Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

As The BRAD BLOG reported yesterday, voting machine company ES&S has finally relented and agreed to join all of the other companies operating in the state by cooperating with the Secretary of State Debra Bowen's "Top-to-Bottom Review" of all electronic voting systems previously certified by her predecessor Bruce McPherson. After previously refusing to supply the state with source code for the company's InkaVote Plus system used exclusively in Los Angeles County, Bowen had demanded the release of the source code from escrow where it was stored by state law, as we also reported previously.

But has ES&S really relented? Or is something else up?

We asked yesterday why ES&S decided to send their source code, instead of allowing Bowen to pull it from the escrow facility at Iron Mountain, as she had previously demanded. And now, based on a letter from the company which The BRAD BLOG was able to obtain from one of our sources, as sent to Bowen's office when they agreed to supply the source code Monday, the smell of something fishy continues to permeate. The complete ES&S letter is posted in full at the bottom of this article.

On Monday, June 25, ES&S sent the letter to Lowell Finley, California's Deputy Sec. of State in charge of Voting Systems Technology and Policy, agreeing to supply the source code for InkaVote Plus is an amazing example of the company's arrogance even as it continues to beg a myriad of unanswered questions.

ES&S opens the letter repeating their desire for changes to the previously agreed upon Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) they have with the state. AS well, they believe the cost of Bowen's "top-to-bottom review" is too high, and they have concerns with some of the researchers who are doing the review. Nonetheless, they agree to cooperate.

Yet, after informing Finley that they intend to finally send the required source code, they instruct him that they expect him to send a letter to Iron Mountain Intellectual Property Management Inc. to release the firm from the state's request for the escrowed source code. Now why would they need to do that?

"As ES&S is providing the InkaVote Plus voting system source code directly to your office, ES&S requests that you send a letter to Iron Mountain retracting your request for the InkaVote Plus voting system source code," writes ES&S' Steven M. Pearson in the letter.

"This will provide the required notification to Iron Mountain that you are no longer in need of the requested source code and allow Iron Mountain to close your request. In addition, this will avoid ES&S from having to issue contrary instructions to Iron Mountain to prohibit the release of the InkaVote Plus voting system source code."

So what the heck is that all about?...

Blogged by Brad (quickly) from Atlanta...

Constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley on Olbermann: "For many years, since we first found out about this program, some of us have said that this was a clearly criminal act that the president called for. ... If we're right, not only did he order that crime, but it would be, in fact, an impeachable offense."

"This administration, I have to say, has a certain contempt for the law," added Turley. "They treat it like some of my criminal defendents used to treat it. ... They come up with any argument that might work. ... It's a sort of shocking development. ... But at the end of the day, they will lose, and they're making the situation worse."

Full story, video at RAW STORY.

Blogged by Brad from Atlanta...

Following on subpoenas issued to both Dick Cheney and the White House earlier today on the warrantless wire-tapping issue, the Summer of Accountability continues as the heat grows on both Cheney and Gonzales in the matter of the refusal by Cheney's office to provide reports on the handling of classified information.

A statement just sent to The BRAD BLOG (posted in full at the end of this article) by the offices of Representatives Conyers, Waxman, and Clay calls on Gonzales to explain his position on the National Archives request for Cheney to comply with an Executive Order requiring all Executive Branch offices to detail their handling of classified material and his subsequent refusal.

Cheney has claimed, in his failure to file appropriate reports for the last three years, that he didn't need to because the Office of the Vice President is not a part of the Executive Branch (that, despite their having complied with the order in years prior to 2003, when it seems they leaked the classified identify of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame).

In the statement, Waxman says Cheney's response is "absurd," Conyers calls it "highly dubious," and Clay characterizes the matter as "a breathtaking act of arrogance" in which Cheney is making a mockery of the law and our system of checks and balances."

The complete statement from Waxman, Conyers, and Clay follows in full below...

Blogged by Brad from Atlanta...

BRAD BLOG readers will recall Greg Palast's exclusive here which followed on Monica Goodling's admissions in Congressional testimony concerning Tim Griffin's vote caging. As well, you may also recall an attack on Palast's reporting by DailyKos diarist "drational," in which he described Palast's reporting as "dangerous." Subsequently, Palast responded to those challenges here.

Well, the pseudonymous "drational" has now followed up with an excellent analysis of the caging lists which shores up the bulk of Palast's claims and reporting (even if he can't help but take a few more inappropriate and unhelpful shots at the guy who broke the story in the first place, and kept banging on it for two and a half years until Mr. "Drat" finally found the time to investigate the charges).

"Drational" posted a follow-up today on the RNC's "Widespread Caging in 2004" (in FL, OH, NV, WA, and OR, all crucial battlegrounds) and names names of high-level Bush/Cheney officials and others who seem to have been involved in some way.

Yesterday's "drational" posting was based, in no small part, on a detailed analysis researched and published by the good folks at ePluribus Media.

Also yesterday, Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker posted a similar independent analysis of the Tim Griffin caging lists. His findings, as well, "strengthened allegations that Griffin, working for the Republican National Committee, was involved in an effort to target African-American voters."

All four posts mentioned are worth reading in full, with a reminder that we quoted a bit more from TPM Muck in Alan Breslauer's posting here yesterday of Tim Griffin's recent denial video in which he strains credulity by claiming he didn't even know what caging was, and had to look it up in a dictionary.

Nice try, Tim. In the meantime, any broadcast news outlets ready to run the story yet? Or will they wait until after it happens again, say, in 2008 or so?

Oh, and Mr. "Drat"? You owe a straight up --- unqualified --- apology to Palast for your original, over-the-top, un-researched, knee-jerk attacks on his reporting. Advancing and/or independently verifying someone's reporting is appropriate and appreciated, as you did in your latest. As well, holding folks responsible when elements are incorrect is also helpful. Going off half-cocked, as you did, with claims that Palast's reporting on this was "dangerous" and trying to justify those claims later based on several errors you claim to have found, none of which change the thrust of his original reports, as you did in your very good follow-ups, is less than impressive, in our opinion.

UPDATE: We failed to link, originally, to the ePluribus Media report upon which much of "drational's" article was based. We've now corrected that failure in the above article and have changed both the text and the headline to incorporate and link to their excellent work. The BRAD BLOG regrets the original oversight.

UPDATE 6/29/07 10:53pm PT: "drational" has done the right thing and posted "My Real Apology to Greg Palast..." at DailyKos. Some additional thoughts of mine posted in comments here.

Blogged by Brad from Atlanta...

Just out from AP...

As TPM Muckraker notes in their breaking coverage, "The trigger is pulled...Get ready for a huge court fight."

RAW STORY has a statement from Sen. Leahy concerning the subpoenas.

And as Joseph Cannon guest blogged here yesterday, a subpoena was/is needed to begin the impeachment process. Any subpeona issued to Cheney's office and/or the White House. Well, we now have one.

"If Cheney or any of his underlings refuse to comply with a single subpoena --- and that's a very good bet --- he becomes instantly impeachable, on the same grounds that brought down Nixon," wrote Cannon, who knows the topic well.

Stay tuned. It may be a busy summer...

UPDATE 12:06pm PT: In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG (posted in full below) Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says "After a year and a half of stonewalling by the Administration...The bipartisan support for issuing these subpoenas demonstrates that both Democrats and Republicans are fed up with the misleading statements from the Attorney General and the Administration about this illegal program."

Feingold's complete brief statement follows below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

The BRAD BLOG has learned this evening that source code and a check were sent to the state of California by ES&S. Readers may recall that as of last Thursday ES&S had not complied with Sec. of State Debra Bowen's demand for a copy of the source code used exclusively in Los Angeles County.

According to a Secretary of State spokesperson, they received a copy of the source code and a check to cover the expense for the state's "top-to-bottom" review. ES&S finally relented, and sent the code only after Bowen had demanded it be released from escrow as per state law.

Questions still remain and your intrepid correspondent will be following-up with the state.

Why did the code come from ES&S and not from Iron Mountain, Inc., the escrow agent? Is there something in the escrowed code that ES&S does not wish the state to see? How does the state know that the code they got from ES&S is the same code used to build the software running on the machines used in LA County?

Today Wired News' Kim Zetter reported on their "Threat Level" blog that Maryland Election Director, and long-time Diebold apologist, Linda Lamone has allowed her statements and picture to be used in new advertising brochures Diebold has produced to promote their Express Poll 5000 electronic poll books.

Zetter quotes Lamone:

Note Lamone's mention of being pleased during the general election.

As Zetter points out in her article, the machines that Lamone is speaking for failed spectacularly in Maryland during last September's Maryland primary election. The machines also failed in Georgia last July. It appears that Diebold was doing what seems to have become a common practice among the voting machine vendors, "Beta Testing" in a real election. While Diebold claimed that they fixed all of the problems found during the primaries, at least one official told Zetter that machines in at least one precinct crashed when a last name beginning with "Cur" was typed in.

And what about the conflict of interest of Lamone shilling for a company that the state is doing business with? Zetter goes on to report...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Brad wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. Then Greg Palast offered up a heartfelt apology on BRAD BLOG writing, "Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry." And now you can watch part of the infamous speech that will surely leave many readers teary eyed themselves. The part available at left is where Griffin denies knowing anything about vote caging, and references Palast --- though he refuses to mention him by name.

Of course, Griffin seems to have known what caging was, and had no similar problem naming names in the spreadsheet documents he sent to other Bush/Cheney and RNC operatives in an email with the subject line "Re: caging". The spreadsheet attachments contained lists of voters --- mostly minority voters, some serving over seas --- which they had planned to challenge at the polls in Florida during the 2004 election.

Thanks to TPMtv/Muckraker for the video. As well, they have done their own analysis of the Griffin caging lists in order to verify Palast's findings

Yes, "illegal". As we've been reporting for quite some time now. Also, in violation of several consent decrees, signed by the RNC during the 80's, that they would no longer target minority voters in these type of campaigns.

Guest Blogged by Joseph Cannon

As Des points out below, top Republicans are now plotting ways to remove Dick Cheney from office. The thinking is that a vacancy in the Veep's office could well provide a berth for one of the 2008 Republican contenders --- McCain or Thompson.

The strategy could work two ways, of course. Anyone who replaces Cheney will get Bush administration "cooties." It won't be easy to wash off the smell by November of 2008.

How to bell the cat? After Downing Street has some excellent suggestions. I have one of my own.

Call on your senators and congressional representatives and ask to have documents subpoenaed from Cheney's office. Which documents? It almost doesn't matter. Documents pertinent to the energy task force. Documents pertinent to the use of torture. Documents pertinent to the Niger forgeries. Anything will more or less do.

All of Cheney's staffers can be subpoenaed as well, on any number of issues. A Congressional investigation of Plame-gate. Haliburton contracts. The refusal to comply with the National Archives. Anything. Everything. All at once.

If Cheney or any of his underlings refuse to comply with a single subpoena --- and that's a very good bet --- he becomes instantly impeachable, on the same grounds that brought down Nixon. Cheney no longer has many friends in Congress. Nobody has his back.

If every person reading these words made the call to his or her House and Senate members, Cheney could well be history. First subpoena, then impeach. That's the plan, and it WILL work.

Click here to contact your Congress member...

UPDATE 6/27/07 11:15am PT: Breaking: AP reports subpeonas are served on Cheney and the White House...

Guest Blogged by DES from Atlanta, GA...

Sally Quinn at WaPo writes:

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The video includes highlights from John and Elizabeth Edwards's Tonight Show appearance last night. Elizabeth, who looked great and said she feels great, gave an impassioned response to a Leno question about the mixed reaction the Edwardses received from the media after deciding to continue on with the presidential campaign after her diagnosis with incurable breast cancer, stating at one point, "And honestly, people who have been in the same situation all do what we do. Just grab hold of life as hard as they can and do everything they can to make whatever days they've got left mean something."

On the lighter side, Leno questioned Elizabeth about whether she hangs out with "some of the other spouses like Michelle Obama or Bill Clinton" at campaign functions. John Edwards also garnered laughs by poking fun at his highly publicized $400 haircut.

Guest Blogged by Joseph Cannon

Larisa Alexandrovna draws our attention to a piece by noted reactionary Michelle Malkin. In her blog, Malkin publishes some photos of Iranian police brutalizing four men, and adds these comments:

As we'll see in a moment, Malkin hasn't quite told the truth about those photos. But even if we were to take her assertions at face value, Malkin has ignored what we may call the "Matthew 7:4 factor."...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

While BRAD BLOG has extensively covered the "Vote Caging" issue over the past two years, including Brad's post from the road today, the file would not be complete without this video clip of John Conyers (D-MI) questioning Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing last week. For more details on McNulty's testimony as well as an interesting exchange between Conyers and Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) at the end of the clip, see Margie Burns's June 21 BRAD BLOG post.

Blogged quickly by Brad Friedman from Alabama (with a laptop on my knee)...

McClatchy's excellent Greg Gordon reports that the DoJ had written a letter in support of vote caging by Republicans in Ohio in 2004...

As BRAD BLOG readers know, we've been reporting --- often far too exclusively --- on the Florida 2004 vote caging scheme by former GOP oppo-researcher turned Karl Rove assistant turned Arkansas US Attorney turned disgraced former US Attorney, Tim Griffin. As we're on the roll, we'll have to refer you to our "Vote Caging" category for our previous detailed coverage. Scroll through the articles on that page for much more background.

But here's a bit more from McClatchy's piece today...

Guest blogged by Arlen Parsa of The Daily Background

On January 10th, George W. Bush stood before the nation in a prime-time address and outlined his plan for a so-called "surge" of American troops into Iraq. The explicitly stated purpose of the "surge" was to lower sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, so that political progress could occur.

"The violence in Iraq --- particularly in Baghdad," Bush admitted, "overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made." The escalation's goal was to cut the level of violence, Bush said, later promising that "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home."

On May 2nd, Bush reiterated that the goal of his "surge" was to bring down the overall amount of sectarian violence in Iraq, saying "The definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down."

Most Americans now agree that the surge is not achieving its intended goal of lowering violence. A CBS/NYT poll in May found that 76% believed the "surge" was either making the situation in Iraq worse, or having no effect whatsoever. Despite the fact that all the "surged" troops are now in place in Baghdad, the second in command in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno recently conceded that 60% of Baghdad is still out of control.

In the face of a worsening situation in Iraq, military officials have now backed away from the original purpose of the surge-- decreasing the level of violence.