Blogged by Brad on the long, hot road...

The DNC Media Office released information on their planned "Expanded National Voter Protection Effort" today. I'll avoid my knee-jerk reaction to say "Expanded" from what?! Their full media release is posted below.

As I've got to get in the car and head up to St. Paul for a PBS TV show taping (Mental Engineering) over the weekend, I don't have much time to comment on the strategy and release for now. As you may guess, I have some feelings on both. You'll simply have to guess at those feelings for now. Suffice to say, we need more than paper "trails" and attorneys on Election Day... I applaud the tireless efforts of Greg Moore, heading up the DNC Voting Rights Institute. He "gets it" --- but the rest of the DNC still seems to be burying their head in the sand about the seriousness of the problem.

To that end, and by way of example, we could also use their help in dealing with issues like the Busby/Bilbray U.S. House special election in CA50 now if they are serious about protecting the ballot box in November everwhere! (An essay I posted some weeks ago describing how what happens now in CA50 affects the vote everywhere this November is right here: "A Line in the Sand")

The full release from the DNC as issued within the past hour follows...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Today Oneonta, NY's The Daily Star reported that Chris Zachmeyer, executive director of the Catskill Center For Independence, said Tuesday that voting-machine manufacturers have tried to contribute money to her organization, which has given testimony on which voting machines Otsego County should buy.

But with "millions of dollars at stake" it may well be that "back-door deals" may have been made as Voting Machine companies may be paying disabilities groups to testify on their behalf. It wouldn't be the first time.

As the article goes on to report...

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

Three disability advocacy groups have filed suit in California against the SoS and five counties for using voting systems that are not accessible, according to the groups. The list of systems includes AutoMark and Hart eSlate and Diebold TSx but not Sequoia Edge / "We have lousy voting machines and no results. When I voted this afternoon, there were three men standing behind me who could've seen how I voted." said Park City, Kansas Mayor Dee Stuart about Sedgwick Counties ES&S voting system. / Shelby Co. Tennessee sent their Diebold voting machines home with election workers for the night tonight, ignoring the federal certification memorandum....

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Vanity Fair, 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

from Bill Poovey, AP, in The Seattle Post Intelligencer :

An Exclusive Interview for The BRAD BLOG as Guest Blogged by Joy and Tom Williams…

Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy co-host Ring of Fire on Air America. The two attorneys have filed qui tam lawsuits against the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) companies for defrauding the government. We previously posted an exclusive interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about this case.

Papantonio is a Florida attorney who has already gone after a number of big corporations for the American people. He is named partner and head of the Mass Tort Department at his firm. He has handled many famous cases throughout the nation, including asbestos, breast implants, Dalkon Shield, Fen-Phen, hemophiliac-AIDS, L-Tryptophan, railroad disasters and the Florida Tobacco litigation. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Leading American Attorney. He is also the author of In Search of Atticus Finch, A Motivational Book for Lawyers; Clarence Darrow, The Journeyman; Resurrecting AESOP, Fables Lawyers Should Remember and a co-author of Closing Arguments --- The Last Battle. In addition to all this, he is a popular lecturer in the legal field.

We would like to say something about what a dynamic and articulate man he is, and how much we think he's doing for our country, but, really, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself, and this is no accident. Mike Papantonio is a hard-working, extremely generous, friendly and personable --- and dedicated --- man. One would be hard-pressed to find a better duo for the difficult job ahead. The Kennedy/Papantonio alliance is a particularly brilliant one. Mike took the time to talk to us about aspects of the qui tam cases they have set in motion already...

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

"We are headed for a train wreck on Election Day," said Republican Tom Leatherwood, who is seeking re-election as Shelby Co. Tennessee register and is calling for more machines to be stationed countywide. / Today is Kansas' primary election / A state Senate investigative panel in California queried the Asst. Registrar of Voters in Kern Co. as to why precinct workers were told they didn't need to test their machines before election day, and why volunteers weren't trained in the use of paper ballots should their machines fail and why inexperienced workers were allowed inside the elections secure area that night. / The so-called "Battle of Athens" began Aug. 1, 1946, when veterans opened fire on the local jail to stop corrupt local officials from stealing an election in Athens, Tennessee. / "The root cause of our troubled elections is that, unbelievably, the U.S. provides less security, testing, and oversight of our nation's voting equipment and election administration than it does to slot machines and the gaming industry." Steven Hill in his WaPo column....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday, according to an article in The Bakersfield Californian, a panel of California state senators held a hearing in Bakersfield to discern what happened in the county during the June 6 state primary. The panel consisted of Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach; Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield; and Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove.

The California Senate Select Committee on Integrity of Elections has launched an investigation into problems in elections in the state. That investigation started in Kern County (Bakersfield) with testimony by County Deputy Registrar of Voters Sandy Brockman, Diebold Election Systems official Mike Rockenstein, and other election workers.

Brockman stood in for her boss, Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett, who was on vacation and not available to answer questions about why some voters were not able to vote in the primary. In fact, the paper reports:

The questioning was all about mistakes:

The Diebold representative got his turn to answer some hard questions from Sen. Dunn:

The next stop by the panel has been unannounced so far. Could San Diego Co. be very far down on their list?

"More evidence tonight that the security of our elections, the integrity of our democracy are at risk from electronic voting machines. A county in Iowa has just come close to putting the wrong candidate in office because of a massive programming error."

This Dobbs report underscores the problems in the Busby/Bilbray CA50 election fiasco, as the candidates shown as losing the election based on the optical-scan count in Iowa were later found to be winners --- but only after the ballots were actually counted by hand to determine if they were counted accurately by the machine! They were not.

By way of ironic side note, the Iowa Republican primary election in question, as we've noted here many time before, took place on June 6th --- the same day as the flawed Busby/Bilbray election...in which nobody has yet bothered to count the op-scan votes in order to find out if the results were reported accurately. Election integrity, it seems, is more important in some states than in others, we guess.

Says Dobbs in his closing remarks to Kitty Pilgrim: "If this message is not getting through that's emanating from every corner of the country using these voting machines, I don't know what it will take."

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

(Hat tip David Edwards for the video, John Gideon for the transcript and tracking, etc.)

The complete text transcript of the Lou Dobbs/Kitty Pilgrim report follows...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot...

Russell Tice is due in court at 1:00 on Wednesday, August 2nd.

From wikipedia:

As we mentioned last week, Tice is being supported by National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), a group founded by Sibel Edmonds in order to help current whistleblowers and encourage new whistleblowers to come forward.

By serving a subpoena on Russ Tice, according to my conversation last week with Ms. Edmonds, the feds are trying to "kill two birds with one stone"; in other words they are trying to silence Tice on the secret illegal spying, while making an example of him to intimidate other potential whistleblowers.

It's August of what will probably be the hottest year ever recorded, but I am so cold!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

In my frozen heart of hearts I have been wanting to blog about Mexico for a long time now; at this point it's getting ridiculous that I haven't done so already. I don't have a lot of time but I can give you some links and some quotes and some photos. Special thanks to the San Jose Mercury News and Kevin Diaz of McClatchy Newspapers. (The Mercury News asks you to register before you can read news on their website; it's free! and well worth it, IMO.)

July 31: Protesters set up camp, show support for López Obrador