Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In August 1998, Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife Janet were among 131 signers of an advertisement opposing same sex marriage and in support of resolution enacted by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) earlier that year that erroneously suggested that prototypical 1950's "Ozzie and Harriet" style marriage and family life had its origins in the Bible:

"Graciously submitting herself" to her husband is a deceptively benign formulation for the status of women in biblical times. In the Hebrew scriptures that form the basis of the Old Testament, for example, women were treated as harshly as they are treated today in conservative Islamic cultures:

• Unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.
• Married women were not allowed to leave the home of their husband.
• They were normally restricted to roles of little or no authority.
• They could not testify in court.
• They could not appear in public venues.
• They were not allowed to talk to strangers.
• They had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.

Polygamy was commonplace, and, of course, only men could have multiple spouses. Famous polygamists from the Bible included Abraham, Jacob, King David and especially Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

The Bible dictates that women take an inferior role in almost every aspect of life, according to a conservative biblical scholar:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

This ought to drive a stake through the heart of the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative.

According to the Associated Press, after seven years of mismanagement by George Bush and 12 years of Republican dominance of the Senate and control of the House, the national debt of the United States is now expanding by $1.4 billion per day and $1 million per minute:

By the time Bush is scheduled to leave office in January 2009, the debt will be $10 trillion, which is $10,000,000,000,000.00.

Guest Blogged by Stephen Heller

I am no longer a felon.

In brief, I became known to some as the "Diebold Whistleblower" when, in January of 2004, I stole and exposed legal documents [PDF] proving that Diebold Election Systems, Inc. was using and planned to continue using illegal, uncertified software in their California voting machines. (By the way, Diebold recently changed its name to Premier Election Solutions, but don't let that fool you; it's still the same bunch of idiots.) Details about my case can be found here and here [PDF].

The documents I stole were covered under attorney-client privilege, so my theft was a serious crime. In February of 2006 I was charged with three felonies. On November 20, 2006, I plead guilty to one felony count of unauthorized access to a computer, and in exchange for my guilty plea and a restitution payment of $10,000 to the law firm from which I stole the documents, the law firm promised they wouldn't bring a civil suit against me, and I was put on felony probation instead of being sent to jail. The term of probation was to be at least one year, and as much as three years.

Now, one year after my guilty plea, because I've stayed out of trouble and because I'm a first offender, the judge has reduced my felony to a misdemeanor. Sometime in 2008, my lawyers will petition the court to have my misdemeanor expunged.

The bad part is that the most troublesome aspect of my probation is still in force. Before I can accept a job at which I would use a computer networked to one or more other computers (basically any job for which I'd be qualified), any potential employer must write to the judge in my case, tell him that they know about my conviction and that they still want to hire me, and then we have to wait until the judge responds with a "yes" or a "no" before I can accept the job and start work (and then only if the judge says "yes"). So as you can see, employers will be falling all over themselves to hire me.

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, my wife (an actor, filmmaker and writer) certainly hasn't lost her sense of humor. She had been calling me Felonious Punk, but now that I'm no longer a felon, she's switched to Mister Meanor. Ain't it great being married to a comedy writer?

To be clear, breaking attorney-client privilege is a very serious crime, and I accept responsibility for what I did. I'm still being punished for it, and so far the punishment has cost my wife and me over $210,000 - and counting. $210,000 is an enormous amount of money to us. My wife and I have paid and are continuing to pay a very high price for my crime.

But, as we're not Republicans, we might have expected that.

Which got me thinking about other crimes in America that have recently been committed or alleged, and what's happened to those involved. Among the first of many, Lewis "Scooter" Libby comes to mind...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Yesterday, we learned that when he was mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani allegedly played a shell game to hide from taxpayers --- and his scornful wife --- the cost of dragging his security details along when he traveled out to Long Island to visit his then-girlfriend, Judith Nathan. Now comes news that he assigned a car and driver from the NYPD to Nathan during their affair:

Last December, Alan G. Hevesi, the New York State Comptroller, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government and resigned his position after it was revealed that he had detailed a state employee to attend his wife, who was an invalid:

In addition to pleading guilty to a felony, Hevesi paid a fine of $5,000 and reimbursed the state for $206,000.

No word as of yet whether New York's Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, will look into allegations that Giuliani used public employees to carry out personal services for him and his girlfriend.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Here's an interesting development in the increasingly heated speculation about what led Sen. Trent Lott to announce his resignation from the Senate yesterday.

On Larry Flynt's website, Flynt has posted an excerpt from PageOneQ, a Washington-based website that has a record of accurately identifying closeted Republican politicians:

To which Larry Flynt responds:

Meanwhile, at Huffington Post, the idea that Lott had any sort of relationship with Benjamin Nicholas is "put to bed" by none other than Nicholas himself:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In the latest CNN/WMUR poll of likely voters in the New Hampshire primary, Fred Thompson has dropped to sixth place behind both Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee.

Thompson has lagged behind the frontrunners since he entered the race in September. But in this latest poll, his support in New Hampshire dropped from 13 percent in the September poll to 4 percent now.

Ron Paul has doubled his support from 4 percent to 8 percent since September. Mike Huckabee has 5 percent.

Mitt Romney, who was governor of next-door Massachusetts, is in the lead with 33 percent, up from 25 percent in September. John McCain's 18 percent support is unchanged. Rudolph Giuliani is in third place with 16 percent --- an eight percentage point drop since September.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The White House is probably busy right now dusting off a Medal of Freedom --- as well as complete and full pardon --- for Howard "Cookie" Krongard, their inspector general (IG) at the State Dept. It appears that in Krongard's testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform yesterday, he made false statements under oath about the membership of his brother, Buzzy Krongard, on an advisory board for Blackwater, the controversial paramilitary security contractor based in North Carolina's Dismal Swamp.

Blackwater has close ties with Howard Krongard's bosses in the Bush administration, who have awarded over $100 million in contracts to the company since the invasion and occupation of Iraq began. The fact that the brother of the Bush State Dept.'s chief investigator into Blackwater's activities in Iraq is on Blackwater's payroll would appear to be a conflict of interest, to put it mildly.

Early in the hearings, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) laid out a series of allegations from officials in the State and Justice departments that Krongard has been stonewalling investigations into corruption and illegal activities by Blackwater and other U.S. personnel and companies in Iraq.

Here is video of Waxman's questioning and Krongard's evasive responses:

Laters, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) asked Krongard if his brother was a member of the Blackwater advisory board:

Howard Krongard responded, under oath, with a flat denial:

But during the break, Howard Krongard called his brother and found out that Buzzy did, indeed, sit on a Blackwater board:

Guest Blogged by Pokey Anderson

Just down the road from Mount St. Helens, there's an unexpected eruption. The small southwest Washington town of La Center is having a political eruption --- its state legislator is embroiled in a sex scandal, details of which are still unfolding.

This time, there's no resorting to the time-honored "wide stance" defense, and no encrypted toe tapping in an airport public restroom. This time, there is no explicit text messaging to a Congressional page from a member of Congress, then co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, while a bill is being debated on the floor of the Capitol.

This time, the stage is a booth in back of an X-rated video store, and then a room in the nicest hotel in Spokane, Washington.

This time, there's a lawmaker wearing black sequined lingerie...

Guest Blogged by Steve Huff

Theodore Robert Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers of the last half-century, was a Republican activist while studying law at various universities in the west and northwest.

John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer who equalled Bundy in viciousness and notoriety, was very active as a Democrat in his Chicago neighborhood --- even had his photo made with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Politics and sex crime. Sometimes, they go together. Perhaps because both deal with dominance, and power. Bundy and Gacy would simply be two of the most extreme examples.

Of course, both sides of the aisle get hit, but lately, it is Republicans who are taking a consistent battering in this arena.

Guest blogged by Steve Huff

Introduction {by Winter Patriot}: The BRAD BLOG is pleased to introduce Steve Huff, of HuffCrimeBlog.com. Steve is not only a blogger; he's also a part of the investigative team for Court TV's Crime Library, crimelibrary.com.

Ripples of shock spread from the little Village of Green Oaks, IL, through the Illinois political establishment on Monday as the news spread: Mayor Tom Adams, age 68, had been arrested at his home on Anderson Drive, and charged with distributing kiddie porn over the internet.

If convicted, Tom Adams could face 15 years in prison for each person who received child porn from him via the web.

Following on our earlier report today, covering 100's of electronic voting machines in Philadelphia which failed to start up this morning for Pennsylvania's primary election, we now have a similar report from the other side of the state.

100's of machines in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, also failed to work correctly today. If we're able to remember correctly (since the story doesn't name any voting machine company names), Allegheny County finally settled on voting machines made by ES&S, after they abandoned hopes of going with Diebold when their machines were found to be hackable, and then later found machines from Sequoia Voting Systems --- who they'd planned to use instead --- were discovered to be similarly hackable.

ES&S eventually won the prize, just weeks before today's primary --- we warned about going with a new system with so little time to prepare, but did they listen? --- yet appear to have lost the day for PA voters, according to this report from Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette...

More details on the failures in the Post-Gazette's story. Amongst those details, apparently Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was locked out of his polling place when an election worker failed to show up to open it this morning.

New CBS/NYTimes poll. Bush now ties his father's career low point, higher only than Nixon and Carter...

The word "glitch" takes a rest, as the AP uses "hiccups" instead to minimize what happened in Ohio's Primary Election mess last Tuesday.

Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who was on the Republican Primary ballot for the Governor's race, refuses to step down from the investigation which is just now beginning since manual hand-counting of ballots in Cuyahoga County was just completed yesterday (Sunday), after Diebold machines failed to be able to read 17,000 absentee ballots...

More...

From USA TODAY...

(NOTE FROM BRAD: Playing serious catch-up on a number of stories, related-but-off-blog commitments and several crushing deadlines. Was gone the entire day yesterday interviewing someone on camera. Very interesting. More on that, and a bunch of other items as I can get caught up later today, tonight, and for the rest of the week as things are breaking and I do my best to keep up with all of it. Hopefully David and John will be able to jump into the breach where available here and as I continue to scramble to get caught up throughout the week. Begging your indulgence and patience over the next few days where coverage might be quicker or leaner than normal in the bargain...and as necessary.)