Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Summit County has recently had problems with failed memory cards as related by The BRAD BLOG on March 9 and March 10. As reported at the time, as many as 30% of the cards completely failed initial testing in the county. A few days later, corresponding tests in North Carolina found more than 1000 of the cards failed. The memory cards, amongst other things, store the vote tabulations from elections.

New tests now in Summit County have also revealed additional failures on both memory cards, and the voting machines "firmware" as well.

Today the Akron Beacon Journal has revealed that Summit County has discovered 28 more bad cards in a batch of what was supposed to be good cards as sent to them by ES&S specifically to replace the previous bad ones.

The Beacon-Journal reports:

The Beacon-Journal is also now reporting that ES&S has found a problem with the firmware --- the software which is embedded into the system's hardware --- on their touch-screen machines that are used in counties across Ohio and across the country. ES&S is currently in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties.

Other states and counties who use ES&S should be made aware of the problems, since ES&S does not seem to be doing so.

On the firmware issue, the Beacon-Journal reports...

According to a late report from AP tonight, Ohio's Sec. of State (and Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney '04 Re-Election Committee) J. Kenneth Blackwell, "accidentally invested" in Diebold last year...

The "discovery" (that he owns shares in Diebold, not that Diebold is the only company to meet HAVA standards --- which they don't) occurred during some ethics filings as the Governor's race, in which Blackwell is a candidate, heats up in the Buckeye State...

According to a Rasumussen poll released on Friday, Blackwell currently trails the likely Democratic nominee for Governor, Rep. Ted Strickland by a 10 point margin of 50% to 40%.

Strickland beats Petro as well in a face-to-face match-up by even more: 47% to 34%.

Strickland appears to be widening the gap against both of them. But count no chickens yet. This is, after all, Ohio.

-- TIME Mag covers here...
-- WaPo covers here...
-- MSNBC covers here...
-- CNN covers here...
-- AP covers here...
-- LATE ADDITION: Houston Chronicle offers more details, and DeLay's Political Obit in the early/late web edition (12:44am PT - Hat tip to Pokey A. in Houston)

From TIME...

What TIME didn't mention, but WaPo did...And which would seem to explain a lot more about his sudden exit after his bravado of the last six months since his indictment...

From CNN...

Says MSNBC...

And here come the bloggers. First in, from Josh Marshall who tends to know this stuff cold...

More subpoenas seem to be on the way for voting machine company officials, this time in Illinois where it looks like the city aldermen in Chicago, according to the Sun-Times are none-too-happy to be forced to continue payments to Sequoia Voting Systems who ran such a disastrous primary on new electronic machines across the state just a few weeks ago.

A similar battle has been underway in Texas where officials have been trying to avoid payment to ES&S for the primary disaster down there on March 7th, just two weeks before the Illinois debacle.

In the meantime, the hypocrisy of the Right Wing continues vis a vis Electronic Voting Machines and their newly discovered concerns, as we reported late last week, about a Venezuelan company, possibly tied to Hugo Chavez, controlling the Sequoia company, and thus having an unknown and troubling amount of concern over American elections.

As in the wingnut piece we pointed to last week, Richard Brand in the Miami Herald (via right-leaning RealClearPolitics.com) is horrified that a company tied to Chavez may be having undue influence over American elections.

Not a word in Brand's piece about the influence over American elections by partisan companies, run by partisan executives, such as Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivic and others who are given carte blanche to use secret, uninspected software to count almost every citizen's vote in the country by now.

So, again, while we're happy to see concern --- no matter where it comes from --- about the little-noticed watershed change in our electoral system which now allows private companies to control the most sacred element of our democracy, with virtually zero checks, balances or public oversight, it's incredibly hypocritical (even by wingnut standards), to turn a blind eye to the Rightwing influence over all the other companies who have even more control over more of American votes.

We'd hope that the concerns about Chavez would suddenly help these guys realize what the hell has been going on here. We're concerned about any private corporation having such influence over our elections. But, in typical Rightwing blinders-on fashion, it's only votes that are perceived to be questionable because they might have undue influence from the Left that seems to concern these folks.

What a pity. But hardly a surprise.

To underscore that irony/hypocrisy, take a look at this concern of Brand's about a recent Venezualan elections run on machines made by Smartmatic, the company which now owns Sequoia (and be sure you're sitting down when you read it)...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Audio in MP3 format...

At a press conference today in Atalanta, Black lawmakers, clergy and activist gathered to declare their continued support for Representative Cynthia McKinney.

McKinney has been accused of "assaulting" a Capitol Police officer. The officer, not recognizing the congresswoman, grabbed McKinney "in an innapproiate way" as she was entering the Capitol Builing. Upon being touched, McKinney apparently touched the officer in return with a mobile phone.

Republican lawmakers and other GOP operatives are now using the issue to "swiftboat" Represenatitive McKinney. As always, the corporate media gladly forsakes important news to participate in the right-wing echo chamber.

As of today, the D.C. Capitol Police confirm that the incident has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office but would not say if a warrant has been issued for McKinney's arrest.

UPDATE: AP reports that D.C. Capitol Police have requested permission from Federal Prosecutors to issue an arrest warrant for Cynthia McKinney.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Senator Russ Feingold steps over the right-wing talking points in Sunday's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox.

As Wallace sets up each Bush Administraion strawman, Feingold knocks it down with the simple truth. The President should not be allowed to break the law.

This is freakin' brilliant: "Chevy's 'Make Your Own Tahoe Commercial' idea not exactly going as planned".

Too funny.

(Hat tip to Huff Po...and another BRAD BLOG reader who tried to point me to these earlier, but whose name I've forgotten. With apologies.)

After being suddenly tossed off the air to make room for yet another religious station in Arizona, Air America Phoenix has found a new home and begins a new broadcast day at Midnight tonight!

They will now be heard at KPHX 1480 AM in Phoenix, or via aaphx.com on the web! Congrats folks! And welcome back! Arizona needs ya now more than ever!

And thanks to all of those BRAD BLOG readers who answered our calls for action in support of AAR Phoenix over the last month or two! It's nice to win one every now and again, huh?

But more good news for progressives in Phoenix, as the smartest man on radio, Peter B. Collins, will begin airing out there as well (on a different station, I believe) beginning the week after next. And judging by his brilliant regular Friday afternoon guest (5:20p PT), I'd say Phoenix is in for an embarrasment of Progressive riches! UPDATE: Peter B. contacts us to say he'll be on KPHX as well! His show will air on tape delay at 10p-1a Mon-Fri!

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The March 27 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

Having a problem with some users not being able to comment as being told they are "Banned". Trying to figure out and fix the problem now. Apologies for whatever reason it's occuring...Hope to have it taken care of shortly.

UPDATE: Fixed? If you had previously not been able to post a comment this morning, please try and post one here to see if we've gotten the problem fixed. If you still can't post, please let me know. Thanks!

Ann Coulter and Al Franken had a high-priced debate out here in Los Angeles this week. Here's a bit of coverage of the event from Rob Eshman in The Jewish Journal. Haven't seen much other coverage out there, though I haven't looked too terribly hard. Please feel free to post links in comments if anything else of note on it out there.

Otherwise, Ryan M. McCaffrey, publisher of the conservative Harvard Salient takes down Coulter from a more academic perspective in an article titled "Ann Coulter's Treason:
Killing the future of the conservative movement" as published a few weeks ago. It followed on the heels of her infamous "Ragheads Speech" embarrassment at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in DC. Not that any of those in attendance who greeted her with a standing ovation were embarrassed in the least. Neither were the pols who shared the limelight with her like Cheney, Frist, Santorum, and other America Haters of the same ilk.

The title of McCaffrey's piece should give you an idea where he --- a seemingly real conservative (versus the phony Coulter et al) --- stands on the Republican Rockstar, but here's a few quick licks:

Both links come courtesy of Dan Borchers of Citizens of Principled Conservatism, and our our resident Conservative Coulter-o-phile who covered her CPAC appearance for The BRAD BLOG last February.

Editor & Publisher, the nation's oldest journal covering the newspaper industry, founded in 1884 has today published a version of my "Why Attribution Matters" piece (originally published at BRAD BLOG a few days ago here).

E&P has done a bit of editing and given it the new title, "Give Credit Where Credit is Due". The E&P version is published here. We'll hope we don't soil their excellent 100+ year reputation.

The piece --- which was spurred originally by AP lifting a story from RAW STORY without giving them credit for their original reporting --- covers the emerging case of Mainstream Media outlets finally picking up on so much of what Internet-based news sites such as this one, RAW, and others have been reporting for many months and sometimes years. It's nice to see them finally recognizing the newsworthiness of such reports, but disappointing to find them failing to give the appropriate credit to those of us who broke such stories in the first place. Stories that the MSM outlets might not otherwise have known about at all. See the editorial for reasons why it matters more than you might think.

In the intervening days between my writing the original piece and giving it to E&P to run, I received an Email from Jason Leopold (previously of RAW, now of Truthout.org) concerning virtually the exact same problem. In this case, a helluva story he broke for RAW in January of this year on how Michael Scanlon's former fiancee kicked off the Jack Abramoff scandals was run as an front page "exclusive" in Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Friday this week.

I believe we'll be seeing much more of this as we move forward, and I can only hope the MSM reviews their attribution policies since "we don't give credit to blogs" as the AP reportedly said while refusing to recognize RAW for their original work, ain't gonna cut it.

Since the final line of my original piece was removed from the version of the Braditorial which ran today on E&P, I believe it bears repeating here. Paraphrasing Stephen Colbert (See? Attribution! Is that so hard!?) my piece concluded: "MSM, you're on notice."

And you still are.

UPDATE: Jeralynn has more on this at Talk Left...

FURTHER UPDATE: Now Josh Marshall is pissed off about the same thing, since the MSM lifted some four stories alone last last week from reports at his TPMCafe! His piece begins "Okay, enough is enough." Agreed! What the hell is going on here?! (Hat tip to Jeralynn for pointing Josh's piece out to me. See? Attribution again! Wasn't that simple?!)

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

In this video, Senator Lindsey Graham questions John Dean and Bruce Fein at today's Censure Hearing. Besides being argumentative and contrary, it's difficult to make much sense out of the Senator's hostility.

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster has this to say about Senator Graham's performance:

Meanwhile meanwhile... The Wingnuts have discovered they too should be concerned about hackable Electronic Voting Machines, as we find in this article posted yesterday over at RedState blog --- the site co-founded by serial plagiarist and disgraced former Washington Post blogger (for three days anyway) Ben Domenech --- concerning new ownership of Sequoia by Venezuelan firm Smartmatic.

Apparently, the writer is concerned about Electronic Voting Machines only now that he's realized Smartmatic may be owned or controlled or unduly influenced by one Hugo Chavez. He goes so far as to quote these words by another blogger in his article:

While we're glad to see the Wingnuts suddenly giving a damn about Electronic Voting --- now that they're concerned about their own ox being gored by a company which may have left-leaning ownership --- we're hardly surprised that the anonymous blogger who calls him or herself "AcademicElephant" (we'll presume it's a "he") didn't seem to have such concerns about another Voting Machine Company with "connections to the George W. Bush regime [being] selected to run elections" all over our country in 2004 during one of the most contentious elections in our country's history.

But of more concern for the moment, now that Mr. Elephant has suddenly decided to be worried about such important matters as a transparent and accountable democracy, he sadly exhibits the all-too-familiar Wingnut tendency of having a problem with that whole pesky "fact thing".

By way of example, Mr. Elephant decides right off the bat to use some of the same tired old misleading propaganda in one of his early grafs...