Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Here's an interesting development in the increasingly heated speculation about what led Sen. Trent Lott to announce his resignation from the Senate yesterday.

On Larry Flynt's website, Flynt has posted an excerpt from PageOneQ, a Washington-based website that has a record of accurately identifying closeted Republican politicians:

To which Larry Flynt responds:

Meanwhile, at Huffington Post, the idea that Lott had any sort of relationship with Benjamin Nicholas is "put to bed" by none other than Nicholas himself:

IN RELATED NEWS: Congress and the courts review the Bush Administration's unprecedented extra-Constitutional use of the "states secrets privilege." The same one used to keep FBI translator/whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' allegations of criminal misconduct from seeing the light of day for 5 years now and counting.

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG toon sherpa, Pokey Anderson!)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began two weeks of testing 125 voting machines used in Sarasota Co Florida in the CD-13 race a year ago. These are supposed to be the same machines that lost over 18,000 votes. What if they find no problems with the machines? What if they find the machines were the cause?

Marin Co California has admitted that only 17 ballots have been cast in the past two county wide elections on their 130 AutoMark voting machines that they purchased for the use of voters with disabilities. That works out to over $45,500 per ballot. Oklahoma paid $1M to lease a telephone voting system last year. It was used by only 50 voters. Voters with disabilities must be allowed the opportunity to vote in privacy. We cannot go back to the days when they had to ask for someone to mark their ballot for them. However, some common sense has to be added to the mix. Why are states not going low-tech? There are options available.

Those stories, and many more, all linked below...

And yet, Fox "News" continues to anoint her (and the rest of the MSM plays along, as usual). Go figure.

The numbers, just out, are here...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Cable newsers are ga-ga over breaking news that Dick Cheney's doctors discovered that he had an irregular heartbeat today:

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't seem odd that a vice president's health problem might be discovered "incidentally" --- or that his spokeswoman is, well, speaking about it. But this is Dick Cheney. And it brings us to a question: Is this story real, or could it be a fabrication meant to set the stage for Cheney's resignation?

Before you dismiss the latter as speculation from a conspiracy nut whose tin-foil hat is on too tight, consider this:

• Cheney and Bush created an incredibly elaborate and entirely false rationale for taking the country to war --- a massive misinformation campaign that completely snookered the corporate media and a majority of the public and that has yet to be sussed out. Faking news of an irregular heartbeat in order to shuffle Cheney off the stage quietly is child's play by comparison.
• It's a damn good excuse. The standard remedy for heart ailments like atrial fibrillation is to reduce stress. The only practicable way for a sitting vice president to reduce stress is to resign.
• With Cheney out of the way, a new vice president could run for president with all the campaign advantages of the incumbency, especially including the ability to manufacture events and control the flow of news.

And the motivations for moving Cheney out under false pretenses are manifold:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In 1999, former Pres. George Bush famously said, "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."

John Gibson, the Fox "News" anchor, takes an opposite view. He says he wants to "give a medal" to the Bush officials who deliberately jeopardized a top-secret, well-established CIA program that tracked the sales of weapons of mass destruction in black markets worldwide.

Why would a rightwinger like Gibby want to pin a medal on these traitors? Because the traitors are Republicans --- a cabal led by Dick Cheney and that included Karl Rove and Scooter Libby --- while the covert agent in charge of the CIA's top secret WMD tracking program, Valerie Plame Wilson, made a campaign donation to Al Gore in 1999.

(Ed Note: It is our understanding that she and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, also contributed to George W. Bush's campaign at the time as well.)

In her 20 years as a spy for the United States, Agent Wilson worked for a front business, an oil industry consulting firm called Brewster Jennings and Associates. She frequently traveled overseas where she developed a network of secret "assets" --- foreign nationals who provided her with inside knowledge on the movement of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons and materials in the worldwide terrorist black market.

The CIA will not say, of course, how many of these foreign assets were compromised, killed, wounded or kidnapped and tortured as a result of Cheney's treasonous conspiracy to forfeit them by exposing Agent Wilson's covert identity.

And only time will tell how many weapons of mass destruction were transported undetected because Agent Wilson's network was forfeited --- and whether one or more of these weapons will be used to attack the United States.

But none of that matters to Republicans like John Gibson and his cohorts at Fox "News" and in the Bush White House, whose patriotism is as fake as the made-in-China American flags pinned to their lapels. Gibson's remarkable statement advocating giving a medal to Rove, Cheney and Libby --- the "most insidious of traitors" who betrayed vital national secrets --- exposes him for what he is: an ideologue who puts his party ahead of his country even at the risk of national security.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Trent Lott, the man who is probably best remembered for saying that the United States would have been a better place if Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina racist, had been elected president in 1948, is retiring from the Senate:

No good news here, however. Lott's replacement will be appointed by the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, the former GOP lobbyist and RNC head, who is undoubtedly scouring the state right now to find the most ardent rightwing racist troglodyte available to fill Lott's seat.

In fact, Gov. Barbour will be hard pressed to find someone who fits that description better than himself, and if the governor hadn't just been reelected in a landslide in November, he'd probably put his own name at the top of the list of appointees.

Lott ran unopposed for reelection last year, so his term won't expire until 2012. Typically, the governor's appointee will hold the seat until an interim election can be held, in this case, possibly as early as next November.

The AP says Lott's health is not an issue in his retirement, and the fact that no reason has been given for his abrupt departure --- not even the standby "desire to spend more time with his family" --- suggests he plans to cash in on his four decades as a Washington insider and power broker by becoming a lobbyist.

Lott, who made his comments about Thurmond at the late senator's 100th birthday party, is the sixth Senate Republican who has announced retirement this year, according to the AP.

by Brad Friedman from St. Louis, MO...

Now that ES&S has finally submitted their previously withheld source code and documentation to California Sec. of State Debra Bowen, new members of her "Top-to-Bottom Review" team have been able to look at the ES&S Inkavote Plus system used across the entirety of Los Angeles County. And whaddaya know, the system is easily susceptible to fraud, hacking and manipulation.

The full report from the new testers --- not the original members of the TTBR team at University of California, but testers sub-contracted by the ubiquitous private e-vote consulting firm of Freeman, Craft, McGregor Group (FCMG) [Ed Note: See additional thoughts/concerns from John Gideon on FCMG in comments here] --- is now posted at the SoS TTBR page [PDF]. The LA Daily News summarizes the findings this way in today's paper...

A public hearing will be held on Monday in Sacramento so that the SoS may receive public input on how she should proceed, and whether the ES&S Inkavote Plus system should be recertified in advance of February's Presidential Primary.

Of particular note is the possibility that the hackable system may be used to vote on a Republican-sponsored ballot initiative to divide California's 2008 electoral vote by Congressional District which could be on the Primary Election ballot next February. Such an unprecedented measure, if passed in the Golden State, could well hand the November General Election nationally, to the Republican party given the large number of electors that would be thrown to the GOP if the current winner-take-all system of choosing electors in California --- the same one used by almost all other states --- is changed for proportional representation.

Reports of potentially fraudulent signature gathering, in order to see the measure added to February's ballot, have already surfaced.

Los Angeles County itself, a reliably Democratic-leaning county over all, carries an enormous number of votes for the state. It's the largest such county in the nation, larger even than two-thirds of the states in the country. Tampering with the vote tabulation in that one county alone, could easily change enough votes to see the Electoral College initiative passed successfully across the state.

Last week, Bowen announced a $15 million lawsuit against ES&S for the illegal deployment of uncertified AutoMARK voting systems across the state. The next day, San Francisco announced its own separate suit against the company, the world's largest supplier of voting systems, charging fraud, false claims and breach of contract.

Blogged by Brad from St. Louis, MO...

Things are really expensive in Marin County, California. For example, the cost to the county, so far, for each vote cast on their brand-new AutoMARK touch-screen voting machines has been $45,588.23.

Yes, that's more than $45,000 per vote for each of the 17 votes cast on the county's 130 machines over the last two countywide elections since they began using them.

And apparently, the county's elected Registrar of Voters, Michael Smith, really wants to continue using those machines, even though ES&S, the company which distributes them, is now being sued by the State of California for deploying uncertified AutoMARK machines in counties across the state, in violation of state law.

Nonetheless, Smith is asking CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen if he can continue using the uncertified machines in the upcoming Presidential Primary election next February, despite all of that, according to the Marin Independent Journal, who reports today:

True, the cost per vote on the AutoMARK in Marin will theoretically come down with each successive election in which they are used (depending on what ES&S charges the county to program them each time, plus the excessive costs of warranties). In a decade or two, at this rate, if the same machines are still in use, each vote cast would come at a bargain basement price of just a few thousand dollars a piece.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We still have a few copies of a great new novel by Mark Coggins, mystery writer and Shamus and Barry award-nominated author of the August Riordan series. “What could be better than a fun fiction about the real dangers of electronic voting? Coggins shows us that elections can be hacked and the cover-up can be murder.” The book is gripping and laugh-out-loud funny in places and it is another example of the fact that election integrity is no longer conspiracy theory from “tin-foil hats”. Read more about the book at VotersUnite.Org and help us out with a $50 or more donation and get a copy of the book as a premium. You help VotersUnite continue our valuable work and you get a great book. [Note: VotersUnite! is in affiliation with International Humanities Center, a nonprofit public charity exempt from federal income tax under Section 501[c](3) of the Internal Revenue Code.]

Today's notable voting news stories, including the full review of RUNOFF as quoted above, are all linked below...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The members of the world-champion U.S. womens bridge team who faced harsh sanctions because they held up an anti-Bush sign during awards ceremonies in Shanghai last month have struck a deal with their professional organization, the United States Bridge Federation (USBF).

As the tournament was playing out, they were barraged with questions and criticism of George Bush and his policies by players from other countries. When they took the stage after they'd won the championship, one of Americans held up a hand-lettered sign that read, "We did not vote for Bush."

After the incident made international news, the women received emails from fellow members of the USBF who remain in Bush loyalists accusing them of "treason" and "sedition." But the harshest reaction came from the USBF leadership who threatened to impose a draconian settlement on the champions:

The sanctions had the distinct odor of Bush-era fascism about them, which led to an even greater uproar. Free speech advocates were up in arms. Supporters of the bridge team compared them to the Dixie Chicks, the all-female group from Texas who were ostracized by country music fans several years ago after they expressed shame that Bush was also from their home state.

But now the controversy appears to be mostly smoothed over:

I did quick 10 minutes this morning on the nationally syndicated Stephanie Miller Show, as Guest Hosted by our friend Bree Walker. The topic: the latest in the Sibel Edmonds case. And if you're not yet familiar with the case, here's a quickie on what it is, why it matters and what you can do about it.

Here's the audio from my appearance this morning on Stephanie's show...

Apparently, one of the requirements for working as a reporter at the Washington Post is that you must remain as out of touch as possible with anything that matters.

According to ThinkProgress today, Watergate's investigative genius, Bob Woodward, smartly meets the requirements...

Check out TP for those facts (as if you need them), and how you can contact Woodward, and the rest of the clueless WaPo gang to give the poor folks some help on this very very (apparently) obscure topic.

BRAD BLOG's own dozens and dozens of articles --- apparently most of them just too "exclusive" --- on the topic, are posted right here in reverse chronological order.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is considered an intellectual lightweight back home in Chattanooga, where he once served as mayor. So you know it's getting bad when Corker slips up and tells a hometown audience the unfortunate truth that in meetings with George Bush, he has been "underwhelmed" by Bush's knowledge and understanding of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

In remarks to a group of about 500 Republicans on Tuesday, Corker "raised some eyebrows," according to a local media outlet, when he recounted details of his recent visits to the White House:

Corker quickly added that he supports Bush's occupation of Iraq --- even though he just admitted that Bush himself doesn't understand it --- and that all that is needed to turn things around is an increase in both the size of the U.S. government and the amount of happy-talk propaganda it spews at the public:

The senator then hastily added that he regretted having just expressed his true assessment about Bush's feeble intellect:

Rest assured that Sen. Corker will never make the mistake of expressing an honest opinion in public again.

Guest Blogged By Michael Richardson

Sometimes facts seem like fiction and sometimes fiction seems like fact. San Francisco voting machines have now provided both fodder for a new detective novel and a novel new lawsuit.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is the author of the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court against Election Systems & Software (ES&S) alleging fraud and breach of contract. Herrera charges that ES&S intentionally sold uncertified machines to the city and is seeking to recover $300,000 in damages.

The city lawsuit closely follows another lawsuit against ES&S earlier in the week by Secretary of State Debra Bowen. The state lawsuit seeks nearly $15 million in damages for the sale of uncertified machines in a number of counties.

Mark Coggins is the author of RUNOFF, the fourth novel in a series, about gritty private detective and professional smartass, August Riordan, who is hired to solve a rigged city election. In a special author's note, Coggins explains the characters are "complete figments of my imagination." Coggins also notes that the scenario in the book could not occur in San Francisco because of a law change in 2003.

"Residents of San Francisco will know--and perhaps now appreciate that the city does not use touch screen voting machines. They should also be aware that San Francisco is one of the few American cities to adopt ranked choice voting, which eliminates the need for runoffs. This was done after the 2003 mayoral election, but in my fictional version of the city runoffs are still possible, and, as it happens, very useful to the plot."

Riordan gets hired by the "Dragon Lady" of Chinatown to crack the case of the rigged voting machine. Before the detective is done investigating, the plot twists and turns leaving dead bodies all over the place. The first murder is nobody less than the city election director himself, killed in his basement elections division office at City Hall.

Seeking out technical assistance, the sleuth visits Professor Ballou at Stanford University, an echo of real life Stanford computer science professor, e-voting activist and expert, VerifiedVoting.org founder David Dill, who is thanked by the author in the book's acknowledgements.

Ballou gives Riordan the short course on voting machine security. "A touch-screen voting machine is just a computer --- a specialized kind of computer, but a computer nonetheless. Erroneous outcomes could happen for a variety of reasons, including software and hardware errors, procedural errors, security holes or hacks installed into the voting machines."

The modern day fictional noir detective, straight out the proud and gritty Sam Spade tradition, probes the fictional professor more about vote machine rigging, as the fiction ends and the facts begin. Riordan asks Ballou about ways to hack a voting machine.

"I'm afraid there are many, many different ways, but I'll try to focus on a few of the most likely. First, starting at the polling place, when the memory is removed from the computer, a corrupt pollworker could alter the results for the precinct before turning them in. It's much easier than ballot box stuffing because you only need to change one number and there is no need to steal or forge ballots."

But there is more, as the Professor's ominous instruction to Riordan is at least as terrifying in reality as it is under the guise of fiction...