Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Hidden amongst the smoke and mirrors of Bush's plan to boost sinking poll numbers, pander to his base enact immigration reform, the media largely missed revelations that Vice President Dick Cheney has been directly implicated in the CIA leak case.

MSNBC's Countdown managed to sneak in this short report about the new details of Cheney's involvement. My apologies for not posting this video sooner but the issue is still relevant and deserves further scrutiny.

A recent court filing by Patrick Fitzgerald includes Cheney's handwritten notes on a copy of Joe Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed. According to Fitzgerald, the handwritten notes show "the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president". In his notes, Cheney writes talking points that are later leaked to the press and used to smear Joe Wilson.

Christy Harden Smith of Firedoglake writes,

In an interview on MSNBC, Richard Wolfe of Newsweek, went even further by leaving no doubt that Cheney's notes on Wilson's opinion article were actually "an order" directing his staff to push Cheney's loaded questions to friendly journalists...

Following on our earlier report today, covering 100's of electronic voting machines in Philadelphia which failed to start up this morning for Pennsylvania's primary election, we now have a similar report from the other side of the state.

100's of machines in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, also failed to work correctly today. If we're able to remember correctly (since the story doesn't name any voting machine company names), Allegheny County finally settled on voting machines made by ES&S, after they abandoned hopes of going with Diebold when their machines were found to be hackable, and then later found machines from Sequoia Voting Systems --- who they'd planned to use instead --- were discovered to be similarly hackable.

ES&S eventually won the prize, just weeks before today's primary --- we warned about going with a new system with so little time to prepare, but did they listen? --- yet appear to have lost the day for PA voters, according to this report from Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette...

More details on the failures in the Post-Gazette's story. Amongst those details, apparently Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was locked out of his polling place when an election worker failed to show up to open it this morning.

Pennsylvania is having their primary elections today and, as expected, the train wreck is underway. As reported by Philadelphia Daily News, hundreds of machines (in this case, those made by Danaher Guardian) have failed...

The local ABC affiliate has more details. Amongst them...

More from TheNextMayor.com...

LATE UPDATE: 100's of machines also failed in Pittsburgh across the state in Allegheny County! Details...

The massive security flaw recently revealed in Diebold touch-screen voting machines --- which allows election software and systems to be overwritten with rogue software in minutes, without need of a password --- and which has sent Elections Officials from Pennsylvania to California to Iowa to every state in the union which uses them, sequestering the machines and scrambling for a solution to mitigate the problem, was previously revealed in a 2004 security report commissioned by the state of Maryland, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

The security assessment of Diebold's touch-screen voting systems was completed by RABA Technologies, and presented to the Maryland State Legislature in January 2004. The report, reviewed at the time by both Maryland election officials and officials at Diebold, consisted of "a 'Red Team' exercise to discover vulnerabilities in the actual voting system" prior to the state's March 2004 primary election.

A "Red Team" attack is used by computer security teams to attempt to hack into a computer system or software package. The results of the RABA report in 2004, spelled out specific details of the latest Diebold security problems which have been splashed across the pages of maintream media outlets from coast to coast since last Wednesday.

Maryland was one of the first states to adopt Diebold's paperless touch-screen systems in 2002 and, as previously reported, spent millions of dollars , in an initiative with Diebold at the time, to promote the new electronic voting systems to state voters.

The security problem exists in both Diebold's paperless touch-screen systems, as well as their newer models which include a so-called "voter-verified paper trail."

The BRAD BLOG broke exclusive details of the story originally on Friday before last, several days before the MSM joined the fray...but we're glad that they're all finally paying attention.

Apparently, though Diebold was apprised of the serious security problem back in early 2004, Diebold programmers and company officials appear to have done nothing to fix the flaws which were found as still present in voting systems being sold by the company this year. In March of this year, an independent security analysis of Diebold touch-screen systems deployed in Utah for the first time, confirmed the continuing presence of the same flaw and, additionally, found even more troubling details surrounding the same security vulnerability.

At least one computer scientist and E-voting expert has now described Diebold's delinquency in failing to correct the problem after two years to be "criminal" and meriting complete decertification.

Furthermore, the security vulnerability --- being described by computer security professionals as "the most serious security breach that's ever been discovered in a voting system," and "a major national security risk" --- appears to be yet another apparent violation, by Diebold, of federal Voting System Standards...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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CNN's Barbara Starr is reporting that a court has ordered the Pentagon to release Pentagon surveillance video from 9/11 that shows AA flight #77 hitting the building. Judicial Watch has pursued this video in the courts for several years.

Barbara Starr expects that this video will answer some questions and suspicions that have circulated (largely on the internet) since 9/11. This video release on includes the Pentagon 's surveillance cameras. It does not include other surveillance video that were confiscated from local business after the 9/11 attack.

UPDATE: Judicial Watch plans to post the video on their site sometime after they receive it at 1 pm ET today. Their site is getting hit pretty hard right now. If we can obtain a copy of the video we will re-post it here.

UPDATE #2: MSNBC's Pete Williams is reporting that the newly released video is a series of frames that are similar to some previously released video frames showing a fireball exploding on a exterior wall of the Pentagon. The new video frames show the same fireball exploding from a different angle. It supposedly only shows "the tip of the plane which may not be enough to satisfy the conspiracy theorist," says Williams.

UPDATE #3: CNN is now showing the new video frames. They look very similar to the previously seen "pentagon fireball" video frames. If you weren't convinced by that earlier set of video frames then you will probably not be impressed by this newly released set of video frames. The new video is reported to be a little over a minute long and may have views from several different (but similar) angles. We're trying to get a copy from Judicial Watch for closer inspection...

UPDATE #4 (This one from Brad): I just spoke with Christopher Farrell, director of Investigations and Research at Judicial Watch who says their servers have crashed due to the crush of interest in the video, but that their technical guys are working on it, and they should be back up shortly.

He says this new video, "shows the plane coming in real fast and real low and the nightmare ball of fire that you'd imagine."

Farrell explained that while "some Internet sites had some other version that they posted that is different from the one we've got. This one shows a silver streak very clearly coming in, incredibly low, and slamming into the building. It wasn't like a dive-bomber from above, but coming in very low."

He says that, though it's security camera video, so it's not great, it clearly shows the plane as it crashed into the Pentagon.

Keep checking the Judicial Watch site for when they come back up. Otherwise, we've offered to host the video over here at BRAD BLOG if they continue to have bandwidth and server issues. So feel free to continue checking back here to this item as well.

UPDATE #5 - From MSNBC, here is a screenshot of the frame that reportedly shows the plane followed by a zoomed-in view of the same frame...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Part 1: Maher's Monologue, Panel Discussion

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Playing Time: 10 minutes

Part 2: Panel Continued, New Rules, Maher's Closing Rant

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Playing Time: 12 minutes

Friday's episode of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher was the final live broadcast of the season. The panelist were musician John Legend, national security expert Richard Clarke, and academic Cornell West.

Maher took the opportunity of the season final to focus on slamming President Bush. Maher said that Bush was such an easy target that he had avoided having a Bush theme throughout the season.

Discussion of recent stories about the NSA's domestic programs really took over much of the show. Maher's panelist were outraged at the Bush Administration's abuse of power. Cornell West was highly critical of human and civil rights abuses while Richard Clarke warned of the dangers that happen when an incompetent government employs excessive power.

Due to the length of the video, it has been split into 2 parts. Both parts contain clips from the show that focus on Maher's criticism of Bush and the NSA's domestic spying.

Apropos to the discussion of late concerning the unquestioning relationship between Voting Machine Company Officials and State Elections Officials (see our last entry with documents revealing Pennsylvania simply reformatted a Diebold notice and released it as their own), The BRAD BLOG has obtained exclusive video from a public meeting held in Mississippi last year in which Diebold representative Charles "Buck" Jones demonstrates the AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) machines to a number of people, including the Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark.

Clark, who clearly states that his mind is already made up as to the security of Diebold's touch-screen systems refuses to stick around to answer questions at the meeting. Incredibly, he's recorded in this video tape, made in 2005, describing the security of the Diebold's touch-screen machines as "the most secure thing outside of a Wells-Fargo truck."

Jones, "The Diebold Man", as described in the video, is the one trying to refute "reports you might have seen on the Internet" to some Election Integrity Advocates present at the meeting. He's the one who says directly to the camera: "I'm not gonna see it on the Internet or anything like that, right?"

BRAD BLOG readers may recall Jones as the one who'd contacted us via email on a Saturday last March just moments after we'd posted an article concerning an election in New Hampshire which had to be rerun after it was discovered the electronic voting machines had apparently recorded more votes than there were voters. The story Jones contacted us about covered the New Hampshire Union-Leader's report of the incident, which had errantly described the voting machine in question as one of Diebold's. Jones kindly informed us the Union Leader report was in error, and the faulty machine was, in fact, made by their competitor, ES&S.

We quipped at the time that it would be lovely if Diebold was as responsive to the myriad problems revealed in their own systems, as they apparently are in pointing out problems found in their competitor's systems.

Given the litany of recently revealed, irrefutable security problems found in Diebold electronic voting machines, this seems a good time to share this video with you. It was made by one of the attendees at the meeting...

"It is like the nuclear bomb for e-voting systems," said Avi Rubin, computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University. "It's the deal breaker. It really makes the security flaws that we found (in prior years) look trivial."
-- From Security Focus, 5/12/06

Pennsylvania officials warned local election registrars last week about the vulnerability in the mechanism that installs and upgrades software on Diebold equipment. It said the risk of the vulnerability being exploited was "low".
-- From AP, 5/11/06

The first graf above, quoting Rubin, comes from a superb and indepth article by Robert Lemos at Security Focus on the latest Diebold security disaster. We recommend his report for a host of reasons, amongst them; his broad coverage of dozens of the stories we've yelled and screamed about here at The BRAD BLOG over the past several months, but also because he adds loads of details to the latest Diebold mess which is finally being picked up by the mainstream media. Big time. (Here's an eye-popping compilation of scores of articles from just last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with many more to come.)

We point to Rubin's quote --- similar to on the record statements from of the other computer scientists and e-voting security professionals familiar with the details of the built-in "feature" in Diebold's touch-screen systems now revealed to be an extraordinary security vulnerability --- by way of contrast to the way both Diebold and the State of Pennsylvania (and subsequently the bulk of the media) reported their characterization of the problem. That would be the second graf of this story in which AP quotes PA officials describing the risk as "low."

From Diebold's Mouth to Your Ears...

We're often asked, by media folks and others, why it is that Election Officials seem to stand by their E-Voting Machines and Vendors, such as Diebold, ES&S and others, instead of holding them accountable and independently verifying their (usually unsupported) claims about the security and reliability of their voting machines --- as Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho and Emery County, UT County Clerk, Bruce Funk, both rare exceptions --- did.

Setting aside that both Sancho and Funk have been fighting with state officials to hang on to their jobs ever since, The BRAD BLOG has obtained a few documents which underscore what's really at work in the bulk of Election Official/Election Machine Vendor relationships...

By John Gideon, www.VotersUnite.Org and www.VoteTrustUSA.Org May 15, 2006

Yes, the wheels are wobbling on the locomotives. The vendors --- ES&S, Diebold, and the rest --- attempt to keep a stiff upper lip as they both fail to perform, yet continue collecting tax-payer dollars from the county election coffers. Meanwhile some elections officials have just turned a blind-eye to what is happening while they continue to make excuses for their vendors: The private corporate American Electronic Voting Machine behemoths that are being paid to take over America's Public Electoral system.

And the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) which was put in place by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), theoretically, to keep all of this from occurring? Well, all they do is raise their hands and shrug and tell anyone who asks, that they don't do voting systems certification so they just don't know anything. The Sergeant Schultz Defense, perhaps?

As longtime BRAD BLOG commenter, Czaragorn asked for some red meat today, and as we've been conflicted on whether to "report" anything on this or not, we'll just toss it out there and say, oh well, Czaragorn asked for it. And we aim to please.

Surely, you've all heard the many and various rumors and speculation of late about a Karl Rove indictment being handed down from the Grandy Jury in the Valerie Plame TreasonGate case. Either that, or you've read Jason Leopold's article from Friday reporting that Rove has informed the White House he's about to be indicted. Or the follow-up story yesterday, in which he reports that it's a done deal, Rove's attorneys have been served with the indictment and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has spent Friday and Saturday with Rove's attorneys in pursuit of some sort of plea deal.

While we can't independently confirm or deny any of Jason's specific reporting, we have received various bits and pieces of note from sources that we have more than a fair bit of confidence in, while at the same time noting a few other interesting signs and tea leaves worth pondering...at least for Cazaragorn's sake...

From WISH-TV...

From today's Tennessean...

As usual, btw, the reporter gets the story wrong with the same misinformation concerning the Help America Vote Act (HAVA):

As if we haven't repeated this hundreds of times here: HAVA requires one disabled-accessible voting device (not machine!) in each polling place (not precinct, though that error is one we had made previously ourselves). Larger point being that there are other devices for voting that can be used which are not "machines" --- despite how much the vendors appreciate the mainstream media doing their misinformation for them.

(In which we subtly bite the very Huff Po hand that feeds us...)

"On Electronic Voting: We Were Always Right, They Were Always Wrong..."

And we entrust these guys to correctly count our votes?! Are we out of our minds? Can these guys do anything right? (These questions have long ago been answered on these very pages, of course.)

From AP today...

And from the Daytona Beach News-Journal...

How much higher can the mountain of evidence get to make the case that these guys should be put out of the election business and our democracy's misery immediately and entirely?

Who the hell is running the federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC)? OJ's jury?!

...CONTACT...
United States Election Assistance Commission
1225 New York Avenue N.W., Suite - 1100
Washington, DC 20005

Telephone: (202) 566-3100
Toll Free: (866) 747-1471
Fax: (202) 566-3127
E-mail Address: HAVAinfo@eac.gov

I was in studio today with Marc Maron of Air America. First time on his show. A good guy (who got screwed by Air America, btw, when they dumped him from their national morning show.)

I thought I'd take the opportunity, while on Air America's air, to beat up a li'l on Air America, and Al Franken specifically, for not touching any of this Election Reform stuff.

That, Ann Coulter, and a few other rants in a very fast paced 12-minute appearance which I think you'll enjoy...

-- Brad on The Marc Maron Show [MP3]