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It's Up to You, New York: 'BradCast' 3/21/24
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Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
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Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

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Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

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Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
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CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

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RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
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GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

By David Edwards on 4/25/2006 9:50am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Audio in MP3 format...

Ex-CIA Analyst, Ray McGovern, is part of the group "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" which has been critical of the Bush Administration for the political use of National Security intelligence. McGovern also happens to be a friend of Mary McCarthy. McCarthy was recently fired by the CIA for allegedly leaking classified information to reporters.

The opinion of the intelligence community is unanimous. In general, leaking of classified information is a firing offense, possible criminal and can pose a danger to America's national interests. Ray McGovern agrees that leaks are dangerous and should not be condoned but he says that actions by the Bush Administration have created an "exceptional situation" where leaking may be the only choice for exposing illegal activities.

Ray McGovern says that the "war of aggression" on Iraq, the secret "black" prisons, torture, rendition and other activities are "war crimes". The American people deserve to know when crimes are being committed by their government. McGovern says:

That's the reason these prisons are overseas, because there is U.S. law, 18 U.S. Code 2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids these activities, torture, rendition, putting people, disappearing people, and so forth. And so that's why these things are created overseas.

But my point is: This is not American. This is not the country that we serve. And when we see this happening, somebody has to speak out.

This video contains about 10 minutes of clips from the interview with Ray McGovern. See PBS Newshour for an entire transcript.




By David Edwards on 4/25/2006 6:19am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Audio in MP3 format...

Lawyers for fired CIA Officer say that she did not leak classified information to reporters. They claim that the fired officer, Mary McCarthy, did not even have access to the classified information about secret "black" prisons. MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell breaks the story.

Keith Olbermann interviews Ex-CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle. Mahle maintains close contacts with CIA insiders and has written a book titled "Denial and Deception." She says that the leak investigation is considered to be a "witch hunt" by many inside the agency.

This playing time for this video is about 8 minutes. MSNBC has not published the transcript yet.




By John Gideon on 4/24/2006 5:13pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

California counties are switching back to paper based systems. Alameda is the latest to announce that they will be using optical-scan and paper ballots for the primary and probably in the future. In what is an extremely quick response MicroVote got their uncertified software ITA tested in just six days (less than four working days). Indiana now needs to certify it for use by the counties....

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Hello 20's?
By Brad Friedman on 4/24/2006 3:34pm PT  

We've truly enjoyed watching the contortions of Bush's GOP dead-enders who spin each and every new poll showing Bush at his lowest approval ratings yet, by trying to say that the numbers have "bottomed out", "can't get any lower" and therefore "have nowhere to go but up."

We (not so) respectfully disagree.

On the heels of last week's Fox News Poll showing Bush at 33% (which also revealed Republican voters as desperately out of touch with mainstream America,) followed by today's CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll just out showing Bush at an all-new new low of 32% with Republican support dropping off precipitously, we see no reason why numbers in the 20's (and falling) shouldn't be far behind.

Do you?




By David Edwards on 4/24/2006 11:31am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


-- Video in Streaming Flash format
-- Video in Windows Media format
-- Audio in MP3 format

Better late than never, CBS News' 60 Minutes details how the Bush inner-circle misused dubious intelligence to convince the American people to back a preemptive war on Iraq.

Ed Bradley interviews Tyler Drumheller, a retired CIA official who saw first-hand evidence of how the Bush team used selective (and discredited) intelligence to support war plans which had already been set.

This 13 minute video is the complete broadcast from Sunday night's edition of 60 minutes.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: First, thanks David for getting this up, since I only caught the last part of the report when it aired last night. Secondly, please see Josh Marshall's comments on this story, as he posted additional information last night to advance the story. His report includes new details from Drumheller last night that he'd been interviewed by the two Senate committees supposedly investigating the Bush Administration's pre-war use of intel (the Silberman-Robb committee and the Pat Roberts Senate Intel committee), but in both cases the folks working on the reports seem to have completely ignored Drumheller's testimony. Josh's reporting would seem to suggest that both reports should now be viewed as extremely suspect at best, a completely unreliable white wash at worst.

MORE... TPMMuckraker has more, this time showing how the White House's own WMD report conflicts with the information from 60 Minutes and Drumheller. And how the White House report seems to have twisted the facts to place blame on the Intelligence Communities for their own policy "failures" in selling the horseshit about Uraniam, Iraq and Niger to the American public in the mislead up to war.




We Believe the Sharp Columnist Knows the Answer...
By Brad Friedman on 4/24/2006 10:25am PT  

Ralph De La Cruz writes today in his South Florida Sun-Sentinel column titled "Could a sharp eighth grader swing Florida election?":

Tallahassee· There's always a word or phrase.

Something that captures the mood of the moment. The ear, if not the imagination, of a legislative session.

Last year it was "living will." Or, depending on your take on the Terri Schiavo case, perhaps it was "judicial tyranny."

This year, it may be "transparency."

That word has been surfacing a lot in Tallahassee. Unfortunately, it's not coming from the Capitol.

It's become the favored word of Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, who's become a lightning rod for concerns about electronic voting machines.
...
Now, it's already bad enough to consider that our voting systems can be corrupted by a sharp eighth grader who might be able to access an elections office.

Think of what a savvy, committed adult could do.

As Mr. De La Cruz writes for a South Florida paper, and includes his email address and phone number at the bottom of his column, perhaps a few of you may wish to thank him for his coverage of Ion's story, and suggest to him that he cover Clint Curtis' story in a future column as well.

After all, in Curtis' affidavit, he says he was told that the vote-rigging prototype Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to create was meant "to control the vote in South Florida."

For those unfamiliar with Curtis' amazing story, a good primer is always available at this address: www.BradBlog.com/ClintCurtisSummary.htm.

While we're on the topic, please remember that Curtis is now running for Congress against Feeney and his massive DeLay/Abramoff/Top-Tier-GOP Money Machine and your support is needed if he is to stand a chance of beating Feeney in the very "conservative" district which Feeney carved out for himself when he was Florida House Speaker. See below for more details on how you can help him take on one of Congress' most corrupt Friends-of-the-Bushes...

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com



'I'm the Decider'
By Brad Friedman on 4/23/2006 10:44pm PT  


Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo...

(Hat-tip Justice Through Music for being the first, of about twenty places, that I found linking to this song over the last 24. Check out JTM's anti-war, anti-Bush song collection page, btw.)




(Okay, it was lunch, but the title didn't scan as well that way)
By Brad Friedman on 4/23/2006 5:23pm PT  

Russ Feingold blew through town this weekend, and called on a few bloggers to meet him for lunch.

I'm happy to report that upon introducing myself, he informed me that he's well familiar with The BRAD BLOG. On the other hand, he's a very good politician, so I'd have said the same thing to me too ;-)

I'll mention up front, that of the current cadre of '08 Democratic Presidential contenders --- which, of course, he claims not to be thinking about --- he's just about the only one I'd seriously consider supporting at this time (though I'd certainly be open to the idea of Al Gore if he jumped back in, and Wes Clark hasn't yet done anything to piss me off yet, but barring any other fresh ideas, I'd likely be forced to go the third-party route as usual. But I digress...)

Feingold, in person, is as affable and charming and smart and impressive as he is on TV. Probably more so (especially after his BRAD BLOG compliments. I'm a cheap date!)

I had two major points that I was curious about and hoped to get a sense of from him during our meeting. 1) Why he chose not to tell any of his Dem colleagues about his Censure Resolution condemning Bush's warrantless domestic spying program before announcing it on This Week and then introducing it in the Senate the following day and 2) If he understood the extent of the havoc being wreaked on our country and democracy in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

I was able to get fairly informative answers to both questions...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




While We Continue to Connect the Dots the Media Continues to Fail To...
By John Gideon on 4/23/2006 4:25pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon,
Exec. Dir. for VotersUnite.Org & Info. Mgr. for VoteTrustUSA.Org

It is a fact that this primary season is proving to be a disaster.

The locomotives of the voting machine vendors and unwary, naive elections officials are headed down the same tracks, straight towards each other, in many states. The vendors only have the bags of government provided cash in sight and they don't seem to care about anything but putting those bags into their coffers. They don't seem to care about signing contracts that they know they cannot meet. They seem to be under the impression that "act now and apologize later" is good business. They seem to understand that the only criteria for getting paid for contracts with the government is having signed the contract.

As for the elections officials well, they are blinded by the lights of the fast approaching locomotive and many can only apologize and cover for the vendors. They just don't seem to know, or care --- or acknowledge that they either know or care --- that the same story is playing out in the next county over and in the next state over. Ignorance is supposed to be bliss, but it also spells chaos for elections.

But wait, all may not be lost. This past week we have seen a bit of progress toward stopping the chaos of ES&S in Indiana and Oregon, while West Virginia just doesn't seem to know or care what is happening to them. As well, New Jersey may be making headway against their bad acting vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 4/22/2006 10:17pm PT  

"These machines are a problem. This is not some Internet conspiracy; this is a serious problem that faces American democracy. These machines are not reliable and they shouldn't be used. We should not be using machines in this country where the results of the vote can't be verified after the fact. Period. Any machines."
-- DNC Chair, Gov. Howard Dean, 4/19/06

David Grossman (formerly of MediaMatters.org, currently of PoliticsTV.com) attended a breakfast with Howard Dean the other day. He asked Dean about his concern over Electronic Voting Machines. Dean's answer was interesting (transcript of complete answer is below.)

While I'm encouraged somewhat by Dean's response --- he seems to have a general grasp of the concerns --- it seems to me that he's still vastly "misunderestimating" the disastrous situation now afoot in the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). He just doesn't yet seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation and the extent of the problems and dangers posed to our democracy.

To that end --- in case there are any of Howard Dean's peeps reading this --- I will make the same offer I've previously made to people close to John Kerry, Wes Clark and, personally today, to Russ Feingold (more on that later). Namely, I'll be happy to brief Dean and/or his staffers by phone, in person, or any other way they might like to full explain what we are now dealing with in this country, and how incredibly important it is that they pay attention and take action now. They may feel free to contact me here, if interested in taking me up on the offer.

Dean also speaks, in his full response, about his experience a year or so ago in 2004 hacking a Diebold GEMS central tabulator with "someone" on "live TV". That "someone" was Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org and the live TV was a CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown which Dean was Guest Hosting. The clip of him hacking the machines with Harris is right here. He added, in his response, that he didn't know for sure, but it "could have been a program that was elaborately programmed to fool me into thinking I was doing something I really wasn't doing."

No, Dr. Dean. It wasn't anything of the kind. We'll assume you were kidding. But what you did on live TV was exploit a vulnerability allowing a malicious user to hack the Diebold GEMS central tabulator, in about 30 seconds, to change the reported results of a Diebold election.

That is, of course, precisely what the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT, a branch of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security) warned about in a "Cyber Security Bulletin", as published prior to the 2004 Election.

Of course, nobody reported the US-CERT "Cyber Security Bulletin", originally posted on August 31, 2004, anywhere in the media until The BRAD BLOG did so more than a year later on September 15, 2005. As far as we know, nobody in the Corporate Mainstream Media has bothered to report on the warning even since then.

A huge thanks to David for asking Dean his question about Diebold! David's full blog item is here. The complete transcript of his exchange with Dean on this matter follows...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By John Gideon on 4/22/2006 5:12pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

An editorial today applauds the Allen County Indiana decision to violate state law and use uncertified voting machines. The editorial may be correct and Allen County may be in a position where they are faced with being illegal no matter which way they decided and they took the path with less consequences. VoteTrustUSA has put the complete testimony from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law as presented to a state senate committee and regarding the California voter registration database....

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger Jim Cirile Gets an Exclusive Pre-Release Listen to Neil Young's Groundbreaking New Protest Album
By Jim Cirile on 4/22/2006 10:46am PT  

Guest Blogged by Jim Cirile

Neil Young wants to keep on rockin' the free world.

His new record, Living With War, makes very clear that if the Bush regime is allowed to continue, there may not be a free world to rock for much longer.

At 7:30 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006, Reprise Records' Dan Rose ushered a small cadre of us into a Reprise's Burbank headquarters for an exclusive listen to Young's new CD. For the next 50 minutes, listen we did.

Let's get one thing out of the way right now: this album rocks. It's post '80s electric Neil Young at his grunge best, and of the 10 cuts on Living With War, the first eight are mostly uptempo rockers. In fact, this may be the 60-year-old Young's most crossover-worthy album yet, since many of the songs should appeal to fans of bands as diverse as Green Day and Pearl Jam and will likely be embraced on campuses across America.

But there's one other tiny thing that makes this record stand out: it is one mother%^&*#% of a protest album. In fact, Living With War may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock.

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By John Gideon on 4/21/2006 5:15pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Allan County Indiana's elections director is blaming the state for the fact she has been knowingly using uncertified software on her MicroVote machines and MicroVote did not submit it for federal certification until just last Tuesday. In New Jersey a judge found that Sequoia would probably not be able to install a printer on their Advantage machines by 2008 and the printer would cost far more than represented by Sequoia. And in Ohio the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has found that punch-card voting discriminates against minority voters....

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Those Identified in Survey as Independent Voters Vastly Agree with Democrats, Not Republicans, as GOP Voters Continue Their Move to the Extreme Political Margins
By Brad Friedman on 4/21/2006 1:01pm PT  

According to a BRAD BLOG analysis of the Fox "News"/Opinion Dynamics poll [PDF] released yesterday, which showed George W. Bush's latest approval rating at an all-time low of 33%, respondents in the poll who identified themselves as Republican are revealed by the survey time and again to be completely out of touch with mainstream American voters.

A review of the 13 questions asked in the survey where Republican majority responses differed completely from Democratic majority responses to the same question, finds that those identifying themselves as Independents agreed with the Democratic majority opinion nearly 100% of the time.

For example, on the question "Do you think it is appropriate for retired military generals to openly criticize Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during wartime or not?," 71% of Democratic respondents said YES and just 24% said NO.

On the other hand, Republicans had the opposite opinion - YES: 36% and NO: 62%.

Breaking the tie then, were those identified as Independents who agreed with the Democrats on the matter by answering YES: 64% and NO: 32%.

In virtually every single case where Republican majority opinion disagreed with Democratic majority opinion, the Independents agreed with the Democrats --- suggesting that Republican voters, even in (or especially in) a Fox "News" poll are completely out of touch and out of step with mainstream America.

The only minor exception was on the question: "Do you think Donald Rumsfeld should resign as secretary of defense?" Democrats said YES: 57% and NO: 22%. Republicans said YES: 18% and NO: 67%. The tie was broken by Independents barely breaking in Republican favor with responses YES: 41% and NO: 42%.

The poll, however, has a margin of error of plus/minus 3% points. So the response from Independents wasn't conclusive as to whether they agreed more with Dems or Reps on that one question only.

After five years of malicious propaganda by Republican opinion-leaders attempting to paint Democrats as "out of touch with mainstream America," it's interesting to find that the Republicans' own Fox "News" Poll reveals that it is the GOP --- not the Dems --- who now seem to be on the "kook fringe" of American political public opinion.




Conyers Sends New Letters to Agencies, Continues to Amend Request by 52 Congressmen, Argues Fees Should be Waived as Agencies Keep Up Stonewall
DoD, State, Question House Members' Ability to 'Disseminate Info to Public'
By Brad Friedman on 4/21/2006 10:31am PT  

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) is continuing his negotation, on behalf of more than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the release of documents related to the Bush Administration's plans for War in Iraq long prior to the beginning of hostilities, according to new letters written by the ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG.

After the revelations in Spring of 2005 from the so-called Downing Street Memo and other related documents --- a series of secret memos created by British officials documenting Bush Administration efforts to "fix" the "intelligence and facts...around the policy" of going to war with Iraq no matter what --- Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were filed by 52 House Members [PDF], including Conyers, for the release of documentation of Administration Iraq policies going as far back as the day after the 2000 Election.

The original FOIA requests were filed [PDF] with both the Departments of Defense and State, in June of 2005 after the disclosure in May, by Sunday Times of London, of the initial memo. Both federal agencies have largely stonewalled in response to the request. Correspondence from the agencies have claimed that the House Members must first agree to pay large fees for the requested material on the grounds that they do not meet FOIA standards which allow such fees to be waved.

The Dept. of Defense has estimated [PDF] the fees chargeable for answering the FOIA request would be approximately $110,000. The State Department has not yet given a similar estimate, but has also informed the members that they would have to agree in advance to such payment.

FOIA, however, allows such processing and copy fees to be waived in cases where the information provided will be widely circulated to the public and will "contribute significantly to the public understanding of activities or operations of the government."

Several communications from both DoD and State have suggested that since the requests for information did not come formally from a U.S. House Committee, the members' request does not meet the standard required for waiving fees or expediting the release of the information.

Conyers' disagrees...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




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