Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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President Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card will be replaced by Josh Bolton, the current Budget Director, who is also part of the President's "inner circle".

This clip begins with an introduction by CNN's American Morning. MSNBC's Imus provides some comic relief as the President begin's his Press Conference. Imus refuses to watch the entire press conference (calling it "insanity"). The video switches back to CNN for Andy Card's comments. In conclusion, NBC White House correspondent David Gregory provides some post-speech analysis.

Read more information about the White House shakeup from AP.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Prompted by a new report in The New York Times, MSNBC's Hardball takes a fresh look at a history of the Iraq war through the lens of a January 31, 2003 memo detailing a White House meeting between Bush and Blair.

This video begins with a report by David Shuster that weighs possible repercussions of The Memo against the increasing violence in Iraq and President Bush's low standing in the polls.

Chris Matthews interviews writer Phillippe Sands whose recent book, "Lawless World", exposes more pre-war lies. According to The Times, Mr. Sands "is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner."

Matthews and Sands take the opportunity to pile on The President. Even Matthews' questions to Sands appear to be clear indictments of The Presidents actions:

The January 31, 2003 memo is consistent with the July 2002 "Downing Street" Memos where British officials expressed concern that Bush had already decided to go to invade Iraq and that "intelligence was being fixed around the policy" to meet that goal.

Blogged by Brad from the Road...

Yup, still on the road, and largely "off the grid" for another day or so (with much going on, sorry, I'll catch up soon, I hope! Not even able to check email!) --- but caught this in the carbon-based version of the NY Times this morning. No time for context other than to mention our previous report on Maryland's Republican Governor who wants to see Diebold's paperless touch-screens banned in the state along with the Democratic-majority House which voted a bi-partisan 137 to 0 to ban them recently, along with the Democratic Board of Elections Director, Linda Lamone, who has been fighting for them since Day 1, and still is. Search BRAD BLOG for the links to all of those stories.

Point is, as we've always said, this ain't an issue of Right and Left, it's an issues of Right and Wrong. That said, here's the letter printed in this morning's NY Times (who has been horrendously delinquent in reporting on any of these matters, and still buys into the Voting Machine Company's "it's just glitches" meme)...

Letters to the Editor --- especially from Elections Officials, but regular old Voters are just as good --- make a difference. Especially to papers like the Times who refuse to properly investigate and report on this stuff! Please write one today!

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

Still on the road and unable to cover anything as usual. So I'll leave it to you guys to comment on the notable details. Had an interesting day/night yesterday at the California Democratic Council Annual Convention, and hope to share some thoughts and perhaps pics with you as time allows in the not-too-distant future. But until then...

Both Washington Post today, and AP yesterday, cover the Ion Sancho story is a fair bit of detail with some interesting responses, as well, from both Diebold and Sequoia (ES&S seems to have refused comment for either story).

WaPo's story in today's A section (page A7) --- headlined "Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors: After Official's Criticism About Security, Three Firms Reject Bid for Voting Machines" --- focuses on all three companies certified to do business in Florida all now refusing to do business with Sancho.

That story reads nearly identically, to BRAD BLOG's March 8 story on same. Hey, better two-and-a-half-weeks late than never, we suppose. And no, not a nod nor hat tip to BRAD BLOG's coverage. And as our friend Larisa Alexandrovna from RAW STORY points out in her dead-on piece over at HuffPo yesterday, the Mainstream Media is far too good too recognize any lowly "bloggers" in their reporting.

On Saturday, AP covered the Sancho story in great detail as well. Though there's a few more details here, I think I prefer the WaPo story today. Both are worth a read however, particularly since I have no time to cover the deets.

Finally, today's WaPo story in the Sunday paper included a Tom Toles cartoon which, so far, I haven't been able to find online. A kind reader scanned it and sent it to me. It's posted below.

We continue to win this fight...despite the slow and seemingly endless struggle against some forces of evil with a lot of money to back their fight. We may be naive here, but with the truth on our side, we believe we believe David will eventually defeat Goliath.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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We haven't forgotten Fox News' phony 'War on Christmas' where Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson and other Fox personalities attacked anyone or anything that used blasphemous words like "holiday".

Fox is again "fighting for the rights the Christian Majority" with another faux menace: The War on Easter.

Undoubtedly, the "Spring Bunny" will cause the downfall of The Republic.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Responding to the President's criticism of the media coverage of Iraq, ABC's Nightline, airs the story of an attempt to report on good news in Iraq.

After a day of covering the horrible violence in Iraq, ABC reporter Jake Tapper tried to find some lighter news. The ABC News team decided to cover a new Iraqi sitcom and the challenges of creating comedy for Iraqi television viewers.

The story quickly turned from good news to tragedy and fear as Jake's contact, who was also the head of the entertainment division for Iraqi TV, was murdered during filming.

Jake Tapper concludes the story with these words: "And there went our effort to show comedians trying to make Iraqis smile again. It ended with the funeral of the man who helped us put the story together. A horrible, gruesome, perfect metaphor for daily life in Iraq."

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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CNN's Showbiz Tonight picked up on an interview Charlie Sheen did for Alex Jones' radio show where Sheen expressed his doubts about the "official" 9/11 story.

Besides Showbiz Tonight, the story has gotten some critical coverage by the New York Post, The Boston Herald and Human Events. Alex Jones' Prison Planet website explains "The mainstream media has finally seen fit to cover Charlie Sheen's comments on 9/11... penning hit pieces that seek to smear Sheen as an unstable crackpot."

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Russ Feingold and Jon Stewart both do a great job in this interview. Videos have been floating around the internet since it aired last night. If you haven't seen it yet then it's worth a look.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Howard Dean filibustered CNN's Soledad O'Brien to push the message that the Democratic Party has an effective strategy for changing the course in Iraq.

While the President Bush and the Republican noise machine are blaming the press, Dean said that the Democrats are having difficulty getting media coverage.

On the plan for Iraq, Dean said "We do believe that we can't withdraw immediately... Over the next couple of years we need to bring the troops home." On the apparent divided opinions of Democrats Dean said "There's a middle ground between Jack Murtha and Joe Biden and we think it makes a lot of sense."

Will the strategy as described by Howard Dean convince American's that the Democrats can get Iraq on track towards a resolution? Should the Democrats come together and support a single specific plan for Iraq?

Heading up to Santa Clara to speak this weekend (see "Media Appearances" section at top of front page, and come on by if you can!) Don't know if I'll be on or offline over the next week. Please assume I'll be off, and don't hold it against me. Need a break anyway. Though knowing me, I won't be gone long. Although I'm happy to leave the messes in TX, IL, CA and elsewhere to John Gideon anyway

He and David Edwards will be holding down the fort here. Treat them kindly. If anyone needs me, contact John or David and they'll know how to track me down!

And stay outta the liquor cabinet while I'm gone! Seriously, I marked the bottles, and I will be checking them when I get back.

P.S. Don't forget to VOTE FOR US!

We'll have another fairly enormous story shortly concerning the problems, as reported previously, in Tarrant County, TX where some 100,000 votes were incorrectly added to the results of the March 7th primary by ES&S and Hart InterCivic electronic voting machines in use there. For a bit more background on that, see our report on the Hart InterCivic whistleblower who also worked in Tarrant County. He tried, to no avail, to alert the Sec. of State of problems with both Hart and Tarrant as far back as July 2004. His alarming letters, included in the article, were ignored by both the TX Sec. of State and Attorney General.

But until the promised big story out of Tarrant...We received the following email last week after posting the aforementioned report. The writer, Jerry Lobdill, identifies himself as "a retired physicist and system engineer who has specified, designed, tested, and evaluated computing systems for the US Navy for 30 years." He was a supporter of Doreen Geiger who ran in Tarrant County for Democratic Party County Chair. Read Lobdill's note for details of how the Democratic Party seems to have rolled over in Tarrant County on this issue, chosing not to challenge the questionable results from the Hart InterCivic and ES&S machines.

All of which leads the Lobdill to conclude in his note: "Democracy is dead here."

That is, of course, particularly troubling considering the TX Sec. of State halted a recount in Tom Green County yesterday when the printed results differed from the reported results from Election Night by as much as 20%.

Lobdill's email follows in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Summit County has recently had problems with failed memory cards as related by BRAD BLOG on March 9 and March 10. The problems in Summit County concerned a 30% failure rate found in pre-election testing for those cards. That problem alerted folks in North Carolina to test those same cards on their own ES&S machines where they discovered last week that more than 1000 of them failed to work!

Now that those problems have been in the media (Yes, even the MSM has reported the problems) the vendor has decided to not be cooperative with Summit County, OH.

The ES&S on-site project manager was not allowed by the company to attend a board of elections meeting to explain why there were problems with memory cards. Board members have also complained that ES&S staffers installing the system have suddenly become cold and getting any information is "like pulling teeth".

The Akron Beacon Journal also reports on other problems the board is having:

And in addition:

Meanwhile, SoS Ken Blackwell's office has, in effect, just shrugged their shoulders and said that they hope both sides can get along and adhere to their obligations. Of course it was Ken Blackwell who chose ES&S as the vendor for Summit County.

We will be sure to keep an eye on this situation and report back when there is more to pass on.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

WARNING: This video contains graphic images.

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A video tape uncovered by Time Magazine showing evidence of an attack on Iraqi civilians in Haditha has renewed human rights calls for investigations into possible war crimes by the U.S. military. The Pentagon announced that 12 Marines were under investigation for the deaths shown in the video tape.

The video in this post has a BBC report on the U.S. military investigation as well as reports from the point of view of Arab television.

Here are some details from a March 21 AP report:

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Last night on CNN Anderson Cooper 360, Rep. John Murtha reacted to comments made by President Bush during a rare press briefing. Responding to a reporter's question, Mr. Bush let it slip that all U.S. troops would not be removed from Iraq for the duration of his Presidency.

This is a short video clip of Murtha's response (transcript) in which he says:

The second Primary Election night of the year, this time in Illinois. As predicted --- following on the heels of the various disasters two weeks ago in the primary in Texas (with much more news to come on that, by the way) --- the first reports out tonight begin to outline the latest raft of problems throughout the day on the newly deployed Electronic Voting Machines in the state.

Also as predicted, the problems are minimized as "glitches", and here in the first sentence no less. The word is used a total of three times throughout the Chicago Tribune's "High-tech voting hits snags" article quoted below.

These "glitches", mind you, are just those reported so far. And only the one that occurred on Election Day itself...the counting problems have yet to reveal themselves. But they soon will.

You've heard it here first, but based on the various disasters in just the first two Election Nights of 2006, it sure as hell looks like we're headed towards an E-meltdown with our Electoral System --- And at this rate, it's coming well before we make it to the Generals in November.

Here's just a few of the "glitches" and "snags" as reported by the Chicago Tribune (apparently, they're reserving "hiccups" and "snafus" for the follow-up articles.) These before Elections Officials and Voting Machine Vendors (this time, mainly from Sequoia Voting Systems) send out their Damage Control Goons. Take a look and decide for yourself how "minor" the problems are...

Read on...It gets worse...