As we have long tried to get across to anyone who would listen, the greatest threat to "secure" computerized systems --- such as the electronic voting systems, incredibly, still in use in all 50 states for this year's crucial election cycle --- comes from insiders.

Late last week, another report, this one via ComputerWorld, underscored the point yet again:

The gullible are welcome to buy into the Rightwing propaganda that ACORN is somehow stealing elections, despite the complete dearth of any actual evidence that any vote has ever been illegally cast in any election vis a vis an improper registration by an ACORN worker.

But the facts, demonstrated yet again by the BofA story, are much as non-ideological computer scientists and security experts have been trying to warn for years in regard to electronic voting systems: the greatest threat to such systems comes from insiders, such as election officials who can manipulate results simply and directly and in such a way that they are unlikely to ever get caught doing it.

Even the sham 2005 Rightwing-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission --- created almost entirely to put an "official"-appearing imprimatur on the call for disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at polling places --- was forced to admit as much in their final report...

A gentle reminder here that The BRAD BLOG runs almost solely on the support of donations from readers like you.

The BRAD BLOG receives no corporate or foundational support, has no deep-pocket "angel" contributors (though we'd welcome one or three!), and the ads running on this site cover very very little (extremely little!) of the actual costs we have to cover each month just to stay up and running.

It's been an exhausting last several months here as we've directly taken on, with some success, some absolute Goliaths. And while I think we've been instrumental in helping to substantially turn back the tsunami of corporate media distributed disinformation which has helped to undermine democracy in one of the greatest Rightwing Hoaxes of the modern era, I have failed to find time during it all to post a direct plea to help underwrite all of the work done here.

If you support that work, please consider donating as a vote for it to continue --- particularly in this crucial election year. While donations of any amount are always appreciated, monthly sustaining contributions --- also in any amount you chose --- are even more so. You can make such a contribution, security and quickly, via the light-blue "Please Help Support The BRAD BLOG" box you'll see if you scroll down our right sidebar.

Snail mail contributions are also welcome, made out to: Brad Friedman / 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 / Los Angeles, CA 90028.

I hate asking, try to do so as little as I can, and wouldn't do so at all unless it was necessary. So I thank you mightily in advance for your consideration... --- Brad

This must drive the Neo-Cons even crazier than they are already. From the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC)'s straw poll over the weekend:

Yes, Ron Paul lost to Mitt Romney, the man who signed legislation into law mandating health insurance policies for all Massachusetts citizens, by just one vote. That, after Paul easily won the straw poll at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in D.C. in February.

Paul's positions, however, are actually conservative, and thus run antithetical to most of the Neo-Con, Big Government, Bush/Cheney-era Republicanists who now call themselves Tea Baggers, as RAW STORY notes today here. How many more "Democrats in Disarray" articles will we have to read before the "Republicans in Disarray" articles finally begin in the corporate media?

One other related thought: When Palin came in a distant fourth at CPAC's straw poll, the Republican and Republican-enabling and TeaBag-promoting Chattering Class instructed us via the corporate media that she would have done better had she actually showed up and spoken at the event. Well, she showed up and spoke at the SRLC, received a larger percentage of the vote, but still managed to do no better than third place among the dyed-in-the-wool, hard Right Southern Republicanists at the conference. Go figure.

Closing out another week of guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show LIVE tonight from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Hope you'll join me by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

Our LIVE chat room will be up and operating here during the show, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We''ll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

So far scheduled for tonight...

• JODIE EVANS, co-founder of CODE PINK joins us live from a Rove protest at UNLV following the group's attempted citizens arrest of the "war criminal" Rove this afternoon at a book signing event in Las Vegas (See our exclusive coverage here)...
• BOB KINCAID, WV environmental activist and founder of the Head-On Radio Network (HORN) on the recent Massey Energy mine disaster, and their disastrous CEO Don Blankenship...
• PLUS: Everything else we didn't get to previously this week (and there's plenty!), your calls at 877-520-1150, your tweets to @TheBradBlog, and lots of other stuff sure to come up along the way...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams. Here's a few to choose from: GREEN 960 in San Francisco "¢ KTNF in Minneapolis "¢ KPOJ in Portland "¢ KPTK in Seattle or at MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: Had a great week, ya'll! My thanks to you, and to the Malloys for inviting me back behind their big microphone! Mike returns Monday! The audio archives from tonight's BradCast are now posted below, along with the archive of tonight's chat room. Enjoy 'em all until we next meet this way again...

I just spoke with CODE PINK co-founder Jodie Evans who tried again --- as she did last month in Los Angeles --- to file a citizen's arrest against Karl Rove. This time Rove, whom she accuses of war crimes, was at a Barnes & Noble book signing event in Las Vegas. Last time, Rove was forced to cancel his plans to sign books after his speech in L.A.

Evans writes to say that she and several others from CODE PINK, including an army vet who is a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), attempted to hand-cuff Rove at the table where he was signing copies of his new book, while unfurling a "Rove is a War Criminal" banner.

"We get to the table, he looks up to take my book and jumps back against the book shelves," Evans says. He then points to three security guards and says "it's her," before the guards "pile in," according to her account.

One member of the team then takes out the banner --- which had been hidden in her skirt, since purses were confiscated before citizens were allowed in line --- "while I pull out the handcuffs and try to reach for him and then pull the arrest complaint out of the book, trying to argue that he needs to be arrested and I have a right to be there. They argue private property and lead us out."

She went to add that he was "standing freaked against the books" before he was then handed the next book to sign "as we are ushered out. We were physically pushed out the door with our unsigned book."

"The women behind us tell us we are 'rude,' to which I answer not as rude as Rove who has killed over 4,000 of our US Soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi," writes Evans.

She indicates there may be video available of the event later. We'll try to update this item with it, if so. [Update: A bit of video from the encounter is now posted at the bottom of this item.]

Evans and the "Pink Tank" crew will be protesting Rove again tonight at the Performing Arts Center at UNLV where he is scheduled to speak.

She'll also be joining me on the Mike Malloy Show, which I am guest hosting again tonight from 6p-9p PT (9p-Mid ET), just before the event begins. So please tune in! We'll have live listening links posted here before show time, or see Malloy's site above.

CNN's video report of Evans' attempt to arrest Rove last month --- during which Rove ironically (in more ways than we have the time to point out right now) declared "with all due respect, this goes to show the totalitarianism of the Left. They don't believe in dialogue. They don't believe in courtesy. They don't believe in First Amendment rights for anybody but themselves" --- is reposted below...

UPDATE 4/10/10: Here's my interview with Evans from last night's Mike Malloy Show [appx 17 mins]...
Download MP3 or listen online here...

The CNN video from Evans' previous arrest attempt follows below...

[UPDATED with audio archives below. Enjoy!]

I'll be Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show again tonight and tomorrow, LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Our LIVE chat room will once again be up and operating here during the show, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We'll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

So far scheduled for tonight...

• KATE SHEPPARD, energy and environmental politics journalist from Mother Jones' Washington bureau, on Obama's off-shore drilling plan, the Massey mine disaster (and their disastrous CEO Don Blankenship), and where we stand on Climate Legislation in Congress.

• MARCY WHEELER, the great accountability blogger from Firedoglake's emptywheel, on accountability, the DoJ and Yoo!
• PLUS: My rants on all of the above and more, your calls at 877-520-1150, your tweets to @TheBradBlog, and lots of other stuff that will come up along the way...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams. Here's a few to choose from: GREEN 960 in San Francisco "¢ KTNF in Minneapolis "¢ KPOJ in Portland "¢ KPTK in Seattle or at MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: A lively show tonight with lots and lots of callers (for a change) to boot! The audio archives follow below, and the archive of last night's live chat room follows below them...

A reader alerted me this morning to these misleading, inaccurate, propaganda anti-ACORN "editorials", duplicates of which have been appearing, unbylined, in a bunch of papers under different headlines. Before I was able to get to them, it looks like Muriel Kane at RAW STORY was able to jump on it. (Thankfully! Since I've been busy with both today's Green News Report today, and putting together tonight's Mike Malloy Show!) . Here's the lede from Kane's coverage today...

Like the GOP's years-long hit-campaign against ACORN, the GOP's ACORN "voter fraud" fraud, and their ACORN "Pimp" Hoax, these "editorials" are similarly faked propaganda, meant as a part of that same, blatant, shamefully partisan, anti-Democratic and anti-democracy scheme. See RAW's full story here.

And in related-ish news, the audio archives from last night's Malloy Show, in which we covered (as I was guest hosting) the anti-ACORN "Pimp" Hoax scam in some detail --- including a pretty tough live interview with ACORN's CEO Bertha Lewis --- are now posted here for download and/or online listening.

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

Welcome aboard to our latest new affiliate partner: Rational Broadcasting in Dallas!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A setback in the search for missing WV miners; Massey Mine Explosion: Who is to blame? ... PLUS: Record snow, record landslides, record rain, record heat & predictable silence from the Global Warming Denialist Industry ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': A Modest Proposal for hacking the planet; CO law to require uranium mining cleanup; Study says U.S. waterways are warming; Pipeline leaks oil into Louisiana wildlife refuge; Global Warming's Big Winners: fire ants, poison ivy, ticks; Fox News Tries to Re-Ignite Attacks on Exonerated Climate Scientist; Melbourne smashes record for run of warm days; Race to introduce GM corn before Africa's climate worsens ... PLUS: Oil and Gas Industry Launches Ad Campaign to Target 'Energy Industry Taxes' ...

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

[UPDATED with audio archives now posted below! - BF]

I'm Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE again this week through Friday, LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Our LIVE chat room will be up and operating here during the show, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We''ll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

Scheduled tonight...

• BERTHA LEWIS, CEO and Chief Organizer of ACORN on the now-infamous ACORN "Pimp" Hoax, mainstream media failure, their own failure, and the future for the four-decade old anti-poverty national community organization.
• PLUS: My rants on the New York Times failures, your calls at 877-520-1150, your tweets to @TheBradBlog, and lots of other stuff that will come up along the way...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams. Here's a few to choose from: KTNF/Minneapolis • KPOJ/Portland • GREEN 960/San Francisco • KPTK/Seattle or at MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: Lots and lots of ACORN and accountability and ass kicking. Hope you enjoy the archives as much as we enjoyed making 'em for you!. You can also read the rerun of the night's chat room. It all now follows below...

Finally, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow covers the actual phony ACORN tapes themselves by airing the newly release unedited versions, since CA AG Jerry Brown forced hoaxsters O'Keefe and Giles to turn them over in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution, as we noted in our coverage last Friday. (That coverage also includes links to the full, unedited versions of the tapes, clips of which Maddow aired last night, as seen below.)

Maddow slams the entire hoax as pulled off by O'Keefe, Giles and their employer/publisher/con-man Andrew Breitbart, and aptly describes it as "a dishonest political stunt that bears no resemblance to journalism"...

For the record, yes, as Maddow notes, Fox "News" endlessly pimped the phony ACORN tapes and got the story completely --- and likely purposely --- wrong. But it should also be noted that so did New York Times, AP, Baltimore Sun, CNN, New York Post, Washington City Paper, Philadelphia Daily News, NPR, Dallas Morning News and many many more, some of which are listed here. Haven't checked, but I'm guessing somewhere along the line on MSNBC they got it wrong as well. All should correct the record and issue apologies the many folks who were damaged by the utterly irresponsible coverage, or, as O'Keefe and Breitbart might describe it (but only when it adversely affects their partisan political agenda), "journalistic malpractice".

Almost none have issued such corrections and apologies to date. Though the NYTimes pulled a neat trick recently by completely disappearing the "pimp" from their latest coverage.

And, no, since several have brought this up to us via email and in comments, Maddow didn't mention The BRAD BLOG in the report above or in her blog item/text transcript, or her similarly excellent report filed on the show last Friday. Should she have? I'll leave that to others to decide. We don't cover this stuff for either credit or attribution, though it's true that appropriate attribution can make it easier for folks like us to continue the type of independent, progressive, investigative reporting that we suspect Maddow appreciates.

(On that note, our thanks to John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent who has been particularly generous towards our coverage in his recently related articles, both last night in his story on Maddow's coverage, and several days ago on the CA AG's ACORN findings. We also appreciate the far-too-kind closing thoughts in this post from Jill at "Brilliant at Breakfast".)

Yesterday, Peter Hart, of the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), flagged the New York Times' latest ACORN-related report for us and notes "how far the Times is from where it started on this story."

Yes, after a full six months of out-and-out misleading the public on the now-infamous ACORN "Pimp" Hoax by repeatedly misreporting that disgraced rightwing prankster and activist James O'Keefe had dressed as a 70's-era blaxploitation pimp while scamming low-level workers in ACORN offices --- and even as the Times finally conceded it was wrong on at least that point just two weeks ago --- the paper has still been standing by the misleading assertion that O'Keefe "clearly presented himself as" a pimp in those offices.

But the NYTimes' latest story is decidedly "pimp"-less and seems to tacitly serve as an admission that even that false narrative was previously misreported. Of course, they've yet to issue a public acknowledgment --- much less a correction, retraction, apology, or explanation --- for having gotten that point so wrong, for so long.

Last week's finding by the CA Attorney General, that ACORN committed "no violations of criminal law" in any of the illicitly and likely-illegally taped videos that O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles created in CA offices, may finally have convinced the people running the paper they had it wrong. At least if one notices the glaring absence of what wasn't reported this time around by the Times in its most recent story...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Appearing on Democracy Now (video posted below) today, constitutional law attorney and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald observed:

During the same remarkable Democracy Now broadcast, Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks co-founder, revealed that even before it exposed this horrific video yesterday, Wikileaks had been targeted in a counterintelligence report [PDF], which describes WikiLeaks as an "information security threat to the U.S. Army." The report discusses outing the identify of the whistleblowers in hopes of destroying them and to deter others from leaking to the website:

The report states:

But, as revealed by The BRAD BLOG's extensive coverage of the Sibel Edmonds story --- and as discussed by "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg in his 2008 BRAD BLOG guest editorial --- the real threat to U.S. national security more often lies not with those who expose government lies, but with those who hope to keep them.

Greenwald wrote more about the leaked video yesterday, and later sent out this noteworthy tweet commenting on both that news and word yesterday of a massacre by NATO forces in Afghanistan which U.S. Special Forces attempted to cover up as well:

UPDATE 04/07/10: Democracy Now reported today that the "Obama administration is refusing to call for a new probe into the US military's killing of twelve Iraqis despite the public release of video footage capturing the attack on tape."

UPDATE 04/08/10 Rick Rowley, an independent journalist with Big Noise films, who interviewed witnesses one day after this massacre, told Amy Goodman that there was "no reason at all to believe...any of the people in that picture [were] armed insurgents:"

The April 6, 2010 segment of Democracy Now's coverage of the WikiLeaks video follows below...

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

Welcome aboard to our latest new affiliate partner: Rational Broadcasting in Dallas!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another mining tragedy in Coal Country and the unspeakable failures of Massey Energy's CEO Don Blankenship; Oil spill on the Great Barrier Reef... PLUS: ExxonMobil paid zero in federal taxes on their $45 billion profit last year!...All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': U.N. chief shocked by dying lake, once 4th largest in world; Severe drought devastates farmers; 'Smart meter' investigations in Texas, California; BP fights to limit controls on shale gas drilling; Obama's recess appointments include pesticide-pushing trade rep; Wisconsin bans phosphorus in lawn fertilizer; U.S. Refineries have world's worst safety record ... PLUS: Koch Industries outspends Exxon Mobil on climate denial groups ...

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Apparently Tiger Woods is more important today than the following video of what is alleged to be U.S. troops firing on, and killing, approximately a dozen unarmed civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists, from their Apache helicopter in July 2007. Two children were also wounded.

As you'll see, none of the victims appear to have been engaged in combat with anybody and seemed to be simply standing in an open courtyard. The "weapons" identified by the troops in the helicopter, as heard on the recordings, appear to be the cameras of the journalists.

"Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle," one of the gunmen is heard saying after learning they'd shot the children who were in the van of the man said to have been a good Samaritan who chanced upon the grizzly scene in the Baghdad suburb and tried to save the one man who was left alive, crawling on the ground. The good Samaritan was subsequently shot as well.

The Dept. of Defense, up until now, has not revealed how the Reuters journalists were killed, or how the two children caught in the fire were wounded, according to WikiLeaks, which released the video today, titled as "Collateral Murder." The video is said to have been leaked by an anonymous source, as the U.S. government has failed to respond to Reuters' years-long Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to release it...

• Full length version of video.
• RAW STORY's coverage with more details.
• Dan Froomkin also has more, including how the New York Times reported the government's --- apparently less than fully-accurate --- account of what had happened in 2007.

RELATED-ISH UPDATE 4:40pm PT: NATO admits killing three Afghan women. U.S. special forces involved in the shooting reportedly "tried to cover up the deaths by removing bullets from the bodies."

UPDATE 4/6/10 Glenn Greenwald notes the atrocities seen in the video above are "anything but rare"...

On Friday night, responding to the CA AG's finding that the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax videos --- as created and published by righwing con-artists James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart --- were precisely the hoax we'd long described them as, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow hit it out of the park, detailing precisely the reason we've been focused on this point for so long: "The triumph of fake politics...The unmooring of politics from facts," and the unforgivable truth that you've heard far more about the partisan-driven hoax/politics agenda in the media, than about the fact that that these things were all hoaxes.

Maddow takes the opportunity to highlight not only the "triumph" of the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax, but of other successful GOP-played/MSM-enabled scams such as "ClimateGate" (also near and dear to our hearts as we've covered that scam in great depth in our Green News Reports for months, most recently on Thursday), faked GOP outrage about recess appointments, health insurance reform, Miranda rights and civilian trials for accused terrorists, the stimulus bill, "death panels," Obama's birth certificate, supposed threats to the Second Amendment, armed IRS agents coming to get you, abuse of the census, Obama's "plans" to ban sport fishing, et al.

These things are, as she declares in no uncertain terms, "all bull." Yet, she adds, "there's more bang for the political buck to make stuff up like this than to try to debate real problems in the real world. So just go with the bull"...

Our only complaint is that her indictment comes a month or two (at least) too late for victims of the GOP's ACORN scam, and that, other than Fox "News," she fails to call out the still-respected-but-shouldn't-be enablers of the scams in the first place --- in this case, for example, the still-misreporting New York Times.

If you can't watch the video above, or would just like to savor it and/or quote any of the exceedingly-quotable text to your erstwhile inexorably-brainwashed, fully-hoaxed, teabagging wingnut friends and family members, the text transcript is posted here...