A candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Broward County, FL, was arrested yesterday, following threats and orders from her opponent, the current Broward SOE, Dr. Brenda Snipes.

Ellen H. Brodsky, the county's first non-partisan candidate for SOE, had previously been barred from public counting and oversight on a number of occasions, at the county's official Canvassing Board site and voting machine warehouse in Lauderhill, Florida.

After being taken into custody yesterday afternoon by three uniformed police officers, Brodsky was held overnight at the Broward County Jail even though the $25 --- that's twenty-five dollar --- bail had been posted for her by her son by 8pm last night. She was finally released well after 5am this morning.

(Note: An account of the arrest posted this morning on the South Florida Sun Sentinel's blog incorrectly reported that Brodsky was "released on bail Thursday evening." A report later filed on their website by the same reporter correctly noted that she "was released from jail at 5:40 a.m. Friday.")

Brodsky is a longtime member of a number of election integrity advocacy groups in Florida, including the Broward Election Reform Coalition, which she also founded. Earlier this year, she determined to run against Snipes as a non-partisan candidate.

Brodsky is the latest in a string of election integrity advocates around the country who have been arrested in the course of attempting oversight of our election procedures --- although she is the first, to our knowledge, who also happens to be a candidate on the ballot.

The action has brought condemnation from a number of other election watchdogs and even other election officials in Florida who have characterized the arrest to The BRAD BLOG as an outrage and an abuse of power by Snipes and her office...

As I haven't had much (if any) time to focus on it since last Tuesday's election, I just wanted to toss in for now, here on Veterans Day, that I find it hard to believe that many of those vets, to whom we ought a great debt, would have risked their lives to fight to remove individual freedom, personal liberties, and hard fought rights for any American.

Thus, what may have happened in this state last Tuesday, when voters apparently voted in favor of Prop 8 to remove the right to marriage equality for same-sex couples, is an embarrassment and a reminder of why rights should never be put up for popular vote. The U.S. Constitution --- and presumably the CA Constitution, which will be amended by this proposition, if it's allowed to stand --- is meant to protect and guarantee the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Had it been placed on the ballot for a popular vote in the 1800's, slavery would likely have been approved by the electorate as well. That wouldn't have made the right to live free of enslavement in these United States any more correct than removing the right for same-sex couples to share all of the benefits (whatever they may be) of marriage that every other couple in America has the right to enjoy.

What a shameful disgrace. It will not stand. But it remains an extraordinary embarrassment that so many still have to go to such lengths in order to guarantee their individual rights and freedoms in 2008...particularly after all that we've been through in this nation.

Happy Veterans Day to all. And thank you to all of those who have served. Your sacrifice will not have been in vain.

UPDATE: Protest rallies against Prop 8 are planned all over the country this Saturday. Please help keep America free by joining one of them in your town, if you can. More details here...

Guest Blogged by Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us

California's Proposition 8 --- a Constitutional amendment to ban the right to same-sex marriage in the state --- currently has more "yes" (in favor of discrimination) votes than "no" votes tallied, 52.2% to 47.8%, according to the CA Sec. of State's website. This represents a difference of 434,830 votes. But according to the No on 8 campaign, three to four million provisional and vote-by-mail ballots remain uncounted...

My latest column at the UK's Guardian...On America's still dark, twisted soul...

From Saturday's Washington Post, on the "November Surprise" we've been trying to shout about for months now.

The lede: "Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them."...

See below for a rather breathtaking "Round-up of Problems Facing Voters Nationwide", such as registration backlogs, illegal voting roll purges, deceptive practices and dirty tricks, etc., now plaguing American voters across the country with just 17 days left before our country's biggest election ever.

All of that, while Fox "News" (whose asked me to come on live tomorrow, Sunday, at 2:40pm PT, btw, along with my old friend John Fund "for balance") continues to misreport, alarm and deceive their viewers in regard to the GOP's phony ACORN "voter fraud" fraud. Unfortunately, it's not just Fox who is irresponsibly and dangerously misreporting that scam --- though they seem to have made a small cottage industry out of it of late --- CNN and MSNBC have been filed loads of equally inaccurate and misleading reports on it as well.

But take a look at the "Round-up" below, sent this afternoon via email by the 866ourvote.org Election Protection coalition of non-partisan election watchdogs. And keep in mind that their summary below doesn't even mention the myriad electronic voting issues we've been reporting here of late --- touch-screen votes flipping, paper ballot electronic tabulators that can't count correctly or that add thousands of "phantom votes" or that drop thousands of real ones etc. --- cropping up, yet again, across the country...

Guest blogged by DES

The Hill reports today that defense attorneys for Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) have filed a motion to dismiss 35 charges of corruption stemming from a sweetheart real estate deal, claiming the federal government secretly and illegally wiretapped Renzi's cell phone.

Ironically, Renzi appears to have been caught up in the very same warrantless wiretapping that he supported as a Congressman...

By the way, in case you're wondering, this is the real reason --- about 1.3 million of them, actually --- for the GOP's desperate ACORN "voter fraud" scam...

Any questions? If so, first see this and then this, and then read the following list of ACORN FACTS before getting back to me with any of your questions, as I'm happy to help straighten you --- or any of the clueless and lazy media folks who have fallen for the GOP's "voter fraud" fraud --- out, as needed.

The following FACT list is from a recent press release from ACORN, pointing out their success in registering hundreds of thousands of low-income voters whom few others care to go out and register, and the fact that in almost every instance where there have been concerns about registrations turned in by the group (by law, they must turn in all registration forms they collect, problematic or not), it has been ACORN themselves who have first notified officials about the potentially fraudulent or incomplete applications.

The following FACTS need to be read by everybody (apparently), even those who believe they are progressives, yet have fallen for the GOP's Dixie-Chicking of ACORN...

Since we could use some good news around here for a change, we're happy to highlight yet another conservative decision to honor both the Constitution and the rights of all Americans to enjoy equal protection under the law...

Congratulations to the free peoples of Connecticut, and thank you to their Supreme Court for pushing back against those --- Democratic, Republican, or any other --- who would attempt to re-interpret the Constitution and/or liberally create new laws in order to try and discriminate against any American.

Late last week I had the "pleasure" of appearing on Tavis Smiley's public radio show, along with GOP "voter fraud" zealot and propagandist Hans von Spakovsky, about whom we've written quite a bit here over the years. The show was pre-taped last Thursday, ran over the weekend, and will continue to be available at Smiley's website throughout the week.

The audio discussion, which became rather heated at times, is posted at the end of this article.

In his introduction, Smiley credits von Spakovsky as being "from the Heritage Foundation." But in addition to being funded by those unapologetic Republicanists, it goes unnoted that vS, a former chair of the FEC, recess-appointed by Bush, then blocked by the Democrats in the Senate when his appointment came up again, was formerly embedded in the Bush DoJ's wholly-politicized Civil Rights Division voting section.

At the DoJ, he helped to deconstruct the beloved Voting Rights Act of 1965 by, among other things, pushing through polling place Photo ID restrictions in places such as Georgia, against the advice of just about every career employee in the division. (The law was later found to be an "unconstitutional day poll tax" by the courts, but ultimately allowed by a higher court, and still under challenge by Democrats in the state.) He was also instrumental in bringing phony "voter fraud" charges, such as those against ACORN workers in Missouri, filed just days before the razor-thin 2006 Senate election, in violation of the DoJ's own written rules against bringing such indictments just prior to elections where they are likely to affect the race.

Perhaps even more noteworthy, but unmentioned by Smiley, is that even with all of that, the disgraced von Spakovsky has been secretly hired, at tax-payer expense, as a consultant for Bush's similarly compromised, and now ironically-named, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to help monitor the job that the DoJ will (or won't) be doing to monitor the 2008 general election.

In any case, vS remains an unapologetic democracy hater, hell-bent on keeping Democratic-leaning voters away from the polls and, as you'll note during the interview, a liar.

Normally, however, he's not faced with anybody who can actually call him on his bullshit. That wasn't the case this time, as I was there, and was able to do exactly that...

I finally got the chance to watch the final cut (or so he says) of John Wellington Ennis' ingenious and inspiring Free For All! over the weekend. Taglined "One Dude's Quest for Democracy", the latest in the burgeoning election integrity documentary cannon offers yet another fresh look at our democracy on the precipice.

It's also damned funny --- which is a very nice change of pace --- and brings both the soul and spirit of your favorite Saturday morning Schoolhouse Rock to the serious concerns of America's mindblowing electoral dysfunction.

While previous films in the genre have often focused more narrowly on the filmmaker's particularly favorite bête noire, such as voting machines, voter suppression, whistleblowers or the examination of specific aberrations of democracy (such as Florida 2000 or Ohio 2004), Free For All! uses Ohio's 2006 election --- featuring '04 villain, OH Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's quest for the Governorship --- to examine "all of the above", as Ennis himself serves as the Michael Moore-ian "Dude" trying to figure out just what the hell has gone wrong with the system. Answer: Just about damned near everything.

(Watch the FFA! preview at right.)

Ennis even manages to close a bit of a loop on 2004 by bringing in the "Don't Tase Me, Bro" FSU student who, in fact, was attempting to get a real answer from John Kerry on why he rolled over on the '04 election when he received a few thousand volts of thanks for his efforts. Real ones. As opposed to the imaginery ones that ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCFOX used on themselves to shut down reportage on one several of the greatest crimes of modern times.

Ennis also succeeds in offering a solution to many of the discovered woes...

My column this week at the UK's Guardian is headlined "Careening down the slippery slope." It begins this way...

Please check out the full article...

From Democracy Now!...

The report from Army Times is certainly troubling, given the timing and the Constitution-hating evil-doers still allowed by Congress to continue holding the reins of our military. Back in 2005, an AP report headlined: "Bush: Boost military role in domestic emergencies" discussed the Constitutional issues that would block such domestic deployments of the U.S. military. Guess they got that all worked out? Or Bush just decided that following (and defending) the Constitution is a bit too quaint for him at this point in his failed "Presidency".

The brigade, according to the report, will be "known for the next year as...Consequence Management Response Force." Rest easy, kids!

(Hat-tip BRAD BLOG commenter "KestrelBrighteyes".)

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has more on this and its legal provenance. Hat-tip Melissa at Shakesville.

To nobody's suprise, Democracy Now! announces that charges against journalist Amy Goodman and two other staff journalists arrested while doing their job covering protests at the Republican National Convention are being dropped by the City of St. Paul. Journalists intimidated. Mission accomplished...

Chris Bowers has more thoughts on the arrests of journalists, and the dropped charges, and what he alleges amounted to 'a deal' of sorts between the RNC and the St. Paul cops.

Videos of DN! reporter Nicole Salazar being assaulted by the police (:23 seconds) and Goodman's outrageous arrest while peacefully trying to learn what had happened to her reporters (:49 seconds), both follow below...

The chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, is calling on the John McCain campaign to "immediately halt Republican vote suppression efforts," as seen recently in Michigan --- where a county GOP chair announced his intention to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voter eligibility at the polls on Election Day --- and elsewhere.

Conyers has announced hearings on these issues, and is calling on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to launch an immediate "full scale investigation" into these matters. He has sent letters both to McCain [PDF] and to Mukasey [PDF] (the latter signed by 23 members of Congress) to that effect, as well as issuing the following statement today...