I've been meaning to mention all week how appalling it was to see Tim Russert waste the entire sixty minutes of network airtime last week on NBC's Meet the Press, covering the 2008 Presidential Speculation. What, Ann Coulter was available for an "exclusive" full hour interview?

The vacuous hour followed a week on the heels of an extraordinary NY Times exposé on the con game played out by the Bush Administration concerning their torture policies; while America still has more than 160,000 troops committed to two hot wars; and with a criminal cabal still running full throttle out of the current White House.

Thankfully, Colbert mentioned it for me last night...

...And on that note, while Russert fiddles and Rome burns, the exchange with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also fiddling, as conducted by the tenacious Christiane Brown of Reno's progressive station talk station, KJFK, is both disturbing and illuminating.

In the short interview (courtesy of AfterDowningStreet.org), Reid just can't seem to understand the Constitutional responsibility of Congress to hold the Executive branch accountable, when warranted (as it clearly is now as much as any time in this nation's history), through Impeachment proceedings.

The quick audio (less than two minutes), with Reid grasping at straws to answer Brown's questions, while he declares Impeachment as "such a waste of time" and a "foolish idea" is here:

AfterDowningStreet also reports that Nancy Pelosi's appearance on Ed Schultz's show yesterday, in regard to the same topic, was similarly limp. Though we haven't gotten to hear that one yet, as Big Ed's archives are behind a subscription wall.

...All of which also gives us the opportunity to post the following graphic --- run by the Wall Street Journal, way back in 2006, based on data from even farther back in 2005 --- showing support for Impeachment of Bush as compared to Bill Clinton.

Study this closely, Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi...

In a letter sent to station management, as The BRAD BLOG reported in August, former Democratic Senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel, correctly wrote: "The increasing monopolization of the mainstream media today demands that we stand up for independent-minded, progressive voices out there like KLSD AM 1360 in San Diego."

He was the only Presidential Candidate, to our knowledge, to utter a word about it.

As reports emerge that progressive radio talker Ed Schultz' audience now matches Bill O'Reilly's, one has to wonder what the hell the Democrats --- specifically the rest of the Democratic Presidential candidates --- are thinking, as Clear Channel prepares to flip the only progressive talk station in the nation's sixth largest city over to an all-sports format any day now.

The busy Internet rumors suggest it could happen as early as this week. Station insiders have told The BRAD BLOG it's more likely to happen on November 1st "at the earliest", as the corporate bosses at Clear Channel get ducks in a row for what is currently seen as an "inevitable" flip.

It'll be one less major market for Big Ed, one of the Democratic party's biggest and most effective supporters. Though O'Reilly will, no doubt, remain on the air in San Diego, despite the damage and shame his irresponsible "reporting" brings to our Republic.

In late August, we detailed the first indications that corporate media behemoth, Clear Channel, was preparing to dump the progressive talk format at AM 1360 KLSD in San Diego. Citizens were outraged, signed petitions, wrote letters to station management, created websites and showed up at rallies to protest the imminent shut down of the station.

At the time, we suggested to both organizers of the protests and station personnel that they join with Air America (who has several shows airing on the station) to invite the Democratic Presidential candidates out to San Diego for an Emergency Debate focusing on one of the very reasons our country is in the mess that it is: Corporate Consolidation of the Public Airwaves.

It seems quite clear that such consolidation has not been in the best interest of the people who own the airwaves. And further, it seems clear that the corporate interests who lease access to that spectrum, from the people, don't give a damn about such interests.

And yet, to our knowledge, in the nearly two months since Clear Channel indicated they were preparing to flip the station format, only one Democratic Presidential candidate, Gravel, has understood the importance about speaking out against this outrage.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

KTLA News reports on the rush to prepare paper ballots for upcoming elections, including next February's California presidential primary now that Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified electronic voting in 29 counties because the machines proved vulnerable to hackers.

The piece also features Riverside County election integrity activist (and hero) Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE who raises concerns about Sequoia's role in counting the paper ballots, "when these ballots go into electronic tabulating machines there is no way to tell whether or not they have been programmed to flip the vote and rig the election." While Registrar of Voters, Barbara Dunmore, agrees with Courbat about the vulnerability of electronic machines, she believes election officials have put in place safeguards that will ensure fair elections.

For more on Courbat's tireless efforts to protect democracy in Riverside County see this video mashup.

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckracker has picked up on, and advanced, our Exclusive report yesterday concerning the remarkable comments made last Friday by John Tanner, the Chief of the Civil Rights Division, Voting Unit, at the DoJ, concerning Photo ID restrictions at the polls.

In a follow-up report today, Kiel gets reactions from former DoJ officials, including the man who previously held the same job as Tanner at the DoJ, charging that the remarks and logic behind them were "frankly ludicrous" and "false" and based on "cherry-picking the data that he wants to use."

A DoJ source of our own wrote to us after yesterday's report and characterized the comments as Tanner's "Imus moment."

Tanner had told a group in Los Angeles last Friday --- and our own Alan Breslauer was there to catch it on video tape --- that non-minorities were more likely to be disenfranchised by such restrictive polling laws laws than African-Americans.

"It's probably true that among those who don't [have Photo ID], it's primarily elderly persons. And that's a shame," Tanner told the audience. He then added: "Of course...our society is such that minorities don't become elderly. The way that white people do. They die first." The implication being that, therefore, minorities are somehow less likely to be disenfranchised by draconian Photo ID laws at the polling place.

Tanner had approved a disenfranchising Georgia Photo ID scheme on behalf of the DoJ in 2005, despite the fact that 4 out of the 5 career civil rights unit staffers who had reviewed the law recommended against pre-approval under the Voting Rights Act. The law, once approved by Tanner, was later found unconstitutional by two federal courts, and described by one of the judges to be little more than a "Jim Crow-era poll tax."

ePluribus Media has much more on Tanner's resume and discriminatory reign as voting section chief in the Civil Rights Division.

Restrictive Photo ID laws, being strongly and strategically pushed by elements of the GOP around the nation, are controversial since anywhere from 10 to 30 million Americans, largely Democratic-leaning voters who are elderly, minorities, and/or urban dwellers, are believed to have no driver's licenses. Most states already have requirements for some form of ID when voting, though not necessarily state-issued Photo ID.

Further, the federal Help America Vote of Act of 2002 already requires proof of identity when a voter registers to vote. In the meantime, by even the DoJ's own numbers, voter fraud at the polls is exceedingly rare in America. That, despite GOP kool-aid drinkers like Rep. Duncan Hunter and his recent unfounded claims to the contrary.

According to Kiel at TPM Muck today, both Tanner's predecessor Joe Rich and the man who analyzed the numbers for Tanner at the DoJ in the Georgia case, Toby Moore, strongly dispute Tanner's comments, characterizing them as "not only wrong, but way off, and typical of the type of decision making" in the current DoJ's Voting Rights section...

Hat tip to BRAD BLOG commenter Floridiot for this one! But yes, that does seem to be a diaphragm that Fred Thompson's daughter (grand daughter?) is munching on at the beginning of a recent Fox "News" interview...

We'll defer to Wonkette for their coverage...

In case you're wondering if that could really be a diaphragm, someone at DU was kind enough to post a picture of a few, so you can judge for yourself. God God.

The complete video is below...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer with additional reporting by Brad Friedman

Unbelievably, the Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, John Tanner, contends that while it's "a shame" that elderly voters may be disenfranchised by new Photo ID restrictions at the polls because many don't have driver's licenses, minorities don't have to worry quite as much. Why? Because "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

Yes, that's what Tanner said last Friday at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles and The BRAD BLOG was in tow with video camera to prove it...

While folks may have heard about the New York Times report last week concerning the secret DoJ memos created to give legal cover to the Administration to continue their policies of torturing prisoners of war, we suspect that most have not read the full, detailed 5-page investigative report.

But it's an important one, and it details the lengths to which the Bush team went to keep their pro-torture policies in place, even in the face of a DoJ rebellion, Congressional legislation, and even Supreme Court decisions. It was alarming to learn --- though we should hardly be alarmed at such things by now --- that when Bush signed the Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005, meant to ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world, he already knew, even if Congress didn't, that his Dept. of Justice had previously created secret legal documents declaring their ongoing torturous interrogation techniques as not "cruel, inhuman or degrading."

In other words, he knew he'd be able to continue with torture as usual, since new AG Alberto Gonzales oversaw the crushing of an internal DoJ rebellion finding the practices to be both illegal and in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Also alarming (but also, shouldn't be by now), is the lackluster way in which Congress has reacted to this stunning news which --- like so many other things --- might have led to immediate Impeachment talk for almost any other administration.

For those with short-attention spans, however (like the aforementioned Congress members!), the NYTimes story included an excellent sidebar graphic summarizing the timeline and main beats in the "Interrogation Wars" from DoJ to the White House to Congress to the Supreme Court.

Since the graphic is too wide to easily run on most blogs, we've recreated the short, easy to read timeline in text format below. We'd strongly suggest, if nothing else, you familiarize yourself with it so you understand, in simple terms, the con game that has been played out here by this Administration.

As a bonus, below that, is a video from last Thursday Daily Show with John Stewart in which he interviews Jack Goldsmith, once the head of the DoJ's Office of Legal Counsel, and the man who fought back, along with Dep. AG James Comey, against the policies. Though successful in their efforts, for a time, and to an extent, both men were eventually pushed out of the DoJ, as Gonzales was dispatched to quell the rebellion as AG.

One very short and very amusing anecdote, if we may, before both of those, buried on page 5 of the Times report....

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

University of Pennsylvania professor Steve Freeman, author of the important book, Was The 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, sat down with The BRAD BLOG at the 2nd Annual National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles on Friday.

Below are clips from our video interview with Freeman, broken down into five easy viewing segments, including his contention that his initial investigations into electronic voting led him to believe "There has to be some safeguard, it can't be this easy to corrupt. But it is. Even worse. If you haven't looked into this it is worse than you can possibly imagine."

The video clips, and text snippets of his answers to our questions, all follow below...

Who won the 2004 presidential election? - Freeman's short answer: John Kerry. He explains that while the official vote count gave George W. Bush a narrow margin of victory in Ohio of 120,000 votes and a slim electoral win, exit poll data indicates that Kerry actually won Ohio by 500,000 votes and won the national vote by a 6 million vote margin.

More video Q&A's follow below...

We haven't had much luck in raising donations, so I've been going out of my way to try and find premiums in order to offer some incentives to help encourage folks to support our work here at The BRAD BLOG.

The folks at DK publishing have been kind enough to offer a very limited number of copies of Chuck Wills' gorgeous new hardback, LINCOLN: THE PRESIDENTIAL ARCHIVES, to us for use as a premium.

This one is really cool. I suspect that folks here may really appreciate this particular item. As the publishers describe it, the book is an "interactive 'museum-in-a-box' including removable documents and replicas of Lincoln's personal correspondence, landmark speeches and more. Accessible text and photography throughout brings Lincoln's childhood, political ride, presidency, the Civil War era, and untimely assassination to life on the page."

The brand new book --- with literally hundreds of cool pull-outs --- has a suggested retail price of $40, so we're offering it as a premium to folks who make a donation to BRAD BLOG of $100 or more. It's more pricey than our usual offerings, but we hope there are enough folks out there who may be interested in the topic, and in supporting our work, to jump on this one.

We've got just a few of them, but will ship them out ASAP to folks who donate $100 or more online right away. For those who prefer snail mail donations, our address is...

To close a loop (something we don't often get to do) on a story we picked up on a few weeks ago, the Assistant U.S. Attorney from northern Florida, John David R. Atchison, who was arrested in a sting in September for attempting to have sex with a 5-year old girl, has committed suicide in federal prison.

Atchison had previously tried to kill himself just days after being arrested at the Detroit airport where he had flown to a federal agent he had believed to be the little girl's mother.

"Just gotta go slow and very easy. I've done it plenty," Atchison reportedly told the "mother" before he left Florida, after the agent in the string operation had expressed concerns to Atchison about injury to the little girl.

In AP's report on the AUSA's death, they described him as a family man, whose attorney hopes he'll be remembered for "a lot of good in his life"...

ED NOTE about the sub-headline, from our initial quick coverage of the arrest last month, intimating that Atchison was a Republican...

Paul Kiel at TPM has an interesting late update on the Senate hold, by Obama and Feingold, on Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the FEC, which we reported yesterday. New details/analysis on the "game of chicken" now in play in the Senate, along with the ramifications for the FEC in 2008 if a stalemate continues...and what Bush could do about it.

This is interesting. In a "blind bio poll" of Republican voters, conducted by Zogby, Ward Casscells polled as well as both Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson.

Who the hell is Ward Casscells? Some guy who's not even running for anything. But apparently Republican respondents liked his bio as much as they like Rudy, Fred, and all the rest, according to a new Zogby poll out today...

We've suggested that our friends at Why Tuesday? change their tagline ("Fixing our voting system, one question at a time") for what seems to us an obvious reason. They're doing good work so far on their new video blog site, but given the topics they're dealing with, we'd suggest our system is already "fixed" enough thanks.

That said, they recently issued a candidate challenge to all of the presidential candidates, asking them to respond to three specific questions concerning their plans for Election Reform.

We're hoping in the near future, they will add the following question to their challenge: "Do you support a paper ballot --- not a 'paper trail' or a 'paper record,' but a paper ballot, and one that is actually counted --- for every vote cast in America?"

In the meantime, we'd encourage those of you out there going to candidate events (both Republican and Democrat) to ask such a question of the candidates if you can, and capture it on video. Do that, and send us the clip (or a link to it on YouTube, etc.) and we'll get it up on The BRAD BLOG, and perhaps even on Why Tuesday? as well.
So far, the first response they've been able to get to their challenge is from Joe Biden when WT?'s Exec. Director Jacob Soboroff ran into him recently at a D.C. coffee shop. Biden's comments are at the right.

We'll note that, while not asked about it specifically, he first refers to a "paper trail," but later refers to a "paper ballot" and wants a standardized system used across the country. He also mentions that full public financing of presidential and congressional elections will do more than anything to reform the system as he sees it. Let us know what you think.

Guest Blogged by BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent, Margie Burns

It was a big day on Thursday in the national capital, with several flaming surges hitting the news at once – the Washington Post hooking up with the MSM campaign to put “Hillary” over the top before the magic deadline of October 15 (more on that later, elsewhere); Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee holding a powerful hearing on Iraqi corruption; the blocking of Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the FEC; and discussion of a proposed federal shield law for journalists (full text of bill here), which was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today to the full Senate.

While I was able to sit in for hearings on two of the items above, space and time regrettably being constraints, I'll cover only the proposed shield law for the moment. Right up top, I have to say that I have qualms about it. A real leak, by a whistleblower exposing a crime or some danger to the public, is one thing. But protecting journalists from exposing a politically motivated ‘source’ trying to plant misinformation is another. This bill, as it was debated in committee and written about in papers yesterday, might equally protect both, if it protects either...

Does this mean he is gay after all? It's all so confusing.

(P.S. We still love our wife!)

UPDATE: Two very short related sound clips for your bemusement...

Nasty Boy...

Mr. Closeted Conservative Congressman...

LATER UPDATE: The inimitable Josh Marshall weighs in on The Genius of Larry Craig, Senator, master of crisis management.