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!)

Scurrying across this great land of ours. Homeward bound. Finally. Will pop in here as time allows throughout the week, though that may not be much. We'll see...

The great BRAD BLOG Guest Bloggers will fill gaps as needed here, and we'll look forward to getting back to business in full by next week.

If the Democracy/Radio Gods are with us (and we can find our new Left Coast Homebase!) we'll be back on the air this Saturday with another LIVE show! Guest list, etc. to come as the week rolls on. Hopefully we'll find our new broadcast home, because we've already got some amazing guests pencilled in! Details soon!

The archives from last week's show are now online at BradShow.com - including the original unaired first half of the fourth hour (during which some strange technical glitch pre-empted us with a rerun of ourselves! Go figure!) So go hear what you missed there, which includes the awesome Bright Eyes tune from the Leno show. Justice Through Music has also posted a higher quality version of that video as well!

Also...if you missed the second hour with John Conyer's General Counsel, Ted Kalo [MP3], you may wish to give that one a listen as well...I think he may actually have made a bit of news around the :36 minute mark. Give it a listen and let us know what you think...I believe it was a great hour in any case!

UPDATE: Fixed the incorrect link to the Ted Kalo interview above. Had it as "third hour" and then pointed to the first! Should have been second, and so it has been corrected! Thanks CoreyK for pointing out my error!

Not much time to take this one apart properly, but New York Times' Adam Cohen today holds bloggers up to ethical standards which, he argues, ought to equal the high standards of those in the MSM.

While we agree with much of his thesis in general, one wonders if he ought to be throwing such stones from inside the Times' own fragile glass house.

This finger-wagging quote --- "Information should be verified before it is printed" --- amongst others, strikes one as more than just a tad ironic coming from the paper who allowed buckets of front page ink for Judith Miller to post un-verified information which helped march the world directly into a (so far) endless war.

Ms. Miller still works at --- and presumably collects a handsome salary from --- New York Times in the bargain. As she doesn't seem to have been held up to any particular set of ethics in the bargain, wouldn't Cohen's criticism be better directed homeward right about now?

Blogs, it seems, in Cohen's article are all tossed into the same ethically-challenged, non-journalistic barrel. All of us, apparently, require an "ethical upgrade" in Cohen's condescending opinion. True, we suppose, in as much as it would be appropriate for us to criticize the Times themselves for "reporting" done by super-market tabloids such as Weekly World News.

By way of example, here's just one graf from Cohen's piece:

Message to Mr. Cohen and the other MSM'ers apparently now beginning to defend their turf by entering into the "then they fight you" phase of Gandhi's famous quote: "Physician, heal thyself!"

...of The BRAD SHOW --- well, the lost half-hour, anyway --- will be available during tomorrow's rebroadcast, beginning at 12noon ET.

The half-hour lost was at the top of the fourth hour, so that would be 3pm ET (2pm CT, 1pm MT, 12noon PT - got it?). Including the Bright Eyes tune from NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The glitch, we are told by the network, was due to some kind of "automatic language filter" that kicked in for unknown reasons, and the backup came (another hour from a previous show) automagically kicked in.

Hear what you missed tomorrow! And thanks all for the support in every respect! Thanks WP for keeping things rolling here when I can't!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Brad Show goes LIVE! again this week after last week's unfortunate interruption. This week's guests include:

* Raw Story's John Byrne and Larisa Alexandrovna
* Carol Towarnicky of the Philadelphia News
* Nationally Syndicated Columnist Robert Kohler
* Attorney Ted Kalo, who represents the House Democrats and John Conyers

Listen LIVE via the Web! Saturday from 7p-11p ET (4p-8p PT)!
Repeating Sunday 12noon-4p ET (9a-1p PT)
Quick and easy access to LIVE listening links, archives, upcoming guests,
donation links and ad info (it's not to late to advertise!)
and more via www.BradShow.com!

More links...
Direct streaming links via RAW STORY!
Donate here to help defray costs!

URGENT REMINDER: The Brad Show is supported by your donations. This week we need more listeners and more donations! So get on the phone, or send some e-mail, and tell a few friends about The Brad Show. You (and they) will be glad you did.

And this MESSAGE FROM LARISA reposted from another thread:

Please click the "comments" button to discuss this week's show and our guests.

UPDATED: with links to tonight's Brad Show guests and their work...

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!)

Looks like others have taken notice of the Tribune Media Service spiking Robert Koehler's column this week as discussed previously on BRAD BLOG.

Editor & Publisher ran an article on it yesterday.

Bob Koehler will be a guest on tomorrow evening's BRAD SHOW. Don Wycliff of the Chicago Tribune who wrote an article rebutting Koehler's original column (which did not run in the Trib) has not yet returned our invitation to appear as well. We hope that he will, as we'd be delighted to allow him to give his side of the story on air.

(Thanks Wiley50 and the folks discussing it at DU for the link!)

P.S. Ted Kalo, the General Counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrats and to John Conyers specifically, has been added as a guest tomorrow night as well! Tune in for him, and some other guests being added today as well!

Guests booked so far (subject to change as breaking news requires): Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services on his spiked Election Reform column, Carol Towarnicky of Philadelphia Daily News on her Gannon/Guckert column, John Bryne of RAW STORY on Bush-Cheney's new ties to DeLay scandal, Ted Kalo General Counsel to John Conyers and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY on Real ID...Uh, oh.

See BradShow.com for more details and live listening links!

Please help support The BRAD SHOW and The BRAD BLOG by making a DONATION. I hate to have to ask, but right now, your support is the only way that I can keep going with all of the above!

In the first of several reports from RAW STORY on an expansion of the widening fundraising morass currently plaguing Republican House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, the White House itself is now being named as a major beneficiary of Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm in dollar numbers that dwarf anything DeLay has so far been tied to!!!

...MORE...

In a major afternoon exclusive, RAW STORY will report that Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's lobbying firm, has made what amounts to a "massive in-kind donation" to Bush-Cheney to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars!!!

...MORE...

Bush-Cheney 2000 Recount Committee has $314,000 "unpaid" to Greenberg Traurig from total bill of $800,000!

Four-plus years after recount, outstanding portion of Bush-Cheney's bill to Abramoff's lobbying firm still unpaid.

Newsweek reported in 2001, when the unpaid number was still at $800,000:

We suppose those "in-kind contributions" to the "reputations" of Greenberg Traurig employees may have served as a fine trade for the in-kind contribution that Greenberg Traurig appears to have made to Bush-Cheney by not collecting on their billed fees...

RAW STORY is now reporting that many of those employees, including the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was hired by Greenberg Traurig during the recount period after being retained by Bush-Cheney, have enjoyed great boosts to their resume from the work done on the 2000 Recount...

Full story now available at RAW STORY!!!

Clarification from RAW STORY on their original edition of the article...

What began innocently enough with a watershed article several weeks ago by Tribune Media Service's Robert Koehler on the need for Election Reform and an investigation into the results of Election 2004, has now erupted into a full-fledged firestorm resulting Wednesday afternoon in the unprecedented rejection of Koehler's latest column by the higher-ups at TMS where Koehler is both a columnist and editor!

Tribune Media Services is the syndication arm of the Tribune Company which, in turn, is the parent company to the Chicago Tribune.

Koehler's original ground-breaking column from April --- the first by an American Mainstream Media journalist that we know of to out-and-out charge that the 2004 Election was stolen --- was written a few days after Koehler attended the National Election Reform Conference last month in Nashville. The piece was headlined "The Silent Scream of Numbers: The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?"

He followed it up the next week with another stunner headlined "Democracy's Abu Ghraib — If they can disable an election, what's coming next?"

While both pieces were distributed via TMS to syndicate member newspapers, only a handful chose to run either of those two columns.

Most notably, however, despite Chicago Tribune itself having chosen to run neither column, their "Public Editor", Don Wycliffe, found it appropriate to write a column in the Trib's pages wherein he rebutted Koehler's original piece. Wycliff's rebuttal, as reported here previously, attempted to discredit Koehler's column, Koehler himself, and those of us who might give a damn about democracy and the responsibility that the people (and yes, that would include the media) have to remain vigilant in order to sustain it.

Wycliff's column, citing the "moral example" of Richard Nixon (yes, not kidding) as the figure whom Americans ought to follow in regards to potentially stolen elections, has erupted in a torrent of email directed towards the misguided and/or misinformed Wycliff and in support of Koehler.

Koehler once again hits a home-run with this week's column in response to Wycliff's. Or at least he would have had the Masters of Tribune Media Services not killed the article for the first time in Koehler's career!...

Did this performance really appear on NBC's The Tonight Show??? Does anybody know???

(UPDATE: The link to the video above has been changed to include a higher quality version now available via Justice Through Music. And yes, it's since been confirmed as legit! It really aired as is!)

We usually like to check these things out for ourselves, but are otherwise occupied for the moment and yet would love any details anyone may have.

We'd be so incredibly delighted to know that it actually aired on American Broadcast Television that we'd even be more than willing to overlook the use of the misleading phrase "Voter Fraud" in lieu of "Election Fraud"!

(Hat tip to Emailer MitchMB!)

Catching up in a brief "off the road" moment with another item from the good Mr. Conyers' blog posted yesterday.

Some months ago he promised not to let go of the Election Reform issue. As far as we can tell, he has kept that promise --- without fail --- each and every moment since then.

From his latest public volley yesterday:

On the money, as usual, Congressman.

But allow us also to include this mouth-watering notion also from his same blog item:

While we do not know if Conyers was referring to anything in particular beyond the current tanking approval ratings for Bush and Cronies, we have some early word ourselves about a coming wave (perhaps a tsunami even) which may be coming ashore soon. Even within the next 24 hours or so...

We'd recommend you keep an eye on The BRAD BLOG over that period for a few details as we're able to release them...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

It's always nice to find a website that features plenty of talk about freedom, democracy and the press. But it's a special treat when you can actually see these things in action.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The major media may be busy trying to find a runaway bride or drooling over lurid details of the trial of a former pop music star, but Congressman John Conyers is not about to let these vital non-issues detract attention from the most serious story of the day. It figures!!

Rep. Conyers has written an open letter to president bush asking some very pointed questions, as detailed in this piece from our friends at The Raw Story !! Conyers doesn't mess around with small-talk, either. The letter begins:

The remainder of the letter follows...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

It's out now! The Gannon/Guckert story is out in the mainstream!!

And it ain't pretty.

Thus wrote Carol Towarnicky, of the Philadelphia News, in a piece published Monday.

E-mail a quick Thank You to Carol Towarnicky.