-- 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 à¼ber 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...

Our friends Bobby Kennedy Jr. and GoLeft.tv interview another of our friends, Election Integrity hero Ion Sancho, the legendary Leon County, FL, Supervisor of Elections, on the election messes in New Hampshire, Florida, Los Angeles, and everywhere else. (And thanks for the kind hat-tip, guys...even though The BRAD BLOG never claimed there was fraud in NH. But we're happy to let that slide, since the interview was live, and you might have been talking about someone else. And we know you mean well.)

WARNING: Markos Moulitsas and the other front-pagers and gatekeeping denialists at Daily Kos should not watch the above interview! If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a user record over there, you should go ahead and ban him right now! Make sure he's never allowed to write at dKos! In this interview, he has the temerity to talk about concerns with the way the New Hampshire Primary Election was conducted! Can you believe it?! And he's even a Hillary Clinton supporter! Clearly, he, like The BRAD BLOG, is "doing far more harm than good," as you like to say, for the Election Integrity movement! What will the Democratic Party and the Mainstream Corporate Media say about your site if that "nutter" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is allowed to post over there?! Quickly --- before he damages the credibility of your site --- you better go ahead and ban RFK Jr. in advance! As you know, better safe than sorry, boys!

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has used the "F" word to describe what may have taken place when zero votes were registered for Barack Obama during unofficial results at nearly 80 precincts in New York City on Super Tuesday, including several in heavily African-American areas such as Harlem.

"If you want to call it significant undercounting, I guess that's a euphemism for fraud," the tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist Mayor --- who would not be welcome to post at the Daily Kos --- is quoted telling the New York Post today.

Politico's Ben Smith follows up today to report that a Bloomberg spokesman "reiterated the charge in an e-mail," but curiously notes that Bloomberg, who "controls the police department" in New York City would not be launching an investigation.

"Loeser said he didn't think there was actually a legal issue at stake in the preliminary, unofficial vote counts," reports Smith.

So if we have all of that straight, the NYC Mayor's office confirmed they believe there was "fraud" at work in the city's Primary Election, but don't believe there are any "legal issues at stake." Interesting position.

For our part, The BRAD BLOG covered the curious issue of NYC's zero vote totals as it emerged last week from a report by the New York Times (which included some misleading information, by the way, as we noted). We don't know if the matter rises to the level of fraud or not. But if we were to use that word, we'd also be calling for a full investigation by every appropriate legal authority.

How the anti-Election Integrity folks who control the front page at the Daily Kos will have to twist and contort themselves to cover this news is beyond us. So we'll simply continue seeking out information from knowledgeable and uncompromised news sources instead.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

The Newark Star-Ledger is reporting that New Jersey election officials have found a discrepancy in the state's Primary Election results as reported on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines used on Super Tuesday. Voter totals reported by the internal paper tapes on their Sequoia AVC Advantage DRE in a number of counties are failing to match up with totals found on the memory cartridges, used for both ballot definition and results storage, on the same machines, according to the report today...

Problems with Sequoia's AVC Advantage systems also emerged early on the morning of Super Tuesday, forcing a 45 minute delay for the state's Governor, who was unable to cast his vote when the machines failed to boot up on Election Day. In February of last year, the same machines were hacked by a Princeton University Professor after he'd been able to purchase a number of the $8000 systems for just $86 apiece on the Internet.

The Star-Ledger today goes on to report some of the details on the latest failures now emerging in New Jersey during the state's post-election canvassing...

California Sec. of State Debra Bowen wants Los Angeles County's acting Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, to check the poll rosters of thousands of precincts in order to help accurately count tens of thousands of currently uncounted ballots cast in the Super Tuesday Democratic Primary.

As The BRAD BLOG pointed out last week, tens of thousands of currently uncounted ballots cast by Non-Partisan voters who chose to cross over and vote in the Democratic Primary, but who failed to ink in a second bubble meant to instruct voting machines to count the ballots as Democratic votes, can be counted accurately, as per the voters' intent, if Logan bothers to check those poll rosters.

Bowen, who sent a 3-page letter [PDF] to Logan after our article pointed out that he was simply wrong, in his own report [PDF] to the County Supervisors, when he claimed that it was "impossible" to determine the intent of the voters on those ballots.

It's not, and Bowen clearly seems to understand that, as evidenced by both her letter to Logan and comments she made last Friday on Northern California National Public Radio affiliate KQED, where she said she was "shocked" to hear that the debacle had happened in several elections previously...

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...

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...

The conspiracy theorists at the New York Times today tell us something is amiss, but proceed to ultimately tell us nothing about why it happened, suggesting that all is just fine...and that it'd be even better if the city "upgraded" to new electronic voting machines...

So how did the numbers change from 141-0 to 261-136 and from 118-0 to 118-116? No confirmed explanation is given, but some lazy guesswork about how votes are counted on NYC's old lever voting machines is proffered by local Election Officials, and dutifully passed on by the Times who --- before proceeding with a misleading "ad" for new electronic systems --- soothes our concerns by informing us that an unspecified number ("a handful") of districts also reported zero votes for Clinton in the original, unofficial tallies...

The Republican women of Snohomish County, WA, seem to be lacking a bit in the self-respect department. While we're sure that's not the case for every Republican woman in the county, that's the message that's just been sent with the following photograph that appeared in this morning's local paper...

Though he claimed during last night's appearance with the proud shameless, self-loathing Republican women of Snohomish that "we're neutral as a state party," and aren't endorsing a candidate, The BRAD BLOG has previously noted "Esser the Suppressor's" fealty to John McCain's state campaign chairman, AG Rob McKenna, Esser's old chum, and the man responsible for helping to push the last state chair (a woman) out of the job, in order to replace her with Esser.

He arguably returned the favor during last Saturday's GOP caucus in the Evergreen State by halting the counting with just 87% of the returns in, just after McCain, who'd been trailing Huckabee for most of the night, finally took a 242 vote lead...

You can read The BRAD BLOG's previous detailed explanations of the current Los Angeles County "Double Bubble" ballot debacle here and here.

If you've yet to sign the Courage Campaign's petition demanding that these ballots be counted immediately, please do so right now!

As the clock ticks towards the date required for final certification of as many as hundreds of thousands of currently uncounted ballots in Los Angeles County --- due to an idiotic, ill-conceived, and possibly illegal scheme by the county's Registrar of Voters --- it is imperative that those ballots be counted immediately.

While the acting Registrar has claimed, incorrectly, that it is "impossible" to accurately determine the intent of the voters on those ballots, he is wrong.

Almost every single uncounted ballot can be counted today with absolutely certainty that the intent of the voter is being accurately recorded.

With current the miscount/error rate of those uncounted ballots --- on which the voter's intent has currently been inaccurately recorded by the optical-scan voting machines as "no vote" --- now standing at 100%, almost every single ballot counted will only lower that rate at best. At worst, in a tiny (almost infinitesimal) percentage of ballots, the current error rate will be not be lowered, though it will not be increased.

Thus, the error rate can be reduced to almost 0% if the Registrar's office will simply begin counting the ballots --- immediately.

Here's what everybody, (including apparently the Registrar!), needs to know about the currently miscounted ballots...

"A voter who casts a vote in an election in accordance with the laws of this State shall have that vote counted."
- Article II, California Constitution
Added overwhelmingly by California voters in Prop 43, on March 5, 2002

Election Code requirements "shall be liberally construed so that the real will of the electors will not be defeated by any informality or failure to comply with all of the provisions of the law."
- California Elections Code, Sec. 19001

Los Angeles County's acting Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, says in a report delivered to the County Board of Supervisors yesterday on the "Double Bubble" debacle from last Super Tuesday's Presidential Primary Election, that he believes it will be "impossible to determine with absolute certainty" the intentions of some 100,000 non-partisan voters who chose to vote in either the Democratic or American Independent Party's open primary, despite selections having been made for one of the Presidential candidates on their ballots.

The intent on almost every one of those uncounted ballots CAN be determined with absolute certainty. So, allow me to put this as nicely as I can: Dean Logan is full of shit...

The strange situation with Washington state's Republican Caucus over the weekend keeps deteriorating by the hour, the more we learn about it. It all underscores, of course, why full transparency is useful when it comes to elections.

And yes, the process overseen by the state's GOP chair Luke Esser "the Suppressor" --- where Huckabee led McCain for the bulk of the day as returns were coming in, only to stop the counting at 87% once McCain took a 242 vote lead --- was anything but transparent.

Seattle's NBC affiliate KING 5 is now questioning the reported vote totals out of Snohomish County:

This is all made possible, as the WA state bloggers at HorsesAss (who have been doing some terrific work on all of this) helpfully report, due to the bizarre way in which WA Republicans determine delegate proportionment from the caucus voters.

Unlike the state's Democratic Caucuses, where delegates are essentially selected by a mathematical formula to mirror the way caucus goers voted, on the GOP side, participants at each precinct may determine how to proportion delegates any way they wish. For example, even if, say, Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul were to receive the most votes at a precinct, the organizers could still choose to give the most delegates to John McCain.

As the KING 5 report above points out, there is now a question of consistency with the numbers that state party chair Esser the Suppressor was reporting.

Adding still more worries for the Huckabee camp, or even the Paul camp who currently follow Huck with a close third place, David Goldstein at HorsesAss also points out that Esser has long served as a reliable hatchet man, for years, to WA State Attorney General Rob McKenna, who helped him get the job, and who just happens to be the state campaign chairman for, you guessed it, John McCain...

Wow. An amazing find by HorsesAss. Here's Washington state GOP Party chairman Luke Esser --- he who unilaterally stopped counted votes from Saturday's Republican Caucus at 87%, once McCain finally took the lead from Huckabee by just 250 votes --- from his earlier days as an aspiring vote-suppressor...

That 'splains a bit, don't it?

Thus was the Republican party's now de rigeur "win"-at-all-costs atmosphere created by Esser over the weekend, leading Huckabee to say this morning on CNN: "That is not what we do in American elections... Maybe that's how they used to conduct it in the old Soviet Union, but you don't just throw people's votes out and say, 'well, we're not going to bother counting them because we kind of think we know where this was going.'"

Think again, Huck.

Be sure to factor all of the above in the next time you the hear the wingnuts tell you about "Democratic voter fraud" in the razor-thin Washington state Gubernatorial election eventually won by the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire. They will tell you there was massive fraud in the race, though if you bother to look up what really happened, you'll learn the GOP never alleged fraud in their court case, which was thrown out and not even appealed, after no evidence of fraud was ever presented by them.

(Hat-tip TPM)

UPDATE 2/11/08 7:14pm PT: Seattle's NBC affiliate reports "inconsistencies" in votes as reported by Snohomish County. ALSO: Esser the Suppressor's ties to McCain's state campaign chairman. Details now here...

[Updated at bottom of article with an "explanation" from the WA state GOP chairman. This story gets more bizarre by the minute. Be sure to check the updates if you read this story earlier.]

"The Huckabee Presidential Campaign will be exploring all available legal options regarding the dubious final results for the state of Washington State Republican precinct caucuses," according to a statement posted today on their official campaign website.

It was 2:30am on the West Coast last night as we noticed CNN was reporting only 87% of precincts counted from Washington state's Republican Caucus yesterday. Just over 200 votes separated the leader John McCain from Mike Huckabee in a very close second, with Ron Paul coming in a very close third.

Throughout the day, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, Huckabee had been leading in the returns until very late, when McCain pulled just ahead of him by just a few votes.

"With 87% of the returns counted," writes Marshall, "the Washington state GOP, which runs the caucuses stopped releasing results. That left us and a lot of other news organizations in a bit of a quandary last night since it looked like McCain was going to pull it off. But as late as 1:30 AM on the east coast promised new results kept failing to materialize."

And then, in the middle of the night, the state GOP posted a press release declaring McCain the winner, even with some 13% of the votes still unreported, and just 242 votes --- out of 13,745 reported so far --- separating McCain from Huckabee who'd finished a "strong second" according to the GOP release.

"In other words," Huckabee campaign chair Ed Rollins says in their statement this morning, "more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party."

"Now, I think it would be borderline for a media organization to declare one candidate a winner when the margin separating first and second was 1.8% with 13% of the results still uncounted," writes Marshall today. "But for the officials holding the election to declare the result on that basis is simply bizarre. But that's what they did."

Of course, none of that kept the always-responsible Reuters news service from declaring "McCain wins Washington state Republican contest" at 8:10am ET this morning.

This afternoon, the Huckabee camp is announcing they are prepared to go to court if necessary, as the candidate himself declared that "weird things" are going on in Washington while on NBC's Meet the Press.

At the same time, the results of the GOP Louisiana Primary, as announced by the state, are even closer than those so far released in Washington. Though because the election was held on wholly unverifiable electronic voting machines, everyone will simply have to settle for whatever numbers the faith-based systems reported to them, no matter how close the margin...