In or near Los Angeles tonight (Tuesday)? Please come on by the Fairfax Cinemas (7907 Beverly Blvd.) at 7:30pm for a special screening of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections. I'll be speaking at a Q&A afterwards, along with filmmaker David Earnhardt, "Diebold Document Whistleblower" Steve Heller (who is both featured in the film and now also an occassional BRAD BLOG guest blogger!), Mimi "Dharma & Greg" Kennedy of PDA, and all of it hosted by the good Jerry Quickley of KPFK/Pacifica.

Oh, and psst...say the super-secret password "NO DIEBOLD!" at the box office tonight, and get $3 off your ticket! But don't tell anyone! We'd like to keep that as much of a secret as Diebold's own passwords for all of their voting systems ("1111").

If you can't make it tonight (for some crazy reason), and if you've yet to see Uncounted (for some crazy reason), and you haven't helped support The BRAD BLOG lately (for some crazy reason), special editions of the DVD, as signed by the filmmaker, are still available for online donations of $50 or more. Snail mail works as well, to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

We'd love the support, and you'll love the film. And we'd all love to see you tonight if you happen to be in the hood.

P.S. The film is also screening at the San Diego Film Festival this Thursday and Saturday at 5pm. I'll be heading down for a Q&A following the Saturday showing there, so I expect to see everybody in person by the end of this week! Thank you.

I'll once again be hosting KPFK/Pacifica's "Special Election Year Coverage" hour from 2p-3p PT (5p-6p ET) today (Wednesday).

I hope to be focusing on plans (or lack thereof) by both Democrats and Republicans to help protect your vote, though neither the Obama/DNC nor the McCain/RNC has so far been particularly forthcoming in offering a rep to discuss those plans. So if they don't show up, I guess I'll have to discuss their plans myself. To bad for them, I guess.

Guests scheduled for today...

• JON GREENBAUM - Director of the National Lawyers Committee's Voting Rights Project, on their new, non-partisan, 866OurVote.org election protection effort announced today.
• MARK CRISPIN MILLER - NYU Media Professor, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform and Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008. See his BRAD BLOG guest blog on why he believes Palin was chosen as Veep by the GOP, filed yesterday.

In addition to that, I will be giving away some DVDs of the freshly released documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story and tickets to next Tuesday night's Los Angeles screening of the documentary Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections at the Fairfax in Hollywood to callers (see the websites of each for more details.)

KPFK is heard at 90.7FM in Los Angeles and 98.7FM in Santa Barbara and streams live on the net at KPFK.org. Please tune in, stream in, and call-in at 818-985-5735, if you like.

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: It was another lively, and hopefully very informative show today, with a bunch o' great calls and more. Unfortunately, our best laid plans for Mark Crispin Miller were for naught, as we lost him on the Long Island Railroad somewhere, but Jon Greenbaum was great, with a lotta good info, and some interesting information concerning the National Lawyers Committee's support for a bill that supported the continued use of touch-screen voting machines. I'm hopeful they will consider changing their position in the future, even as they're doing a great job of serving the voters with their 866-OUR-VOTE election protection effort this season!

MP3 Download (appx 55 mins), or listen online...

BTW...I hope those within spittin' distance of L.A. will come to the screening of Uncounted in Los Angeles --- as mentioned during the show, next Tuesday (9/23) at Fairfax Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd. --- where you'll be able to spit on me, filmmaker David Earnhardt, "Diebold Document Whistleblower" Steve Heller, and host Jerry Quickly of KPFK in the Q&A that follows. If you can't come, you can get the DVD at the website, OR help support our work here and get a special version of the DVD, signed by Earnhardt, in exchange for a contribution of $50 or more to The BRAD BLOG.

We hope to offer a similar premium soon, for the just-released --- and scary as hell --- Murder, Spies & Voting Lies!

I'm delighted to be filling in for Randi this afternoon on The Randi Rhodes Show from 3pm-6pm ET (Noon to 3pm PT). Hope you all will join me!

If you're not lucky enough to have Randi on the air in your hometown (affiliates list here), you can stream us online via NovaMRadio.com. You can try to call in at 866-87-RANDI or leave your comments in the Open Thread right here, where Agent 99 will be your friendly host as always.

My thanks to local Randi affiliate KTLK am1150, "L.A.'s Progressive Talk," for allowing me, yet again, to broadcast from their fine studios in beautiful downtown Burbank!

I've blogged about today's show over at Randi's site, so check it out for more details, but here's a few sneak previews of scheduled guests (as always, subject to change, pending breaking news and if I happen to feel like it):

• Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War (the awesome dude with the "You Can't Win an Occupation" sign as seen everywhere during McCain's RNC speech!)
• Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly's Spy Talk on the fugitive Alberto Gonzales' lies to federal investigators about his mishandling of classified information.
• Stephen Spoonamore, Republican cybersecurity expert/whistleblower on RoveCybergate.com, what the hell happened in Ohio a few years ago (and even in Congress today!) and who the hell Mike Connell is and why you need to know.
• And much more!

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: Well that was fun! Archives now posted below, for download or online listening. Thanks to Ben Burch of White Rose Society for the commercial-free archives, which makes each "hour" just 37 fast-paced minutes long!...

HOUR 1: Lots of rants, lots of calls, guest Jeff Stein, and a focus on Republican and Fox "News" lies, and the rest of the intimidated media. Download MP3 or listen online...

HOUR 2: Lots of rants, lots of calls, guest Adam Kokesh and a focus on the reprehensible "Community Organizer" slurs from Palin and others. Download MP3 or listen online...

HOUR 3: Lots of rants, lots of calls, guest Stephen Spoonamore, clips from interview with former AL Gov. Don Siegelman on "stolen elections" and a focus on what you can do this year to reclaim your democracy. Download MP3 or listen online...

Had planned to run this on what I thought would be a "slow" Labor Day weekend. Oh, well.

Goofin' with talk radio pals Jim Ward (of The Stephanie Miller Show) and Randi Rhodes (of The Randi Rhodes Show) last week at the DNC...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Denver...

Mike Sheehan, of both Scholars & Rogues and RAW STORY, cornered me on Monday for an interview on a number of important issues. Here's his Q&A with yours truly, mouthing off on a number of them...

With a hat-tip for the title-variation on my pal, Art Levine's landmark piece on "The Republican War on Voting" in The Prospect, my column this week at the UK's Guardian focuses on the latest in the Republican "voter fraud" scam, intended only to keep Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast a legal vote this year.

The launching point for the column: conservative "founding father" Paul Weyrich's remarkable comments to 15,000 preachers in Dallas in 1980, as seen in the video at right, featuring this Rosetta Stone phrase:

Yes, that's what he actually said. Out loud. And the GOP has been working to make Weyrich's anti-democracy dreams a reality, at no small cost, ever since. My complete Guardian column is here...

I'll be appearing tonight (Friday) for a Q&A following the 7:20 showing of Dorothy Fadiman's new documentary Stealing America: Vote-by-Vote, at the Laemmle's Music Hall in Beverly Hills where the film will be playing for through the 21st (see the website linked above for where and when else it's playing around both CA and the rest of the country). I'll also be sticking around to introduce the 9:50pm showing.

LA Times had this to say in the lede graf of their review today:

And from an earlier capsure review, posted by the Times earlier this month (a reprint from NY's Newsday), the wrote:

Sounds good to me! If you're in the 'hood, please come on by tonight and say hello! [DISCLOSURE: I'm in the film itself, though only briefly. So don't let that keep you from checking it out!]

I'll be jumping in again today (Wed.) to host KPFK/Pacifica's "Special Election Year Coverage" hour from 2p-3p PT (5p-6p ET).

My guests will be...

• PHIL LINDSEY of ShowMeTheVote.org to discuss the latest in the case of his arrest while trying to vote last week during Missouri's state primary, and
• DEAN LOGAN, L.A. County's Registrar of Voters, to discuss concerns about the polls here in November, as well as what happened to cause my own votes to be flipped by the voting system during last June's state primary election.

KPFK is heard at 90.7FM in Los Angeles and 98.7FM in Santa Barbara and streams live on the net at KPFK.org. Please tune in, stream in, and call-in at 818-985-5735, if you like.

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Post-Show Update: Thanks to both Phil Lindsey and Dean Logan for joining me today. It was a very good and informative hour, if I say so myself. So informative, in fact, that someone called in to complain after the show that I wasn't tough enough on Logan. Okay. You can decide for yourself if I was, or wasn't, or if he even deserved it this time out. The archive follows. I appreciate that he showed up and took questions. We've got to work with election officials, folks. Period. Even as we hold feet to the fire.

(Appx. 1 hour) MP3 Download or listen online here...

Having made all too precious-little headway in overcoming the failures of the U.S. corporate mainstream media --- see these comments from over the weekend on that point --- I guess I need to "go overseas" to see if we can make any headway from over there instead.

I'm now honored to be contributing to the UK's Guardian from time to time. My first column, posted today, picks up on the anthrax case, and the dismal, one-sided case made for the guilt of the now-deceased Bruce Ivins, by both the FBI and the mainstream corporate media outlets in this country, which were all too happy to pass on misleading report after misleading report from those prolific "unnamed government sources."

As with Iraq WMD, Valerie Plame, Torture, Secret Prisons, Spying on Citizens, the U.S. Attorney Purge, Election Integrity, and so many other almost-all-but-lost landmark issues from over the past seven years or so, it has been the remarkable efforts of the citizen media that managed, at least a bit, to mitigate the corporate media-propelled "conventional wisdom" in this entire sorry matter.

Please feel free to put in a good word over there for me.

-- Brad Friedman

I had the opportunity to ask an important question of both the legendary Leon County (Tallahassee), FL, Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, and Los Angeles County's no-longer-interim Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, last week here in Los Angeles.

Readers of The BRAD BLOG will remember Logan from his poor showing, as acting Registrar, in the handling of L.A.'s Super Tuesday "Double Bubble" ballot debacle, in which at least 12,000 mostly-perfectly-countable votes from the Democratic Primary went completely uncounted, as well as his handling of the failure I encountered myself, in the more recent state primary in June, when four of my own votes were printed incorrectly by the county's ES&S electronic voting system.

Sancho was in town for press avails, in advance of the opening of Dorothy Fadiman's new documentary Stealing America: Vote-by-Vote (opening for week-long runs in NYC on Aug 1st, and in L.A. on Aug 15th - DISCLOSURE: I appear briefly in the film). Logan, to his credit, was kind enough to show up, with his deputy Peter McNamara, for a screening of the film held by PDA last Thursday.

After the screening, Sancho, a compelling presence in Fadiman's film, as he was in HBO's landmark 2006 documentary, Hacking Democracy, answered questions, and the activists in the crowd managed to shoehorn Logan onto the stage to speak to a number of local concerns as well.

I took the opportunity to ask a few questions of both men, as captured by Alan Breslauer, with answers, on the video posted at the end of this article.

Of most important note, I wanted to know if either of them would commit to a hand-count of ballots in a handful of precincts this November, on an experimental basis, on Election Night. The count, in such a "pilot program" as I described it, needn't be the official count, but could later be compared to the results as reported by both counties' optical-scanners, since both L.A. and Leon County use paper ballots for their non-disabled voters.

As I've advocated to a few other election officials in the past, hand-counting in this small, experimental way would help us all to begin to compile data about the effectiveness --- or even, lack thereof --- of transparent, polling-place based HCPB (Hand-Counted Paper Ballots) on Election Night, as many Election Integrity advocates have called for...

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So we learned last week that new information concerning Republican high-tech guru Mike Connell's alleged participation in computer-aided fraud from Florida to Ohio to the Swiftboaters to RNC headquarters to Congress has helped lead Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck to reignite a long-standing federal lawsuit concerning Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election.

We learned this week that Connell may have been threatened by Karl Rove should the GOP's "high IQ Forrest Gump" --- so described for his uncanny ability to be found "at the scene of every [GOP] crime" --- fail to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, according to a letter sent by Arnebeck to AG Michael Mukasey asking for Connell's protection.

But who exactly is this exceptionally successful, yet largely-below-the-radar-until-now Republican operative?

The following clip (appx 6:45 mins) from the new documentary film, FREE FOR ALL! (downloadable in full, free for all, at www.freeforall.tv) by filmmaker John Ennis, gives us a small taste of who Connell is, and how he fits into the big picture.

BRAD BLOG readers will likely recognize a few faces here. Please enjoy...

Ohio Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who notified Attorney General Mukasey yesterday about threats made by Karl Rove against the GOP's high-tech guru, Mike Connell, as we reported last night, will join Peter B. Collins and me during my weekly Friday 5pm PT appearance on PBC's syndicated radio show.

You'll be able to listen online at www.PeterBCollins.com if his show is not aired in your town. And you may call in with questions and comments for Arnebeck or myself at 888-5-PeterB (or post them here, and I'll try to ask them). Hope you'll tune in!

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: Arnebeck joined us for the first half-hour of the show and dropped a few interesting details during our discussion. Among them: 1) Bush can't pardon someone convicted under a civil RICO case, which is what Arnebeck is compiling. (Also, can't remember if it came up during the interview, but as some have suggested that Rove simply invoke Executive Privilege to avoid being deposed in this case, Exec Privilege does not come into play in such a case. It only refers to Congressional testimony.) 2) Connell had agreed to meet with the House Judiciary Comm. several months ago, but so far Judiciary hasn't followed up. 3) Arnebeck makes a tantalizing reference to the finding in the Paula Jones case that sitting Presidents may be deposed in civil cases. More detail on those points and others in the audio interview.
Download MP3 or listen online here...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer
Earlier this month, writer, director, producer, and actor John Wellington Ennis released a free online election documentary titled Free For All. The trailer (4:21, at right) for the smart, informative, and hugely entertaining flick is below (with none other than Brad Friedman serving as the video thumbnail) while the entire movie can be downloaded here.

Meanwhile, today David Earnhardt, who brought us the excellent election integrity documentary Uncounted, The New Math of American Elections, released a clip (7:04, below right) from the movie about Clint Curtis. The clip also features Brad.
[Ed Note: Help support The BRAD BLOG! Special premium offer for DVD of Uncounted, signed by the filmmaker, is available only to BRAD BLOG readers here.]

For more on Curtis see The BRAD BLOG's special Clint Curtis coverage.

It is also worth noting that Brad Friedman figures prominently in both documentaries.

[Ed Note: ...But they're worth watching anyway!]

As The BRAD BLOG expands into new territory, we bring you our first, important, hard-hitting nature documentary...

Reported by Brad Friedman, from the road...

The whistleblower lawsuit against voting machine company Hart InterCivic, as filed in federal court on behalf of former employee William Singer, has been withdrawn following a decision by the Supreme Court that makes pursuing the case nearly impossible, according to the law firm who originally filed the complaint.

The suit had been sealed for nearly two years as the Dept. of Justice asked for extension after extension during their decision on whether or not to join the case. Earlier this year, they ultimately decided not to join the case, as we reported last March, leaving the firm of Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor, P.A to proceed on their own. The DoJ declines to join some 76% of such cases.

In the interim, while waiting for the DoJ, the case of Rockwell Intl Corp. v. U.S. [PDF] came before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the findings in that decision, as attorney Mike Papantonio told The BRAD BLOG, has "made it next to impossible to proceed with any and all federal whistleblower (qui tam) cases."

The decision found that Rockwell was required to pay millions of dollars under the federal False Claims Act to the federal government, but that the relator of the case --- the insider who blew the whistle --- was not entitled to any of that money, nor even for the millions of dollars accrued in legal costs since the amended complaint, filed with the Justice Dept., included information about which the relator did not have direct inside knowledge.

The SCOTUS finding, as expressed for the majority by Justice Antonin Scalia, may well hamstring future whistleblower cases in federal courts, according to legal experts.

"I used to think qui tam was the way to go," Papantonio told me as his firm was weighing their decision on how to proceed after the case was finally unsealed, "but now I just don't know anymore."

Papantonio's Florida law firm has used the qui tam laws successfully in the past, and has taken on giants such as the Tobacco Industry. After he and his radio partner Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had learned about Singer's case from The BRAD BLOG --- we originally reported Singer's extraordinary saga back in early 2006 --- they decided to launch the federal fraud suit on his behalf later that year.

(I was interviewed about the withdrawal of the federal case by Mike Papantonio for this weekend's Ring of Fire radio program, which he co-hosts with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. A video version of the interview is also posted on their GoLeft.TV site. Both versions are now posted in full at the end of this article.)

Though the attorneys working on the case have gone out of their way to express their faith in both Singer and his remarkable complaint --- detailing more than 40 federal fraud allegations, and accusing Hart of doctoring voting machines, covering up system failures, including the loss and miscounting of votes, and other malfeasance, in order to attain contracts and payment under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 --- the chance that millions of dollars spent pursuing the case might be unrecoverable at the end of the process, even if successful, in light of the Rockwell decision, forced them to withdraw the complaint from federal court...

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