreed to cooperate with any other federal investigations. AP has filed this report.

Republicans are worried about information that may implicate as many as a dozen in Congress including Tom DeLay and Bob Ney. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) is up for re-election and has returned more than $100,000 in campaign donations. Polls in Montana show that Senator Burns' constituents are becoming concerned about his dealings with Abramoff.

ThinkProgress and RAW STORY are reporting that a news conference will be held at 12:30 et today. Some DU members suspect that the Abramoff scandal is masking foreign influence peddling by the GOP.

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UPDATE: David Corn asks "What's Good for Abramoff Is Good For America?" And in a just-published piece, Mad Cow Morning News follows David Corn's reasoning to a grave possibility:

At the press conference, the prosecutor read out the charges against Abramoff and then in a forceful but rehearsed voice said that "government officials and government action are not for sale. The Justice Department will aggressively investigate and prosecute these types of cases which have a devastating impact on the public's trust of government. We will not shy away from that responsibility no matter where the trail leads."

The prosecution of public officials by the DOJ has increased 90% in 3 years. When asked, the prosecutor chose not to give an explanation for the increase.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are happy to join the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA and ask that the EAC do their job and demand that the ITA reinspect the Diebold software looking for banned 'interpreted' code. Diebold has admitted that it is there. Now the ITA needs to find it and, if necessary, withdraw the qualification of Diebold software until the 'interpreted' software is removed. So far 26 organizations have signed the VoteTrustUSA petition. Concerned citizens have sent 2705 emails and 375 letters so far....

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Osama bin Laden's niece attempts to rehabilitate her image by posing for the January edition of G.Q. magazine.

For your protection, a warrant was not obtained before (or after) violating her privacy.

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The December 26 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

Missing 2005 already? I'm not. But if you are, here's
The Best of The BRAD BLOG 2005!

Guest blogged by David Edwards

On MSNBC's Countdown, Keith Olbermann presented a very funny segment called "D.C. Follies".

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are happy to join the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA and ask that the EAC do their job and demand that the ITA reinspect the Diebold software looking for banned 'interpreted' code. Diebold has admitted that it is there. Now the ITA needs to find it and, if necessary, withdraw the qualification of Diebold software until the 'interpreted' software is removed. So far 18 organizations have signed the VoteTrustUSA petition. Concerned citizens have sent 1550 emails and 180 letters so far....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are happy to join the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA and ask that the EAC do their job and demand that the ITA reinspect the Diebold software looking for banned 'interpreted' code. Diebold has admitted that it is there. Now the ITA needs to find it and, if necessary, withdraw the qualification of Diebold software until the 'interpreted' software is removed. So far 14 organizations have signed the petition. Concerned citizens have sent 855 emails and 90 letters so far...

While sitting in for Rush Limbaugh this morning, Roger Hedgecock did a fine job of lying in his place.

Paraphrasing here, since I don't yet have a copy of the audio (any Ditto Heads out there feel like sending it to me?), at appx. 40 minutes into the first hour of today's show, Hedgecock informed lied to his listeners by telling them that Bill Clinton "didn't even have NATO approval" for the campaign against Kosovo.

Aside from NATO, who actually led the bombing, Hedgecock's "news" will likely come as a shock to the wingnuts out there (like Phyllis Schlafly, for instance) who have been referring to the Kosovo campaign as "the Clinton/NATO bombing raids" for years while expressing their outrage (IRONY ALERT!) that the President "lied" us into the war. A war, we might add, where not a single American Troop was lost, but that's beside the point, of course.

BRAD BLOG comment trolls can rest assured that --- even with their Talking Points Master, Rush, gone for the week --- they are still receiving the finest misinformation GOP money can buy even in his absense.

Guest Blogged by David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and CensureBush.org

In the eight months since the so-called "Downing Street Documents" have been made public, certain media elites have claimed that it is all "old and uninteresting news" that…

1. Bush had already decided to go to war long before approaching Congress or the public or the UN about it, and had already started the attack with increased bombings;

2. Bush had already decided to lie about weapons of mass destruction and ties to 9-11;

3. The Brits were concerned by the illegality of an aggressive war, but the Bush Administration was not;

4. Going to the UN was an attempt to justify the war, and the hope was to craft an ultimatum that Saddam Hussein would reject;

5. The focus of the Bush and Blair administrations was on selling the war to the public, and not at all on trying to avoid it;

6. The Bush and Blair administrations were aware that Iraq was no threat, and were willing to attack Iraq precisely because it posed no serious threat of fighting back.

Of course, those who care about the world we live in do not find any of this "uninteresting." As well, given the shameful dearth of proper coverage by the Mainstream Media of these issues, many Americans still have yet to hear about these things. So it is hardly "old news" in any meaningful sense.

But still, some have maintained that the "Downing Street Documents", as well as all the other evidence that makes them old news in the eyes of some, are not credible. In fact, a right-wing group called Move America Forward is running television ads claiming that every Bush war lie was true, even the ones that Bush himself has admitted were "mistakes." (Yes, they even go so far as to claim in their ads that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq!)

Some people may be beyond the realm of rational persuasion, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to present those in doubt or poorly informed with a few pages of paper confirming the accuracy of the Downing Street Minutes and related documents, and listing other evidence that corroborates the Minutes point by point?

Now you can…

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

VoteTrustUSA has launched a campaign; with the assistance of The BRAD BLOG and VelvetRevolution, and other state and national election integrity groups; to hold the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) accountable for ensuring that all Diebold software is re-inspected and decertified until it can be shown that all prohibited code has been removed. We also urge the EAC to initiate the re-inspection of the election software of other vendors, which may also include software that is expressly forbidden in the FEC Voting System Standards. Please go to the VoteTrustUSA action page and send an email to the EAC voicing your concern about the use of prohibited software on voting machines.

In December, The BRAD BLOG joined newspapers across the country and reported that computer experts in Florida had conclusively proven that the “electronic ballot box” in Diebold optical scan vote counting systems could undetectably alter the results of an election. Within days, California's Secretary of State reported that the use of banned software affects Diebold's touch-screen voting system as well, a fact which Diebold has acknowledged.

This breach of security exploits an inherently insecure feature of the Diebold optical scanners and touch screens known as interpreted code, which the Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) of 1990 and 2002 specifically prohibit. For further details about how Diebold uses interpreted code and why it is banned from use in voting software, please click here.

Because this prohibited code exists on Diebold touchscreen machines as well as their optical scanners, the Secretary of State of California has demanded that the Diebold Touchscreen (TSX) software be re-examined by the Independent Testing Authority (ITA), who originally certified that the systems were in compliance with the 2002 Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG).

How did the ITA overlook such an obvious violation of federal standards in the first place? And just as importantly, do the voting systems produced by Diebold's competitors contain similarly prohibited code?

It is time to put the EAC on notice that violations of federal standards by the ITA, which is now under their jurisdiction, will not be tolerated by voters.

Take action and send an email to each of the four EAC commissioners and to the EAC Independent Test Authority Secretariat and let them know you demand that action be taken.

National, state, and local election integrity groups can sign an Open Letter to the EAC which will be sent to them on January 3.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are happy to join the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA to ask that the EAC do their job and demand that the ITA reinspect the Diebold software looking for banned 'interpreted' code. Diebold has admitted that it is there. Now the ITA needs to find it and, if necessary, withdraw the qualification of Diebold software until the 'interpreted' software is removed....

For those of you who may have missed any of the notable ups and downs (mostly downs) for our patriotically-impaired friends over at Diebold, Inc. over the last three weeks, I've just done a quick review of the most notable tales from the tape over at Huffington Post, including links to the latest key BRAD BLOG articles chronicling the end-of-year undoing of everyone's favorite American Voting Machine Company.

At HuffPo: "DEMOCRACY STRIKES BACK! As Diebold Goes Down for the Count..."

Everything's fine. Nothing to worry about. These aren't the droids you're looking for. That was the message out of Sacramento yesterday in regards to the newly exposed concerns about ES&S voting machines in California as recently revealed by a secret letter from California's Secretary of State. That letter was written and sent five weeks ago privately, but only reported publicly for the first time last week after it was uncovered by an AP reporter.

Of course, CA SoS Bruce McPherson's office has yet to actually inform the voters (you remember them, don't you, Mr. McPherson?) of the "problems experienced by counties utilitizing ES&S voting equipment and software" as discovered during the recent November Special Election which "deeply concerned" the SoS enough to threaten ES&S with decertification in the entire state, according to the letter.

But the message out yesterday is that all is well, and no --- you pesky voters don't need to worry your pretty little selves about a thing!

According to the Vallejo Times-Herald (note how the concern in the lede here is for Elections Officials as opposed to Voters!):

Yea! The Solano County leaders don't have to worry about a thing! Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!

What exactly are those needs, Ms. Kerns? Do the California Voters have any right to know about them? Or will it require investigative reporters and bloggers with bad attitudes to uncover still more secret letters and documents sent to the Voting Machine Companies that we, the Voters (you remember us, don't you, Ms. Kern?), are paying with our tax-dollars to privatize our public elections?!

State Senator Debra Bowen had previously called on you "to immediately release all corrspondence to all vendors, and all documentation related to the certification of any and all voting equipment and voting systems." Have the SoS's office done so? It would certainly be appreciated, so we could judge for ourselves about those "one by one" needs that ES&S has "thoroughly met". And we speak as California Voters ourselves here, by the way.

Bowen also asked, "When is the public entitled to know?" Which, of course, we'd like to know as well. She also added "This kind of secrecy is completely unacceptable." And, of course, we agree to that as well.

So, Mr. McPherson or Ms. Kerns --- or whoever it is that is making decisions up there in Sacramento while you suppose that few are paying attention between Christmas and New Years --- would you like to answer the Senator's call on behalf of the voters of California for whom you work?

Our lines are always open. We'll be happy to help you disseminate all of that information. If you actually care about such things. We'll even try and get rid of the bad attitude when we do just for fairness sake. But you'll have to meet us halfway. If you work for us (as you're supposed to), then we'll do our best to work with you.

(Hat tip to the eagle-eyed John Gideon, who, unlike Diebold, actually means it when he says he "never rests".)