Monday's testimony to a U.S. House Committee by Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, the leader of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) --- who also happens to be the National Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04, Inc. --- has just been added to the website of the "non-partisan", tax-exempt, one-week old "Voting Rights" group.

In his testimony, Hearne failed to mention to the U.S. House members, either his connection to Bush/Cheney or his long roots in the Republican party going back to the Reagan Administration. The testimony was given last Monday to the U.S. House Administration Committee at hearings held on the Ohio Election problems. The hearings to which Hearne was invited were held just 3 business days after the ACVR suddenly appeared for the first time on the Internet...or anywhere else that we've been able to find. More on that here.

In Hearne's testimony, as seen via the page posted today on the ACVR's website [UPDATE 2007: the testimony may now be found here in the Interenet archives, since ACVR has deleted their site], he describes himself as a "a longtime advocate of voter rights and an attorney experience in election law". No mention of his long-term pedigree as a high-level GOP operative...

The rest of his testimony is available at the ACVR website. [UPDATE 2007: ACVR's website has been removed from the Internet, browse their old site here via the Internet Archives.]

Here again is a photo of Hearne taken a few weeks ago at a Republican National Lawyers Association reception in Ohio:

We've learned more about both the mysterious outta-nowhere election experts at the ACVR and Mr. Hearne's "non-partisan" activities which we hope to report later this evening as we've got to do a couple of radio interviews for the next several hours, beginning in just a few minutes.

So check back shortly, and for now...we'll just say...DEVELOPING...

UPDATE: The ACVR National Headquarters! Uncovered! BRAD BLOG has the exclusive photographs!

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

So much crime fighting, so little time. I've fallen desperately behind on posting some of the radio appearances I've done of late. (Along with falling behind on everything else...so my continued apologies for unreplied email, unread comments, and un-everything I wish I had more time in each day for! I'm doing my best however, and will keep chasing to get caught where it's possible.) To make up for the unposted radio spots, here's a collection of some freshly minted ones of which you may choose to listen at your liesure...Or not.

3/23/05: 35 Minutes yesterday on Michelangelo Signorile's Sirius OutQ show. Guest-hosted by our good buddy John Aravosis of AMERICAblog! Good fun this one! Covering just about everything! And, on the usually gay-themed show, John calls me a "heterosexist"! Check it out...Streaming RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or MP3 Download.

3/23/05: Just over 23 minutes yesterday on Atlanta, Georgia's "Wednesday World Party" on WFRG. On BRAD BLOGGING, Velvet Revolution and Georgia's new return to Jim Crow voter ID laws. Live and local, baby! Streaming RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or MP3 Download.

3/22/05: 20 minutes from our weekly Tuesday gig with our new buddy, Don Grady of Louisiana Live. Always fun. On the latest BRAD BLOG goings on, Raymond Lemme and more... Streaming RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or MP3 Download.

3/21/05: 30 easy-goin' minutes from a 3/21/05 interview on Guy Rathbun's KCBX show, "An Evening With..." In this case, it was an evening with yours truly. On VR et al. I think it was a nice interview. Enjoyed it very much. Guy is good. The show won't actually air until 3/30/05, but Guy was kind enough to post the recorded interview on his archives today. So kind, in fact, that I'll let him us to the bandwidth for the MP3 of the interview.

3/21/05: About 15 minutes last Monday on Lila Garrett's Connect the Dots show on KPFK, Pacifica Radio's Los Angeles affiliate. On Velvet Revolution, and Los Angeles registrar Connie McCormack's fight to keep her best friend --- who sells machines for Diebold in Southern California --- in da money. Streaming RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or MP3 Download.

Today we attempted to get some more information about the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), a group who suddenly appeared on the Internet last Thursday. On Monday, they gave testimony to U.S. Congressman Bob Ney's (R-OH) House Administrative Committee during hearings held in Columbus, OH on the 2004 Election mess in the state.

(Please see this previous BRAD BLOG article for the emerging background on this supposedly "non-partisan" tax-exempt organization which was the only such "Voting Rights" group invited to give testimony at the hearings. And, oh yes, every single name attached to this group so far seems to also be attached to Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. and/or the Republican National Committee and/or the Ohio Republican party.)

Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II --- the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. --- gave testimony for the group and is listed on the U.S. House Administrative Committee website as simply "National Counsel, American Center for Voting Rights". No mention of his current high-level connections to Bush/Cheney and his long history of working with other powerful Republican officials all the way back to his time working for the Reagan Administration.

We called him this morning to see if we could ask him a few questions about the ACVR, his involvement as their apparent-organizer and his role as lead contributor for the 31-Page report [PDF] on the Ohio Election produced by the ACVR in time for Monday's hearings.

Hearne's response, "Not right now...Send me some information about who you're involved with and I'll give you a call back."

We persisted nonetheless, and asked if he could describe any of the "voter education and outreach" programs which the "About Us" page at the ACVR website describes as one of their activities. Or if he could tell us about any of the "symposiums and conferences" the group claims to be sponsoring as also mentioned on the site.

His response, "We certainly anticipate those. You keep an eye on our website."

We pressed on...

He was, indeed, rather terse in the answers to our attempted questions, and so we wondered why he didn't wish to be more forthcoming about his "non-partisan" group.

"Sounds to me like your coming from the Left," he told us.

We informed him that --- though we think didn't think any of our questions were particularly partisan or Left-like --- he might well say that we are indeed coming from the Left. Nonetheless, we consider free and fair elections to be a non-partisan issue. As his website claims to be a non-partisan organization, we figured he wouldn't mind answering some questions about it.

Mr. Hearne told us to "Email me some information on who you are and I'll get back to you."

We have done so and look forward to his call and a report here on his answers to some of our many concerns.

Next we tried a call to Jim Dyke who is listed as the "contact" in a press release issued Monday by AVCR.

Dyke, we have subsequently learned, also happened to have been the Communications Director for the Republican National Committee during the 2004 Election.

Perhaps he would be more open with us about this nascient group and their seemingly newfound concern for "Voting Rights" in America. Indeed, Dyke was much more willing than was Hearne to speak at length with us...

If you had any questions about what sort of fellow Ohio Secretary of State (and Co-Chair for Ohio's Bush/Cheney '04 campaign) J. Kenneth Blackwell is give a quick listen to this 4-minute audio report on yesterday's hearings from Ohio Public Radio featuring some of the heated exchanges between His Arrogance Mr. Blackwell, and some the questioners.

(See our previous report explaining this rare appearance by Blackwell who has, until now, snubbed all such hearings at which he was called to testify and refused to answer a single question about the 2004 Election which he was designated to oversee as "fair and impartial" arbiter.)

Additionally, we received this report from a congressional staffer who was inside the hearing room in Columbus on Monday:

(Hat tip to BRAD BLOG commenter, "MelissaB", for the link to the audio report!)

We remember an episode of COPS some year ago when a perp was hiding beneath an overturned kiddie pool. When the police lifted the pool, the perp didn't move. We remember having the feeling he must have been thinking, "I'm invisible, I'm invisible. Please God make me be invisible."

It looks like Republican House Majority Whip, Tom Delay, and his co-conspirators at the National Republican Congressional Committee are trying a similar tactic.

(BTW, it didn't work for the perp on COPS either.)

Republicans seem to have a new found interest in the Electoral Reform movement. An article today from the extremist rightwing web publication WorldNetDaily attacks Sen. Hillary Clinton's election reform bill with quotes from several critics, but none from either Clinton or other supporters of the bill.

In Ohio, state Republican legislators are attempting to raise the cost for candidates seeking a recount after an election. While in Georgia, Republican legislators are trying to pass laws requiring voters to produce Photo ID at the polls.

And yesterday, Ohio Republican Congressman, Bob Ney, chairman of the U.S. House Administrative Committee held hearings in Columbus on the massive reported problems during the 2004 Presidential Election in the Buckeye state.

Perhaps something is suddenly causing Republicans to try and get on the offensive when it comes to the drumbeat of Election Reform now surging across America.

But it's a brand-spanking new, outta-nowhere, just-in-time-for-yesterday's-hearings, Talon News-like "Voting Rights" organization that has caught our eye for the moment.

As reported here earlier today, the U.S. House Administrative Committee hearings yesterday in Columbus featured testimony from St. Louis attorney, Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II of the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR).

According to Internic records, the ACVR was established on the web just last Thursday and early investigation into this group would seem to indicate that it is little more than a front group for Republican operatives with little or no interest in actual "Voting Rights" at all.

While Hearne is listed as a witness for yesterday's hearings on the U.S. Committee for House Administration website as "National Counsel, American Center for Voting Rights", there is no mention of his affiliation or extensive work for Bush/Cheney '00, '04 and other Republicans.

Hearne, a former Reagan Administration official, is the National Election Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. and was Missouri counsel to Bush-Cheney ?00 Inc. As well, he was General Counsel to Republican Missouri Governor Blunt.

He is pictured, at a March 5, 2005 Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) reception in Ohio, at the bottom of this article. The RNLA is an off-shoot of the national Republican Party.

But Hearne is not the only high-level Republican operative working for the tax-exempt "non-partisan" 501(c)3 organization...

Yesterday, in Columbus, OH, the U.S. House Committee on House Administration held a hearing on the mess otherwise known as the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.

Unlike the previous hearings last December in Columbus run by Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, this committeee, led by Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney was given a hearing room in Ohio's State Capitol building. (The Judiciary Committee member's hearings last year had been originally scheduled to take place in the statehouse, until "someone" decided they were not welcome there. But we digress.)

Ney has been a big supporter of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and has shown an interest on the CHA website in doing everything possible to leave the flawed Help America Vote Act (HAVA), hastily passed in the wake of the 2000 election debacle, in place and unchanged so that things like mandatory paper ballots with every vote cast cannot be amended to the law. HAVA sets asides millions of federal dollars for the purchase of new electronic voting machines from a few select private companies.

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, tasked with running a free and fair election in the Buckeye state last November --even while he was tasked with being the OH Co-Chair for the Bush/Cheney Re-Elect Committee --- finally decided to show up and take some questions yesterday.

As well, a Republican operative by the name of Mark F. (Thor) Hearne was also called as a "Witness" to discuss Election Reform issues despite fronting an organization, the so-called "American Center for Voting Rights" which suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the web just last Thursday.

Last month, Blackwell had succeeding in displeasing even his theoretical Ohio Republican ally, Ney, by refusing to attend the committee's first such hearings in D.C. Even though Blackwell was already in town.

Yesterday, however, he finally showed up...

From today's Doonesbury, in which Roland Hedley has replaced Jeff Gannon in the White House press corps...

...And also from today's paper...

Zeitgeist, anyone?

While listening to CBS News Radio last night, a spokesman from the Schiavo camp was quoted as saying something along the lines "We're so pleased that the broad majority of the American people have really pulled together to get behind the case for Terry Schiavo to save her life."

There was no alternate view presented in the story. Which is odd, given how we've been repeatedly told by the wingnuts what a bunch of leftie, pinko, commie, Bush-haters CBS News is.

And now this from Reuters:

Wow. Who knew? It's almost as if CBS News isn't quite the bunch of leftie, pinko, commie, Bush-haters that the Wingnuts would have us believe. We're starting to feel the Right just may not be telling the whole truth to the American people. We are beside ourselves with disillusionment. What next? A new poll telling us that Steroids in Professional Baseball is not the most pressing and divisive issue facing our country today?!

UPDATE: Washington Post is reporting that all of this hullaballoo about Schiavo may just be a trumped up political issue or something! What?! Apparently a memo was distributed to all Senate Republicans on this matter according to the leftie, commie, pinko Bush-haters of ABC news [emphasis added]:

Oh, boy. Now we're really confused! We're just waiting for the Blame America First crowd over at ABC to tell us that, in reality, Saddam Hussein didn't topple the World Trade Center! Geez...

Congressional support for VR's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign continues to build strength as TWENTY-THREE U.S. House Members signed on to a letter sent late Friday to the nine major American Voting Machine companies!

The letter, authored by Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. John Conyers (reported here late last week), demands transparency and accountability from the private companies which now run the public function of America's electoral system. The Congressional members outline --- in no uncertain terms --- their position that all government funding should be withheld from companies that do not comply with the standards originally set forth in VR's February 21 letter to the companies.

From the recent Congressional letter:

The letter was signed by the following U.S. House members: John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Sam Farr (D-CA), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rick Boucher (D-VA), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), William D. Delahunt (D-MA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Corrine Brown (D-FL), Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Robert Wexler (D-FL), James Oberstar (D-MN), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Donald M. Payne (D-NJ), Barney Frank (D-MA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), George Miller (D-CA), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) and Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ).

The members have asked for a reply from the companies no later than April 15, 2005. A copy of the complete signed letter is posted here.

As well, Conyers, sent another letter to me (as co-founder of Velvet Revolution) to inform us of this latest Congressional effort and his continuing commitment to the fight which VR began with our DV4D campaign. That letter is also posted at VR.

Twenty-three signers, we are told, is rather impressive for such a letter. As one congressional aide mentioned on that point via email, twenty-three signatures is "really good for a letter that kicks around a few weeks, let alone one that has circulated in just the last several days. Congrats! Wow!"

We suppose that must be attributed to the notion that supporting democracy in America really shouldn't be all that controversial an issue!

VR's "Divestiture for Democracy" Campaign, allows 60 days for the companies to announce their intentions of adopting the standards or face a massive divestiture effort to be launched against those companies (and their affiliates and clients) who choose to ignore the steps which so many Americans find necessary to restore confidence in America's electoral process. If you have not already done so, please click here to send an email to the companies yourself! It'll take you less than a minute yet means a lot!

Conyers had previously endorsed VR's "DV4D" campaign on March 2nd. And last week, Green Party Presidential Candidate, David Cobb, sent his own letter to America's Voting Machine Company strongly endorsing VR's campaign.

For more information on Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign, please write to DV4D@VelvetRevolution.us.

{ed note: We love Tom Tomorrow, but --- though he mentioned them --- none of the above could have been possible without the cooperation of Democrats like Sen. Joe Biden. Any Dem who would sell out the best interests of their constituents, as the Bankrupty Bill does, for a few thousand dollars from the Credit Card industry, deserves to be tied to the railroad tracks as well!}

The beat goes on. We are hated by the world not because of our "freedom", but because of a hypocritical foreign policy that has gone on for decades and --- even in the wake of 9/11 --- continues to this day.

The latest hypocrisy, blaming North Korea for nuclear exports to Libya, when it fact it was our (theoretical) "ally" Pakistan who did the deal.

From today's Washington Post...

Look the other way Bush supporters. Heads back in the sand! And when another 9/11 happens, be sure to tell yourself it's because "they hate our freedom". Not because we look the other way when our "friends" --- the chosen despots and U.S. approved villians --- destabilize the world (see friends and business partners Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein at right) even while we trump up phoney-baloney charges against those regimes which won't play ball and/or don't serve our current economic interests.

It's nothing new. It's just more brazen than ever with this bunch and, in the wake of 9/11, more shamefully obvious and more clearly self-defeating than ever. A very good lesson apparently not learned.

"Freedom" American Style continues on the march...

(Click here for a worldwide celebration of "freedom on the march")

God Bless Media Matters.

In a single day yesterday, they tracked what appears to be an epidemic growing number of lies and disinformation now streaming out of the Rightwing Media and, most specifically Fox "News", in an alarming and every increasing tsunami of governmental propoganda.

With the White House now defending the millions of dollars spent to create their very own fake "news" reports and Arnold doing the same out here in California, is it any wonder that the wingnut media seems to feel no compunction about saying whatever they want, whenever they want, all the facts be damned. After all, who is going to stop them?

And, in the meantime, where is the "real" media? Where are the freedom fighters for reality and truth? Where are the mainstream reporters who ought to be exposing this organized and invidious scheme which has quietly --- yet in plan sight and without repercussion --- layered out-and-out lies, disinformation and propoganda directly into the news "mainstream" where Americans by-and-large haven't a clue that they are being played for fools? The corporate mainstream media has completely abandoned their post and their duties as truth tellers for the American people.

Take a look at a list of a few reports --- just yesterday alone --- from the dedicated heroes at Media Matters...

Guest blogged by Jaime

Hey. Jaime Here. Friend of Freedom Fighter Friedman and occaisional guest blogger and contributor. As you all know, tomorrow, March 19th is the 2nd anniversary of George W. Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. I just wanted to put out a call for you folks to network and clear up some time to join one of the many protests worldwide this weekend. Here are some of links with vital information of the whats, whens, and wheres.

ANSWER LA
UNITED FOR PEACE
STOP THE WAR
INDYBAY.ORG
NOT IN OUR NAME

Get out there and get active!