If the GOP can, in the course of selecting their own Presidential nominee, use a fictional TV show to highlight dangers, real or imagined, that face America, so can we point to a fictional networkwide election hacking scenario as recently seen on a popular TV show. Fictionalized or otherwise, the premise behind this TV hack is based on a real and documented vulnerability of electronic voting machines and underscores the dangers they pose to American democracy.

The following compilation of a few scenes from last week's HEROES on NBC demonstrates a very real scenario: the ability of a single person to hack an election via inappropriate access to a voting machine --- the type of access regularly granted to election officials, voting machine company employees, and poll workers allowed to take voting machines home for "sleepovers" prior to elections.

While the inappropriate access by this particular person in the following clip is obviously a fantasy, the premise underscoring the scenario is anything but --- at least if you're one of those reality-based folks who still believe in the expertise of scientists, peer-reviewed university studies and reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), etc.

Enjoy...

(Thanks to Alan Breslauer for the smart edit, and to BRAD BLOG emailer and HEROES fan, Corey K. for the heads up!)

John Fund is an evil, unrepentant liar who despises democracy and the very American values that it represents. Other than that, he's swell.

At left is the Wall Street Journal's editorialist/propagandist, lying to America on Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher. Actor and well-informed progressive Bradley Whitford deserves credit for attempting to call "bullshit" (literally) on Fund's garbage, but it sure would be nice if Maher had someone on who could really speak to the insidious (and successful) GOP "voter fraud" scam meant for nothing more nor less than to keep legitimate voters from being able to cast a vote, as revealed more clearly than ever by the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal. Fund is one of the original architects, or at least a ponyboy for that despicable scam.

(Hint: I live about 7 minutes from where Real Time tapes each week, and would be happy to counter the previously-debunked horse manure that Fund was allowed to spread, virtually unchecked, last night.)

Important Note: Before you view the video, I should point out that Fund's reference to the Baker/Carter Commission's recommendation for Photo ID restrictions at the polls should be taken in context with the fact that that privately-empaneled commission was created by the same fraudsters who created the GOP's American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) scam as we originally broke here and followed up here, and which RAW STORY subsequently busted wide open here.

As we all reported at the time, that Baker/Carter scam was meant to do little more than give "respectable and official blue-ribbon" credence to the Photo ID scam they were beginning to perpetrate back in its nascent stages. The scam was perpetrated by the same operatives who secretly created and ran the commission in the first place, in order that folks like Fund (who, naturally, was called to give testimony to this phony commission) could later cite some sort of official elder-statesmen blessing of their disenfranchising Photo ID conspiracy which they've been using to con an otherwise gullible media/electorate.

Here's what a fuming John Conyers had to say about Fund's Baker/Carter commission testimony as we reported it in April of 2005, not long after live-blogging the entire hearing:

(Thanks to BRAD BLOG's video ace, Alan Breslauer for the stomach churning video clip!)

UPDATE: We have now sold out of copies of signed FOOLED AGAIN books, but hope to offer more such premiums to BRAD BLOG readers in the near future! Of course, we still welcome your donations to help us continue our work here. Thanks to all for your support!

Congratulations to Mark Crispin Miller, whose FOOLED AGAIN: The Real Case for Electoral Reform will be released in an all-new, updated paperback edition next week!

Mark's added a monster 100 page update to bring things up to date since the 2006 election and tells me that he's drawn heavily from The BRAD BLOG's reporting in the new chapter. Haven't seen it yet, but I'm told one is on the way and I'm looking forward to it.

(UPDATE: My copy just arrived, and a quick thumbing through the new chapter, "Afterword: State of Denial" reveals all manner of cool stuff, like the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney story, San Diego's Busby/Bilbray voting machine "sleepover" debacle, the ACVR, the Holt Bill, RFK Jr. entering the issue, and more, much of which has never made it into print until now! More thoughts on it all after I get to read the new stuff in full.)

To help launch next week's new release, he and his publishers have made a number of personally signed copies available as premiums for BRAD BLOG contributors! As usual, it's first come, first served, so please act now to get your own signed, updated copy of this landmark book while helping out one of your favorite blogs (that would be us!) at the same time!

To get your own signed copy as soon as they're available, choose one of the options below...

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Thanks in advance! As well, a huge thanks to Mark and his publishers for their generous support of The BRAD BLOG!

It's getting really hard to keep up. But let's give it a quick shot...

Last night, McClatchy's Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor reported two more U.S. Attorneys were targeted for firing for failing to bring cases based on bogus GOP claims of "voter fraud." That brought the number of election swing-states where attorneys were targeted to 9. In 7 of them, as of now, the reasons for wanting to get rid of them are related to "alleged Democratic voter fraud."

All of which underscores our previous thesis and the one discussed in Greg Palast's BRAD BLOG exclusive posted a thousand years ago (yesterday), that it's all about the '08 Election.

Then comes WaPo today suggesting that a total of 26 U.S. Attorneys in all --- that's 1 in 4 of the 93 total USAs --- had been targeted for possible removal at one time or another:

And then today, McLatchy's Talev and Taylor followed up with more details on some of the latest "voter fraud" targeted prosecutors in Georgia, Virginia, and Florida...

If the reason isn't clear by now, you're living in a cave. Beyond that, you're all caught up. (Even if the night is still young.)

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast

"The wheels have come off, the engine is on fire and no one is driving," Captain David Iglesias told me yesterday. I'd asked the Naval Reserve officer, heading off to duty in Norfolk, why he didn't want his old job back, United States Attorney for New Mexico.

The busted, burning, ghost-mobile he described is the Department of Justice, driven by Alberto Gonzales. Or is Karl Rove at the wheel? Or no one? Whomever, he didn't want to jump back into Bush's Justice Jalopy.

Today, Iglesias is in Washington to pull the junker off the road, meeting with the Office of Special Counsel where Obstruction of Justice may be swirling around in the old oil pan laying on the garage floor.

The ex-prosecutor and I, long, long ago, had both worked for the Attorney General of New Mexico, a state where the snakes have less venom than the politicians.

First, there's Senator Pete Domenici, whose hiss is as smooth as his bite is deadly.

Domenici, softball interviewer Chris Matthews notes, is a nice guy. On TV. However, the Republican Senator's call to Iglesias at his home, just before the 2006 midterm election, asking the prosecutor about filing charges against Democrats in the week before the vote, was downright rude. When the prosecutor replied in the negative, the Senator hung up.

And apparently, the Senator contacted one Monica Goodling who, scribbled on a notepad: "Iglesias - Domenici says he doesn't move cases." Oops. Goodling, a political stooge working for Gonzales, was listing the reasons for firing US attorneys. Now, rudeness was no longer the issue. Firing a prosecutor for failing to "move cases" --- handcuff citizens at the request of a Senator --- is Obstruction of Justice.

No wonder Monica took The Fifth.

Of course, the Rove dogsbodies at Justice couldn't tell Congress they fired Iglesias because he wouldn't jump at the Senator's rattle. They reached for another complaint on Monica's list: "absentee landlord." Deputy Assistant Attorney General Paul McNulty used absenteeism as the official reason for dismissal. McNulty's resigned.

He should have taken The Fifth....

A WaPo article from Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein yesterday, headlined "Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals," reports:

"More central than previously known" to whom? Certainly not BRAD BLOG readers, as we've been reporting on the scam to invent actionable, yet phony "voter fraud" claims via the White House's Thor Hearne-run front group, The American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), since at least March of 2005.

The swing-state hotspots reported by WaPo and others of late, as named by Rove in 2006, etc., are almost precisely the same ones which led the coordinated ACVR effort going back for years. The same locations --- Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Missouri, etc. --- were named in the ACVR's phony report on phony "voter fraud" released back in July of 2005. We covered it at that time, while few, if any, in the MSM --- certainly not WaPo --- bothered to take notice.

As we reported back then, in our August 2, 2005 article headlined, "Phony GOP 'Voting Rights' Group Delivers Onslaught of Disinfo Today!":

The complete report, which we linked to at the time, is now found here via the Internet archives, since the ACVR website was taken down shortly after the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal began to expose the entire conspiracy. Here's what the "Letter of Introduction" for their propaganda report said at the time:

Those cities and states, of course, have almost all come into play in the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. Point being that very little of the entire scheme is actually "new" --- it's just that the mainstream media (and even elements of the progressive blogosphere) are finally beginning to wake up to what we've been running around with our hair on fire for years trying to let them know about.

It's all been there all along. The only thing that was missing was the will to investigate and report on it. And it's still being under-investigated and under-reported today.

So, if we might take the liberty, allow us once again to point to the person who holds the key to much of all of this: one Mr. Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, the former national general counsel to Bush/Cheney '04 Inc., friend of Rove, and mastermind behind the ground game for national conspiracy as aided, abetted and orchestrated by the group he co-founded, the still-mysteriously funded ACVR.

Although some light was finally shone onto Hearne and the ACVR in a recent groundbreaking McClatchy report, he and his entire direct connection to the White House remain incredibly under-investigated, even while he and his ACVR co-conspirators have been trying to hide their tracks wherever possible of late. (E.g., Thor's online profile at his very powerful, corrupt Missouri legal firm, Lathrop & Gage --- also very much at the center of all of this, btw --- had described him as "General Counsel for the American Center of Voting Rights (ACVR)" as of April 27, 2007, as seen via the Internet archives. That reference to ACVR has now been quietly excised from Thor's current online profile.)

So again, all we can do is try to get the word out that MSM reporters and progressive bloggers looking into the US Attorney scandal may want to peruse our years of coverage on all of this, nicely indexed for their review at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

On a related note, moving the ball one step forward...WaPo's piece also goes on to quote Dan Tokaji, election law specialist at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, as saying: "There is reason for worry and suspicion at this point as to whether voting fraud played an inappropriate role in personnel decisions by the department."

"Reason for worry and suspicion?" With all due respect to Tokaji, we'd say it's gone far beyond that. We'd suggest "reason for indictments and jail time" would be more accurate.

But the question, however, which occurs to us at this point is: What is the next step? It's unclear where Congress plans to go with this investigation, as it's become clearer and clearer that the White House was directly behind the use of the DoJ as little more than a political bludgeon and an outreach arm of the RNC.

Do they plan to recommend indictments? If so, to whom? The DoJ? Will they ask for a Special Prosecutor to do same? Or will they exercise their Constitutional duty to impeach those Administration officials who have criminally violated their oaths to protect and defend that Constitution?

We don't pretend to know where all of this goes, and the endgame seems hazy right now to say the least, but we'd suggest it's time for Congressional investigators to start thinking and/or talking about it.

We hope to have a fresh Exclusive here tomorrow from Greg Palast, with some new details, which begin to look at exactly that. Stay tuned...

The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections is dubious about the explanation by the apparent vote fraudster, Ann Coulter, that she used her realtor's address on her voter registration application for fear of stalkers, The BRAD BLOG has learned. Further, when the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office closed their investigation into the documented allegations in April, following an unusual call from an FBI agent, the election chief who had brought the complaint to the PBSO was never notified.

"The whole claim of stalkers was very strange to me," Dr. Arthur Anderson, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, told us in a phone call today. He wondered why the claim hadn't come up before now.

"I found it to be rather ironic that no action was ever taken to conceal her location, her home address, etc., until now that this issue has come up," in relation to allegations that she committed a third-degree felony by knowingly using the wrong address on her registration form, and then voting at the wrong precinct as she did in 2006.

Anderson's comments echoed those of Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Gregg P. Miller who told us yesterday that the "stalker" claim sound like "a load of bull." He told us via email that if Coulter "were trying to avoid a stalker, she would not have purchased her house in her own name," and added that she would have used "a trust or an LLC " to avoid exposure for her home address on public records.

On Friday, Palm Beach Post's Jose Lambiet reported that Anderson's requested investigation had been shut down --- failing to even interview Coulter --- after an agent from the FBI Academy's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, VA, contacted the local detective working on the case to instruct her that Coulter's use of a phony address was somehow related to an investigation of his, in which no charges have ever been brought, concerning a "stalker."

Later that day, The BRAD BLOG revealed that the "Special Supervisory Agent" in question, Jim Fitzgerald, seems to have been an ex-boyfriend of Coulter's who may have intervened on her behalf on a number of occassions. His questionable involvement in Coulter's voter fraud case in Palm Beach has spurred an internal investigation, according to the Post.

Anderson also told us that, though the PBSO investigation which began at his request in January had been shut down on April 12, he has never been notified and still has not been sent a copy of their final report.

"Had it not been for someone from the press contacting me, I'd not have known about it," he told us. "I had not heard anything back from the detective that took the case, which is funny since I was told initially that I'd hear back within a few weeks, even for a progress report or something as things moved forward."

"I've still never heard back from them. So to hear they closed the case from someone else is very troubling," he said, adding that he was planning to send the PBSO a letter "to inquire about the reasons for that."

He confirmed comments given to AP on Friday, that, after going through three different law enforcement agencies, and with new election laws recently passed in Florida, it was difficult for him to pursue the case much further. He had previously suggested that his next stop would be the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement if PBSO declined to take on the case.

"Given the new election reform matters that we have to deal with, I'm not inclined to spend much more time on Ms. Coulter," he told us, though he added he was not previously aware of the "FBI boyfriend" angle we reported yesterday and that current issues in the news concerning GOP claims of "voter fraud" could change his thinking.

When we told him about the allegations that the FBI man had been a former lover of Coulter's, Anderson laughed and said, "that figures."...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Part 1 (8:18)

Parts 2 and 3 follow below...

It looks like Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) is housing his own little Republican voter fraud factory at his NC crib.

Mike Rogers has several scoops, following up on this item from CBS News today:

Whoops. But Rogers's version of the story reports a number of additional questionably-registered folks who appear to be living in McHenry's house as well, along with a few additional juicy details (okay, rumors, but interesting ones) about the "unmarried" McHenry...

[Ed Note: Story updated with additional details. Brian Skoloff, of AP's Florida bureau was later revealed as the writer of the article in question. See end of this item for details.]

OATH: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that...All information on this form is true. I understand that if it is not true, I can be convicted of a felony of the third degree and fined up to $5,000 and/or imprisoned for up to five years.
-- Oath signed by Ann Coulter when she fraudulently lied about her address on her Florida Voter Registration Form

AP never fails to fail. Incredible.

Their unbylined report, out this afternoon, is surely good news for Ann Coulter! And we'll bet their headline is currently scrolling by on the Fox "News" and CNN crawls, it's certainly everywhere else. Here's the headline:

We guess the fact that an FBI agent --- who, as we reported earlier today, is apparently her former boyfriend --- interceded inappropriately in the case to claim she was being "stalked" (without evidence apparently) isn't noteworthy enough to include in AP's report.

Neither is the fact that the FBI has begun an internal investigation into the matter, according to the Palm Beach Post this morning.

No, instead, the AP reports --- in an unbylined article! --- Coulter's wet dream headline that she's been "cleared."

And despite the fact that her Loyal Bushie attorney didn't even bother to respond to AP's request for comment, AP passed on his wet dream by reporting completely unsubstantiated horseshit to the effect of: "Her attorney, Marcos Daniel Jimenez, told the detective Coulter may have not changed a previous address because of a stalking incident."

That's a bald-faced lie. Coulter didn't "not change" anything....

The Ann Coulter Voter Fraud case, which we've been covering for more than a year (see our Special Coverage Page here, including her fraudulent Voter Registration Form, the complaint that started it all, and much more) has taken several bizarre twists this morning as Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet once again steps up with several fresh scoops in the matter, and The BRAD BLOG, who, as of today's article, has now become a corollary in the story, has an exclusive detail or two of our own to offer on the heels of this morning's Post report.

First, Lambiet reports that the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, which had been investigating the matter, has closed the case after an FBI agent interceded on Coulter's behalf. The PBSO had been investigating Coulter's fraudulent, knowing use of the wrong address on her voter registration form, a third-degree felony, and the fact that she subsequently, knowingly voted at the wrong precinct.

Second, the reason offered by the FBI man for Coulter's use of a phony address on her form --- actually that of her Palm Beach County real estate agent --- was because of claims that she was being "stalked" by a conservative BRAD BLOG guest blogger!

After the FBI intercession, as Lambiet reports, the PBSO investigator shut down the probe "without interviewing Coulter; a Realtor, whose Indian Road address Coulter used [on her fraudulent voter registration form]; or neighbors of Coulter's Seabreeze homestead."

The BRAD BLOG has previously shown that, in fact, Coulter had knowingly lied on her voter registration form, signing next to an "oath" swearing that "All information on this form is true" and that she understood "if it is not true, I can be convicted of a felony of the third degree and fined up to $5,000 and/or imprisoned for up to five years."

Once the issue was reported originally by Lambiet, Coulter went about lying about it to the media and at public appearances, claiming she didn't even live in Florida, as Michelle Pilecki, who picked up on Lambiet's item today, had previously reported at Huffington Post. Nonetheless, property records and other evidence we've published at The BRAD BLOG, including an affidavit from Republican poll worker James Whited, show conclusively that Coulter lied on her voter registration form, and then knowingly committed voter fraud when she voted at the wrong precinct in 2006.

"We stand by our detective's work," a PBSO spokesman told Lambiet in today's report. "Based on the nature of the allegations, she did as much as she could."

But this gets a lot more bizarre, so keep reading...

The BRAD BLOG spoke this morning with the "stalker" in question, as named by Lambiet, longtime Coulter critic, and founder of Citizens for Principled Conservatism, Dan Borchers, who tells us that "Ann Coulter used a false allegation as a 'get out of jail free card'" on her voter fraud charges.

He also tells us something that Lambiet didn't mention in his report: The FBI man in question, Supervisory Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald, was Coulter's former boyfriend!

Lambiet, who spoke with Borchers for his piece, didn't report that allegation, but hinted that something wasn't adding up in Fitzgerald's intercession in the matter. He wonders why an FBI profiler from the FBI Academy's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, VA, "who went after the Unabomber [would] take time from his busy day to even think about a municipal election snafu?"

Fitzgerald wouldn't reply to Lambiet, but he reports that after the Post contacted the bureau for comment on the matter, the FBI "immediately launched an internal review of the agent's involvement."

Anderson and Lambiet aren't the only ones dubious about the FBI's intervention on behalf of Coulter or the excuse that a "stalker" led her to use her realtor's address on her voter registration form....

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Click To Play

Amy Goodman interviews (18:04) former Justice Department Attorney Joe Rich and Bertha Lewis of New York's ACORN on today's Democracy Now! Rich, who left Justice in 2005 after 36 years in the Civil Rights Division, was the head of the voting section from 1999 to 2005. He discusses the politicization of virtually all elements of the Justice Department including the administration's emphasis on voter fraud with aims at suppressing the vote....

From AP...

And I can't help but feel the two election officials should have been sentenced to 18 years instead of months (though we understand that to be the max sentence), given the number of folks who have died in Bush's War since the 2004 Election and the fact that there were enough votes in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) alone to give the race to Kerry instead of Bush had the election been administered legitimately.

Just for the record, only 6 votes registered for Kerry instead of Bush in each of Ohio's precincts would have changed the result of that election.

Must run, so we'll refer you to our previous coverage when the two Ohio elections officials were found guilty in January for more details.

NOTE: Hat-Tip to "Ninepatch" over at DailyKos for tipping us off to the news of the sentencing. It's a rather sigh-inducing irony to get the news from dKos given it's proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zúniga had once shamefully banned all diarists, and purged their diaries, for daring to discuss and/or investigate the Ohio 2004 Presidential Election conspiracy. Thank you for continuing to make noise on these matters anyway those of you who have done so at dKos!

UPDATE: AP now has more on the sentencing and concerns by both the Judge and prosecutor that the conspiracy goes higher:

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** By Guest Blogger Jim Cirile

Clint Curtis just won’t roll over. And that, fellow Americans, is a very good thing.

Curtis came to prominence a few years back when The BRAD BLOG broke the story of his blowing the whistle on Republican congressman Tom Feeney (FL-24) who, as Curtis alleged in a sworn affidavit, asked him to write an election-rigging software prototype when both men worked at the same Oviedo, FL, software firm in 2000. Curtis was a programmer, Feeney was then Speaker of the Florida House as well as the general counsel and registered lobbyist for the company, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI)

A lifelong Republican, Curtis did as asked, believing the program was meant to be used to prevent election tampering by Democrats. When he learned the true purpose was to manipulate the vote in South Florida, Curtis went to the authorities and finally to the public. The BRAD BLOG has been following his story closely ever since.

Last year Curtis, who switched to the Democratic party in the wake of his experience and others like it with Feeney and YEI, challenged the powerful Feeney on his own turf --- he ran against him for the U.S. House seat in Florida’s 24th district, where Feeney had ascended in 2002.. Feeney's campaign against Curtis was as slimy as expected, with the powerful Republican friend of DeLay, Abramoff, and the whole bunch spending big bucks on a smear campaign in hopes of painting Curtis as a wacko conspiracy theorist, despite years of evidence shoring up Curtis’s original claims – including his successful passing of a polygraph test – and one report after another revealing massive holes in the claims of innocence by both Feeney and YEI.

Despite pre-election polls, including one from Zogby International, Inc., just prior to the election, showing the two men to be in a statistical dead heat, Feeney defeated Curtis 58% to 42% according to Florida’s officially certified election results.

But Curtis smelled a rat. Backed up by polling and his remarkable online vote verification tool, VoteNow 2006, he refused to concede. His race is now one of five challenges (four of them from the state of Florida, including the well-known FL-13 Jennings/Buchanan contest) currently pending in the U.S. Congress as having been filed under the Federal Contested Elections Act.

We spoke with Curtis late last week about what’s going on with those challenges, about his ongoing efforts to lobby Congress to finally bring reform to our broken election system, his experience with the Democrats "50 State Strategy," and whether he plans to run against Feeney again in 2008.

Suffice to say, like those three gals from Texas, Clint Curtis isn't "ready to make nice" either…

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As is too often the case, the proverbial shit seems most likely to hit the erstwhile fan whenever we're on the road and unable to cover the splatter sufficiently. This week has been no exception.

There is much movement in Ohio today as Michael Vu, the Election Director for Cuyahoga County, where two Election Officials were convicted two weeks ago of having rigged the 2004 Presidential recount, has now finally resigned from the Board of Elections after what is hopefully his last failed election.

The official BoE statement generously says: "Michael Vu has chosen to pursue future career growth and will resign as director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections March 1 of this year."

In related news --- and speaking of failed elections and "future career growth" --- the office of the new Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has now officially requested an audit of the SoS's office over the last two years as it was led by the corrupt former SoS and democracy-hater J. Kenneth Blackwell.

In addition to the $80,000 in bonuses given to employees on the way out the door, and the $250,000 settlement Blackwell agreed to concerning the 2004 Election last December (as we reported two weeks ago), Brunner expressed a new concern in her hand-delivered letter to the Republican State Auditor Mary Taylor: Shredded documents.

As reported today by the Columbus Dispatch:

Blackwell shredding documents?! We're shocked! Shocked!