Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It appears that the voters in New Mexico have been given a Thanksgiving present (or early Christmas present) and not the ‘turkey' they were going to have for elections. Their SoS, Rebecca Vigil-Giron has suddenly had an epiphany and has decided that the counties in the state should have an option between DREs and optical-scan systems. This is a complete change from her recent statements against the use of optical-scan systems. We also have an excellent article from our friend, Bob Koehler who talks about the recent Ohio election debacle....

Happy Thanksgiving from The BRAD BLOG!

Please take a few hours off, as I hope to do, to give thanks for whatever it is that we still have left in this country to be thankful for. And that is certainly plenty.

Also please be sure to take a few minutes to read the first Guest Blog effort from our new friend, the lovely actress and author Lydia Cornell.

We will continue, of course, to bring you exciting, provocative and necessary reports, opinions and occasionally bad attitude here at BRAD BLOG. We are enormously thankful for all the support that you've given us as we continue to fight the good fight for as long as it takes.

Please have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving! From "all of us" here at BRAD BLOG to you and all of your families... Brad

Guest Blogged by Lydia Cornell

Sex is sort of losing its appeal. Death is sexier these days, at least that's the impression I get from Ann Coulter, who makes a living calling for the "killing of Liberals" and repressing the free speech of Democrats. She may appear to be joking, but she is not. And Coulter actually claims to be a Christian. Like Pat Robertson and George W, she seems to take perverse delight in defining Christianity as the opposite of itself, so I suspect she belongs to the Antichrist trinity or the Taliban sect of Christianity.

I never mix religion with politics, but for Christ's sake, don't they know that Jesus was a Democrat? In fact, a bleeding heart liberal?!! The Great Peacemaker was the very essence of love and compassion; he was revolutionary in his softness and forbade vengeance of any kind. How the Christian right has twisted Christ's peaceful message is one of the riddles of our times. I've been bewildered to the point of jaw-gnashing agony at how certain fundamentalists can call themselves Christian, when they do not follow the teachings of Christ! I feel I'm going insane. Right after the 2004 election when You-Know-Who was elected, I actually developed a nervous tic in my left eye, like the Police chief in the Pink Panther, who was driven berserk by Inspector Clousseau. Of course there's no comparing the lovable Peter Sellers with the witless, war-mongering leader of the free world, but I don't want my eye twitch to come back so I'm trying to stop hating him so much. I think I figured out a way to talk to Ann Coulter: turn the other cheek and let her hit that one.

But it's so twisted and malevolent that Bush called himself a Christian and did the exact opposite of what Christ would do by rushing to war with 'shock and awe' --- and claiming he had an audience with God in this decision! The other day a plumber came to fix our sink and told me his wife has breast cancer; since I've had many miracles from prayer I told him I'd pray for her. Then I quickly apologized, "I'm a democrat --- but I pray." He laughed really hard and said, "Yeah well I think Bush is a war criminal."

Are we in the Twilight Zone? The only God I know is the God of Love. These right-wing "Christians" are engaged in the most dangerous perversion of Christianity I've ever seen! And despite what Cheney said recently defending our mission in Iraq --- all successful revolutions start from within; nothing is ever truly won by force. We could have gained allies in the underground and hovered over Saddam for years instead of carpet bombing precious Iraqi children, entire cities and looting ancient Babylonian museums. And by the way, whatever happened to that warehouse of weapons that was 'misplaced?' Does anyone remember what I'm talking about?

Anyway, Coulter seems to be a turn-on for certain young Republicans (the ones that go on field trips to hear Coulter spew hate..."with jokes" at anywhere between $16,000 and $30,000 a pop.) It was bad enough when our heroes were just anorectic models and athletes, but now we have a new generation of hate-speak-worshippers. It's true, hate sells, but I predict that the most exciting thing on the horizon is peace, even between Republicans and Democrats. Fighting and divisiveness are getting boring; 'moderate' is the new sexy. I mean in a world where everything is so intensely fringe, the only way to go is to the center, toward harmony. Think of Halle Barry, the most gorgeous mixture of black and white. Think of the 'Gang of 14': meeting in the middle, working things out, getting along --- it's ground-breaking! In other words, loving your enemy --- which is what The Great Peacemaker taught and what any good Christian would advocate.

So it was with peacemaking in mind --- that I returned the call from Bryan Harman, Vice-Chairman of the Alachua Republican Party...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Approval statistics by Survey USA
(thanks to kpete for the graphic)

UPDATE FROM BRAD:
Or...if we were less generous, and as cynical as Republicans, perhaps we would best put it this way:

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

We're probably not supposed to talk about this. So here goes.

As Chris Floyd explains:

As you can probably see, Chris explains things much better than I can. To tell you the truth, the whole affair leaves me practically speechless. But you can follow the story as it has developed so far, using the links and quotes below:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In yesterday's ‘DVN' I mistakenly characterized the California SoS's Diebold hearing as being in a room that was difficult to find and with people only speaking to a microphone and tape recorder. Unfortunately, I reported from the wrong article. The room used was, in fact, the same hearing room that had been used in past meetings and there were members of the elections staff in attendance. What is important is that there were very few members of the public who defended the Diebold TSx and there were many from the disabled community who all spoke about the complete lack of accessibility provided by these machines. Thank you to all of those who pointed out my error. I would also like to take this opportunity to join my associate, Ellen Theisen, in wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. Please be safe and enjoy the holiday....

The congressman man who ran sham hearings in House Administration Committee on last year's Ohio Election mess (the ones that exposed the insidious ACVR hucksters), was recently subpeonead by the DoJ where he is said to be under investigation on four different aspects of an ongoing probe, looks to be in big big trouble in the wake of the Michael Scanlon indictment.

Jesse of Stakeholder has a round-up of today's headlines on the apparently-soon-to-be-indicted U.S. Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH). Here's what Jesse's found just today at a quick glance:

Tribune Media Service columnist Robert Koehler weighs in tomorrow on the Ohio's impossible '05 Election Results.

The latest piece from the courageously curious columnist who has been one of very few in the Corporate Mainstream willing to question the dangers of our increasingly crumbling democracy, includes a puzzling acknowledgment by the Columbus Dispatch public editor on their poll which went inexplicably awry for the first time in its history. It will also mark the first time a Corporate Mainstreamer has even acknowledged the existence of the recent GAO report confirming the unbridled dangers of Electronic Voting Machines in America. The piece ends thusly:

UPDATE: The column is now available online, at this location.

"Mystery Pollster" Mark Blumenthal follows up his recent post on the matter of the extraordinarily questionable results of Ohio's November 8th, '05 Elections. All four of the Election Reform initiatives on the ballot that day mysteriously and spectacularly failed to win approval in stark opposition to the pre-election polling by the historically accurate Columbus Dispatch which had predicted most of them would win by large margins.

That they lost by large margins instead, has been the subject of some controversy. We've blogged about it (here and here) and responded (here) to Blumenthal's analysis of tweaks in the Dispatch polls methodology that he feels "might" have skewed their findings this time around. Despite the major changes in the "methodology" used to gather the actual Election Results in Ohio this year (44 of Ohio's 88 counties installed all-new Touch-Screen Electronic Voting Machines for the first time ever) Blumenthal's presumption is that it must have been the tweaks in the Dispatch poll's methodology rather than any problem with the Election Results as gathered by these all-new, untested, unaccountable, untransparent and demonstrably prone-to-failure Electronic Voting Systems.

In his latest article on the matter, he follows up by suggesting that citizens in Ohio take advantage of Public Records Laws in the state which --- according to Blumenthal's information gathered from the Ohio attorney general website --- allow for the examination of "paper ballots" 60 days after Election Results have already been certified by the state. Says Blumenthal:

While Blumenthal later calls for "more formal routine audit procedures with far more transparency," he stops short of accepting my previous invitation that he join those of us calling for a truly transparent democracy by ending the use of Electronic Voting Machines employing secret software protected by the Voting Machine Companies who have claimed that examination of their source code by the public would violate "proprietary trade secrets". So the privatization of our Public Elections by private (and partisan) corporations, paid for with our tax dollars is presumably just fine for Blumenthal. Which is good, because billions of tax-dollars are now being given to those corporations to do exactly that, even though millions of us agree with the non-partisan GAO that reported recently on how all of this is a threat to our democracy.

Beyond that, there are apparently a number of points the Mystery Pollster mysteriously doesn't seem to understand about all of this, or that he simply does not wish to acknowledge when he calls for "an enterprising voter or investigative reporter" to "check the ballot paper trail" in Ohio. For example...

Faster even than the Lefties at Air America were able to embarrass themselves with missteps not long after their launch, the new and well-monied hard Right-leaning "Open Source Media" bloglomerate has been forced to change its name back to its original working title: Pajamas Media. The founders explain, blame others.

Last week, we briefly covered their launch featuring the dubious selection of disgraced former "reporter"/jailbird Judith Miller as keynote speaker. We might recommend that OSM PJM now focus a bit more on content rather than parties and/or names, since they have yet to offer much of a reason to stop by the joint. (Other than to enjoy the brilliant and airtight performance of yours truly in one of their early online debates about the Left/Right Politics of Shame.)

For the moment, it seems that Arianna doesn't have too much to worry about.

(DISCLOSURE: We should also mention again that they've been in talks with us about adding The BRAD BLOG to their list of paid homies. Discussions to that end continue to continue.)

Were it not for our world gone mad, this is the sort of thing I wish I was able to report more about. According to a recent report in the Houston Chronicle it appears that an innocent man was likely executed in the state in 1993.

The prosecutor, the jury forewoman and the one lone eye-witness all seem to now believe they executed an innocent man.

From Reuters coverage of the Chronicle's story:

Perhaps the worst part is that Cantu could not have been executed today since the Supreme Court "ruled this year that executions are illegal for crimes committed by minors."

In the meantime, I haven't been able to find where I read it recently, but as I recall there has been a move afoot by lawmakers to decrease the length of time that Death Row inmates have to appeal their cases and/or prove their innocence. (I welcome any BRAD BLOG readers who might have links to post on that in comments.)

Prior to the systematic killing of thousands of innocent folks around the world, I might have liked to have spent more time in the pursuit of stopping the shameful practice of our government killing its own citizens...whether they are guilty of a crime or not. No government should be in the business of putting its own citizens to death. Period. Our country has plenty of shame to go around for this continuing and morally reprehensible practice.

(Hat-tip RAW STORY for the reminder about this story!)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Yesterday the CA SoS held a hearing regarding the state certification of the Diebold TSx DRE. The hearing was held in a room that was difficult to locate and was held in front of a microphone attached to a tape recorder. This is what the SoS seems to think of as democracy. In regards to the Diebold machine and Diebold's actions so far, Jim March of BlackBoxVoting had this to say, "If you don't want to be accused of cheating at cards, don't let aces fall out of your sleeves at every step." Bev Harris and Jim March are going to be allowed to do their ‘hack' into a Diebold machine on Nov. 30....

ADDITIONAL INFO FROM BRAD: The California Secretary of State's office will accept public comment on the certification of the Diebold TSx touchscreen voting machine until next week. To submit a comment, visit www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_vs.htm, call (916) 653-6814 or email votingsystemcomment@ss.ca.gov.

Mark Crispin Miller, author of the new book FOOLED AGAIN, which makes the case that Election 2004 was stolen, and so will be the 2008 Election unless something is done --- and quick! --- responds in a letter to the editor to critical coverage by both Slate's Farhad Manjoo and Mother Jones' Mark Hertzgaard.

Manjoo has written numerous articles for Slate pooh-poohing the theory that anything went particularly wrong in the 2004 Presidential Election and recently wrote a critical review of Miller's new book. In his foolish review of Miller, Manjoo embarrasses himself by suggesting that he --- and the rest of the media --- would bother to give a damn about the mountain of demonstrable problems in our democracy if only John Kerry or the mainstream Democrats bothered to complain about it. He thus sets aside any responsibility that he might have as has a watchdog for our democracy...unless instructed to do so by some politician or another. Shameful.

In Hertzgaard's long feature article at MoJo, he claims to have done "some reporting of [his] own" to look into the claims made by Miller and others who have been investigating the mountain of problems from last November. And yet, the work Hertzgaard turns in --- while it looks and reads a whole lot like reporting --- contained damned little of it. What it did contain was little more than half-baked. His recurring tactic in "reporting" on each of the "irregularities" he chooses to examine can be summed up this way: "Folks who challenge the election claim this, but those who disagree say that, therefore, that proves there's nothing here to worry about, folks!" It's really ludicrous and atrocious, --- as many astute MoJo letter writers point out --- and just one of the reasons I haven't bothered to highlight his article until now.

We won't comment on Miller's book itself, since we've yet to read more than just the excerpts from FOOLED AGAIN as published recently in Harper's. But we did read the two articles by Manjoo and Hertzgaard and came away less than impressed as you can tell. Most disappointingly so in MoJo since we like them, and indeed have an article upcoming ourselves in their January '06 issue.

Miller's money quotes from his full letter:

The Marine Corps Reserve Colonel whom freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH) claimed she was quoting last week when she delivered his "message" on the floor of the U.S. House that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do" has disavowed that statement and denies having made it to Schmidt.

The comment was directed to 37-year Marine colonel and combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). says she got his comments wrong.

Schmidt's comment on the floor of the House has caused a firestorm of debate since they were uttered, forcing the recently-elected Congresswoman to apologize and retract them shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, Schmidt has a long working relationship with Bubp. Schmidt has worked alongside him advocating for far-Rightwing and Fundamentalist Christian causes together over the years as reported by Max Blumenthal.

Cincinnati Enquirer has more on the fallout in wake of Schmidt's comments pointing to some of her statements, during her swearing in just a few months ago, that she would never do such a thing...She must have just been kidding.

And one more point on the shameful Schmidt --- a report from BluegrassReoprt.org [linked fixed] yesterday suggests that "Mean Jean" may also be flaunting a few laws and House rules on her own website.

We're shocked...shocked...to see such behavior by a Republican...from Ohio.

Firedoglake has more on the pride of Clermont County...

UPDATE: Chickenhaw Rush Limbaugh calls Murtha a "useful idiot" and questions his "hawk" credentials. Media Matters has the deets and the audio.

LATE UPDATE: Josh Marshall has more on Schmidt who is now, apparently, playing the victim card! Not kidding. Amongst "the attacks from the Left" that she claims to be getting, she also says, "There's no way that I remotely tried to impugn his character." heheh...

The Marine Corps Reserve Colonel whom freshman Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH) claimed she was quoting last week when she delivered his "message" on the floor of the U.S. House that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do" has disavowed that statement and denies having made it to Schmidt.

The comment was directed to 37-year Marine colonel and combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). says she got his comments wrong.

Schmidt's comment on the floor of the House has caused a firestorm of debate since they were uttered, forcing the recently-elected Congresswoman to apologize and retract them shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, Schmidt has a long working relationship with Bubp. Schmidt has worked alongside him advocating for far-Rightwing and Fundamentalist Christian causes together over the years as reported by Max Blumenthal.

Cincinnati Enquirer has more on the fallout in wake of Schmidt's comments pointing to some of her statements, during her swearing in just a few months ago, that she would never do such a thing...She must have just been kidding.

And one more point on the shameful Schmidt --- a report from BluegrassReoprt.org yesterday suggests that "Mean Jean" may also be flaunting a few laws and House rules on her own website.

We're shocked...shocked...that such behavior would occur from a Republican from Ohio.