Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Prompted by a new report in The New York Times, MSNBC's Hardball takes a fresh look at a history of the Iraq war through the lens of a January 31, 2003 memo detailing a White House meeting between Bush and Blair.

This video begins with a report by David Shuster that weighs possible repercussions of The Memo against the increasing violence in Iraq and President Bush's low standing in the polls.

Chris Matthews interviews writer Phillippe Sands whose recent book, "Lawless World", exposes more pre-war lies. According to The Times, Mr. Sands "is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner."

Matthews and Sands take the opportunity to pile on The President. Even Matthews' questions to Sands appear to be clear indictments of The Presidents actions:

The January 31, 2003 memo is consistent with the July 2002 "Downing Street" Memos where British officials expressed concern that Bush had already decided to go to invade Iraq and that "intelligence was being fixed around the policy" to meet that goal.

Blogged by Brad from the Road...

Yup, still on the road, and largely "off the grid" for another day or so (with much going on, sorry, I'll catch up soon, I hope! Not even able to check email!) --- but caught this in the carbon-based version of the NY Times this morning. No time for context other than to mention our previous report on Maryland's Republican Governor who wants to see Diebold's paperless touch-screens banned in the state along with the Democratic-majority House which voted a bi-partisan 137 to 0 to ban them recently, along with the Democratic Board of Elections Director, Linda Lamone, who has been fighting for them since Day 1, and still is. Search BRAD BLOG for the links to all of those stories.

Point is, as we've always said, this ain't an issue of Right and Left, it's an issues of Right and Wrong. That said, here's the letter printed in this morning's NY Times (who has been horrendously delinquent in reporting on any of these matters, and still buys into the Voting Machine Company's "it's just glitches" meme)...

Letters to the Editor --- especially from Elections Officials, but regular old Voters are just as good --- make a difference. Especially to papers like the Times who refuse to properly investigate and report on this stuff! Please write one today!

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Windows Media and QuickTime at Crooks and Liars.

CBS News reporter Lara Logan appeared live from Iraq on CNN Reliable Sources on Sunday morning. She issued a stern rejection of the notion that Iraq reporters are biased towards negative stories.

Lara Logan's genuine outrage makes this a must see clip!

From CNN's trancript:

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The March 20 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

Still on the road and unable to cover anything as usual. So I'll leave it to you guys to comment on the notable details. Had an interesting day/night yesterday at the California Democratic Council Annual Convention, and hope to share some thoughts and perhaps pics with you as time allows in the not-too-distant future. But until then...

Both Washington Post today, and AP yesterday, cover the Ion Sancho story is a fair bit of detail with some interesting responses, as well, from both Diebold and Sequoia (ES&S seems to have refused comment for either story).

WaPo's story in today's A section (page A7) --- headlined "Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors: After Official's Criticism About Security, Three Firms Reject Bid for Voting Machines" --- focuses on all three companies certified to do business in Florida all now refusing to do business with Sancho.

That story reads nearly identically, to BRAD BLOG's March 8 story on same. Hey, better two-and-a-half-weeks late than never, we suppose. And no, not a nod nor hat tip to BRAD BLOG's coverage. And as our friend Larisa Alexandrovna from RAW STORY points out in her dead-on piece over at HuffPo yesterday, the Mainstream Media is far too good too recognize any lowly "bloggers" in their reporting.

On Saturday, AP covered the Sancho story in great detail as well. Though there's a few more details here, I think I prefer the WaPo story today. Both are worth a read however, particularly since I have no time to cover the deets.

Finally, today's WaPo story in the Sunday paper included a Tom Toles cartoon which, so far, I haven't been able to find online. A kind reader scanned it and sent it to me. It's posted below.

We continue to win this fight...despite the slow and seemingly endless struggle against some forces of evil with a lot of money to back their fight. We may be naive here, but with the truth on our side, we believe we believe David will eventually defeat Goliath.

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram picks up on our previous report about Hart InterCivic / Tarrant County, TX election software whistleblower William Singer.

Does the "Startlegram" give any love to The BRAD BLOG in their article? Despite an hour or two on the phone with them after they called for deets and a hook-up with our source last week? Not a jot.

But we're not in it for the love. We're in it for the big bucks.

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

I know I'm supposed to be taking a few hours off (how's that going, Brad?)...But I couldn't help sharing with you a quick piece of audio from my regular Friday guest appearance on KRXA 540am's Peter B. Collins Show today (broadcast out of Monterey, CA).

I was pleased that Carolyn Wilson Crnich, Elections Registrar of Humboldt County, CA was able to join us on air for one of the segments (posted below.)

Crnich is one of the officials named as a defendant in the recent lawsuit against CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and other county elections officials around the state. The suit calls for the ban of use and purchase of Diebold touch-screen voting systems in the state since (amongst other reasons) they have proven to be hackable and their recent certification was in violation of state law requiring all certified voting systems to conform to Federal Voting System Standards. Diebold's machines do not conform to such standards because they contain "interpreted code" --- which is specifically banned by the Federal standards. Diebold has now admitted to the existence of such code on their systems. The forbidden code went unexamined and untested by Federal authorities when the machines received Federal certification.

Nonetheless, Crnich (we believe) is one of the good guys. She's proven willing to dump her previous plan to use Diebold AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) machines, which she was going to use in order to meet the disabled-accessible voting device requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). She is now hoping to use the paper-ballot based Vote-PAD system in Humboldt County this year instead.

However, as our on-air conversation revealed, there are still very serious concerns with Humboldt County's optical-scan system since they use the very system, made by Diebold, which was shown to be hackable last December in Leon County, FL.

Of note in our conversation, Crnich admits that optical-scan systems are sent home with poll workers the night before elections where --- even if the hackable memory cards are wired into the machine so they can't be removed --- they can still be accessed by other means. If so, a malicious poll worker could modify the code on the memory cards, allowing an election to be hacked without a trace left behind during that breakdown in chain of custody for such home-stored voting machines.

Give the interview and discussion between Crnich, myself and Peter B. a listen. See what you think. It's good to have such an admission on the public record, and the fact that she admits to not knowing what could happen when these machines are stored at poll workers' houses.

Again, I'm glad she was willing (unlike many other Elections Officials around the country) to come on air and face some of these tough questions. Happy to hear your thoughts.

-- Carolyn Wilson Crnich, with Brad on the Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 13 mins]
-- Complete Brad appearance on Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 35 mins, and quite a bit funnier, IMHO]

(Thanks to Joe at the Peter B. show for sending the audio!)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Today our friends at Rawstory posted an article about Clint Curtis giving his background and more about his run for the House of Representatives from the Florida.

Also in the article is a bit about Supreme Court candidate Steve Smith of Texas who is considering challenging the election from earlier this month in which some strange numbers were posted. This was covered by BRAD BLOG earlier this week.

Clint is enjoying the help of some avid supporters.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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We haven't forgotten Fox News' phony 'War on Christmas' where Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson and other Fox personalities attacked anyone or anything that used blasphemous words like "holiday".

Fox is again "fighting for the rights the Christian Majority" with another faux menace: The War on Easter.

Undoubtedly, the "Spring Bunny" will cause the downfall of The Republic.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Responding to the President's criticism of the media coverage of Iraq, ABC's Nightline, airs the story of an attempt to report on good news in Iraq.

After a day of covering the horrible violence in Iraq, ABC reporter Jake Tapper tried to find some lighter news. The ABC News team decided to cover a new Iraqi sitcom and the challenges of creating comedy for Iraqi television viewers.

The story quickly turned from good news to tragedy and fear as Jake's contact, who was also the head of the entertainment division for Iraqi TV, was murdered during filming.

Jake Tapper concludes the story with these words: "And there went our effort to show comedians trying to make Iraqis smile again. It ended with the funeral of the man who helped us put the story together. A horrible, gruesome, perfect metaphor for daily life in Iraq."

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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CNN's Showbiz Tonight picked up on an interview Charlie Sheen did for Alex Jones' radio show where Sheen expressed his doubts about the "official" 9/11 story.

Besides Showbiz Tonight, the story has gotten some critical coverage by the New York Post, The Boston Herald and Human Events. Alex Jones' Prison Planet website explains "The mainstream media has finally seen fit to cover Charlie Sheen's comments on 9/11... penning hit pieces that seek to smear Sheen as an unstable crackpot."

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Russ Feingold and Jon Stewart both do a great job in this interview. Videos have been floating around the internet since it aired last night. If you haven't seen it yet then it's worth a look.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Howard Dean filibustered CNN's Soledad O'Brien to push the message that the Democratic Party has an effective strategy for changing the course in Iraq.

While the President Bush and the Republican noise machine are blaming the press, Dean said that the Democrats are having difficulty getting media coverage.

On the plan for Iraq, Dean said "We do believe that we can't withdraw immediately... Over the next couple of years we need to bring the troops home." On the apparent divided opinions of Democrats Dean said "There's a middle ground between Jack Murtha and Joe Biden and we think it makes a lot of sense."

Will the strategy as described by Howard Dean convince American's that the Democrats can get Iraq on track towards a resolution? Should the Democrats come together and support a single specific plan for Iraq?

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

It was only early last month that the state of Illinois certified the Sequoia voting system that was used in the Illinois primary in Chicago and suburban Cook County this week. In that 6 week period over 23,000 election judges had to be trained to set-up and use the voting machines and they had to learn a completely new set of procedures for opening and closing the polls.

The county and city failed to do that training or failed to do enough of it for those who were trained at all. According to this morning's Chicago Tribune:

This clear lack of training and the introduction of new, un-reliable voting machines has caused what amounts to a disaster in vote counting. Three days after the voters went to the polls votes are still being tallied. In fact, memory cartridges were still being located as of Wednesday afternoon.

Not helping with all of the chaos were the machine failures reported all around the city and county:

So this week's Illinois primary has been a disaster with machine breakdowns, procedural errors, lost memory cartridges and a complete lack of training. They have to be able to learn from this and make changes; right? Well actually, as reported by VoteTrustUSA, they are going to take all of those Sequoia voting machines used in Chicago and suburban Cook County and they are shipping them all to Clark County, Nevada. Meanwhile, Chicago and Cook County will be getting another brand-new Sequoia voting system that has never been used in any election. Let's hope they can take just a little more time to train their poll judges because November will be here soon.

Heading up to Santa Clara to speak this weekend (see "Media Appearances" section at top of front page, and come on by if you can!) Don't know if I'll be on or offline over the next week. Please assume I'll be off, and don't hold it against me. Need a break anyway. Though knowing me, I won't be gone long. Although I'm happy to leave the messes in TX, IL, CA and elsewhere to John Gideon anyway

He and David Edwards will be holding down the fort here. Treat them kindly. If anyone needs me, contact John or David and they'll know how to track me down!

And stay outta the liquor cabinet while I'm gone! Seriously, I marked the bottles, and I will be checking them when I get back.

P.S. Don't forget to VOTE FOR US!