Carter Evans, of GoTVNetworks.com, a cell phone video content provider, has put together a very good and incisive series of news reports on America's E-Voting Meltdown. You'll see some familiar faces --- ours included --- in his four part series of short reports. In Part I, posted below, you'll also see Diebold whistleblower Chris Hood (a long time source of The BRAD BLOG's) for the first time on camera. He's tremendous.

Evans promises an interesting run-in with voting officials down in Florida in upcoming reports. Here's Part I of his report (about 3.5 minutes)...

-- Streaming Flash version...

UPDATE: GoTV now has all 4 parts up. Good, quick, easily digestible stuff. All segments now viewable right here.

We've had some documents from Coulter's attorney concerning the below for some time, but we haven't been able to find a second to run them. Just too much going on. So for now, I'll let AP pick up the ball for the moment. Besides, it's embarrassing for them that I keep beating them to so many stories!

A search for "Ann Coulter Voter Fraud" (yes, voter fraud, the kind the Republicans say is rampant, despite evidence suggesting that it's election fraud that's the real problem) here at The BRAD BLOG will yield loads of previous coverage on this story, including an actual copy of Coulter's fraudulent felonious voter registration forms, the original complaint from the polling place where she illegally tried to vote, attorney letters, and much more more...

From AP...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

Tuesday's segment of "Democracy at Risk" was about the increasing incidence of problems in Florida during early voting. After discussing the problems encountered by some voters, Gov. Bush was quoted and showed that he is no smarter than his brother:

Bush needs to open his eyes and look at what is happening around him. Of course, he might find out there are problems and that would mean doing something to fix them, which would mean making decisions, which would mean....Oh never mind! As Lou said in closing the segment: "Idiotic. Idiotic. Unbelievable. It's just --- it's incredible."

And in the "Hacking Democracy" segment we learn that although Diebold is protesting the fact that HBO is going to air the documentary all month beginning on Nov. 2, Diebold is protesting a different documentary than the one HBO is airing.

It is no wonder that no one from Diebold has agreed to appear on Lou Dobbs. They might have to get the facts right.

The text-transcript of Tuesday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Click the photos for the video pitch of your choice. As someone mentioned recently to us (and we agree), the political novice vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional candidate (FL-24), Clint Curtis, has studied hard and well. He now comes off as downright "Clintonian" (in the good sense) in his presentation these days, as you'll note in the video below. His opponent, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), is the one Curtis alleges asked him to create vote-rigging software in 2000. Feeney claims Curtis is "not fit for public office." We'd suggest the short videos below prove otherwise...

The whistleblower...

The whistleblowee...

P.S. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) currently has a quick feature article on Curtis at the top of their website. PDA has endorsed Curtis, as have the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Esquire Magazine, and others...

ED NOTE: BRING YOUR VIDEO AND STILL CAMS WITH YOU TO VOTE, ESPECIALLY ON TOUCH-SCREEN, TO DOCUMENT THIS STUFF!

The Miami Herald is reporting that votes on touch-screen voting systems in in South Florida are flipping from Democrat to Republican candidates.

Not a single report of a vote flipping from a Republican to a Democrat so far. As usual.

The Herald didn't mention it --- but we will --- the type of touch-screen voting machine reportedly failing in Broward was the ES&S iVotronic.

That's the same model of voting machine that was also reportedly flipping votes in St. Louis County from Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill to Republican Jim Talent in Missouri's extremely close U.S. Senate race as we reported late last week along with several similar incidents reported in both Texas and Arkansas as well.

Note in the Herald report linked above, the Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman also admits that "it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot --- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual."

A "15-step process" for recalibrating by poll workers with a few hours training? Brilliant.

And this...

Relax, people. It's only democracy. Do you actually want it to be accurate too?! George Will's column on Sunday, --- which either supports electronic voting or doesn't, it's hard to tell --- seems to think you're probably asking way too much.

UPDATE 2:40pm PT: And more reports coming in now from Florida of votes hopping from Democratic candidates to Republicans. This one via Tampa Bay Tribune...

In a cover story interview in the Crawford, Texas Lone Star Iconoclast, Clint Curtis has a few no holds barred thoughts on his race in Florida's 24th Congressional district, on his opponent, the corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), and on his plans to fight back at the retaliation Feeney has levelled against him for blowing the whistle on Feeney's vote-rigging attempts and other alleged malfeasance...

If you don't know who the fearless Curtis is, what cave have you been living in? We originally reported on his remarkable story in December of 2004 and have been doing so ever since. The rest, as they say, may well be history in the making.

The endorsement from Esquire magazine is short and sweet, and is now added to the list --- along with the Daytona Beach News-Journal's endorsement of publications supporting Clint Curtis over the corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) in Florida's 24th U.S. House Congressional District:

So much for Feeney's discredited attempts to sell the idea that Curtis is "not fit for Congress." Looks like the nation's newspapers and magazines seem to think it's Feeney who's not fit for the post.

And the voters, in yesterday's Zogby poll showing Curtis and Feeney in a "virtual toss-up," would seem to agree. Notable numbers, if only because Curtis has had almost zero money to use in his campaign while Feeney has had more than $1 million.

(Donate to Curtis here if you'd like to help --- unlike Feeney, Curtis is currently getting no money from either the national party or huge corporate PACs.)

In the meantime, the Curtis campaign has just released two new one-minute radio spots. They're both linked below. In the first one, he challenges Feeney to a public polygraph test for the both of them. (Clint has already passed one himself in re: his allegations about Feeney.)

-- Curtis for Congress, Audio Ad: "Take the Test, Tom!"

-- Curtis for Congress, Audio Ad: "Vote for Clint Curtis!"

Let us know what you think, and remember that donations made above will help to get these things on the air all over the 24th district in Florida to counter Feeney's disgraceful smear campaign against Curtis.

One last thought, posted below the fold is a comment sent to the Clint Curtis Blog from someone who claims to be a professional pollster who says about that Zogby poll showing the dead heat that the "That poll is even better news than advertised. That's not a dead heat --- you may well be winning!"

He goes on to add, "I'm a professional pollster and let me give you a polling insider's tip about how to interpret a poll like this one." Those "insider tips" are beneath the fold...

Blogged from the road by Brad Friedman

Once thought to have been a "safe" Republican U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th Congressional district the race to defeat the once-powerful incumbent Rep. Tom Feeney now appears to be up for grabs, according to a new Zogby International poll.

Computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower turned Democratic Congressional candidate Clint Curtis is now in a virtual dead heat with Feeney, despite the sitting Congressman's enormous campaign treasury funded by top-tier GOP funders and corporate PAC money.

Curtis' campaign has, to date, been funded only by individuals across the nation via the Internet. Neither the DNC nor the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee (DCCC) has contributed funding to Curtis's race, which now appears set to possibly unseat the once powerful Republican House Deputy Whip.

The inequity in funding may all now (hopefully) change as Feeney is seen as leading Curtis by only 2 points in the new poll commissioned by Election Integrity organization VelvetRevolution.us.

The Zogby poll showing the dead heat also reveals that Curtis is leading among likely voters who describe themselves as independent by a full 11 points!

According to the report from Zogby International of 402 likely voters in Florida's 24th district when asked "If the election for Congress were held today and the candidates were Democrat Clint Curtis and Republican Tom Feeney, for whom would you vote?" respondents replied as follows:

The two point difference between Curtis and Feeney is well within the poll's +/- 5% margin of error. As we're currently on the road, and scrambling with a number of breaking stories even while barrelling down the highway towards home, we hope to have more details on the poll after we get the opportunity to review the internals, which look very good indeed for the challenger Curtis.

(DISCLOSURE: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us)

Feeney (R-Abramoff), the one-time gubernatorial running mate of Jeb Bush and close friend of the Bush family, carved out what was believed to have been an extremely "conservative" 24th Congressional district for himself while Speaker of the Florida House. Ascending to the U.S. House in 2002, Feeney was not even challenged for the seat in 2004, as he was thought to be unbeatable. Many Florida papers have continued to knee-jerk report on the race in those terms despite the lack of any known polling for the contest between Feeney and Curtis until now.

Curtis is the computer programmer and political novice who has alleged (as we originally broke back in December of 2004), that he was asked by Feeney to create electronic vote-rigging software back in 2000 when both men worked together for the Oviedo, Florida, software firm, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI). At the time, Feeney was YEI's general counsel and registered lobbyist even while he was Speaker of the Florida House and even while they had multi-million dollar contracts with the state. Feeney has since been named one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" two years in a row by the D.C. ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

He remains the only sitting U.S. Congressman who went with Jack Abramoff on one of the lobbyist-paid golf trips to St. Andrews, Scotland, who has yet to be indicted.

Feeney has mounted a costly smear campaign attempting to label Curtis as "crazy" and unfit for office in light of the charges. Yet Feeney's campaign, which has included a number of documented lies, unevidenced claims and attacks, and even a controversial mailing which offended voters when it included doctored photos of Curtis and a Hustler magazine cover --- seems to have backfired.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal, which reported on a number of Feeney's ethical lapses over the years, recently endorsed Curtis over Feeney, criticizing the sitting Congressman for "not really talking issues in this campaign" and "choosing to focus largely on denigrating his opponent." Curtis, meanwhile, the paper says, "is an independent thinker" who has "prepared well" for office.

Curtis, once a Republican until his dealings with Feeney soured him on the party, made his allegations concerning Feeney and YEI long ago via sworn affidavit, video-taped testimony to a Congressional panel, and a polygraph test, which he has called on Feeney to take. Feeney has denied Curtis's allegations, many of which have since been documented via state and federal reports as accurate, but has refused to either take a similar polygraph test, or even meet face to face with Curtis.

His story has also been highlighted in a number of documentaries. We recently posted documentary video footage from the film Eternal Vigilance, which tells the basics of Curtis's story through interviews with the whistleblower.

(Blogged on the road by Brad from the Bioneers Conf. in Marin, CA)

It was one thing when Daytona Beach News Journal endorsed computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis over his Democratic primary opponent (whom Curtis thumped in that race).

It's quite another thing --- a coup, in fact --- that now the News Journal has endorsed Curtis over the powerful sitting U.S. Congressman and former Florida Speaker of the House, the corrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), in their race for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th district.

Feeney, of course, is Jeb Bush's former gubernatorial running mate, the man who promised to deliver Florida's electoral vote to George W. during the 2000 fiasco no matter what the Supremes had to say, the only so-far unindicted Congressman to have gone with Jack Abramoff on a paid golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, and the man whom Curtis accused --- via affidavit, video-taped Congressional testimony, and lie-detector test --- of commissioning a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

Shamefully, Feeney has done little more than mount a disgraceful smear campaign against Curtis, attempting to paint him as "crazy" and not fit for office. The campaign seems only to have highlighted Feeney's own lack of seriousness as a legislator; one fit more for prison than the U.S. House of Representatives.

The News Journal's complete endorsement of Clint Curtis seems to bear that out, to Feeney's eternal disgrace. Here's a few snippets...

...

An enormous number of superb documentary films that cover the topic of our American electoral meltdown are being released. Last week, I quickly ran a preview item on HBO's Hacking Democracy --- premiering Nov. 2nd on HBO --- which gives a first-hand account of the detective story as it has unravelled over the last three years concerning the many lies of the Diebold corporation. I've now seen the final cut and will have more details on that extraordinary film soon.

In the meantime, I was thrilled recently to get a look at David Earnhardt's breathtaking Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System documentary, which tells the story of America's crumbling democracy and a few of the citizen patriots across the country who are attempting to save it.

Along with a focus on some of those folks, the film's emphasis is on the impossibilities which seem to have occurred in the tainted 2004 Presidential Election and the likes of which we may look forward to in the weeks and years ahead.

Earnhardt's film draws a great deal from a series of speeches and interviews filmed in April of 2005 during a National Election Reform Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

I participated as a speaker at several events during that conference, as did computer programmer, whistleblower, and former lifelong Republican Clint Curtis who had, at the time, yet to even dream of running against a very close friend of the Bush clan, the corrupt U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) --- the very man Curtis has alleged asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype when they both worked for the same Oviedo, Florida, software firm in 2000.

Curtis left the Republican party after being soured on them vis-a-vis his direct experiences with Feeney.

Earnhardt was kind enough to share with The BRAD BLOG the section of the film which introduces the basics of Curtis' vote-rigging claims about Feeney. It's a beautifully done segment --- and not just because it includes interviews with me as well, but it doesn't hurt! --- which should go a long way towards allowing folks to decide whether Curtis is "crazy" as Feeney's reprehensible smear campaign and website against him is hoping to trick voters into believing now that they've become Congressional opponents.

Here's the clip (about 8 mins) from Earnhardt's film which I found to be finally as uplifting and hopeful as it was maddening and heartbreaking. The entire film can be purchased on DVD at the website www.EternalVigilance.us where additional clips from the film are also available.

NOTE: There is yet another documentary, still in the works, wholly devoted to the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises, Inc., vote-rigging scandal and The BRAD BLOG's so-far two-year long investigation and reporting of it. That films goes into considerably more detail on the entire breadth of the allegations (including the Chinese spying, the mysterious death of the Florida Inspector General who was investigating Curtis' claims, etc.). We hope to have details and, perhaps a short preview from that film soon as well.

Please pass the permalink to this article far and wide to help counter the hundreds of thousands of corporate PAC and RNC dollars that Feeney is using in his shameless attempt to discredit Curtis.

While you're at it, if you'd like to help unseat Feeney, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, please donate to Curtis' citizen-funded campaign. We've spoken to him recently, and he continues to be upbeat about his chances, but while the national Dems have still failed to help his campaign (as with so many others across the country), it's up to the people to help someone who will fight for electoral integrity get into the U.S. Congress!

(Hat-tip Hotpotatomash for help with the video!)

The publicity email sent to us this morning from filmmaker David Earnhardt follows in full...

Poor, poor, corrupt, ethically-challenged, morally bankrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff). Can't even run a smear campaign without getting into trouble, screwing it up and seeing it backfire.

As we reported several weeks ago, the feckless Florida Republican launched a "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear website and blogsite, to attack his whistleblower-turned-congressional opponent with doctored photos and doctored facts.

The Tom Feeney for Congress Campaign's shameful tactics continue to fizzle, apparently, as they have been forced to remove their smear blogsite, which had been set up on blogger.com to attack Curtis. The removal of the site, and the link to it from the main smear-site, comes not a moment too soon: we had planned to run an item on Feeney's latest demonstrable lie, which we had noticed was recently posted on the smear blog. The blog, which had been at CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com is now redirected to an innocuous search page, with no trace left behind.

In a blog item Feeney posted on the site --- before he "disappeared" it --- he charged that an article published in Hustler about the mysterious 2003 death of Raymond Lemme "was based on the delusions of Clint Curtis's murder conspiracy theory," or some such nonsense.

As it was "we," Brad Friedman, who actually wrote the article in question [PDF], we can tell you that it was based on nothing of the sort. It was based on the mysterious and still unexplained circumstances surrounding Lemme's death, which the Valdosta, GA police had initially ruled a suicide, but then later reopened the investigation after The BRAD BLOG reported on an affidavit filed by Curtis. Curtis alleged that his former employer YEI had harbored Chinese illegal aliens spying for China (later confirmed), overbilled on state contracts (later confirmed), and that Feeney, who also worked for the firm as lobbyist and attorney --- while simultaneously serving as Speaker of the Florida House --- had requested Curtis to create a software vote-rigging prototype (not yet confirmed, but similarly not disproven.)

Lemme was an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looking into the charges Curtis originally filed with the state of Florida in early 2001. In his sworn affidavit, Curtis says that Lemme told him in June of 2003 that his final report was almost complete, and that he'd found the corruption "went all the way to the top." Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in Valdosta, Georgia.

Our story on Lemme's death detailed the many contradictions between the official police report and the unearthed photographs of the death scene --- photographs which the police report originally stated were taken at the scene but unavailable, due to a "failure in the camera's flash memory cards."

And now, Feeney has scrubbed the smear blogsite altogether, in what appears to be the latest misstep in the Congressman's bizarre and shameful campaign.

Previous follies in Feeney's smear campaign include (but are not limited to):

All of this from a man who issued a news release in the early morning hours after Curtis's landslide victory in the Florida primary. Quoth Feeney: "Serious times demand serious leaders and Curtis is not even in the same solar system as the rest of us."

Really? Which solar system are you in, Mr. Feeney? We're still waiting for your "serious" leadership, or at least a serious campaign on both the issues and allegations.

For his part, Curtis recently issued a press release calling on Feeney to explain what he knew of Florida colleague Mark Foley's sexual predator issues and when he knew about them. As a GOP Deputy Whip in the U.S. House, Feeney is a part of the Leadership who had been reportedly made aware of Foley's predilections long before the information was publicly revealed.

So far, Feeney has refused to comment on the record, to our knowledge, concerning the Foley matter.

He has also refused to take a polygraph test concerning Curtis's allegations and has denied, but not answered to, them. Curtis, who gave an account of the remarkable story in video-taped sworn testimony to a Congressional panel in late 2004, successfully passed such a polygraph on his own in early 2005.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

Last night Lou Dobbs doubled the reporting on his semi-regular "Democracy At Risk" segment. Kitty Pilgrim reported on the recent breakdown of the system in Volusia County where but for the local newspaper and stalwart activists the county would have been able to bury discrepancies in their recording of votes in their primary election. Also Bill Schneider reported on how important the November general election is and that there are teams of lawyers ready to step in and take action.

-- Streaming Flash version...

The text-transcript of Tuesday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Think things have gotten bad for Diebold and friends? Something tells us they're about to get a whole lot worse.

HBO has just announced that they will be debuting Hacking Democracy, the long-awaited documentary film by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels, on November 2nd --- just days before millions of Americans will head to the polls to use all-new untested, inaccurate, hackable, electronic voting systems for the first time.

The BRAD BLOG received the first press release issued by HBO on this film late yesterday; it's posted in full at the end of this item.

We've yet to see the final version of the eagerly anticipated film (though we're told a screener is headed our way) but we've spent hours of time in conversation over the last year or two with both Michaels and Cohen as the pieces --- and the evidence --- were coming together.

We're told there are some remarkably damaging revelations to be seen --- and heard --- in the film, which includes not just interviews with Elections Officials, Computer Scientists, Security Experts, and Diebold Spokesliars, but loads of on-the-scene, first-hand documentary footage of some of the most remarkable and stunning moments during the long road of discovery in the E-Voting Revolution Scam that's been perpetrated on American democracy before, during and since the 2004 Election.

The investigative film, nearly three years in the making, is said to lay out a devasting case against E-voting in general, and Diebold in particular. The film, previously known as VoterGate, was released on the Internet in a very short, barebones "Presidential Election Special" just prior to the 2004 Election. At the time, that early, quickly compiled version --- which was jaw-dropping in and of itself --- followed the early stages of investigations into electronic voting machine fraud, vulnerabilities, and malfunction by Bev Harris and the late Andy Stephenson of BlackBoxVoting.org.

The earlier clips were released for free on the Internet in 2004 when the filmmakers felt they had already acquired so much important footage that they felt a responsibility to do something with it before the Presidential Election.

But as remarkable as the revelations of that short version were, that was then and this is now: some two years, miles of footage, and at least two or more actual demonstrated voting machine hacks later. The now-retitled film includes scores of fresh never-before-seen interviews, damning statements, and documents, and culminates in one of the most devasting moments in E-voting's short and sordid history: The Leon County Florida Hack, by computer security expert Harri Hursti, of a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in December of 2005.

The filmmakers were there for that watershed moment when the legendary Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Ion Sancho, allowed independent computer security experts the opportunity to try and hack his paper-based Diebold optical scan voting system. The result was a flipped mock election, with no trace of the hack left behind, save for the paper ballots (which, in Florida, are now illegal to examine by hand after they have already been counted by a machine.)

Diebold said it couldn't be done. Diebold, apparently, lied.

That hack resulted in shockwaves across the national electoral landscape as it revealed the very real consequences of what had, up until then, been a largely theoretical fear about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines to malicious tampering.

An election had now been flipped for the first time on an actual voting system, this one a paper-based Diebold model. The touch-screen systems, we would later learn, are even more vulnerable.

The Leon County Hack will be seen, as it occured, for the first time when HBO premiers the film just days before this November's general election, when millions of Americans will be using those same new, hackable, optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and others for the first time.

It's about to get much worse, indeed. We hope to have more on Hacking America in the coming days.

UPDATE 10/15/06: Details now available on HBO's site here...

HBO's complete first press release on the film, including a schedule of air-dates, follows in full...

The Clint Curtis campaign for the U.S. House (FL-24) issued a press release late last week asking "What Did Feeney Know About Colleague Mark Foley's Predatory Behavior And When Did He Know It?". (Press release posted in full at the end of this article.)

It was not without reason that we asked the same question of Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) last week at the end of a blog item on the latest misstep in the corrupt Congressman's crazy smear campaign he's running against Curtis. A smear campaign that, we might add, seems to be helping Curtis enormously!

For evidence of that, see this local Florida news report (includes video) blasting Feeney for sending porn mailings to local moms, and this darn-near accurate feature article in Saturday's Orlando Sentinel calling on Feeney to take a lie-detector test!

The question of what Feeney knew about Foley, when he knew about it and what he did about it is an appropriate one. Feeney, as Deputy Whip, is a member of the House GOP leadership who had reportedly been informed long ago of the "Foley Problem." Feeney is also a Florida caucus colleague of the now-disgraced child predator and proudly worked with Foley on bills such as the PROTECT Act of 2003 to punish those who would exploit children.

For background, as briefly as we can give it (regular BRAD BLOG readers may skip this graf) Curtis is running to unseat Feeney this year. Curtis alleged in December of 2004 that Feeney had asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype to be used for flipping the votes in South Florida when both men worked at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, FL, software firm. Curtis was a programmer, and Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist (in addition to his day job as Speaker of the Florida House). As early as 2001, Curtis also alleged that YEI --- where Feeney maintains his campaign headquarters even today --- was harboring communist Chinese spies and overbilling state agencies by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both of those claims have since been borne out (see this summary of the extraordinary Clint Curtis story); Curtis has also told his story in sworn video-taped testimony before a congressional panel and passed a polygraph test, which Feeney, for his part, still refuses to take.

Despite Feeney's silly and shameless use of doctored photos and doctored facts on his campaign's smear website and smear blog --- which has only just now been updated to disclose that its "Paid for by Tom Feeney" after an FEC complaint was filed --- and despite Feeney's various misfired attempts to tar Curtis with ridiculous and self-disproving claims, we'll avoid such cheap and childish shots at the Congressman. At least for the time being.

We will, however, suggest that Mr. Feeney --- who has been mighty quiet about the Foley scandal since it broke --- may want to go on record, sooner rather than later, about exactly what he knew and what he did, or didn't do, about the Foley issue over the past several years.

While we're at it, was Feeney one of those dozens of folks in Congress who recently received subpeonas on this matter? I'm sure he'll have no trouble telling us whether that answer is either yes or no.

As we all know, it's not the crime, but the cover-up that gets 'em every time. We're waiting Mr. Feeney. You may wish to make your move before someone else does it for you. Just trying to be helpful here.

Clint Curtis' complete press release follows in full...

A campaign mailing received by a hundred thousand Florida voters today would seem to indicate that the corrupt, and apparently desperate U.S. Congressman from Oviedo, Florida, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), is willing to do everything within his power to lose his congressional race this year against challenger Clint Curtis.

"Don't send smut to my mailbox," the New Smyrna Beach, Florida. mother says in a video report at Florida's WFTV Channel 9, "It's not really something I want my 9-year-old walking out to the mailbox and bringing to me and asking me questions about."

The mailing, of dubious taste, is the latest chapter in Feeney's bizarre smear campaign against his former colleague, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional opponent Clint Curtis.

We highly recommend the article at the WFTV Channel 9 website (which also includes a video of their coverage on tonight's evening news.)

In the mailing --- sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters in Florida's 24th Congressional district and featuring a poorly-doctored photograph of Curtis dressed as Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner --- Feeney claims he's attempting to "alert" voters that Curtis has been endorsed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

So far, Feeney's bizarre attempts to garner support have included a rudimentary smear website named "Crazy Clint Curtis," featuring doctored photos of Curtis and other dubious claims, and a blogsite repeating those claims citing "evidence" that actually seems to belie the strange assertions. (e.g., See our coverage of on Feeney's odd 9/11 conspiracy theory.) The smear blog, however, has no indication that it's paid for by the Feeney campaign.

The disingenous references to Hustler in the mailing, including a doctored cover from the salacious magazine, are in reference to an article of ours [PDF - WARNING: Includes graphic photos from death scene!] on the mysterious death of Florida Inspector Raymond Lemme, which the magazine ran some months ago.

Lemme, as we originally reported at BRAD BLOG, was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia hotel room during the course of investigating Curtis' whistleblower claims against Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, Florida, software firm with top-security state and NASA contracts.

Curtis had worked as a programmer at YEI while Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist.

Feeney was also the Speaker of the Florida House at the time when Curtis claims YEI had employeed illegal Chinese aliens (spying on America), overbilled the state on contracts, and had requested that Curtis create a vote-rigging software prototype at the behest of the Congressman. The charges of Chinese spies and state overbilling have since been confirmed, by both state and federal investigations and reports.

Hustler ran a sidebar with our article written by someone named Mark Johnson. That sidebar, titled "Vote for Clint!" describes Curtis' early plans at the time to run for Congress and urges readers to support the effort at www.ClintCurtis.com.

Feeney's new mailer, however, looks like it may have done little more than succeed in angering Florida families and voters who had never even heard of either Feeney or Curtis before. The mother in the report indicates that it has led her to not vote for Feeney this November.

Adding to the poorly timed association of sex and politics --- in light of the recent revelations of sexual improprieties by Feeney's Florida GOP House colleague Mark Foley --- it looks like another triumphant disaster for Feeney.

From WFTV's report:

The article and video (both of which we couldn't recommend more!) go on to say that Feeney claims our Hustler article about Lemme's death charges that "Feeney was involved in a suspicious death in Georgia."

Since we actually wrote that article, we can tell you that no such allegation was made of involvement by Feeney in the death of Lemme. WFTV should correct that point for the record. (NOTE: We've contacted the WFTV reporter, Josh Einiger, who did an otherwise very good job on the story and he says he'll be attempting to correct the inaccuracy on their website shortly. Apparently, he was just repeating what Feeney, and the mailing, had incorrectly claimed.)

Hey Tom, in the next mailing, why don't you include photos of yourself posing with a bunch of Congressional pages? Voters in the 24th need to know how much you care about our nation's youth!