{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

The fight for democracy in America --- even as we still scratch our head with continued wonder that a "pro-democracy" movement is actually necessary in the United States of America in 2005 --- continues to be a difficult one. But the fight is well worth it. Even as our victories tend to come in small, but continually accruing pieces.

We're not supposed to be talking about this issue at all, 11 months after November 2nd, 2004...and yet more and more are doing so every day. The Mainstream Corporate Media may not get it yet. But the ranks of great patriots who give a damn about their country continues to burgeon as the noise in favor of an accountable democracy increases every day due to the folks like the good readers of The BRAD BLOG who take their civic duty to heart.

Here are just a few of the latest positive signs in the continuing fight for a free, fair, verifiable and transparent democracy that many would prefer we simply didn't even discuss. We will continue to do so nonetheless. The burden is well worth carrying. The rewards for doing so are well worth the effort.

Debra LoGuercio, editor of Winters Express and columnist in Daily Republic and elsewhere, makes it a hat trick with her third column in as many weeks on our tenuous Electoral System. She was haunted by the siren sounded by our first article on the Diebold insider we dubbed DIEB-THROAT, who alerted us to the Dept. of Homeland Security website where a Cyber Alert was issued last year prior to the election about the vulnerability to hackers in Diebold's central tabulator software. That vulnerability has, by Diebold's own admission, never been addressed.

In her latest column titled "E-voting fraud is an American issue" LoGuercio joins the ranks of those of us who continue to be stunned at the remarkable indifference by the Mainstream Corporate Media to what DIEB-THROAT refered to as "one of the greatest threats democracy has ever known":

Again, read her full column to find out about her response from AP and NBC affiliates when she contacted them about all of this, and see if you can find a way to help swim together with her efforts. It's well worth it, and the support means the world to folks like us who go out on a limb on these matters...even when doing so may be neither popular nor the easiest thing to do.

In the meantime, there are signs that more and more folks are taking notice of what is going on and walking out on that limb as well. C-NET's News.com ran an article yesterday by Declan McCullah headlined "E-voting hobbled by security concerns".

The first couple of grafs:

The article covers both the ongoing concerns, and the internal debates --- even amongst election reformers --- about how and when to produce and count paper ballots...or "receipts" as they are regrettably becoming known in many circles.

On the point of the difference between reformers on these issues, I hope to produce a one-page "Declaration of Democracy" in the next couple of weeks, a page on which we worked diligently at the Portland Election Reform summit. I believe we can bridge the differences between reformers on these matters to get everyone on the same page. I've been working hard on that effort personally behind the scenes, and hope to have something to show for it in the next couple of weeks. Just by way of a heads-up...So that perhaps we may be able to "swim together" on these issues.

A second article from News.com published yesterday over at ZDNet covers a similar discussion on the problems with E-Voting vulnerability and the need to open the software for inspection:

And finally, there it was yesterday...smack dab in the middle of The New York Times: a full-page ad that asks the the too-obvious questions, "Would you trust a bank that refused to issue ATM receipts? Will you trust your democracy to voting machines without them?"

The ad calls for support of Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) H.R. 550 "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005" which we generally support as a good first step towards accountability. (You can send your words of support as well to your folks in congress quickly by using Velvet Revolution's easy Email generator here.)

Here's the very welcome ad, signed by many election reformers. Amongst them, our friend the heroic Robert Koehler (listen to our interview with Koehler at the Portland Summit as broadcast on The BRAD SHOW by clicking here and selecting HOUR 3.)

To read the full text of the ad in PDF format, click it, or click here.

Let's all keep swimming...together...

If you need some added inspiration to keep up the fight for democracy, we'll strongly recommend this great song [mp3], courtesy of Victoria Parks. "It's well worth fighting for..."

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Republican House members DeLay, Barton, Hastert and Blunt held the vote open on a controversial energy bill until they were able twist enough arms for the bill to pass.

Although only 5 minutes are allotted for voting, Republicans refused to close the voting for 40 minutes until enough votes had switched to pass the energy bill which will gut environmental standards in favor of building more oil refineries.

Video in Windows Media format...
Video in QuickTime format...

As reported by Reuters:

UPDATE: Jesse from Stakeholder has more, including this quote from Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY):

FURTHER UPDATE: ThinkProgress has more, including the C-SPAN version of the video...

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Well, whaddaya know...Despite the unsupported ravings of Republican operatives and cynics hoping to paint "Voter Fraud" as an actual issue of great concern in this country to deflect from the very real concern of Election Fraud, it looks as if an actual case may have been found.

The alleged fraudulent voter: Karl Rove!

Political watchdog organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), announced the latest news yesterday:

Of course, such laws only apply to those who are actually bound by "the rule of law," which, as we all know, ceased applying to Republicans as of January 20, 2001. Just ask Ann Coulter.

In the meantime, we'll remind readers unfamiliar with the issue that Voter Fraud, though it undoubtedly happens in the United States, is far from an epidemic rocking our election system. A recent study by the League of Women Voters in Ohio, for example, of more than 9 million votes in the last two national elections there, found four cases of actual Voter Fraud (voters voting twice, or the spouse of a dead registered voter sending in an absentee ballot for them). More info on the phony hype over Voter Fraud here.

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of votes in America are routinely ignored, thrown out, not counted, or voters are disenfranchised by not being allowed --- by various means --- to cast their vote in the first place.

Nonetheless, we're happy to see all cases of Voter Fraud properly prosecuted. Including that of the the most insidious, anti-American, anti-democracy advocate of them all: Karl Rove. (Though in most states, felons aren't allowed to vote anyway...so Rove's voting rights may not be long for this world anyway.)

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

Who hits zero first?

Latest Bush Approval Rating: 37% (and falling)
Latest Diebold Stock Price: $34.25 (and falling)

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Jim Dyke, the liar who helped found the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), is boning up on his "non-partisan" creds of late by working for the White House to help them push Harriet Miers through the nomination process.

As reported last night by NPR's All Things Considered in a story about some rightwinger concerns about Miers:

Of course, BRAD BLOG readers will remember Dyke from our special coverage of ACVR, the phony voting rights group which claims tax-exempt "non-partisan" status. The group was co-founded by Dyke, former RNC Communications Director, and Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. to help smokescreen the real problems that occurred during Election 2004, and to produce misleading propoganda in hopes of further disenfranchising American voters in the future through insidious new plans to making voting harder, not easier, for mainly Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Conservative readers --- real conservatives, not fake George W. Bush "conservatives" --- would likely admit to being outraged at these senior GOP operatives who are pimping their efforts to further disenfranchise Americans at the voting booth through the incidious work of a front group like ACVR. All the while, as we've pointed out, doing so by sucking off the tax-payer teat with their disingenuous tax payer funded 501(c)3 tax-exempt status.

One would think real conservatives wouldn't look too kindly on that sort of thing. (That assumes, of course, that there are any real conservatives left in America.)

Surely there must be some true conservative law firm or organization out there who feels like filing suit to get at the truth and hold these guys accountable for the fraud they are committing on the U.S. government, no?

Paging Judicial Watch...Your test case is ready...

UPDATE 10/11/05: Non-partisan Jim Dyke now working for Dick Cheney! Info here...

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.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

According to a BBC press release, George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God instructed him to go to war with Afghanistan and Iraq:

UPDATE FROM BRAD: UniRealist's comment in this thread poses an eye-opening question:

The answer, sadly, speaks for itself. And volumes about the United States of America on October 6, 2005.

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

I've been so busy with so many things concerning and since the National Summit to Save Our Elections that I haven't had much time to write about it. Thankfully, others have. Including the great Bob Koehler of Tribune Media Services with whom I had the honor of sharing 45 minutes or so on stage at the Summit where we were both able to interview each other. (The BRAD SHOW carried that and more from the summit. The Koehler interview is in HOUR 3 of the archives for last Saturday's show which are now up here.)

More coverage of the weekend was written by DU's "Autorank" and carried by Scoop (only New Zealand is interested in Democracy in America, apparently). Coverage of Day 1 is here, and Days 2 & 3 is here.

As usual, of course, it's Koehler who hits the ball out of the park again after this conference, as he did after the Nashville Conference last April with his now-classic "Silent Screen of Numbers" column. (As well as with his "Citizens in the Rain" column which was spiked by Tribune Media Services and thus never ran other than on the net!)

In Koehler's latest, "Ballot and Soul" he again puts the weekend's events into appropriate --- and chilling --- historic perspective. Here is just a taste:

Please read the whole thing. And thank you, Mr. Koehler, for giving a damn. I wish more of your media brethren did so as well.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Radar Magazine is reporting a buzz of unconfirmed rumors in D.C. that indictments may be imminent from Fitzgerald's grand jury:

If there is any truth to this rumor, we wonder how the indictments match up with Think Progress' list of 21 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak.

Meanwhile, The Raw Story has confirmed that Rove has been missing from White House events and that he may be a target of the probe:

Some are wondering if these rumors could simply be a Rovian stunt to distract from other very real and very damaging news?

...developing...

Guest blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

In a move that some people found amazing and others expected, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has filed a new elections bill. HR-3910 ? Verifying the Outcome of Tomorrow's Elections Act of 2005 does nothing to verify the outcome of "tomorrow's" elections, but it does further the RNC's wish to keep as many poor, elderly, disabled, and people of color (in other words ? normally Democratic voters) away from the polls as they possibly can.

And who is this Rep. Feeney? If you recall, he was the person alleged to have asked for a programmer to write software to switch the touch-screen votes, undetected, in Florida. Clint Curtis, whose story was originally broken here at BRAD BLOG, was the programmer. When asked about this latest step by Feeney, he responded via email simply: ?Appears that Mr. Feeney is still trying to protect his fixed voting system?.

Around the water coolers on ?The Hill?, there has been talk that Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550) would be going to mark-up sometime in October. It is timely that suddenly Rep. Feeney would produce a bill that will now allow the House leaders to blend the two bills and make one bill that represents their view of privatization of elections.

This bill provides for a voter verified paper audit trail but it leaves to the states how that audit trail will be used, if at all. No verification there.

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

During my radio debate last weekend with Ann Coulter on the Ron Insana Show --- audio here (exchange in question at appx. 17 minute mark) --- Coulter correctly suggested that evidence needed to be presented in re: allegations about Sen. Bill Frist's potential misdeeds concerning sales of stock he owned in his family's hospital chain before he should be found guilty. While I agreed with that, I remarked that Coulter was more than happy to call Bill Clinton "a felon" and "a rapist" before evidence was put forward in court or any jury had found him guilty to those ends.

Insana followed up on the fact that Clinton was rarely given "the benefit of the doubt" in the media and by Coulter specifically in such matters.

She answered, in part, this way:

That interview, where Coulter sneared that she'd "moved on from Clinton" was October 1, 2005.

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land, a quick check of Ann Coulter's personal website reveals the following two articles in her "Quotations from Chairman Ann" section. The first was written on October 2, 2005 --- the day after her quote above.

And then there's this one, posted just four days prior to Ann's having announced that she's "moved on from Clinton":

Glad to see she's "moved on from Clinton".

At least she's a terrific spokesperson for today's Republican Party! Being, as she is, apparently genetically incapable of telling the truth. But more than adquately programmed to lie and then lie and then follow it up with a lie. And then lie about it.

Book publishers may feel free to contact me if they are interested in a pitch for a new best-seller: "How to Talk to Ann Coulter (If You Must)".

Special BRAD BLOG / Velvet Revolution coverage
of the Sep 24-26 Rally in D.C.
Guest blogged by Katrina Wilcox

What struck me the most were the buildings which house our seat of government. Old buildings. Massive buildings. Awe-inspiring columns in front. Quotes carved in stone. All representing huge monuments to our history as a nation. Made my heart swell with pride to know that generations ago the citizens who came before us believed that America was worth the anguish and danger and, yes, disruption to their normal lives to struggle against all odds to shape a nation in the best way they knew possible.

And what pissed me off the most, after my great sadness at the number of Iraqi and American lives lost because of this administration, was the fact that the corrupt criminals in power are dragging our wonderful, beautiful, capable-of-so-much-more-goodness country through the sewer. We can't blame our founding fathers. They did their best to protect us from what the future might hold. They couldn't know that all the checks and balances they carefully placed for our protection wouldn't be enough against the greedy corporations and politicians that were to come. It is us - who are to blame. For not keeping a closer watch on our inheritance, for assuming that it was already the best it could be, for not struggling always to make it better.

Which leaves us where we are now. With a broken, corrupt, unfixable system of governance which has enabled fascists to take power and pillage and pocket the spoils of our hard-earned pride, security, and money. We - just a leaderless revolution made up of patriots who will not give up our country - are all that stand in the way of the bastards dragging our noble nation down into the depths of hell.

Yes, we have been waging a revolution since 2000 when depraved evildoers staged a coup d'etat. A revolution in which each participant decided on their own to dig in their heels, frantically grab onto whatever they could find to do, and scream NO at the top of their lungs while watching in horror as the usurpers continued to drag us kicking and screaming ever closer to the precipice of annihilation.

But we have been fighting to rectify the symptoms of the problem (corruption, torture, lies, war crimes, election fraud, media deafness, environmental problems, campaign finance abuses, etc.) instead of fighting to change the system of governance that is the root of the problem. Once we institute a new system of governance, all the different symptoms will disappear along with the old system. We must declare that the American experiment of a Constitutional Republic has failed, take back our country, and bring forth a New America.

We can march on Washington again and stay until our demand to get our country back is met. Or we can wait around while the villains in power continue until there is nothing left of value to pillage and destroy (whether at that time there will be any of us alive and free enough to pick up the pieces is open to debate).

Those are our choices. Facts we have to face. There is no one to rescue us. We are on our own. We must right this wrong and put in place a new system of governance that protects us and future generations from this EVER happening again.

Just as our founding fathers did their best to protect us - now it is up to us to be the founding fathers for the coming generations of Americans. If we don't get it quite right, future generations may also have their day in history when they have to become the founding fathers to correct against dangers that are unforeseeable to us now.

But history has placed you and me ... here ... now ... and it is up to us to take our great nation to the next level of democracy, equality, and freedom for its citizens.

We are the founding fathers of New America.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Marine Captain Josh Rushing has taken a job reporting for an Arab news network which is drawing criticism from some conservatives. He was recently interviewed by NBC's Today Show.

Video in Windows Media format...
Video in QuickTime format...

The Arab language news network Al-Jazeera has plans to begin broadcasting an English-language channel by Spring of 2006. The network already had 30 to 50 million viewers in the Arab-speaking world. The network has been called propagandists, liars and terrorists by many neocons like Donald Rumsfeld and Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly. Even so, Al-Jazeera is almost certain to be a popular news alternative for many English-speaking viewers when it launches.

{Blogged by Brad from the road...}

In a speech today to a "Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Symposium", Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, lauded himself, John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice for having made "enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority."

Gonzales claimed, without any apparent irony, that "We will not tolerate the infringement of voting rights."

He also seems to have contained the instinct to laugh out loud at his very own words when he said, "The results speak for themselves; you're getting the job done and we are making progress."

Progress, indeed. Here are some of the not-ironic-at-all highlights (or lowlights) from his speech today... (Complete text here)

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was re-indicted today on a second charge related to the $190,000 in corporate money that DeLay is said to have illegally participated in laundering for use in a number of Texas state races from 2002.

Using corporate money to finance campaigns has been illegal in the state of Texas for nearly 100 years. Yet DeLay, who had previously been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges in the scheme, is now being charged with directly laundering the money. All of which, incidentally, Republican apologist Ann Coulter has no problem with.

From this morning's NY Times:

{Blogged by Brad in Portland, OR}

Last week, Iraq War vet Paul Rieckhoff of OpTruth.org wrote a troubling blog item in which he discussed the DoD's lip-service given to supporting the troops, while sending at least 40,000 of them into harms way in Iraq with inadequate body armor. His item includes a link to a shocking video showing a sniper taking a clear shot at one U.S. troop who was lucky enough to have the appropriate armor!

Today, Rieckhoff follows that item up with another which includes an email from another troop currently serving in Ramadi, where 11 have been killed in the batallion within the last 10 days.

Rieckhoff notes:

The email from his friend in Ramadi complains about the lack of side armor on vehicles where troops are now being targeted every day by snipers and IED's, and goes on to say:

He goes on to add that, though they should have appropriate air support for their daily missions, they are not getting getting the air cover they need. And then he closes with this troubling phrase...

We continue to follow OpTruth's advice to "Really support the troops...Listen to them." We wish the DoD, and the American people, would do the same.