The silly, seemingly ineffective, and apparently expensive smear campaign being mounted by Florida's U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) attempting to attack his congressional opponent, a former colleague-turned-whistleblower, Clint Curtis continues.

Repeating a seemingly unsubstantiated attack on Curtis, initially posted on Feeney's "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign website, a posting on the Congressman's smear blog site makes the same unevidenced claim.

Feeney's "evidence-free" charge is that Curtis has claimed Feeney knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened.

It's an extraordinary claim now repeated several times in several places by the Congressman who was recently named one once again this year one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-partisan ethics watchdog organization in D.C.

While the claims has now been made on both his smear campaign website and blog, the "evidence" offered by Feeney for this claim would seem to disprove their own assertions. Here's Feeney's latest smearblog item in it's entirety (NOTE: We don't believe it's written by fifth graders, it just reads like it)...

That's it? Are we missing something here?

Their evidence that "Crazy" Clint Curtis claimed Feeney knew about 9/11 before the attack is that line from his self-published book?!

If we were Feeney, we'd ask for our money back from our campaign consultants. After they came home from school.

See our previous report on the smear site set up recently by Feeney and the kids, including doctored photos of Curtis and many other impressive campaign techniques.

Keep up the bad work, Tom!

For the record, in our two years of interviews and reporting on Clint Curtis' story since we originally broke the story of Curtis' extraordinary allegations [PDF] of Feeney's request to create vote-rigging sofware and much more, we have never heard him make any such claim that somehow Feeney knew about 9/11 before it happened.

On the other hand, while Feeney is spending hundreds of thousands on his less-than-dignified "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign, he has yet to answer to any of Curtis' substantive allegations made in sworn affidavit, sworn video-taped testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and found to be truthful in a polygraph test administered by the state of Florida's former lead polygraphist.

What Feeney has refused to speak to includes (but is certainly not limited to) the following wholly unanswered questions...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who filed a landmark article last June in Rolling Stone concerning evidence of a stolen 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio, is set to rock the country again in tomorrow's Rolling Stone, The BRAD BLOG can now report.

The issue is currently on the stands in some sections of LA and NY, and will be available across the nation tomorrow.

Through interviews with a number of BRAD BLOG insider sources over the past several months, Kennedy, along with co-writer Dick Russell, will expose a plethora of new details concerning the scandalous and outrageous overtaking of our public election system by private companies such Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and others.

The article is titled: "Will The Next Election Be Hacked? - Fresh disasters at the polls --- and new evidence from an industry insider --- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted".

Many of the items covered may be familiar to readers here, as a good number of them were originally broken on these very pages over the last year or so. We worked closely with Kennedy and Russell on this story during its development over the past several months.

The article, however, covers several new and sometimes explosive details of Diebold's rollouts in both Georgia and Maryland dating back to 2002, as well as Florida, Ohio and Texas in 2004.

Characterizing the unchecked spread of electronic voting as "insane," Kennedy and Russell conclude, "It is time for Americans to reclaim our democracy from private interests."

Some of the damning details covered in the extensive piece include: the now-infamous and mysterious patch applied to the paperless touch-screen systems in GA just prior to the Chambliss/Cleland election; the presence of Diebold elections division president Bob Urosevich in the tabulation room in MD in 2002; Diebold's interest in downplaying, hiding the significance of several scientific reports in 2004 warning of the vulnerabilities in their machines; Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) involvement with former staffers and Diebold lobbyists in passing the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) through congress; ES&S shenanigans in Texas in 2004; E-Voting anomalies in Ohio and Florida may have given the election to George W. Bush; the Diebold electronic voting machine which kicked off the 2000 Presidential Election debacle...

The article is now posted in full at the RS website. Extended excerpts from the article follow below...

###

...TROUBLE COMING THIS NOVEMBER...

Much more now below...

For the second year in a row, DC ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics in Washington (CREW) --- the folks who filed successful ethics charges in the House against former Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay --- have issued their "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" report.

And once again our old friend, the corrupt Florida congressman Tom Feeney, is right up there near the top! Congratulations, Tom!

What may be most impressive is that Feeney, amongst other bad seeds like the disgraced Tom DeLay and Bob Ney, is neither in jail or even under indictment! Yet! No easy feat for someone as sleazy as Mr. Feeney! You'd have to be the craziest man in America to think you could get away with it! But (so far) Feeney has!

The indifference to the Rule of Law and our American Values and Constitution doesn't stop with Tom himself though! Just take a look at what Feeney's own chief of staff, Jason Roe, and his wife Patty are up to --- apparently with Feeney's help --- according to this report last week from Harper's!

The CREW list, which includes both Republicans and Democrats (though mostly Republicans), singles out Feeney for his years-long record of corruption, obfuscation, ethics violations and broken rules in accepting lobbyist and foreign-agent paid travel, holidays and more!

While we know that Feeney has already been accused by computer programmer Clint Curtis of asking him to create vote-rigging software back in 2000 and other skullduggery (Curtis has given sworn video-taped congressional testimony and has passed a lie-detector test in regard to those charges,) CREW continues to track some of Feeney's greatest Congressional Corruption Hits, from golf in Scotland with Abramoff to trips bought and paid for by foreign-agents. Take a look...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections (SAFE) has just announced that a Sarasota County Judge has found in their favor and against the county voting officials and the Florida Secretary of State.

SAFE had been proposing a ballot initiative that would require voter verified paper ballots and independent random audits of election results in Sarasota County. The County Commissioner chose to go to court instead of allowing the legal petition to move forward.

The press release from SAFE says:

This is a big announcement from a hard-working group of activists who still have an uphill battle to force their county to use a voter verified, auditable voting system.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Here's Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel, from his blog, with my emphasis:

As reported extensively at The BRAD BLOG during the past two years, Clint Curtis has leveled several specific accusations at Tom Feeney. The chief allegation is that Feeney requested Curtis to design a software vote-rigging prototype (a computer program which appeared to be a simple vote-counter but which was in fact something else). Curtis has taken --- and passed --- a polygraph test in support of his allegations. Feeney has not indicated any willingness to go near a polygraph.

For more on the Clint Curtis / Tom Feeney story, start here.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Late Tuesday night, after the election returns from Florida showed a landslide win for Clint Curtis over Andy Michaud in the 24th congressional district's Democratic primary, I heard a fascinating story from Ace Reporter and Managing Editor Alex Babcock of Oviedo, Florida's Seminole Chronicle. The Chronicle is Feeney's "hometown paper" which both the corrupt Republican congressman, and Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI) --- the company he used to lobby for, even while he was speaker of the Florida House! --- threatened with a lawsuit after the paper dared to report on Curtis' sworn, video-taped testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

Curtis had testified that Feeney asked him to create a prototype of electronic vote-rigging software when they were both employed by YEI as The BRAD BLOG originally broke back in December of 2004. Curtis, of course, is now the Democratic candidate challenging Feeney for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th congressional district.

Babcock's remarkable account of the "jubilant" Election Night conversation, witnessed by at least three other parties, went as follows...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

An "explosive" new press release from the office of Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) reveals "new information" regarding his November opponent, Clint Curtis, the "Craziest Man in America".

Wow! Craziest Man In America! That's quite a distinction. There are some pretty crazy men in America these days, as if you haven't already noticed. And it's odd that Tom Feeney should award this title to Clint Curtis, because ...

I never even knew Clint Curtis was a little bit crazy! Did you?

Well apparently he is, because Tom Feeney certainly wouldn't say so if he wasn't.

Right????

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Orlando Sentinel jumped all over the story of Clint Curtis, his apparent victory in last night's Democratic primary, and the epic battle "between Good and Evil" which it sets up in Florida's 24th Congressional disctict.

See? Here's their coverage!, and this is --- literally --- the bottom line:

Even lower down the page, it also says this:

Calling 6 or 7 green and yellow bloggers!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

According to reliable sources, WESH-TV has called Clint Curtis the winner of the FL-24 Democratic primary by a landslide. Curtis had 12,652 votes, compared to 7,990 for Michaud: That's 61% for the vote-rigging whistleblower, with 208 out of 257 precincts reporting, or or 81%.

According to other reliable sources, a reporter from the Daytona Beach News-Journal called Clint and asked whether he wanted to make a statement. Clint said:

So ... shall we let the party begin? Well, really: there's no hurry!

If Clint can wait until all the votes are counted, then so can we!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Democrats in Florida's 24th Congressional District are used to being surprised by Tom Feeney (left), but he's been surprising them again during the past few days. They have reported receiving fliers in the mail --- and phone calls, too --- which appear to be serious, even respectful --- if brief --- comparisons of the policy positions taken by the Republican incumbent, Feeney, and his potential Democratic challenger, Clint Curtis.

What's wrong with this picture?

Guest Blogged By Dan Field

We're all on pins and needles here at Clint Curtis for Congress as the election rolls upon us. For those who haven't been following the race, election fraud whistleblower Clint Curtis --- who says he was asked to deliver a computer program to U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney to flip the vote in Florida --- hopes to run against Feeney himself in the general election in November. But to do that, he has to defeat Democratic rival Andy Michaud.

The interesting wrinkle? Michaud has been virtually a complete no-show on the campaign trail! In fact, many newspaper columnists have simply written him off. He hasn't appeared at any events in weeks and didn't even bother to show up for a 10-minute televised debate with Curtis on the local NBC affiliate!

So it would appear that Curtis has the Democratic nomination in the bag, right?

Well, this is Florida we're talking about, so who knows what sort of chicanery could happen.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

According to usually reliable sources, Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) flexed enough muscle on Monday night to have his potential November opponent, Clint Curtis, evicted from what was supposed to be a public meeting.

The meeting, at the Republican Club of North Brevard, in Titusville, FL, featured Feeney as a speaker. Curtis was sitting quietly in the audience when Feeney noticed him there. At that point, according to our sources, Feeney immediately turned bright red and started whispering to some of the people near him.

One of those people raised a point of order and pointed out that there was a Democrat in the room. She said she wanted him to leave because this was a Republican meeting and she did not feel it was appropriate to have a Democrat in the audience.

The chair said that perhaps Democratic members of the audience would be converted to Republicans. When others objected to Curtis' presence at the meeting, the chair informed them that it was an open meeting and the rules required that Curtis be allowed to stay.

Blogged quickly from the road by Brad...

I had to check in briefly for this one! Even while "out here" and still unable to do very much "in here". And especially with the Florida primary elections set for next Tuesday, September 5th.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal has endorsed Clint Curtis for next Tuesday's election over his primary candidate Dr. Andy Michaud who has shown up at almost ZERO campaign events over the last several weeks. He even failed to show up for a televised debate a week or two ago.

The News-Journal's full endorsement is fairly well done. They quickly cover Curtis' allegations (broken originally by The BRAD BLOG back in December of 2004) that Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) --- then the Speaker of the Florida House even while he was the registered lobbyist for the same computer firm Curtis worked at --- asked Curtis to create a computer vote-rigging prototype program back in 2000. Curtis now hopes to unseat the corrupt Feeney this November.

The last two grafs of their endorsement...

As The BRAD BLOG has covered the Curtis/Feeney claims extensively over the past two years (a quick summary of his story is here) and has yet to find a hole in Curtis' story --- though we have found one after another in Feeney's considerable dodges and dances and smears and refusal to take a polygraph test (as Curtis did and passed!) --- we join the News-Journal in heartily endorsing Curtis in the upcoming election.

Given Feeney's huge money advantage, we also recommend you support clean elections by supporting Clint Curtis with a donation if you can afford it. Feeney, who was/is a huge supporter of Tom DeLay's, "Duke" Cunningham and Bob Ney, will have plenty of money, of course, as he's the only Congressman left in the House who went to Scotland to play golf on Jack Abramoff's dime now that DeLay and Ney have had no choice but to move on.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty Pilgrim reports that Pinellas Co.'s voting machines passed Logic and Accuracy (L&A) Tests until a Sequoia Voting Systems technician changed some software. A subsequent test failed so the county changed the software back and re-did the test successfully. There was no report as to what caused the problem or why Sequoia tried to install software that was, very apparently, unnecessary; or was it?

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

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Art Levine's new piece at Salon raises their election integrity bar quite a bit --- not a difficult task considering where that bar has been lately.

Prior to the 2004 "election", Salon's coverage was generally quite good; since then it's been dismal, thanks mostly to some outrageous smear pieces from Farhad Manjoo. In fact, Salon's coverage has been so dreadful that the site has been referred to in some quarters as "Saloon", which of course rhymes with "buffoon", which gives me a good way to remember "Manjoo", whose name just wouldn't stick in my frozen brain any other way.

But let's not dwell on those sad times.

Levine's article, "Salon's shameful six", looks at six states --- Arizona, Indiana, California, Missouri, Ohio and Florida --- where vote suppression could cause serious problems in 2006.

If you're not a Salon subscriber, you'll have to watch a short ad to read the whole article. I did; it was well worth the time and effort. But just in case you don't believe me, we have a few short excerpts, below the fold.