Update 6/1/09: Thanks to Jed Lewison at DailyKosTV for the following short compilation of clips from among 29 segments of O'Reilly's show, in which he persisently demonized Tiller. "As you can see from these video clip samplings of O’Reilly’s holy war," Lewison writes, "you don’t have to actually pull the trigger to help sponsor terrorism:"

A manhunt is underway at this hour for the murderer of Kansas physician GeorgeTiller, who was shot and killed this morning when he entered his church in Wichita. [Update: Suspect now in custody.]

Tiller was better known to Fox "News" viewers as "Tiller the Baby Killer," as he's long been described by Bill O'Reilly, who has spent years targeting Tiller on the most-watched show in cable news. O'Reilly has long demonized him with allegations of performing illegal late-term abortions, characterized as murder by O'Reilly and his guests.

Of course, it's no more O'Reilly's fault when a lunatic takes action to murder someone the Fox host has targeted for years on his popular television show than it was when another lunatic gunned down church-goers in Tennessee last year, claiming in his pre-murder "manifesto" that it was "a symbolic killing," and that he had "wanted to kill...every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." Goldberg is a regular featured guest on O'Reilly's show, and the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).

Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville, TN, murderer, also advocated the murder of "liberals" in his manifesto, echoing comments frequently made by O'Reilly that "The Major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists."

Those are all merely coincidences, of course. Nobody, other than the murderers themselves, should feel it necessary to take any personal responsibility whatsoever when such events occur.

In March of this year, after Tiller had been acquitted of charges alleging that he'd performed late-term abortions in violation of Kansas state law, O'Reilly continued his series of programs focusing on the Kansas physician, charging him with "operating a death mill" (video here), and alleging that he was "executing babies" (video here).

O'Reilly had previously been highly critical of the state's Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, charging, during his Talking Points commentary in 2007, that she was "allowing [Tiller] to continue the slaughter."

Now, O'Reilly won't have to worry about that anymore.

UPDATE: News Hounds has more links to O'Reilly's smears and attacks on Tiller, and asks: "How many more deaths will occur before Fox News forswears its hate?"

FURTHER UPDATE: A quick read of the far right website FreeRepublic (O'Reilly's base), reveals hundreds of comments on a number of threads, applauding and even celebrating the death of Tiller. We've reposted many of them below. (Hat-tip Charles at Little Green Footballs.)

Note to O'Reilly, who has proven not to understand the difference when he repeatedly highlights a selected anonymous user comment from what he describes as "liberal hate-sites," such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, while comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan: The following are comments by readers at the site, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of those who run Free Republic. Nor is there any guarantee that such posters are not purposely posting these comments in hopes of reflecting poorly on the site in question. Though, in this case, there are so many of them, most posted by users with a long posting history on the site, that we'll leave it to your judgement as to whether you believe these comments are for real or not...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Miscellaneous articles about IRV mistabulation, Internet voting, election auditing, Voter ID issues, fraud, and more....

Best of luck with this, boyz...

(No explanation for the blank :45 seconds or so on the back end. Feel free to offer yours in comments. Hat-tip Josh Marshall who notes the vid is "Catching fire on the right-wing websites." The clowns at the wingnut PowerLine call the video "Hope for the future" in one post and in a second --- yes, top clown Scott Johnson posted it twice there in two days! --- say that it "displays wit and learning in equal parts". The "more info" description on the YouTube posting, says "Young Conservatives is a group with a devout mission to spread the love and logic surrounding true conservatism." As mentioned, best of luck with that, boyz.)

UPDATE, YO!: If you can't watch the video for some reason, or even if you can, Tiger Beatdown's commentary on the high-points is worth the read. And yes, Young Cons, we're laughing at you, not with you...But, um, as we said, good luck with that, boyz...Drill, baby, drill, and all that...And yes, please bring on a follow up soon! Your fans are waiting!

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Hillsborough County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Phyllis Busansky released her 9-page report on 2008 election problems. A notable quote: “Although it was not the main focus of this report, it should be noted that many of the problems that occurred were caused by inadequacies in the Premier system which they have acknowledged and are working to correct.” We hope she submits the report to the EAC, so other election officials have access to the information....

[Now updated with a load of new details on the election conspiracy, how it worked, and who the candidates were that allegedly benefited from it, following today's guilty plea entered in court. See bottom of article for that new information.]

A Republican election official, one of six allegedly bi-partisan [ed note: see update below for more on that] Clay County, KY, Board of Elections officials arrested last March and charged with a long-term conspiracy to rig elections, buy votes, and manipulate vote-selections on electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, has asked to change his plea from not guilty to guilty, according to local news reports...

According to the indictment [PDF], Bishop was a Republican election judge at precincts in 2002 and 2004, and hosted meetings at his house where candidates pooled money to be used for buying votes. The latest report also notes that Bishop, and some of the other conspirators, even employed Rush Limbaugh's illicit drug of choice, OxyContin, as part of their scheme...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

More New York counties join the resistance to switching from lever machines to optically scanned ballots. Smartmatic brought the wrong cable to its all-important demo in the Philippines and caused a short circuit in the optical scanner. Voter ID and Internet voting continue to be in the news. And an error was discovered in TrueBallot’s counting of the votes in Aspen’s IRV election – but it didn’t affect the outcome....

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

As if the former U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Paul DeGregorio hadn't done enough damage to our nation's electoral system during his disastrous reign as a commissioner from 2003 to 2007, it looks like he's now more than happy to cash in on his Bush-appointed public post in the private sector as Chief Operating Officer for a dubious Internet voting operation.

Everyone Counts (E1C) is the San Diego-based firm which ran "America's first all-digital online and telephone election" in Honolulu, which was completed last week. That's the way it was described by Aaron Contorer, the company's Chief of Products and Partnership, in a very thinly disguised press release, sadly posted, as if a news article, recently by Huffington Post. [Full Disclosure: We also contribute articles to HuffPo, though we try to offer news, rather than press releases.]

As COO of Everyone Counts, DeGregorio has posted a video commercial (and a bad one at that, see the bottom of this article where it's re-posted) on his bio page at the company website. His face is also featured on the front page of their site. In the short video, DeGregorio crows about his 22 years in the election "business" while posing in front of the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument in D.C.

Trading on his former self-proclaimed status as "America's chief election official," DeGregorio endorses the private company for which he now works, noting in the video: "I've been involved in this business for 22 years, having risen to the, America's Chief election official. And I have found that Everyone Counts is the place for me to be, because it's the only organization that provides transparency, accessibility, security and choice. And I think that's the most important thing for any election official, anywhere in the world."

While evidently accuracy doesn't even make DeGregorio's list of "most important thing[s] for any election official" --- not surprising, given his oversight, during his tenure at the EAC, of federal approval for myriad electronic voting systems that fail to meet federal accuracy standards --- the idea that EC's Internet voting schemes provide "transparency" seems to be entirely without evidence, as The BRAD BLOG confirmed with a representative of the Honolulu Neighborhood Commission Office which sponsored last week's election.

Moreover, Everyone Counts' virtual election in Hawaii, according to late news reports this week, seems to have been a dismal failure, at least if the 83% plummet in voter participation might be taken as any indication, in addition to the election's lack of transparency and verifiability.

Numerous commenters, including us, left responses to Contorer's misleading and disinformative HuffPo item, noting serious concerns about E1C's "all-digital" voting scheme. Concerns were expressed by many posters about citizens' lack of ability to verify the accuracy of votes cast, and of transparency and security in the system which, Contorer claims, employs "military-grade encryption technology." He goes on to try to convince readers that it's also "faster, more reliable, and more secure than if they had voted on paper." He failed to answer to any of our critical comments, however, and neither did he offer evidence to back up his claims about his company's superior reliability and security over fully-transparent, paper-ballot voting.

Despite his shameless promotion, and an offer in his video to contact him with any questions, DeGregorio himself did no better in responding to our request for comment in regard to our concerns...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: How 'green' is Sotomayor?; Bush and the baby bottles; PLUS: White is the new green! For roofs, that is .... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, Supreme Court noms? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Cate Blanchett ask world business leaders to lead the way in Copenhagen; A solar roof for a Taiwan stadium; How the French deal with the nuclear waste problem; "Veggie Day" once a week for Belgian town ... See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Various aspects of Voter ID are in the news today. Texas Democrats defeated their bill. In Kansas, a candidate for Secretary of State claims it’s essential to prevent fraud....

[Update: Be sure to read Lori Minnite's explanation in comments of what seems to have happened here. Details at bottom of article.]

Unless I'm missing something here (please let me know if I am!) it doesn't appear that the DoJ "dropped" charges against the RNC's alleged 2002 NH election "phone-jammer," James Tobin, as is currently being described in news accounts, and via several emails I've received alerting me to the story.

From my read of AP's coverage, and several others, it looks like the DoJ lost their original New Hampshire case, and then recently saw the appeal of a refiled case, with a different focus (lying to federal investigators) in Maine, "dismissed" by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Losing, and/or being dismissed, seems a far cry from the feds having "dropped" the case, as AP's headline, run at NY Times and elsewhere described it ("Feds Drop Phone-Jamming Case Against GOP Organizer"). TPM's Zachary Roth also seems to have picked up the AP/Times "dropped" meme to headline his version of the story as: "Feds Drop New Hampshire Phone-Jamming Case".

The full AP version of the story uses "drop" or "dropped" three times in the headline, the sub-headline, and in the first graf...

Guest Blogged by Sibel Edmonds

We all have been tirelessly screaming about issues related to Congressional leaders abdicating their main responsibility of 'oversight.' We have been outraged for way too long at seeing 'no' accountability whatsoever in many known cases of extreme wrongdoing. I, and many of you, believe that the biggest reason for this was, and still is, the lack of true journalism and media coverage --- which acts as the necessary pressure and catalyst for those spineless politicians on the Hill and in the Executive branch. Or, at least it's supposed to. So, in our book, the MSM have been the main culprit.

Well, here is a chance to turn the tables.

At my new blog, 123 Real Change, I'm happy to present an experimental project, Project Expose MSM, created to provide readers with specific mainstream media blackout and/or misinformation cases based on the documented and credible first-hand experiences of legitimate sources and whistleblowers.123 Real Change is inviting all members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), other active (covert or overt) government whistleblowers, and even reporters themselves, to publish their experiences in regard to their own first-hand dealings with the media, where their legit disclosures were either intentionally censored, blacked out or tainted.

Yes, we will be naming names --- myself included.

We will even do so below, in one real-case example, intended to help illustrate how the project will work. In the absence of the real investigative journalism and unbiased independent media we need, this is one way to set the record straight...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

A bill introduced into the Oregon House of Representatives in February provided for submission of completed ballots over the Internet for the military and Americans living abroad. Last week amendments made in the House changed the bill, removing the authorization for Internet voting and providing instead for faxed ballots if the voter waives the right to a secret ballot. The bill, as amended, passed the House and is headed for the Senate....

Embarassing news, just in from the CA Supreme Court...

Supporters of equal rights for all are expected to push for yet another (and hopefully clearer!) ballot initiative to overturn the discriminatory Prop 8 in the near future.

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Another step forward in the House for climate and energy legislation --- but is it enough? PLUS: YOU are brilliant, and The Earth is hiring! .... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, legislative sausages? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (links below): "Sun For Rent": Massachusetts initiates creative financing to make solar cheap & easy; Recycling used parachutes; Another beef recall due to E.coli in the Midwest; House Democrats hire Speed Reader --- see him in action; PLUS: How to "Green" Your Workplace, a Net Impact Special Report ...See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

President Barack Obama has nominated 54-year old Sonia Sotomayor, a Judge on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeal in New York, to fill the upcoming vacancy brought about by the pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Despite degrees from Princeton (A.B. summa cum laude 1976) and Yale Law School (J.D. 1979), Sotomayor's Puerto Rican roots are truly working class. Her father, a tool-and-die maker with a third grade education, died when she was nine years old. She and her brother, who became a physician, grew up in a Bronx housing project, raised by her single mother, a nurse.

Although she was initially nominated to the federal bench by George H. W. Bush, in 1998 (when she was approved by a vote of 35 to 11, among still serving U.S. Senators) and is considered a judicial centrist by the ABA journal, her nomination to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal was bottled up by Republicans for more than a year after she was nominated by President Clinton. The hold-up was no mere coincidence...