Well, it looks like we've got our answer. The White House didn't bother to even come up with a casualty estimate for their new escalation plan in Iraq. So much for "supporting the troops." At least if Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice is to be believed.

We've been asking since last Sunday --- and then again just after Bush's Wednesday night speech when he said, "We must expect more Iraqi and American casualties" --- what the White House's estimates are for the increased (or decreased) body count that we can expect vis-a-vis his new plan for a troop "augmentation" (nee "surge") in Iraq.

Surely due diligence when creating such a plan requires such estimates be made by the military for the cost expected in blood for our U.S. troops before such a plan is actually implemented.

Well, finally, the question has been asked of the White House, or at least of Rice, during yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the planned escalation.

If Rice is to be believed, the White House has made no such estimate.

When asked directly by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), "Do you have an estimate of the number of casualties we expect from this surge?", Rice's answer came back as: "No, uh, Senator...I don't think there's any way to give you such an estimate."

Boxer's question came after a morning of tough questions and statements for Rice --- from both Republicans and Democrats --- and after the Senator's own statement in which she discussed the fact that "we are alone in this escalation of troops." She was referring to the point that no other countries among our allies in Iraq would be increasing their own troop strength. In fact, the British have announced they will be decreasing troops in the region over the next few months.

(The entire hearing can be seen via Real Video from C-SPAN here. Boxer's questioning of Rice comes at appx. the 1:47:00 mark.)

And while one would think the admission that the White House has announced a plan to send more than 20,000 U.S. troops into harm's way without first measuring the cost in blood expected by such an increase to be rather newsworthy, rightwing pundits from outlets such as Fox "News" and the New York Post have taken the opportunity to criticize Boxer for the way in which she framed the question instead. In the bargain, they've virtually ignored both the question itself, Rice's answer, and the apparent stunning delinquency of the White House if Rice is to be believed.

Jon Soltz, an Iraq War vet who is co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, tells The BRAD BLOG he's dubious of Rice's statement.

"The Pentagon knows how many casualties they estimate for any of the actions the additional troops will be taking part of. It's basic war planning," Solz told us this morning. "Depending on what happens, that number could go up or go down, but they know what they expect."

Soltz joins our call for the public release of such an estimate from the Pentagon or White House --- if it in fact exists --- given the new policy comes in the wake of previous policy errors and underestimates.

"Normally, the military shouldn't have to release those estimates, but given that the administration is asking more troops to pay for its mistakes, they should be up front about how many they believe are going to make the ultimate sacrifice," he explained.

Solz has been critical of Bush's planned escalation, and was the only Iraq War veteran invited to speak at a recent Senate Leadership press conference in response to the new plan.

...ATTACKING THE MESSENGER...

As reported by RAW STORY this morning --- the New York Post, while ignoring Rice's news and choosing instead to focus on Boxer having pointed out that neither she nor Rice had children who would directly pay the price for the planned increase in troops sent to Iraq, characterized the question as a "slur" to Rice.

"IT'S WAR: Dem Childless Condi Slur," screamed their front page this morning. Their friends and corporate partners over at Fox "News" were all too happy to pick up that ball and run with it as usual. Their front page screamer: "Boxer's Sucker Punch: Calif. senator lashes out at Rice's personal life."

Over at Fox "News" however, not only did their website manage to avoid discussion of Rice's stunning admission, their FOX & Friends morning crew spent much of the day not just attacking Boxer for the way she framed the question, but they unquestioningly parroted Rice's answer --- "I don't think that any of us, uh, have a number. That, of expected casualties." --- to the Senator...

Don't even know where to begin with this story. But begin we must. Don't even know what category to put it in. From AP...

Melinda Henneberger interviews Christine Jennings, who would have won her race for the U.S. House in Florida's 13th district were it not for the ES&S touch-screen voting machines in Sarasota County, which robbed her (so far) of her rightful seat.

We guess candidates have to actually get screwed by these machines themselves before they are capable of fully appreciating the dangers about which we write here virtually every day. At the end of Henneberger's piece, she quotes Jennings in reference to some of the oft-ignored Election Integrity Advocates (like yours truly) who have long been trying to raise the reddest of flags. In this case, Jennings refers to the good folks of the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections (SAFE) with an "I'd wish I'd listened to them" sub-text impossible to ignore...

So what will it take for the rest of the Democratic Party to start getting it?

We gave her a few months off while we covered more pressing items to our nation, but it looks like the troubles are still far from over for right-wing demagogue/hate-monger turned felonious vote fraudster Ann Coulter.

Palm-Beach Post's Jose Lambiet, who originally broke the story a year or so ago, has another scoop today on the matter and The BRAD BLOG has now obtained the documents on which his scoop is based.

Lambiet's item today covers PB County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson's difficulty in finding a local law enforcement agency with the stones --- or at least, the jurisdiction --- to take on the hypocritical pundit even though a police report completed in late November, requested by Anderson, indicates that Coulter could be facing two third degree felony charges, along with one first degree misdemeanor, if charged.

Newly added to the previously known allegations of Voter Fraud --- when Coulter used her realtor's address instead of her own on her Voter Registration Application --- is the allegation by the Palm Beach Police Department that Coulter seems to also have given that same, incorrect address when applying for a driver's license after moving to the tony Sunshine State 'hood, where her fellow GOP propagandist Rush Limbaugh has recently had his own troubles following the rule of law.

The allegation concerning Driver's License Fraud would be yet another third degree felony, according to the Palm Beach Police Department report!

The BRAD BLOG has obtained the complete PBPD report (linked below), summarized by Lambiet as revealing that Coulter "could end up charged with: one felony count for signing a voter form claiming she lived at her Realtor's Indian Road home instead of her Seabreeze Avenue homestead; one felony count for 'unauthorized possession of a driver's license,' also for providing the same wrong address when obtaining her license; and a misdemeanor for knowingly voting in the wrong precinct."

Lambiet reports that Anderson has been making the rounds seeking a law enforcement outlet with the proper jurisdiction since, he says, the PB County Supervisor of Elections office is "not an investigative agency" and given that there has been "significant interest from the community" in seeing the matter addressed. But, so far, Florida authorities have yet to touch the case. According to Lambiet...

The three-page Palm Beach Police Department November report, and the accompanying one-page December letter to Anderson from Chief of Police Michael S. Reiter, detailing Coulter's apparent felonies and misdemeanor, is available right here...

PREVIOUS COULTER VOTER FRAUD DOCS:

• Pollworker's Incident Report & Letter from Anderson to Coulter requesting explanation...
• Palm Beach County Property records proving Coulter lied on her Voter Registration Application...
• Coulter's Felonious Voter Registration Form...

Does this guy despise democracy or what?

Unbelievable.

(Feel free to use this item as an Open Thread for tonight's speech, as I may not be able to blog it...but we'll see. RAW STORY has the complete text of the speech. Will leave this on top for now.)

POST-SPEECH UPDATE:

BUSH: "[W]e must expect more Iraqi and American casualties."

And so we ask again, as we did on Sunday: How many more casualties are expected due to Bush's escalation of the War?

The White House/Pentagon undoubtedly have made estimates in the course of their planning, right? If so, what are the numbers? How much of our blood (Barb's and Jenna's not included) is Bush willing to spend on the gamble which nobody but he, McCain, Lieberman, and possibly Barney (though I doubt it) are in favor of? The People and the Congress have the right to know. They need to demand it.

If no such estimate of a surge or fall in the body count has been made while considering this plan, the White House has been impeachably delinquent. So, is any Congress member or media type out there, other than me, going to ask that question?

NOTE: Yes, we know the chyron is from a political debate show. But does anybody have any examples of similarly obnoxious/partisan/unsupported chyrons from Fox saying something like "George W. Bush: War Criminal" or under the former Speaker of the House "Dennis Hasbeen"? If so, we'd love to see them. Versus endless examples like the one above or this crap and this nonsense, or Fox calling Ted Kennedy a "hostile enemy" of America on one of their "news" programs (versus debate) as they did this morning (video).

I understand there is someone --- I think his name is Colmes or something --- who is supposed to represent the other side on that "debate" show. Does he actually show up for work? Does he give a damn that the side he's supposed to represent is so regularly shat upon by the producers of the show which has his name in the title? You probably don't need to answer that...

Yes, like the Energizer Bunny, the case in CA50 (Jacobson v. Bilbray) is still going. The first oral arguments on the appeal took place on Monday.

To recap: the original case was filed last Summer by San Diego voters Gail Jacobson and Lillian Ritt against then-candidate Brian Bilbray and SD County Registrar of Voters/Voter Hater Mikel Haas, after a BRAD BLOG report revealed that pre-programmed, election-ready, hackable-in-60-seconds Diebold voting machines were sent home illegally (in our rarely humble opinion, though one shared in a recent interview by California's new Secretary of State Debra Bowen) with poll workers on overnight "sleepovers" days and weeks before the U.S. House Special Election last July to replace the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

There is much more than just the "sleepovers" at question in the case, like the fact that Haas, one of America's worst Elections Officials, arbitrarily and capriciously quoted a legal request by voters for a hand-count in the race at $150,000, effectively stymieing the possibility that such a count would happen at all. Also at issue is the fact that the case was tossed out by a lower court judge after the Bilbray team argued --- with the help of a letter [PDF] from the then-Republican U.S. House Admin Committee in Congress --- that California courts and voters had no say over the issue.

In that letter, the House Admin Committee argued that they, not the California courts or voters, had sole jurisdiction over the case once Bilbray was sworn in. He was sworn in after a fax was sent claiming he was the winner of the election, from the very partisan and now-former CA SoS Bruce McPherson's deputy, Susan Lapsley. Lapsley sent the fax just days after the election, despite the controversy that had erupted over the effectively-decertified voting systems used in the race, the slim reported margin between the two candidates, and the fact that the state hadn't yet actually certified the race, in which tens of thousands of votes in San Diego county had yet to be counted at the time.

Attorney Paul Lehto, working with Carlsbad attorney Ken Simpkins, filed both the original case and the appeal. UPDATE: We've now got a number of accounts of the argument from folks in the courtroom on Monday.

First, Simpkins sends us the following update (which is shorter than our recap) from the first day of hearings last Monday in the appellate case...

Describing it as a "threat...intended to interfere with the independence of the judiciary" in Florida's 13th Congressional District election contest, one of the defendants in the case, Elections Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), has filed a motion to strike a letter sent last week to Florida's appellate court from the Chair of the U.S. House Administration Committee, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs describe the motion as "remarkable" and "a blatant thumb in the eye of Congress."

In her January 5th letter [PDF], the new Democratic chair of the committee, Juanita Millender-McDonald, responded to a lower court's decision at the end of the year refusing the release of the computer source code used on the paperless ES&S touch-screen systems during last November's contested election. Circuit Court Judge William L. Gary held in his decision at that time that the proprietary "trade secrets" of ES&S took precedence over Florida voters' right to know what actually occurred in their own U.S. House election.

The plaintiffs in the case --- Democrat Christine Jennings and several non-partisan election watchdog groups --- had requested review of the source code to aid in an independent expert investigation to help determine what went wrong when Sarasota's touch-screen systems, made by ES&S, failed to report some 18,000 votes in Jennings's race for the U.S. House against the Republican Vern Buchanan.

Buchanan was certified as the "winner" by the state of Florida despite his 369 vote margin and questions about the contest based on the extraordinarily high undervote rate on Sarasota County's voting systems. The still-unexplained undervote rate in the county was approximately five times higher than in the same race in neighboring counties, and similarly much higher than the undervote rate in the same race on the paper absentee ballots in the very same county.

In today's motion [PDF], obtained this afternoon by The BRAD BLOG, ES&S demands the court strike Millender-McDonald's letter from the record. They claim that it's an "unauthorized, non-party response" and that her letter was a "thinly veiled attempt...to intimidate this Court and unduly influence its deliberations in order to give Petitioner [Jennings], a member of Millender-McDonald's political party, an unwarranted advantage in this election contest."

That, despite the fact that Jennings has challenged the election in the U.S. House under the Federal Contested Elections Act and that a letter [PDF], similarly from the U.S. House Administration Committee --- then under Republican rule --- sent to a California court was instrumental and cited by the Judge in the dismissal of a contested U.S. House Special Election last summer between Brian Bilbray (R) and Francine Busby (D) in California's 50th district.

David Becker, a Senior Attorney at PFAW Foundation, one of the groups supporting the voter plaintiffs in the case, tells The BRAD BLOG that the claims made by ES&S in their motion "take a lot of chutzpah." ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, Executive Director, VotersUnite.Org

Moving the ball forward a bit in regard to New York Times' stunning report last week that Ciber was refused interim accreditation last July. I've been able to learn a bit more about the existence of the paperwork concerning that denial of accreditation.

The refusal, according to the Times front page exclusive last week, was due to an inspection the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) conducted at the lab. Ciber is one of the three e-voting test labs or Independent Testing Authoritys (ITAs) which are paid by the Voting Machine Companies themselves to test their hardware and software prior to federal certification.

But contradictions have been flowing from the EAC in the considerable fallout from the Times report which revealed the commission not only failed to accredit Ciber, they also failed to tell the public, or even state and local Elections Officials who used the systems approved by Ciber for last November's election. What nobody --- except the EAC knew --- was that, according to the Times Ciber "was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests."

While at first the EAC had denied there was any paperwork documenting the reasons why they had denied interim accreditation to Ciber, I've now been able to learn from an EAC source that such paperwork actually exists. The EAC has simply, again, withheld it from the public. So far. I was then able to get confirmation about it from an EAC spokesperson, along with a hint as to when the world might get to see the actual reasons they withheld accreditation from the private testing lab...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer
Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Greenpeace's John Passacantado in this 10 minute clip that aired yesterday. Passacantando discusses the plight of the polar bear and the extensive effort undertaken by Exxon and the White House to mislead the public about global warming. Also worth checking out is Greenpeace's sobering website, "Exxon Secrets", which is essentially a searchable database evidencing the long reach of the oil behemoth's disinformation campaign.

For the record, despite all appearances, Passacantando and BRAD BLOG's own Brad Friedman are not related.

DRUDGE made the usual jerk of himself yesterday by slamming the Dems for taking the day off for a football game, when in reality, it was later revealed by RAW STORY to have been done "in the spirit of bi-partisan" after a request to take the day off from Republican Minority Leader John Boehner.

"Democrats ran to expand the work week in the House to 5 days. But guess how long that lasted? Not even one week!," Drudge breathlessly sniffed beneath his FLASH headline.

The Wingnut 'sphere had a field day with the headline, as they always do when instructed by DRUDGE. Including, of course, the sycophantic losers at Fox "News'" FOX and Friends who yucked it up on cue at the Dems expense all morning, according to this report by Newshounds.

When the truth was later revealed, and with what should have been egg on their face, the Fox "News" phonies this morning predictably played down their error with the usual "some had said," taking no accountability for the fact that the "some" had been them.

Hat-tip for the report, and the video, to Newshounds: "Watching FOX so you don't have to."

There's been a fair amount of media coverage (at least in California papers), since our scoop yesterday of new CA SoS Debra Bowen's brilliant appointment of dogged E-voting critic and VoterAction.org attorney Lowell Finley to the post of Deputy SoS for Voting Systems Technology and Policy.

There are a couple more ironic points to the Finley appointment above and beyond the ones we mentioned yesterday. One we knew about, another we hadn't.

In his report on the matter, Oakland Tribune's Ian Hoffman reminds us of the qui tam lawsuit filed by Finley against voting machine company Diebold and joined by the state in 2004, which eventually resulted in a settlement:

In a point we hadn't previously known, the Los Angeles Times blogger on state capitol and gubernatorial issues, Robert Sallady, highlighted our coverage here --- describing us as "The state's most persistent blogger-watchdog on the dangers of voting technology" (thank you, sir) --- and advanced the story a bit with this irony-laden chestnut about the man who will now, officially, be working as an appointed member of Schwarzenegger's own Executive Branch:

Office Christmas parties next year in Sacramento ought to be a hoot. Hopefully the Governator supplies the medication.

It may not be a very good day in the corporate offices at Diebold, but The BRAD BLOG has learned some big news that may well indicate today is a very good day indeed for the voters of America and specifically in California.

As incoming Sec. of State Debra Bowen was sworn in to her new office just moments ago, The BRAD BLOG can now reveal that one of the nation's top critics of unverifiable electronic voting systems --- and a key player across several states in the legal battles against voting machine companies such as Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Hart Intercivic --- is today being named by the new California Sec. of State Debra Bowen as Deputy SoS for Voting Systems Technology and Policy.

Lowell Finley, the lead attorney for the non-partisan voting machine legal watchdog organization VoterAction.org, will be named to the position today.

In his new capacity, Finley will oversee testing and certification for all voting machine technology in the State of California. In a phone call this morning, Finley confirmed that he would be working closely in his new role with key national associations like the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC).

E-voting critics and at least one California Registrar of Voters have hailed both the swearing in of Bowen as SoS and her appointment of Finley, expressing delight to The BRAD BLOG over the news, characterizing it as a "colossal surprise" and a "very, very good sign for the future of voters' rights in California."

America's voting machine companies are less likely to feel quite as happy about the news.

Finley and VoterAction have filed a number of landmark lawsuits in several states, including in California, over the past year or so, demanding an immediate halt to the use and purchase of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE/touch-screen) voting systems and decertification of many of those systems, as well as improved processes for certification of such systems.

VoterAction is one of over 30 Election Reform organizations who recently went on record with an open letter to Members of Congress demanding federal legislation requiring a paper ballot for every vote cast in America. Such legislation would effectively ban the use of DRE systems, with or without a so-callled "Voter Verified Paper Trail" (VVPAT).

Bowen has been a dogged critic of former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson during her candidacy and in her role overseeing the Elections Committee as a California State Senator. She has criticized his lack of oversight and lax testing procedures, and has championed a "Voters' Bill of Rights" for the Golden State.

While a suit by VoterAction.org filed against former SoS McPherson and several CA Registrars of Voting --- concerning McPherson's certification of Diebold TSx touch-screen systems --- is still pending in state court, the disposition of that suit will likely change due to the fact that the lead defendant, McPherson, is no longer in office.

The Berkeley-based attorney Finley --- also one of the attorneys representing voter plaintiffs in the contested election in Florida's 13th Congressional district in Sarasota --- had one of his most recent and notable successes last September, when a Colorado judge ordered a complete review of certification procedures for voting machines in the state. The court found the official placed in charge of testing and certification didn't have the qualifications necessary, and performed little or no testing. That man, John Gardner, was appointed by former CO Sec. of State Donetta Davidson, who has been appointed by George W. Bush to head the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission.

The news of Finley's appointment will undoubtedly be of concern to the major voting machine companies that received little oversight from the former Sec. of State McPherson.

"I wish I was a fly on the wall in the offices at Diebold as they learn of this appointment. I'm sure jaws will be dropping and damage control will be ramping up," John Gideon of election watchdog organization VotersUnite.org told us today. (Gideon is also a frequent Guest Blogger here at The BRAD BLOG.) ...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer