Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

A glaring innaccuracy in the New York Times article about Congressman Holt's new election reform bill is pointed out in today's BradBlog article. The NYT says, "Mr. Holt's bill would require paper ballots to be used for every vote cast in November 2010." But according to the bill's text, e-voting machines that merely produce a voter-verifiable paper record are grandfathered in until 2014.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning and ES&S have both responded to the report from Florida Fair Elections Center.

Comelec says: We're ready to go forward with the automation. The Philippines Senate is asking: Who exactly is Smartmatic and are they really able to do the automation? And Business World responds with "A recipe for disaster."...

[Now updated with audio archives...]

I'm Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE again tonight and all week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Tonight's scheduled guests so far include:

• SIBEL EDMONDS, the FBI translator/whistleblower, described by the ACLU as the "most gagged" woman in the history of this country following the Bush Administration's use of the "State Secrets Privilege" in keeping her from exposing corruption learned while a translator at the FBI after 9/11. On that, her new blog, her new project "Project Expose MSM", and anything else you want to ask her about!
• DAVID SWANSON, peace activist on Thursday's "Torture Accountability Day"

PLUS: Today's breaking news (Welcome home Gov. Sanford!), my rants & your calls (877-520-1150) (Later this week: Coleen Rowley, Marcy Wheeler and more!)

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your friendly hostess throughout. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: I hope you'll enjoy the audio archives of tonight's show, as much as I enjoyed making them for you. All three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) provide some good listening, and follow below...

We've been covering this on the Malloy Show, but I haven't been able to keep up with it on the blog, unfortunately. So, this just in:

The very quick back-details:

Monday: Gov 'missing' for six days, didn't tell wife where he was, missed Father's Day with four sons. Wife says he was going off to write, staff says he was hiking Appalachian Trail.
Tuesday: Staff says Gov contacted them, was surprised at the hubbub, would return to office on Wed.
Today: Sanford caught by reporter returning from Argentina, not Appalachian Trail. Presser announced. Sanford admits affair.

All of that follows, of course, on the recent admission by the GOP's other (once) 2012 Presidential hopeful, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, that he, too, was having an affair. If I have time to fill in more back details here later, with links, I will.

UPDATE: Fox "News" does it again! Labels Sanford as a "(D)" Democrat as he was admitting to affair! Screenshot follows below...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Smartmatic, the company, is under fire in the Philippines.

“Why did Florida have high "invalid votes" in 2008? An important new report from Florida Fair Elections Center (FFEC) finds that certain optical scan voting systems contributed significantly to Florida's high invalid vote rate in the 2008 election, while other optical scan systems did not. Invalid votes, which are the combination of overvotes, undervotes and invalid write-in votes, were expected to drop with the statewide use of paper ballot optical scan voting systems. Instead, they increased.” Thus begins the press release for today’s featured item....

The New York Times just doesn't get it. You'd think, by now, they would. But they don't. And they should print a correction immediately.

In a brief, unbylined editorial yesterday, headlined "How to Trust Electronic Voting," the paper endorses this year's version of Rep. Rush Holt's election reform bill (H.R. 2894). The editorial is misleading and, even worse, blatantly (and inexcusably) inaccurate on at least one important point...

[Now updated with audio archives...]

I'm Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE again tonight and all week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Tonight's scheduled guests so far include:

• ED ASNER, the legendary TV icon and progressive political champion joins us to discuss his new smash Pixar film Up and whatever else Mr. Grant has on his mind.
• ANDY WORTHINGTON, journalist and historian, and author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison

PLUS: Today's news, my rants & your calls (877-520-1150) and DESI DOYEN with the Green News Report! (Later this week: Sibel Edmonds, Coleen Rowley, Marcy Wheeler and more!)

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your very polite hostess throughout. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: We had a really interesting and fun show, if I do say so myself. The audio archives for all three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) follow below...

[Ed Note: Desi will be joining me on the Mike Malloy Show tonight, which I'm guest hosting this week, for a live version of the Green News Report and to take your calls! Details here... -BF]

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Saving the planet on less than 50 cents a day!; Energy companies sued for conspiracy; Do not ask for whom the Toll House cookie crumbles... PLUS: Flaming rivers of fire ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, delicious E. coli cookies? 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): Navajo homes demolished due to uranium contamination; "Cash for Clunkers" program --- What you need to know; TN Coal ash spill cleanup slow, cause remains unknown ... PLUS: 'Green' cattle? Nature's diet reduces cows' emissions!

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

The Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Iran’s Guardian Council admits that over 50 cities had a turnout greater than 100% and denies voting irregularities....

[Now updated with audio archives...]

I'll be Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 all this week from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Hope you'll tune in and call in!

Tonight's scheduled guests so far include:

• STEPHEN ZUNES, Chair of Middle-Eastern Studies at U. of San Francisco, on latest in Iran.
• ERIC BOEHLERT, Senior Fellow at Media Matters, author of new book, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press.
• MARCY WINOGRAD, progressive Democratic primary challenger to the embattled U.S. House Rep. Jane Harman (CA-36).
• MIMI KENNEDY Advisory Board Chair of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Dharma's mom from Dharma & Greg, discussing all-things Progressive, including her new film, In the Loop, a political black comedy about the run-up to war.

PLUS: Today's news, my rants & your calls (877-520-1150)! (Later this week: Sibel Edmonds, Ed Asner, much more!)

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your rascible host throughout. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: After a technical glitch or two getting on the air for the first two minutes out of Los Angeles, all went well enough thereafter. The archives for all three hours (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) follow below...

Wow...these guys have, indeed, outdone themselves...

It's been nearly five months since the official complaint about Ann Coulter's alleged voter fraud in 2002 and 2004 was filed in Connecticut, yet state election officials continue to refuse comment on the status of the case beyond acknowledging that it's "still pending," as recently confirmed by The BRAD BLOG.

Several charges of absentee voter fraud were alleged in the complaint against Coulter in Connecticut, where evidence shows she cast absentee ballots illegally while living in her then permanent New York City residence.

In addition to the head of the California GOP's voter registration firm pleading guilty to fraud last week (his company, Young Political Majors, is under investigation in several other states as well, and is alleged to have secretly changed thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican, denying voters the ability to cast votes in last year's primary), and the Republican election official in Kentucky who last month pleaded guilty to participating in a massive election fraud conspiracy beginning in 2002, there still remains the outstanding official investigation into the allegations against Coulter, the GOP's storied Queen of Voter Fraud.

If all you watched was the Fox "News" Channel, however, and their increasingly bizarre --- and yet still evidence-free --- "investigation" into "voter fraud" by ACORN, you'd have no idea. That, even though Coulter herself continues to parade in front of their cameras as a regular guest without ever being asked about the official inquiry in the second state to investigate voting improprieties by the GOP superstar.

"The delay in this case is inexplicable given they need to prove two things: where she registered to vote/voted and where she lived when she registered to vote/voted," the complainant in the case, Daniel Borchers, a Christian conservative who has long opposed Coulter's behavior, told The BRAD BLOG. "Both are easily proven."...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

[Ed Note: Winograd will be one of my guests on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show, which I'll be guest hosting all this week from 6p-9p PT, 9p-Mid. ET, on Monday night. Please tune in! - BF]

On October 20, 2005 Time magazine reported that when confronted with the prospect of an FBI investigation into whether she improperly enlisted the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) left a voicemail stating that any investigation of her would be "irresponsible, laughable and scurrilous."

Yet, as reported by Jeff Stein of CQ Politics on April 19, 2009, Harman “was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former [AIPAC] officials. “In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee,” Stein reported.

According to Tim Rutten in the LA Times on April 22, 2009, however, "Harman denies any inappropriate actions, let alone a quid pro quo, and Tuesday sent an angry letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. demanding that the full transcripts be released." Rutten, who described it as a "faux scandal," points out that Harman neither "intervened on behalf of the lobbyists" nor became chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Recently, Marcy Winograd, President of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles (PDLA), whose 2006 campaign was covered by The BRAD BLOG, announced her intentions to challenge Harman again in the 2010 Democratic primary election. In an email response to our query asking about her intention to run again against Harman, against whom she lost in '06, and about some specific issues of interest to our readers, Winograd noted that she has been a champion of election integrity issues, taking on a Republican CA Secretary of State for his direct work with Diebold lobbyists, as well as challenging U.S. Rep Rush Holt (D-NJ) for his 2007 election reform bill because of "its institutionalization of electronic voting systems."

She also said she intends to hold President Obama "accountable, whether it be closing Guantanamo or ending military tribunals or promoting diplomacy over war," even as she notes that she was "alarmed" by the "recent news reports of Harman's quid pro quo with AIPAC," and writes: "I feel it is my responsibility to run [against Harman], to offer constituents a choice, a real choice."

Her email response follows in full below...

We ran that video last week, and found it was linked to by an enormous number of rightwing websites, using the opportunity to suggest that Maher now agreed with them about Obama.

This week (video above-right) Maher clarified the record. He first noted: "Last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some Liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook." But he then removed any doubt about whether he was actually "in league" with those on the Right.

"As far as you folks on the Right that think that we're somehow in league --- we're not in league! I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douche bags you live to defend. I don't wanna be on your team. Pick another kid."

"So I stand by my words," Maher said, before launching into a no-holds barred attack on the Democrats and Obama for their failings, yet again. "There is another side to the story. And that is, that every time Obama tries to take on a Progressive cause, there's a major political party standing in his way --- the Democrats."

"We don't have a Left and a Right party in this country anymore. We have a center-Right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the Right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital."

He went on to criticize Democrats for becoming the party of "hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby [who] sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War re-enacters...who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans."

The major concluding thesis in his scathing criticism: "Bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans"

Diane Sweet of RAW STORY observed in her coverage: "If Maher had finished by declaring his candidacy for public office, by the sound of the applause in response to his monologue, he would have left the studio Friday evening with an audience full of supporters."

If you're unable to watch the video (above right), a text-transcript of the key quotes from this week's must-see monologue follow below. As with last week's, we find ourselves hard-pressed to disagree with a word of it...

Following on the heels of this week's guilty plea to voter registration fraud charges by Mark Anthony Jacoby, the man who headed the company which ran the GOP's voter registration efforts in 2008, and last month's guilty plea by Republican election official Paul Bishop for his part in a broad election fraud conspiracy in Clay County, KY (and, oh yeah, we'll have more on the latest voter fraud allegations against Ann Coulter in the next day or two), comes this new disturbing development tonight in that KY case...