-- by Brad Friedman

The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal still ranks, in my estimation, as the key to unlocking almost every other unprecedented domestic (and perhaps even foreign) criminal abuse of power by the White House. The matter strikes at the very heart of the dirty dealings by all of the President's men and, if it were to ever be fully cracked open, would likely display the totality of the blood and guts of the Administration's highly illegal, fully politicized takeover and wholesale abuse of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Little wonder then that the White House has determined to go to the mattresses when it comes to fighting off both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees' investigations into the matter. They've determined they are better off playing chicken with Congress and risking criminal contempt charges (which they believe they can either refuse to enforce via the DoJ, or otherwise pardon the players whenever necessary) by refusing to turn over requested documents to Congress and ordering the refusal to testify by top officials such as Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten.

In order to guard the castle gates, after consigliere Alberto Gonzales could no longer effectively hold off the investigation, they found a man who would play ball for them in AG Michael Mukasey, betting --- correctly --- that Democrats in congress would fold rather than refuse to confirm a man who was, even during Senate hearings, so obviously in the pocket of the White House crime syndicate.

Two stories breaking today each serve as fresh reminders of how much is at stake, and how much is being hidden by the WH stonewalling of the scandal's full investigation. Each of them --- the indictment today of AZ's Republican Rep. Rick Renzi on charges of extortion, wire fraud, and money laundering, and this Sunday's long-awaited 60 Minutes exposé on the Rove/DoJ/WH gang-bang frame-up of Alabama's now-imprisoned Democratic former Governor Don Seigelman --- merely offer salacious clues as to how bad, how corrupt, and how historically unprecedented (in this country, anyway) the illegal machinations at the heart of this scandal really are.

Please keep in mind that at the center of the entire scandal lies the über scandal involving the very gaming of our electoral system by folks who, evidence shows, were willing to do nearly anything to ensure they retained a death grip on American political power and the control of its entire legal apparatus in the bargain.

And both the Democrats in Congress, and the American Corporate Mainstream Media, to their eternal disgrace, have all stood by and allowed the shameful bloodbath --- featuring real blood --- to take place...

We're pleased to offer you another excuse to go out and buy Hustler again this month. You're welcome. The April 2008 issue (on stands only through the beginning of March, or so) features an exposé on criminal voter fraud felon, Ann Coulter, as penned by yours truly.

The detailed article is based on our long series of investigative articles (see: https://BradBlog.com/CoulterFraud), going back to early 2006, on Coulter's two third-degree felonies, and one first-degree misdemeanor, voting crimes in Palm Beach County, FL.

The Hustler version ties 'em all together, and includes a few sexy additional tidbits we never got around to reporting here. Plus, there are naked people, who are not Ann Coulter, on many of the other pages.

Hustler won't allow us to post the story online until after the issue is off the stands, so we'll try to remember to run the full piece once we get the all clear next month. Until then, please go support one of the only "mainstream" periodicals which has dared to allow folks like us, Bob Fitrakis, Robert Scheer, Danny Schechter, Larisa Alexandrovna, and so many others to unflinchingly report on so many of the stories the rest of the media have failed to touch over the last seven years or so.

(Two quick examples of that right now, by the way, would be our Hustler stories, both PDFs, on the death of Clint Curtis investigator Raymond Lemme, and on Diebold document whistleblower Stephen Heller.)

As to the question asked in Hustler's title for the Coulter story, the answer is an unequivocal "Yes!" When we submitted the article, almost a year ago (and thus, had to update it many times along the way to keep up with new developments in the story), we originally titled it: "ANN COULTER IS A FELON: Will Someone Please Arrest Her Now?!"

For the record, The BRAD BLOG stands by the original title. Looks like even Hustler can be known to pull a punch every now and again.

UPDATE 6/6/08: The complete Hustler article is now posted online, in full right here...

Breaking late tonight on the Cleveland Plain-Dealer's blog comes news that the Summit County, Ohio, Republican Party Chair, Alex Arshinkoff, is being removed from his position on the county Elections Board by Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

According to the report, Boss Arshinkoff has been running the party machine out of the county election office, which even Republican State Senator Kevin Coughlin --- who is currently the first to vie for Arshinkoff's job as party chairman during his 30-year reign --- says has led to his having "abused his power...abused his position [and his having] abused employees at the board to strengthen his grip on the local party apparatus."

Arshinkoff becomes the latest in a series of Board of Elections officials who served under former Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to face either criminal sentences or disciplinary action since Brunner has taken office.

Writes Michael O'Malley and Laura Johnston at the P-D tonight...

L.A. County's former Registrar Recorder, Conny McCormack, who quit just prior to February's Super Tuesday Primary Election, turned into Condi Rice today. She's quoted in an Los Angeles Times' front page story confirming, as we pointed out over the weekend, that Election Officials did nothing about the "Double Bubble" ballot problem --- which may well disenfranchise a conservatively estimated 50,000 county voters --- despite massive disenfranchisement with the same design over last six years, since McCormack first implemented it.

In her best Condoleese, McCormack is quoted by the paper today saying, "This is an unfortunate, unanticipated result...No one could have predicted this."

Sound familiar?

She is shortly contradicted, in the same article, by a spokesperson from her own former office, before she continues on to blame voters and poll workers for the problem that she created --- as now confirmed by both the LA Times and California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen --- before then proceeding to do absolutely nothing about it...

Kudos the Dallas Morning News for becoming the first U.S. corporate mainstream outlet to run coverage of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' startling allegations of high-treason and the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, with the cooperation of high-ranking U.S. officials, originally published weeks ago by UK's Sunday Times, and papers in virtually every other country --- except for this one.

Today, the Morning News runs a lengthy version of former CIA officer Phil Giraldi's "Found in Translation" essay, originally published at American Conservative Magazine several weeks ago. Though the Morning News version is labeled as "Commentary" and replaces the named identity of former #3 at the State Department, Marc Grossman with "high-ranking official," along with other edits, the piece succeeds in breaking the U.S. media silence on the bulk of the details recently revealed in this remarkable story.

This version of Giraldi's story is sub-headlined, "Why is her story being covered up?" and begins as follows...

Go read it. Then take five minutes to write a letter to your local papers and/or news stations (Dem-based web tool, Rep-based web tool) to ask them why they are not investigating and/or reporting this story.

The BRAD BLOG's extensive, years-long catalog of too-frequently-exclusive coverage of the Sibel Edmonds story can be read here.

Given the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters, and maybe even hundreds of thousands of voters, from Super Tuesday's Los Angeles County Democratic Primary election, which the county's current acting Registrar incorrectly claims to be "impossible" to count accurately, we believe it's time to place some blame squarely where it belongs for the entire mess.

A Los Angeles Times editorial this week, where, it seems, the paper may have finally found religion on the issue of Election Integrity, serves up a great starting point...

So it happened before. 44% of Non-Partisan cross-over ballots went uncounted in March '04 and 42% in June '06. And yet, the county went into '08's primary with no plans to change a thing.

The woman who dreamt up the ridiculous scheme, former Los Angeles County Registrar and Diebold cover girl Conny McCormack, quit just over a month before the election, and knew about the problem from years past, but did nothing about it. Or, she didn't know about, and was thus criminally negligent in her job as chief voting official for the nation's most populous county...

Glad to see it's not just us. We've had our own problems with the self-destructive, control-bots of the Kossack Army Guards of the Gate. Note: The Daily Kos readers, by and large, should not be blamed, since they seem to get it, but founder Markos Moulitsas and his front-page diarists and automatons are a different matter.

Now they've managed to raise the ire of BRAD BLOG friend and former CIA analyst Larry Johnson of NoQuarter, who, believe it or not, was far less politic in his response to Kos than even we were.

And, unlike most of the folks who have been banned and/or purged at dKos for having the temerity to discuss issues of Election Integrity, at least Larry was given a "warning" about his "unacceptable" behavior before it was demanded that he sign the equivalent of a loyalty oath to regain his ability to post over there again...Which, understandably, he has no interest in doing...

What a bunch of goddamn, Orwellian fascists. Here’s the message waiting for me when I checked in tonight:

Okay Mr. Kos. Here’s a word for you: GO FUCK YOURSELF. (Actually, that’s three words. My bad.)

This wannabee poseur and his gang of Animal Farm pig imitators have lost touch with reality.
...
Well Markos and crowd. Orwell was right. Fuck you people. I won’t post and I won’t read. But most of all, I won’t apologize. I have nothing to apologize for other than making the false assumption that you clowns gave a shit about freedom of expression or liberty. You guys are John Bolton and Dick Cheney in drag. You are welcome to kiss my ass.

The graf explaining the initial root of the problem is removed in the above, in hopes that you might go give Larry's excellent site a read to find out what his particular violation was.

UPDATE 2/17/08: A senior Daily Kos front-pager takes yet another shot at The BRAD BLOG following this post, referring to us as a "nutter site" doing "more harm than good" for the cause of election integrity. Go figure. The dKos poster, "DHinMI", also fails to fully disclose who he actually is. But we've been able to connect a few dots, making his Swiftboat-style attack on us a bit easier to understand. Complete shameful details here...

(Deddicated to Dredd)

That's "one small step for freedom of speech," our friend Jesse Dyen writes to us this afternoon.

Dyen was arrested, along with a number of other freedom fighters who had the temerity to show up near Bush's "brush ranch" in Crawford, Texas, several years ago to protest against the war, only to be arrested (twice) by police enforcing an ordinance, passed by the locals after Cindy Sheehan's original stand there in the Summer of 2005, that no such protests on public lands were to be allowed.

Today, he writes to let us know that the guilty charges were overturned by an appellate court that decided [PDF] in favor of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment, and other quaint old notions such as those.

See below for Dyen's missive explaining what happened back then, and in the court decision today, to the courageous arrested "Prairie Dogs" (who happened to include legendary "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, as well as a number of other notables), and a video made from one of our favorite songs, as written by Dyen, during the original historic tipping point moment in Crawford back in the Summer of 2005…

Buried by a number of other things today, we refer you to Paul Kiel's coverage with a note that Harry Reid's Senate has yet to hold a floor vote on similar contempt citations against Karl Rove and Josh Bolten, as recommended to him by a bi-partisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote last December...

UPDATE: Our favorite House member of late, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), speaks in favor of the contempt resolution for a minute and a half. Video at right, full statement below...

In an incredibly heated exchange today during a U.S. House hearing (see video at left) Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) grilled Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice on whether she ever saw pre-war intelligence that countered the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In a statement just released by his office, Wexler says she "falsely testified" in response to his questions...

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning."

The previously covert agent, who had worked in the agency's counter-proliferation division for years monitoring traffic in the nuclear black market under the guise of a cover company named Brewster Jennings until being outed by Bush Administration officials, was asked about the recent series of explosive stories in the British paper during an interview this morning with Florida radio host Henry Raines of American AM.

Those disclosures include allegations that Brewster Jennings' real identity as a CIA front company was outed to Turkish officials by then-Asst. Sec. of State for European Affairs Marc Grossman as early as 2001...

Following a short "dead cat bounce" at the end of last month, after a precipitous six-month stock price plunge devaluing the company's net worth by more than 50% since an insider sell-off last August, Diebold's fortunes began turning south again late last week as the company was forced to begin restating previously-inflated revenue figures from 2006 and 2007.

The company's stock price is continuing to plunge today towards a seven-year low, after it admitted last week that it had over-estimated revenues of its election systems division by more than 300%.

As well, the company announced it will soon be laying off 5% of its full-time global workforce. The restatement of revenues comes as part of a deal worked out with the SEC, which continues its ongoing investigation into the financial practices of the once-great, now-disgraced company. Diebold also acknowledges that it is still being investigated by the DOJ, although the reasons and details of that particular investigation remain undisclosed at this time.

The 50% decrease in the company's share price began just after a number of company executives sold off several thousand shares of stock, all on the same day in August of last year, at $53.05/share, very near the company's 52-week high of $54.50, as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively at the time. In the following week, the company's share price fell 15% just before the management attempted to misdirect investors by renaming their election division in order to offer "a fresh identity for our company."

Following the insider trading and fresh identity, now dubbed "Premier Elections Solutions," the company's share price has continued to fall ever since. The stock is down more than 3% so far today, selling currently at $24.64/share.

A statement released by the company late last week reveals once again that, despite the attempted name change bait-and-switch, the company still bears the liabilities of the old Diebold elections division; the company admits that the SEC and DOJ investigations continue and sales are sharply off for its voting systems, which have been decertified by several states after being found easily hackable and error-prone in study after study over the past year.

As well, there is a Securities Fraud class action lawsuit still pending against the company, as investors cast the only vote that counts --- the one that hits the 150-year old company in the pocket book. The company that made its bones in the security business has tumbled quite a ways since untouchable crime-fighter Eliot Ness served as chair back in the 1940's.

In the wake of its latest round of misfortunes/karmic return, Diebold announced plans for layoffs of some 800 workers last week. We're not happy to hear that. Though if any of those who find themselves out of a job due to the arrogance, corruption, and general failure of this company to perform as a responsible corporate citizen would like to share any inside information, we'd be delighted to hear from you. Your confidentiality, as needed, will always be respected by The BRAD BLOG.

A partial restatement of 2007 revenue estimates, released by Diebold last week in the wake of the SEC investigation which has forced it to discontinue its previously misleading practice of declaring revenues before products were actually delivered, reveals that the company continues to be rocked by its failing election division, newly renamed or otherwise...

On Wednesday, we covered some of the massive problems emerging from New Mexico's Democratic Party Caucus on Super Tuesday. The razor-thin margin between Obama and Clinton remains in question at this hour after ballot boxes were discovered to have been kept overnight, uncounted, at the home of a party official; voters faced long lines at the polls; and some 17,000 voters (11% versus 4% in the last caucus) were forced to vote on provisional ballots.

NPR had reported on Thursday that the state's Democratic party, which ran the election, as opposed to the state itself, had decided to do a full recount of all ballots. Tonight, though, John Gideon informs us the report was incorrect, and only "all qualified provisional ballots" are set to be counted by officials.

We had updated our previous story several times while covering the mess, before finally noting:

Tonight, Steve Rosenfeld at Alternet jumps in with a New Mexico update, in which he tries to make sense of it all. He ends up confirming our fears in his opening graf...

Golly, if only the Democrats had had any idea that AG Michael Mukasey would turn out to be such a stooge for the Bush Administration, maybe they wouldn't have confirmed him. Oh, wait. Yeah, we recall something about that coming up before the Dems decided to give this guy the job anyway.

At right is just one sample from Mukasey's testimony today, answering (or not) Robert Wexler's questions asking if he's been given White House instructions on whether or not he may enforce Contempt of Congress citations. He takes the time to apparently make up a few "facts" along the way while dodging Wexler's questions.

David Swanson reports...

...before he goes on to offer some interesting information suggesting that John Conyers may be "on Edge of Starting Impeachment Hearings" after today's testimony. Whether that happens or not, Swanson offers contact information so that you can weigh in to the Chairman with your opinion on Impeachment (which is, after all, his Constitutional duty, for those of you keeping score at home.)