The BRAD BLOG

USA Swings Both Ways: Pentagon Backs Both Sides in the Iraqi Civil War

It's Nothing Less Than Treason If It's True...

... and by all accounts it appears to be true!

By Winter Patriot on 8/4/2006 2:00pm PT

USA Today has the "latest":
U.S. commander expresses fear about possible civil war in Iraq

The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East told Congress on Thursday that "Iraq could move toward civil war" if the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad is not stopped.

Much as I hate to disagree with the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, I have to question this assertion. Waddaya mean: "move toward civil war"? How many civilians have to get blown to bloody smithereens every day to qualify this mess as a civil war? How many death squads have to roam the country simultaneously before we can all just can the sleazy rhetoric and admit that the Iraqi Civil War is here now?

And as the Washington Post reported recently, some of our guys are starting to get the impression that they are simply 'Waiting to Get Blown Up'.

The commanders in Baghdad and the Pentagon are "looking at the big picture all the time, but for us, we don't see no big picture, it's just always another bomb out here," said Spec. Joshua Steffey, 24, of Asheville, N.C. The company's commanding officer, Capt. Douglas A. DiCenzo of Plymouth, N.H., and his gunner, Spec. Robert E. Blair of Ocala, Fla., were killed by a roadside bomb in May.

Steffey said he wished "somebody would explain to us, 'Hey, this is what we're working for.' " With a stream of expletives, he said he could not care less "if Iraq's free" or "if they're a democracy."
...
"My personal opinion, I don't speak for the rest of anybody, I just speak for me personally, I think civil war is going to happen regardless," Steffey responded. "Maybe this country needs it: One side has to win. Be it Sunni, be it Shiite, one side has to win. It's apparent, these people have made it obvious they can't live in unity."

Did you ever wonder why they can't live in unity now even though they could live in relative peace before the Americans came to destroy their country?

Did you ever wonder why American soldiers in Iraq are considering the possibility that maybe the country "needs" a civil war?...

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Article Categories: Iraq War

ComputerWorld Covers Busby/Bilbray Voting Machine 'Sleepover' Lawsuit, Contest...

By Brad Friedman on 8/4/2006 9:03am PT

Motel Blogged from the road by Brad...

In addition to the previous article mentioned in Florida, more Voting Machine 'Sleepover' coverage today, this time from Marc Songini in ComputerWorld...

A lawsuit has grown out of alleged breaches in security procedures around electronic voting machines in San Diego County after a hotly contested congressional election, throwing a spotlight on the reliability of the machines themselves.

The suit, filed on Monday, requests that a special election on June 6 to fill the 50th Congressional District seat be invalidated. It also seeks a complete hand recount of the paper ballots, said Paul Lehto, an Everett, Wash.-based attorney handling the case. The suit was filed in Superior Court in San Diego and names Mikel Haas, county registrar of voters, and Brian Bilbray, the winner of the seat, as defendants.

San Diego voters used AccuVote optical-scan and TSx touch-screen systems from Diebold Election Systems.

Whatever the specific merits of the suit, it could heighten some citizens' concerns about e-voting technology if critics' claims of the inherent security deficiencies get debated in court during the run-up to the fall elections.

One of the main points raised by the suit is the so-called sleepover policy, under which Haas directed that all the machines be released to poll worker supervisors before the election. These sleepovers lasted from three days to more than a week.

"During these sleepovers, the voting machines were unsecured, subject to access by innumerable neighbors, strangers and family members, and stored without records or proof of actual chain of custody, eliminating the ability of any person to detect whether or not fraud or improper access to the voting machines occurred," according to the lawsuit.

"The sleepover issue is fairly egregious," said Lehto. Tampering with one card in one device conceivably could change race results.
...
This lawsuit is an example of what could happen in upcoming contests, said Brad Friedman, who covers e-voting issues in his blog. "Is this the sort of thing we want to see happen in 435 House races, 33 Senate races and 20-something gubernatorial races around the country on Nov. 7 this year?" said Friedman.

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, Diebold/Premier, California

DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL: On Paper Ballots, Voting Machine Sleepovers, Tom Feeney and Clint Curtis...

By Brad Friedman on 8/4/2006 8:36am PT

Blogged hastily by Brad from the road...(I think I'm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa...though not actually running for anything)...

From an article in today's Daytona Beach News-Journal...

Secure ballots fuel races
...
Verifiable elections also tops the list of issues on the Web site of Titusville Democrat Clint Curtis, who is challenging Oviedo Republican incumbent Tom Feeney for U.S. Congress. Feeney's Web site also touts paper ballot legislation he advanced last year.

Another voting issue making rounds is "sleepovers."

The practice of having precinct clerks store machines just before Election Day is used in Volusia and Flagler counties so the machines can be distributed to polling places in the wee hours before polls open at 7 a.m. The machines are sealed to make sure they're not tampered with, and supervisors say it's safer to have them at a sworn elections worker's home than at a polling place.

The practice is particularly common in large counties where polling places are far from elections offices, said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State.

John Chagnon, a Democrat from St. Augustine who is challenging Winter Park Republican John Mica for his Congressional seat, raised the "sleepovers" issue in a letter to the state Division of Elections last week.

"A lot of people just don't know about this," he said. "When they find out about this, they get upset."

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, Florida, Tom Feeney, Clint Curtis

NYT Op/Ed Criticizes Republican Power Grab in Alabama HAVA Dispute

A Federal Judge Stripped Important Electoral Powers from the Democratic Secretary of State and Gave Them to the Republican Governor

Just Another Day At The Office For Those Who Want To Subvert Our Democracy

By Winter Patriot on 8/4/2006 8:08am PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Things have begun to stink so badly in Alabama that even the New York Times has noticed.

An unsigned editorial titled Strong-Arming The Vote ran on Thursday. And we have some excerpts from it here:

President Bush's Justice Department has been criticized for letting partisanship guide its work on voting and elections. And party politics certainly appears to have been a driving force in a legal maneuver it just pulled off in Alabama, where it persuaded a federal judge to take important election powers away from the Democratic secretary of state and give them to a Republican governor.

Seems to have been a driving force, indeed!

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Raw Story: United Nations Human Rights Committee Report Amounts To 'A Moral Indictment' of USA

Report cites 'Treaty Violations', 'Hubris', and 'Willful Disregard For International And Domestic Law' ... and even at that, it just scratches the surface!

WAKE UP, AMERICA! Your shame is world-wide.

By Winter Patriot on 8/4/2006 6:01am PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY:

UN report a 'moral indictment' of US

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has released its final report after a series of hearings in Geneva last week, which RAW STORY has learned amounts to a moral indictment of US treaty violations, as well as what some attendees and delegates described as US hubris, willful disregard for international and domestic law, and contempt for the Committee itself.

Anybody surprised? I didn't think so.

I can't quote the whole article but I can encourage you to read it!

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Article Categories: Iraq War, Rights And Freedoms, U.S. Constitution, ITMFA, United Nations, Accountability

Flack You, Man...

It's easy to focus on the candidates: who's flacking with you, though?

Part 1: Steve Aiken - Gay Basher, Child Molester, Republican Campaign Official...

By Steve Huff on 8/3/2006 8:27pm PT

Guest Blogged by Steve Huff

Theodore Robert Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers of the last half-century, was a Republican activist while studying law at various universities in the west and northwest.

John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer who equalled Bundy in viciousness and notoriety, was very active as a Democrat in his Chicago neighborhood --- even had his photo made with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Politics and sex crime. Sometimes, they go together. Perhaps because both deal with dominance, and power. Bundy and Gacy would simply be two of the most extreme examples.

Of course, both sides of the aisle get hit, but lately, it is Republicans who are taking a consistent battering in this arena.

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DNC Releases 'Expanded National Voter Protection Effort' Plan...

Sets Up 'Voter Protection Hotline', Calls for Paper 'Trails' and Lawyers in 15 'Key States'...

But We're Gonna Need Much More Than That...

By Brad Friedman on 8/3/2006 10:57am PT

Blogged by Brad on the long, hot road...

The DNC Media Office released information on their planned "Expanded National Voter Protection Effort" today. I'll avoid my knee-jerk reaction to say "Expanded" from what?! Their full media release is posted below.

As I've got to get in the car and head up to St. Paul for a PBS TV show taping (Mental Engineering) over the weekend, I don't have much time to comment on the strategy and release for now. As you may guess, I have some feelings on both. You'll simply have to guess at those feelings for now. Suffice to say, we need more than paper "trails" and attorneys on Election Day... I applaud the tireless efforts of Greg Moore, heading up the DNC Voting Rights Institute. He "gets it" --- but the rest of the DNC still seems to be burying their head in the sand about the seriousness of the problem.

To that end, and by way of example, we could also use their help in dealing with issues like the Busby/Bilbray U.S. House special election in CA50 now if they are serious about protecting the ballot box in November everwhere! (An essay I posted some weeks ago describing how what happens now in CA50 affects the vote everywhere this November is right here: "A Line in the Sand")

The full release from the DNC as issued within the past hour follows...

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, Election Reform, Election 2006

Are Electronic Voting Machine Vendors Paying Disabilities Advocates Under The Table In New York? And Elsewhere?

Catskill Center For Independence Denies They Took Anything But Claim Money Was Offered...And This Isn't the First Such Example...

By John Gideon on 8/2/2006 8:55pm PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Today Oneonta, NY's The Daily Star reported that Chris Zachmeyer, executive director of the Catskill Center For Independence, said Tuesday that voting-machine manufacturers have tried to contribute money to her organization, which has given testimony on which voting machines Otsego County should buy.

"It's happened a couple of times," said Zachmeyer, who declined to identify the manufacturers.

"I told them, 'I'd love to take your money, but I can't,"' Zachmeyer said. "Those were my words exactly, and I would love to take their money because they've got deep pockets and we're a small agency."

"But to what end?" Zachmeyer asked. "We would lose any credibility that we ever had, and no amount of money is worth it.

"We exist totally on our credibility," she said. "If people don't trust what we have to say, we might as well lock our doors and go home."

But with "millions of dollars at stake" it may well be that "back-door deals" may have been made as Voting Machine companies may be paying disabilities groups to testify on their behalf. It wouldn't be the first time.

As the article goes on to report...

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, ES&S, Sequoia Voting Systems

Vanity Fair has NORAD Tapes from 9/11 --- Transcripts and Audio Clips Online Now

'Is this real-world or exercise? ... Is this real-world or exercise? ... Is this real-world or exercise? ... Is this real-world or exercise?'

'I've never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.'

By Winter Patriot on 8/2/2006 3:12pm PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Vanity Fair, 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes...

How did the U.S. Air Force respond on 9/11? Could it have shot down United 93, as conspiracy theorists claim? Obtaining 30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room of NORAD's Northeast headquarters, the author reconstructs the chaotic military history of that day"”and the Pentagon's apparent attempt to cover it up

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Veterans Fired On Corrupt Politicians To Prevent Election Fraud

Some Little-Known American History For Your Reading Pleasure, from Athens, Tennessee, August 1/2, 1946.

The Rallying Cry: 'Why fight overseas for freedom and come home and be denied the right to have your ballot counted?'

By Winter Patriot on 8/2/2006 1:24pm PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

from Bill Poovey, AP, in The Seattle Post Intelligencer :

Felix Harrod, 84, was a 25-year-old poll watcher at the courthouse during the shootout and said it was common for incumbents in the county about 45 miles northeast of Chattanooga to take ballot boxes to the jail and stuff them with pre-marked ballots.

That was a practice the former soldiers hoped to stop. They offered an all-ex-GI, nonpartisan ticket that promised a fraud-free election and reform. Their rallying cry: "Why fight overseas for freedom and come home and be denied the right to have your ballot counted?"

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Article Categories: Tennessee, Election Fraud

Democracy In Crisis - An Exclusive BRAD BLOG Interview with Mike Papantonio

The Electronic Voting Machine Company Qui Tam Cases Explained...

'Citizen media is replacing mainstream media...and a lot more successfully than anybody dreamed.'

By Joy Williams on 8/2/2006 6:00am PT

An Exclusive Interview for The BRAD BLOG as Guest Blogged by Joy and Tom Williams"¦

Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy co-host Ring of Fire on Air America. The two attorneys have filed qui tam lawsuits against the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) companies for defrauding the government. We previously posted an exclusive interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about this case.

Papantonio is a Florida attorney who has already gone after a number of big corporations for the American people. He is named partner and head of the Mass Tort Department at his firm. He has handled many famous cases throughout the nation, including asbestos, breast implants, Dalkon Shield, Fen-Phen, hemophiliac-AIDS, L-Tryptophan, railroad disasters and the Florida Tobacco litigation. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Leading American Attorney. He is also the author of In Search of Atticus Finch, A Motivational Book for Lawyers; Clarence Darrow, The Journeyman; Resurrecting AESOP, Fables Lawyers Should Remember and a co-author of Closing Arguments --- The Last Battle. In addition to all this, he is a popular lecturer in the legal field.

We would like to say something about what a dynamic and articulate man he is, and how much we think he's doing for our country, but, really, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself, and this is no accident. Mike Papantonio is a hard-working, extremely generous, friendly and personable --- and dedicated --- man. One would be hard-pressed to find a better duo for the difficult job ahead. The Kennedy/Papantonio alliance is a particularly brilliant one. Mike took the time to talk to us about aspects of the qui tam cases they have set in motion already...

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Article Categories: Election Reform, Tom Feeney, Clint Curtis

CA Senate Panel Rakes Kern Co. Elections Officials and Diebold Over the Coals

By John Gideon on 8/1/2006 1:26pm PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday, according to an article in The Bakersfield Californian, a panel of California state senators held a hearing in Bakersfield to discern what happened in the county during the June 6 state primary. The panel consisted of Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach; Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield; and Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove.

The California Senate Select Committee on Integrity of Elections has launched an investigation into problems in elections in the state. That investigation started in Kern County (Bakersfield) with testimony by County Deputy Registrar of Voters Sandy Brockman, Diebold Election Systems official Mike Rockenstein, and other election workers.

Brockman stood in for her boss, Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett, who was on vacation and not available to answer questions about why some voters were not able to vote in the primary. In fact, the paper reports:

Ashburn asked why Barnett wasn't there to answer his tough questions about the decisions she made.

Brockman said Barnett was on vacation.

"She had scheduled vacation time prior to them calling this hearing," Brockman said.

Later, Ashburn said that "she (Barnett) chose not to be here. I got the impression at several points that Sandy Brockman had to take responsibility for actions that were made by Ann Barnett."

Ashburn was critical of Barnett immediately after the June 6 election. He called for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to investigate the county's election bungles.

The questioning was all about mistakes:

Committee members pelted local elections officials with searing questions about why they failed the voters.

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, asked why touch-screen voting machines failed and paper ballots ran out making voting nearly impossible for as many as 500 Kern County voters.

County Deputy Registrar of Voters Sandy Brockman, sitting in for elections boss Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett, took the brunt of Ashburn's questions.

Under his questioning, she said Barnett decided not to train elections workers on the use of paper ballots and decided to send only the minimum number of paper ballots to each polling place.

Elections workers testified they were told not to use paper ballots.

But when electronic voting cards failed, the paper ballots ran out and as many as 500 voters could have lost the chance to vote, Brockman said.

The Diebold representative got his turn to answer some hard questions from Sen. Dunn:

Diebold made the voting machines and electronic ballot cards that malfunctioned in Kern County on June 6.

Through the negligence of Diebold, Dunn said, hundreds of Kern County voters were turned away at the polls and lost their chance to vote.

If a chance to vote is priceless, Dunn asked Rockenstein, how much would Diebold be willing to pay voters who could prove they couldn't vote because of the company's mistakes?

Rockenstein said he had no answer to that question.

The next stop by the panel has been unannounced so far. Could San Diego Co. be very far down on their list?

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Election Irregularities, California, Election 2006

CNN's Lou Dobbs: Hand Counts in Iowa Kept Incorrect Op-Scan Counts From Installing the Wrong Candidates!

Republican Primary Saw Popular Incumbent Nearly Lose, Save for a Hand Count of the Paper Ballots

Unlike San Diego's Busby/Bilbray Race, Iowa Election Officials Took Concerns of Election Accuracy Seriously!

By Brad Friedman on 8/1/2006 12:59pm PT

"More evidence tonight that the security of our elections, the integrity of our democracy are at risk from electronic voting machines. A county in Iowa has just come close to putting the wrong candidate in office because of a massive programming error."

This Dobbs report underscores the problems in the Busby/Bilbray CA50 election fiasco, as the candidates shown as losing the election based on the optical-scan count in Iowa were later found to be winners --- but only after the ballots were actually counted by hand to determine if they were counted accurately by the machine! They were not.

By way of ironic side note, the Iowa Republican primary election in question, as we've noted here many time before, took place on June 6th --- the same day as the flawed Busby/Bilbray election...in which nobody has yet bothered to count the op-scan votes in order to find out if the results were reported accurately. Election integrity, it seems, is more important in some states than in others, we guess.

Says Dobbs in his closing remarks to Kitty Pilgrim: "If this message is not getting through that's emanating from every corner of the country using these voting machines, I don't know what it will take."

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

(Hat tip David Edwards for the video, John Gideon for the transcript and tracking, etc.)

The complete text transcript of the Lou Dobbs/Kitty Pilgrim report follows...

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, Diebold/Premier, ES&S, Lou Dobbs, California

Sibel Edmonds Asks: 'What Price Security?' And 'What Security?'

and 'How do we oblige our government to control itself?' and other difficult questions

By Winter Patriot on 8/1/2006 12:00pm PT

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot...

Russell Tice is due in court at 1:00 on Wednesday, August 2nd.

From wikipedia:

Russell D. Tice (b. 1961) is a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). During his nearly 20 year career with various United States government agencies, he conducted intelligence missions related to the Kosovo War, Afghanistan, the USS Cole bombing in Yemen, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In December, 2005, Tice helped spark a national controversy over claims that the NSA and the DIA were engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional wiretaps on American citizens. He later admitted that he was one of the sources that were used in the New York Times' reporting on the wiretap activity in December 2005.

Tice began to receive national attention as a whistleblower in May, 2005, after speaking publicly about alleged retaliation by government officials for reporting his suspicions that a DIA colleague might be a Chinese spy, and about the need for legislation to protect national security agency whistleblowers.

As we mentioned last week, Tice is being supported by National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), a group founded by Sibel Edmonds in order to help current whistleblowers and encourage new whistleblowers to come forward.

By serving a subpoena on Russ Tice, according to my conversation last week with Ms. Edmonds, the feds are trying to "kill two birds with one stone"; in other words they are trying to silence Tice on the secret illegal spying, while making an example of him to intimidate other potential whistleblowers.

It's August of what will probably be the hottest year ever recorded, but I am so cold!

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Article Categories: Sibel Edmonds, 9/11, Russell Tice, Whistleblowers

Massive protests snarl Mexico City!!!

Washington traffic moving normally

By Winter Patriot on 8/1/2006 5:00am PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

In my frozen heart of hearts I have been wanting to blog about Mexico for a long time now; at this point it's getting ridiculous that I haven't done so already. I don't have a lot of time but I can give you some links and some quotes and some photos. Special thanks to the San Jose Mercury News and Kevin Diaz of McClatchy Newspapers. (The Mercury News asks you to register before you can read news on their website; it's free! and well worth it, IMO.)

July 31: Protesters set up camp, show support for Là³pez Obrador

Thousands of protesters set up barricades along Mexico City's central thoroughfare Sunday night hours after the largest demonstration in Mexico's history filled the main square in support of leftist Andrés Manuel Là³pez Obrador's election challenge.

Police made no effort to intervene as the protesters set up tents and blocked traffic, apparently in response to Là³pez Obrador's call for the establishment of 47 "permanent assemblies"' to press his claims of fraud in the July 2 elections. Là³pez Obrador lost the vote to conservative Felipe Calderà³n by less than 1 percent of 41 million ballots cast.

Protesters at one of the barricades on the Paseo de la Reforma said they would remain there until a federal tribunal hearing Là³pez Obrador's challenge orders a recount of every ballot.

The street action comes amid mounting tensions in the post-election dispute and was the first sign that Là³pez Obrador's supporters intended to take their protests beyond organized mass rallies.

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Article Categories: Mexico

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