Guest blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

In a move that some people found amazing and others expected, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has filed a new elections bill. HR-3910 ? Verifying the Outcome of Tomorrow's Elections Act of 2005 does nothing to verify the outcome of "tomorrow's" elections, but it does further the RNC's wish to keep as many poor, elderly, disabled, and people of color (in other words ? normally Democratic voters) away from the polls as they possibly can.

And who is this Rep. Feeney? If you recall, he was the person alleged to have asked for a programmer to write software to switch the touch-screen votes, undetected, in Florida. Clint Curtis, whose story was originally broken here at BRAD BLOG, was the programmer. When asked about this latest step by Feeney, he responded via email simply: ?Appears that Mr. Feeney is still trying to protect his fixed voting system?.

Around the water coolers on ?The Hill?, there has been talk that Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550) would be going to mark-up sometime in October. It is timely that suddenly Rep. Feeney would produce a bill that will now allow the House leaders to blend the two bills and make one bill that represents their view of privatization of elections.

This bill provides for a voter verified paper audit trail but it leaves to the states how that audit trail will be used, if at all. No verification there.

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was re-indicted today on a second charge related to the $190,000 in corporate money that DeLay is said to have illegally participated in laundering for use in a number of Texas state races from 2002.

Using corporate money to finance campaigns has been illegal in the state of Texas for nearly 100 years. Yet DeLay, who had previously been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges in the scheme, is now being charged with directly laundering the money. All of which, incidentally, Republican apologist Ann Coulter has no problem with.

From this morning's NY Times:

Guest Blogged by Clint Curtis

INTRODUCTION {by Winter Patriot}: We are indeed most fortunate to welcome Clint Curtis, whose "incredible" story turns out to be just a little bit too credible after all. For those not familiar with the story, here's a quick summary:

Vote-Rigging Sofware Fit For A Congressman

by Brad Friedman

In an affidavit and sworn testimony, Florida software programmer Clint Curtis told members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee that U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to design a "vote-rigging software prototype". This request, according to Curtis, took place in October 2000 during a meeting at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a computer consulting firm in Oviedo, Florida.

There is almost no other way to put this, but we are simply floored by the report just released by the Department of Justice concerning the Franklin County, OH elections.

If there ever was a report which could be called a whitewash, this would be the very dictionary definition --- with the emphasis on WHITE.

The DoJ four-page report, based on dodgy figures, uninvestigated charges and undocumented information and details, simply concludes that "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a non-discriminatory manner", that "no violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act" was found and they "are thus closing our file."

In truth, a detailed analysis of the flaws in this report, and an unwaivering condemnation of this reprehensible piece of "official documentation" is needed. But as folks are disappearing for the Holiday Weekend, we're afraid any analysis we took the time to compile right now would likely get lost in the holiday news-hole. So, for the moment, we're gonna dump these documents here and leave the detailed analysis and shouts of outrage and condemnation to BRAD BLOG readers. If we can follow up a bit more after the holiday, we will.

Essentially, John Conyers' office requested a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice investigation back in January on a number of very troubling matters related to Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election on behalf of the minority members of the Judiciary Committee. (Letter requesting a Special Prosecutor from the DoJ is here [PDF]. Coverage of it by RAW STORY is here, and BRAD BLOG's own reporting at the time, which led to one of the complaints in the letter to the DoJ, is here.)

Amongst the items for which Conyers' January 14, 2005 had requested an investigation at the time --- according to the response to the report Conyers sent on Wednesday --- were "serious charges concerning Voter Intimidation and Misinformation; Improper Purging and other Misconduct; Caging of New Minority Voters; Misuse of HAVA Funds; Tampering of Voting Machinery and Records; Perjury by a County Board of Election Official; and the Misuse of the Great Seal of the United States on Secretary of State Blackwell's Personal Campaign Materials."

While no "substantive response to the many instances of voting irregularities and civil rights violations in the state of Ohio" about which Conyers' submitted evidence has been forthcoming by the DoJ since that January letter, apparently someone within the DoJ took it upon themselves to conduct --- and as we've said WHITEWASH --- an investigation concerning what happened in just one county in Ohio.

The DoJ's resulting four-page report, conducted by "The Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division" and sent to Franklin County officials on Wednesday, is a masterwork of obfuscation, disinformation, misinformation, smoke and mirrors and out and out lies. And remember, it comes directly from your Department of Justice.

As we've said, a more detailed point-by-point analysis of the outrage is called for. But for now, we feel it's important to get the information out as is so folks can see with their own eyes what has "flabbergasted" Conyers' as according to the response he sent in reply to the DoJ yesterday.

There is, however, at least one paragraph which jumped out at us, but that Conyers' reply does not deal with directly (understandably, frankly, since there is so much to be "flabbergasted" about in this DoJ report!). We feel this one is important to point out as we find it particularly disconcerting for what the future may hold in Ohio [emphasis added]:

Yes, you read that right. Franklin County's "bi-partisan" Board of Election has just now "purged" 114,000 voters from the rolls! Tee-ing things up nicely, it would seem, for many more thousands of voters to find themselves suddenly ineligible to vote when they show up at the polling place in 2006!

Over one hundred thousand voters scrubbed from the voting rolls in just one Ohio County alone by their presumably "bi-partisan" BoE. That, while we have learned over the past several months how these Ohio BoE's are certainly not "bi-partisan" as Blackwell and their other defenders continue to maintain since a) There are "Democrats" on these boards who are specifically plants, in other words, "Democrats" in name only and b) All BoE members serve at the partisan pleasure of the distinctly partisan Secretary of State and Bush/Cheney Co-Chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who has routinely threatened BoE members with dismissal if and when they refuse to follow his personal partisan edicts.

But that's just one of the outrages. We'll let Conyers' handle a few more. Here is his response to the DoJ report first, followed by the complete report itself by John Tanner, the Chief of the DoJ's Voting Section. Prepare to be appalled...

As originally reported here yesterday, Democrats on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee invoked a rarely used rule to extend Committee hearings on the renewal of the Patriot Act.

Apparently, they inappropriately called witnesses to testify today from whom the Republicans did not wish to hear. And thus, in what can only be seen as an unprecedented tyrannical abuse of Majority power in the U.S. House of Representatives, Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), suddenly and without warning, gavelled the hearings to a close! Unilaterally, without debate, and in the middle of ongoing testimony!

The extraordinary video clip of Sensenbrenner's appalling display, was captured by C-SPAN. Take a look at the meltdown...

BuzzFlash describes the remarkable incident in some detail as follows...

UPDATE: We must go on the air on Tony Trupiano's show in a just a few minutes, so this must be quick for now. (Link to that interview, with a lot more information on my conversation with a Democratic staffer who was in the room, is now below.)

To clarify some confusion on this matter, what had been referred to as "Democratic Hearings" today in some places, actually were not Democratic-only hearings (unlike the hearings that took place in January on Ohio Election Irregularities, and the recent Media Bias forum held by Conyers and other Dems).

Today's hearings were called under the archane provision of House Rule 11, which, we are told, allows the Minority to call for an additional day of hearings and to choose their own witnesses if they are unsatisfied with the hearings as held by the Majority.

The U.S. House Judiciary Democrats have been unable to do that previously on issues like Election 2004 and Media Bias because the Majority hadn't called a hearing at all on those matters, and thus, they were forced to call their own hearings.

We are told by a Democratic Staffer who The BRAD BLOG has just spoken to, and who was present at today's debacle, that the Majority has been quite disturbed by those previous hearings for some time, and, in fact, during the airing of Conyers' Media Bias forum (it ran as taped on C-SPAN at 8:30pm ET a few Saturdays ago), an email was sent to a Judiciary Committee staffer which said, in effect, "I'm watching your forum right now, hope you enjoyed it, it will be your last."

We'll have more detail after we're off the air, but the staffer just explained to us that the Minority was displeased with the witnesses called previously in the Commission hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act, and attempted to work with the Majority to call additional witnesses.

According to the staffer, they were told, "'You're gonna get your hearing, but it's gonna be 8:30am on Friday morning'...Never in the history of the Judiciary Committee have we been able to find a time when a hearing has been scheduled like that. The Congress was not in session today. We've never been able to find an instance when a hearing was called when Congress wasn't in session."

"The irony, when we're debating the Patriot Act," we were told, "of cutting off the debate and acting so anti-democratic when that's going on, is unbelievable!

"In the committee with sole jurisdiction over civil rights and civil liberties, for the chairman to say, I don't want to hear about guys who are getting their testicles shocked, it's breathtaking arrogance, it's testimony to abuse of power and how this place is now run. They've become everything they said they deplored when they took over the house in 1994."

Conversations with the House Democratic leadership on currently ongoing. The BRAD BLOG has learned that they are "very very concerned" about this matter, and that "the issue will be elevated."

"Ms. Pelosi is very concerned about this," said the staffer.

Featuring actual reporting (as opposed to just rewritten press releases), the Texas Observer actually writes about what happened at Tom DeLay's recent "Conservative Movement Salute" held in D.C. recently to shore up the failing GOP House Leader.

They accomplished this feat by actually attending the event, talking to people who were there, and reporting on what they saw and what they didn't see. Imagine that.

What they didn't see, was the bulk of DeLay's Republican colleagues, nor the many K Street lobbyists with whom DeLay has infamously raised millions...

It's official. Just in from the folks at Conyer's office...Fighting on every front...God bless him...In the DC area next week? Go help 'em make some noise!

Better yet, write to C-SPAN today and ask them to cover this event!!! We spoke with Conyers' office earlier this morning, and they made it clear they would appreciate any help that "6 or 7" of you might be able to provide in encouraging C-SPAN to be there!

"Tom DeLay is the most effective leader the House has seen in 50 years."

So said U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) of his very good friend, and mutual backscratcher, Tom DeLay (R-TX) outside of last week's exciting "Conservative Movement Salutes Tom DeLay" event!

And no wonder! Between all the cold, hold cash money that Feeney's received from DeLay, and all the money and voting support Feeney's given right back in return, it looks like the two Toms are birds of a feather! We certainly hope they're not jailbirds of a feather someday! Yee-Ouch! That certainly wouldn't be very helpful to the "Conservative" movement!

Feeney's been there for DeLay all along and nothing's gonna stop him now!

That's why Mr. Feeney was one of the few Congressmen willing to talk to reporters --- outloud, and right there in public yet! --- at the big "Salute to Delay" last week. That's why Feeney was more than happy to go on that important trip to play golf in Scotland with DeLay (apparently paid for by lobbyists)...Hell, they're even champs when it comes to redistricting their own states to help themselves get elected!

Is there anything these two can't do together when they set their minds to it?!

And just in case you weren't certain how close the two Toms actually are...The Public Campaign Action Fund was nice enough to recently compile a list of "DeLay Rankings" showing which Congressmen and women are closest to Tom DeLay and deepest inside of his pocket. And guess who came out on top of the entire U.S. House of Representatives?!

That's right! Our man, Feeney's #1! Waytago Tom! You've done it again!

(Thanks American Woman, Jaime, and Jesse of Stakeholder for their contributions to this salute!)

An excellent article just out from June's The American Prospect suggests that Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH), one of the sponsors of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is now under Dept. of Justice investigation for his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the money received from the Tigua Indian tribe to finance a golf trip, like Tom Delays, to Scotland.

Our good friend, Tom Feeney, by the way, was also on one of those Scotland Golf Trips. Just thought it worth mentioning.

The Prospect article outlines in detail in how Ney had used Christopher Dodd (D-CT), without Dodd's knowledge, to suggest that the two of them would be able to add a rider to HAVA which would be favorable to the Tigua Indian tribe. Of course, Dodd never seems to have been a party to any of this.

Ney, who chairs the House Administration Committee, recently held hearings on the Ohio Election 2004 mess during which --- as originally reported by BRAD BLOG --- he invited friends from the phony GOP front group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights to testify, and yet the Prospect article reports that he claims to have been fooled by an Abramoff front group in relation to the trips he was purchased:

That "Florida gambling cruise line" which led to an apparent "gangland-style" hit was Suncruz, as reported in excrutiating detail in a Washington Post piece last week.

As is the norm these days, Ney is attempting to deny knowing who actually paid for the trip, yet the Prospect reports:

And finally --- even after Ney knew full well that Dodd wanted nothing to do with the Indian Tribe legislation --- he invited members of the tribe to the Capitol for a meeting to thank them for the trip, and to act as if he was still hoping to pass their dead-in-the-water legislation:

Using Dodd as a scapegoat for the legislation would was never to have been placed in HAVA, Ney then claims to have been willing to "let election reform die" in retaliation:

How filthy can these guys get? Stay tuned...

(Hat tip Jesse over at Stakeholder for the link tip!)

Every now and again we're pleasantly reminded that there are still good folks out there littered amongst the debris that is the American Corporate Media 2005. Or as Murrow presciently predicted, the "vast wasteland".

We found one of those good folks in Carol Towarnicky of the Philadelphia Daily News (she'll be a guest on this weekend's BRAD SHOW who blasted the MSM for ignoring the Gannon/Guckert scandal. This week, it's kudos to Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel for his piece yesterday on your friend and ours, Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL).

You didn't think we forgot about you...did ya, Tom?

It looks like Tom is up to his enchanting old tricks this week as he tries to disentangle himself from the scandals that he's in nearly as deep as Tom DeLay --- he just doesn't happen to be the House Majority Leader (yet), so you may not have heard. (You will in the future...no worries).

Maxwell tears old Tom (Feeney, that is) a new one in his column, headlined "So sorry --- it's the media's fault" from yesterday:

We wish the media would become "hysterical"! They look fairly sound asleep on most of this to us. What with Runaway Brides and all to worry with.

Maxwell closes smartly with this:

:-) We like Maxwell.

Good to know someone else besides yours truly is on the Feeney beat!

...CONTACT...
Scott Maxwell, Orlando Sentinel

(Thanks to BRAD BLOG commenter, American Woman --- a big Tom Feeney fan she! --- for the link!)

So while we're on a roll...it seems that Clint Curtis' name and story (even briefly) are popping up in papers all around the country, and even around the world. Good folks (no doubt fine BRAD BLOG readers and patriots all!) seem to be contacting their local papers with letters to the editor to discuss the Election 2004 debacle, and tossing in the relevance of Curtis' story along with it! (See this page for more on Curtis if you need...and if so, where in the hell have you been for the last six months!?!

So while we spend some hours working on some important things today, please feel free to take the time to jot a letter or two to your local papers. As we hope you've realized, "6 or 7" letters can make a difference.

Some recent examples... Chicago's Northwest Herald in a letter headlined "Election thieves":

From Nashville's City Paper, in a letter headlined "The most important issue":

Then in the Ireland's Irish Times last Saturday earlier this week, they ran an article (paid subscription required) which included the following:

And finally, our new friend, Robert Koehler of the Tribune Syndicate, follows up his courageous and frank "Silent Scream of Numbers" piece --- the first that we know of from the "mainstream" to out and out charge that "Election 2004 was stolen" --- with another triumphant home run in his latest column. Titled, "Democracy's Abu Ghraib" the piece asks "If they can disable an election, what's coming next?" Just one of the many worthwhile money quotes:

Read on. Then write on! The march of the "6 or 7" must continue and will prevail! Keep making noise!

Must be something afoot...Now it's Madison, Wisconsin's The Capital Times jumping into the Clint Curtis fray as a part of their online Daily Briefing item headlined "Is Your Vote Being Counted?":

The article also hits much of what BRAD BLOG readers have known about for months concerning the evils of the likes of Diebold and ES&S, etc. And granted, they may not be the Miami Herald (who also discussed Clint Curtis earlier today), but hey, the word is getting out! And better late than never! Democracy may be saved after all!

The drumbeat of the pro-democracy movement in America (who could have ever imagined there'd be a need for one in this country?!) seems to be growing louder as more and more Mainstream Media folks get into the game!

Following on the heels of yesterday's Miami Herald piece about Miami-Dade's possible return to paper ballots, Herald columnist, Robert Steinback jumps in with a damning condemnation of Electronic Voting today pointing out that, "Nothing is more important, for the world's pre-eminent democracy, than assuring the sanctity of each vote."

Steinbeck goes on to say:

Indeed. Clearly there are still a few in the MSM who get it. It may just take them a while to figure it out.

Moreover, Steinbeck --- for the first time that we know of --- mentions the Clint Curtis / Tom Feeney vote-rigging scandal in the pages of The Herald, along with a litany of reasons for returning to paper ballots [emphasis added]:

And tomorrow, The BRAD BLOG has learned, syndicated Tribune Columnist, Robert Koehler will also go on record about the pitfalls of E-Voting, a condemnation of what went wrong in 2004, and some terrific coverage about those of us who are out there trying to fight the good fight to save our endangered democracy...even while the rest of the MSM continues to yawn.

Perhaps things are changing, however. We'll see. But at The BRAD BLOG, hope always springs eternal. And so we press on...

...CONTACT...
Robert Steinback and the Herald Editors

The title for this item comes from Lucy Morgan's own Jan 8th article in the St. Petersburg Times headlined "Aside from being wrong, AP had Jeb story right" wherein the Pulitzer Prize winner and SP Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief takes the AP to task for getting a single and small point wrong in a story on Jeb Bush's entourage. Also for being less than willing to cop to it.

Small point or not, we appreciate Morgan's attention to detail, accuracy and potentially misleading information...At least in stories written by others. If only she held herself to the same strict standards.

In her own now-ironic words of just three months ago...

Indeed. It remains to be seen how thick Ms. Morgan's skin truly is. Though a full read of the article from which we quoted above might come as a stunning surprise to those who read our full piece yesterday on Morgan's reportorial transgressions on her blown Clint Curtis scoop.

Perhaps, as she mentioned while snipping at us on the phone (see the previous article) she really does have "two heads" after all. One for pondering the sins of others, and one for ignoring her own.

As well, a BRAD BLOG reader just sent us a link to the SP Times "Standard of Accuracy" page which lists a few interesting thoughts and adds that one should contact Paul Tash, Editor and president at (727) 892-2231 or Timespresident@sptimes.com with any concerns. I will add him, and the corrections address to the Email Contacts in the previous articles.

Of note from that page [emphasis in original]...

...CONTACTS...(Please be clear, but always polite!)
Send">Timespresident@sptimes.c...adBlog@cville.com\">Send an Email to Lucy Morgan, Paul Tash (President/Editor of SP Times) and the Corrections Desk.
Send a Letter to the Editor.

(Hat tip to commenter Bushwh@cker for finding Morgan's Jan 8th article! The BRAD BLOG Purple Martian Avenger Squad salutes you!)

For months supporters and critics alike have been requesting that Clint Curtis take a polygraph test to help shore up (or debunk) the veracity of his explosive sworn allegations that then-Florida State Senator (and Speaker of the House) Tom Feeney, now a U.S. Congressman from Florida's 24th District, asked Curtis to create an electronic vote-rigging software prototype back in 2000 when Curtis worked at Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI) where Feeney was also the corporate counsel and registered lobbyist in his "non-conflicting" day job while working as Florida's Speaker of the House.

Curtis has now taken --- and passed --- the much requested lie-detector test as discussed here Saturday and as broken in a one-sided, unbalanced and unfortunate story by Lucy Morgan, the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative Tallahassee Bureau Chief for The St. Petersburg Times.

While Morgan was handed this rather hot and exclusive scoop over a month ago, just after Curtis took and passed the test on March 3rd, her investigative work since then on this admittedly complicated and very broad case --- stretching back through at least four years of public and private paper trails --- resulted in an astonishingly amateurish piece which serves as a fine piece of pro-Feeney propoganda, a smackdown of the courageous and so-far verified claims of Clint Curtis and --- finally, though less importantly --- a slap in the face to the hard work we've toiled at here for over five months.

Her article, inappropriately and condescendingly headlined "Blogs spin tale of computers, conspiracies" is loaded with countless points of misleading information, crucial omissions and out and out inaccuracies.

Given our (apparently overly generous) offer to fact-check and/or advise and/or supply Morgan with any and all of the copious documentation and public records and hard evidence we've amassed over our past six months of reporting on this matter coupled with Morgan's impressive credentials and experience, we were somewhat stunned to read the fruits of her efforts on Saturday when the story finally appeared in The SP Times.

As we are still somewhat at a disadvantage by being on the road for the moment (still in Nashville at the National Election Reform Conference), we'll have to do our best to speak to Morgan's many unfortunate errors and lack of apparent journalistic standards without access to our complete file of evidence. Nonetheless, we'll do our best to point out what we would have pointed out to Morgan had she bothered to run any of this by us before going to press.

Given also that she found it necessary to include us in the story for inexplicable reasons --- other than perhaps to try and discredit the entire affair as a "conspiracy theory" of some sort --- it seems as though it would have been appropriate to check many of these facts with us and/or at least give us the opportunity to comment on several of the unsupported charges she makes in her piece.

But alas, that seems to be the way of the Mainstream Media these days; Belittle and discredit the stories that they should have been reporting in the first place by suggesting that a story presented on a web log couldn't possibly hold the veracity of something reported by the MSM.

On that note, we'll simply mention that after over six months of investigating and reporting on the Clint Curtis story, we've not once had to issue a notable retraction or correction to any of our work. Whereas one single article from Morgan includes enough misinformation for an entire column's worth of retractions, corrections and clarifications.

We had hoped to extend the courtesy to Morgan that she didn't feel necessary to extend to either Curtis or us in order to give her the opportunity to explain herself and her many omissions, misleads and apparent lack of both "balance" and fact-checking in her story.

Morgan's response to our invitation to comment today: "I have no interest in commenting on your story, you can publish that I have two heads if you want."

We have no interest in publishing that Morgan has two heads, since that would be misleading and untruthful as far as we can tell. We do have an interest in publishing facts however, in a fair way, while correcting those who seem to display a problem in doing so themselves.

So to that end, let's take a look at a few of the most egregious distortions, errors, misleads and omissions in Morgan's unfortunate article...