Un-believable. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced an amendment to the proposed new Immigration Law that would require disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions on voters at the polling place, according to a press release just out from National League of Women Voters.

The provision tagged onto the immigration bill would amend the horrible Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 that McConnell co-sponsored and pushed through to passage along with his Republican counterpart and lead author in the House, the now-jailed Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

The key provision in the amendment is as follows:

Apparently, it's not enough for the Republican White House operatives to create phony "grass roots" groups to create propaganda solely for the purpose of forwarding the fraudulent notion of a massive "Democratic Voter Fraud" epidemic (which doesn't exist).

It's not enough to toss legitimate voters from the voter rolls through purges and "caging" lists to remove legal, minority voters (many serving overseas in Iraq, nonetheless) so they are not allowed to exercise their legal franchise.

It's not enough to remake our entire Department of Justice into nothing more than a branch of the Republican party for the specific purpose of bringing trumped up "voter fraud" indictments in hopes of shaving votes in close elections and otherwise gutting the beloved 40 year old Voting Rights Act for purely partisan gain.

No. Come hell or highwater, these democracy hating Republican thugs are going to find a way to keep you from voting --- even if they have to amend every piece of legislation that comes before them to try and do it --- because, otherwise, they can't win elections.

If McConnell's provision is not defeated, fillibustered, or whatever it takes by every goddamned Democrat in that body, well....good luck voting them out of office either. But they'll sure as hell deserve it. Every. Single. One of them. (As if those who pushed through the Iraq funding bill capitulation don't already deserve to be removed from office.)

These Republicans are absolutely beyond contempt and, clearly, despise the most basic American values at the very core of our once-great Republic. They hate everything about it. They are loathesome. And the Dems damned well better stop them dead in their tracks.

Rick Hasen has the complete amendment and additional details on the latest insipid GOP/McConnell scam.

UPDATE 5/31/07: Late breaking news on Griffin resignation from Palast interview with Conyers, now posted here...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast

This Monica revealed something hotter --- much hotter --- than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One....And the Committee members didn't even know it.

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Deputy AG, Paul McNulty, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: McNulty denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? "Caging"???

The perplexed committee members hadn't a clue --- and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling. If the members had gotten the clue, and asked the right questions, they would have found "the keys to the kingdom," they thought they were looking for. They dangled right in front of their perplexed faces.

The keys: the missing emails --- and missing link --- that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.

Kingdom enough for ya?

But what's 'caging' and why is it such a dreadful secret that lawyer McNulty put his license to practice and his freedom on the line to cover Tim Griffin's involvement in it? Because it's a felony. And a big one.

Here's how caging worked, and along with Griffin's thoughtful emails themselves you'll understand it all in no time.

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

How do I know? I have the caging lists...

A Guest Blog Editorial by Rebecca Abrahams, Freelance Network News Producer

Poor Monica Goodling. Poor, poor Monica. Oh, the indignity of it all --- having to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and all. With Immunity.

She may have violated laws but she didn't mean to. I guess it's all better now. And clearly Committee members agreed --- practically falling all over her with apologies for having been brought forth to testify. Goodling, the former Department of Justice's liaison to the White House and senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was granted immunity from prosecution during testimony regarding the White House's role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. And while she was the liaison to the White House, Goodling asserted that she did not "hold the keys to the kingdom" as some have suggested.

The first three hours of testimony shed little light on the plan to remove the USA's. Although Goodling did say she believed Deputy Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty had delivered inaccurate testimony before Congress. In particular, Goodling said, McNulty had not been forthcoming about newly appointed Arkansas US Attorney Tim Griffin's use of vote caging lists.

Goodling testified that there were "problems with her historic memory" and agreed that the firings should have been handled differently. She believed the USA's in question should have been given a chance to learn about their performance and given an opportunity to improve. Goodling believed the firings should have been done in person, noting "it was the right thing to do."

Goodling recounted a November 27, 2006 meeting she attended concerning the firing of Nevada US Attorney Daniel Bogden. She said the general consensus was that the Justice Department could do better than Bogden, noting, "good people needed to be put in those spots." Goodling said Gonzales agreed to use a provision within the Patriot Act to axe Bogden. Funny, Gonzales has sworn up and down he doesn't even remember attending the meeting. Regardless, Bogden, an Independent, was not the man for the job, despite the fact that he served the Department for more than sixteen years.

The Nevada US Attorney, testifying before a House Judiciary Subcommittee on March 6, 2007, recounted what Associate Deputy Attorney General William Mercer had told him the reason for his dismissal, was so that the United States Department of Justice could do it's job for the American people...by helping to build the resume of all of their close friends...

From Monica Goodling's opening statement to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee this morning [emphasis added]:

For the record, it's the practice of sending registered mail to minority voters, asking for a reply, and if one doesn't come back, the voter's right to vote is challenged either at the polls, or attempts are made to remove them from the voter rolls --- usually without their knowledge. Allegations have been made that this was done, based on race, in 2004, when registered letters were sent to the home addresses of African-Americans in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. Most insidiously, letters were said to have been sent to U.S. troops who were away, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and thus did not (and could not) answer the registered mail. Their registrations were then reportedly challenged.

The RNC agreed to cease the practice in a 1986 consent decree in a court case brought after they had "tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned, " according to the Washington Post.

"The consent decrees that resulted prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that target minorities or conduct mail campaigns to 'compile voter challenge lists.'"

Hopefully one of the Judiciary Committee Members will follow up on this, with either Goodling or in further interviews with McNulty or Griffin, who was Karl Rove's aide at the time, before he was later shoved into Bud Cummins' position as Arkansas U.S. Attorney.

UPDATE 2:45pm PT: The DoJ released a statement this afternoon from McNulty, in response to Goodling's testimony and her claims that his "public testimony was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects":

More on Vote Caging Lists at Wikipedia. The key details follow below...

New Mexico's fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias op-eds in today's LA Times on Gonzeles et al. in advance of this morning's testimony by Monica Goodling:

Monica Goodling, the DoJ liason to the White House, will testify, with immunity, tomorrow morning (Wed.) at 10:15am ET in front of the House Judiciary Committee. These early morning hearings are brutal for those of us bloggers on the West Coast, but we'd hate to miss this one.

Goodling broke down in tears on the morning the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal broke, and has copped the 5th, refusing to testify until given immunity. Why? We don't yet know exactly, but may find out tomorrow.

Career DoJ official David Margolis told Congressional investigators about her crying jag, and said, "I knew she must think everything was unraveling. And, you know, she was right about that."

TPMMuck has more from Margolis's deposition and on what we might expect in the morning. If you're watching, feel free to give us your thoughts in comments as things progress. Especially if she starts crying again. (Anyone want to wager on that?)

We're still buried for the moment, so pardon the light posting today.

Came across this rather amusing House floor "Procedure Off" from last January between Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and pal/boss/roommate of vote fraudsters Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC). BlogActive's Mike Rogers, who pointed us to the video in his report on McHenry and his many questionably registered roomies, describes it as "priceless." We'll concur, and add that it's worthy of a quick viewing in exchange for at least a few chuckles...

Following up on Greg Gordon's Sunday piece on former DoJ operative turned recess-appointed FEC chair Hans von Spakovsky, McClatchy has now posted the emails referred to in the article in full [PDF].

As you'll recall, the point we focused on when we covered Gordon's article was the apparent attempted strong-arming, suggested by the emails, of U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Paul DeGregorio. Von Spakovsky was attempting to influence the EAC's reports and positions on GOP claims of massive "voter fraud" and the effects of legislation for Photo ID restrictions at the polls.

Von Spakovsky was concerned about the EAC's position and the "proper balance" (code word) being brought to bi-partisan reports on "voter fraud" and Photo ID, both of which eventually failed to give evidence of GOP claims of massive Democratic voter fraud. Such claims were being used by Bush's operatives at DoJ and out in the "grass roots" by their boy Thor Hearne and his "non-partisan" front group, the American Center for Voting Rights to game elections and media, and push for Photo ID laws (which have been found to be unconstitutional time and again.)

Both reports would eventually be altered and/or buried.

BRAD BLOG readers will also recall the many reports filed here concerning the partisanship and/or incompetence of the EAC, the White House controlled federal body which supposedly oversees our nation's electoral system. These emails highlight many of the claims we've made about inappropriate influence by the White House on the failed commission.

One thing which catches our eye in the emails right away is that von Spakovsky's emails were sent to the Republican members of the commission including DeGregorio, Donnetta Davidson (now EAC chair), and Tom Wilkey (EAC Exec Dir.), but not to the Democratic members. (Ed Note: See 5/24/07 UPDATE at bottom of article on this point.) We've covered both Davidson and Wilkey, and the failings of each, in some detail here at The BRAD BLOG in the past.

The notes were also sent to Republican aides of Sen. Christopher Bond in Missouri (home of the ACVR's Hearne), as well as Doug Lewis of the Election Center, a voting machine industry front group, which "the Dean of the DC press corp," WaPo's David Broder, recently referred to in a column as his favorite expert on elections, forgetting to mention that he's an industry/Republican shill. Can someone please put Broder out to pasture at this point?! And can the media stop quoting Lewis as if he's a disinterested, non-partisan "expert" on elections?!

Little time for the moment to report on the new specifics found in the emails, so we'll encourage you to give them a quick read (just 5 pages) and leave your thoughts here in comments. As time allows, we'll update this item with our own thoughts if possible.

But one quick point that we haven't highlighted enough lately: Voter Fraud is the term used to describe voters gaming the system on a retail level by voting twice, etc. It's extremely rare, as bi-partisan reports have shown time and again, despite GOP claims (that includes the EAC's own buried and altered reports that von Spakovsky hoped to influence).

Election Fraud, on the other hand, is the defrauding of elections through the administration of those elections, from inappropriate voter roll purges to gaming of voting equipment, etc. Evidence strongly suggests that the GOP's unevidenced claims of a "voter fraud" epidemic by Democrats may well have been forwarded after 2004 in order to deflect from the now-well-documented evidence showing GOP election fraud in Ohio and elsewhere.

Hope that reminder helps to clarify.

UPDATE 5/24/07: McClatchy's Greg Gordon writes to say that he believes that all of the commissioners, not just the Republican ones, were CC'd on the emails in question, but that those CC's somehow ended up on a second page and didn't get included when they created their PDF's of the actual emails. Due to the holiday weekend, unfortunately, he won't be able to try to find them in order to check for sure until next week at earliest. But he wanted us to note that there is a question about whether or not all of the EAC commissioners were actually CC'd, and to note his recollection that they were, at least on some of the notes. We'll update further if we can learn definitively one way or the other.

A letter sent to White House attorney Fred Fielding today by top U.S. House Judiciary Committee members offers "one last appeal" for voluntary cooperation in the U.S. Attorney firing probe, or else a "compulsory process" will begin.

The letter, sent to The BRAD BLOG by committee chair John Conyers (D-MI) and the chair of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, Linda T. Sà¡nchez (D-CA), takes the White House to task for their "rebuff of efforts by the Judiciary Committee to obtain voluntary cooperation" in their investigation "concerning at least nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 and related matters."

The letter may be downloaded below.

"Even without a single document or witness interview provided by the White House," the letter charges, "it is clear that the White House played an important role in the events concerning the U.S. Attorney controversy."

By way of example, the two House chairs detail Karl Rove's admission that he intervened with both the White House Counsel's Office and the DoJ concerning the firing of New Mexico's U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that we will not be able to complete our investigation absent full and complete cooperation from the White House," they write, before pointing out that "it would be constitutionally irresponsible to accept your 'all or nothing' limitations" for nothing more than off-the-record interviews without transcripts or public questioning.

"If the White House persists in refusing to provide information to the House Judiciary Committee, or even to discuss providing such information, on a voluntary basis, we will have no alternative but to begin to resort to compulsory process in order to carry out our oversight responsibilities," the letter concludes.

No explanation of what such a "compulsory process" might include is offered in the letter.

The two-page letter also includes a copy of an email message from Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales's former Chief of Staff, discussing strategy for the firings of U.S. Attorneys last November. The complete letter sent to today to Fred F. Fielding, Esq., Counsel to the President, may be downloaded here in full [PDF]

Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa

{Ed Note: An error in this report was later discovered while working on a follow-up to it. The illegality of the Bush military pay raise proposal as described in the report below, is based on a 1999 law which phased out the pay formula that Bush failed to meet, by fiscal year 2008. Lawmakers are in the process of restoring that provision, even while another law also keeps the legality of Bush's proposal in doubt. The full details and explanation for the error, after combing through a soup of defense authorization provisions, are explained in our follow up report. The BRAD BLOG regrets the error.}

Recently the Bush Administration and Democratically-controlled Congress were at odds over how much to pay US soldiers serving in the most dangerous places in the world: Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress said that the troops should get a raise of 3.5%, while the Administration said any raise higher than 3% was not deserved. Administration officials even bluntly said the White House "strongly opposes" giving the troops that extra 0.5%.

Although Democrats have been arguing for the 3.5% raise, what neither they, nor any news organization seems to have thus far noticed, is that the Administration's meager compensation plan would be, in fact, illegal.

Increases in military salary are traditionally determined by increases in average civilian salary, according to a method of measurement called the Employment Cost Index. Regardless of the actual dollar increase in salary, the base pay for service-members must be at least 0.5% above the corresponding civilian pay because of a Defense Authorization Act which Congress passed in 1999.

But according to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, the Bush Administration's proposed raise of only 3% for active-duty troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is actually less than the average increase in civilian wages from 2006 to 2007 (3.3%), instead of the required 0.5% more than the average civilian wage (which would be equal to 3.8%).

If Congress passes the funding plan that the Administration has proposed, they will, in effect, be illegally depriving the troops of the minimum pay raise guaranteed to them by the earlier law. The move would save the Bush Administration millions and could cost new US Army recruits (who are the least effected by the proposed pay raise) a few hundred dollars annually.

Still, some service-members might take comfort from the fact that the issue at hand is a raise in salary, not a decrease, as the Bush Administration and the Department of Defense had previously tried to pull off in 2003, until they got caught red-handed attempting to stiff U.S. troops back then as well...

McClatchy Newspaper's excellent Greg Gordon moves the ball forward again on the Bush White House's insider politicization of the DoJ to achieve electoral advantages via gaming of phony "Voter Fraud" claims and the pursuit of voter suppressing Photo ID laws at the polls.

His article covers the inside moves of the Bush-appointed operative Hans von Spakovsky after he was assigned to the DoJ's voting rights unit, and the games he played in the post, including an anonymously published essay on "Voter Fraud" and Voter ID laws; overriding of career civil rights attorney recommendations against a Georgia Voter ID law (while refusing to recuse himself, despite his past service as a Georgia official), a law which was later found by a federal judge to be unconstitutional and akin to a Jim Crow-era poll tax; and attempts to influence the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC)'s studies on Voter Fraud and the effects of Photo ID at the polls.

Last year, Von Spakovsky was recess-appointed by Bush to head the FEC, though he will face what could be an interesting Congressional confirmation hearing in the Senate on June 13.

Aside from the many familiar faces (at least to BRAD BLOG readers) who come into play in the story, from Georgia to Arizona to Missouri, one aspect of Gordon's report is a bit of a surprise and so particularly catches our notice...

If the GOP can, in the course of selecting their own Presidential nominee, use a fictional TV show to highlight dangers, real or imagined, that face America, so can we point to a fictional networkwide election hacking scenario as recently seen on a popular TV show. Fictionalized or otherwise, the premise behind this TV hack is based on a real and documented vulnerability of electronic voting machines and underscores the dangers they pose to American democracy.

The following compilation of a few scenes from last week's HEROES on NBC demonstrates a very real scenario: the ability of a single person to hack an election via inappropriate access to a voting machine --- the type of access regularly granted to election officials, voting machine company employees, and poll workers allowed to take voting machines home for "sleepovers" prior to elections.

While the inappropriate access by this particular person in the following clip is obviously a fantasy, the premise underscoring the scenario is anything but --- at least if you're one of those reality-based folks who still believe in the expertise of scientists, peer-reviewed university studies and reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), etc.

Enjoy...

(Thanks to Alan Breslauer for the smart edit, and to BRAD BLOG emailer and HEROES fan, Corey K. for the heads up!)

On their sales page for Dr. Laura's book, Parenthood by Proxy: Don't Have Them if You Won't Raise Them (later repackaged as Stupid Things Parents Do to Mess Up Their Kids), the rightwing "news" outlet WordNetDaily writes:

Looks like the faux doctor, one-time exhibitionist (graphic link very not safe for work!), American Patron Saint of Hubris, and her kid's mom, may not have done such a bang-up job in that "essential task of teaching them right and wrong" after all. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that her son, Deryk, now stationed with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, is "under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called 'repulsive.'"

The site, believed to be Deryk's, reportedly featured "cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned 'My Sweet Little Habib'; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets" and was shut down on Friday.

Color us stunned.

"Yes . . . FUCKINGING Yes!!!," Dr. Laura's adorable little bunchkin began one of his blog entries on the site, according to the Trib. "I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don't."

And in other Rightwing Hypocrisy news this weekend, former family values champeen and South Dakota state Rep. Ted Klaudt was arrested Friday "on felony charges that include eight counts of rape involving foster children and former legislative pages." The story is appalling enough that we don't even wish to go into details here, so be forewarned if you choose to click on the link.

Beyond that, go take on the day!

Guest blogged by DES

On the road this weekend, so little time to offer a summary or ad graphics, but below you'll find the most notable of notable stories posted last week to The BRAD BLOG. From more news of Ann Coulter's felony voter fraud, to exclusives on the U.S. Attorney purge from Greg Palast and another from Brad on the worm which took down Early Voting in Sarasota's 13th district last year, to the continuing unravelling of the GOP 'Voter Fraud' scam and the crooks and liars of the ACVR and the legal firm, Lathrop & Gage, behind it all. A quick review of the following will get you all caught up for whatever tumult is undoubtedly set to follow this week as the wheels continue to come off at a breakneck pace...

John Fund is an evil, unrepentant liar who despises democracy and the very American values that it represents. Other than that, he's swell.

At left is the Wall Street Journal's editorialist/propagandist, lying to America on Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher. Actor and well-informed progressive Bradley Whitford deserves credit for attempting to call "bullshit" (literally) on Fund's garbage, but it sure would be nice if Maher had someone on who could really speak to the insidious (and successful) GOP "voter fraud" scam meant for nothing more nor less than to keep legitimate voters from being able to cast a vote, as revealed more clearly than ever by the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal. Fund is one of the original architects, or at least a ponyboy for that despicable scam.

(Hint: I live about 7 minutes from where Real Time tapes each week, and would be happy to counter the previously-debunked horse manure that Fund was allowed to spread, virtually unchecked, last night.)

Important Note: Before you view the video, I should point out that Fund's reference to the Baker/Carter Commission's recommendation for Photo ID restrictions at the polls should be taken in context with the fact that that privately-empaneled commission was created by the same fraudsters who created the GOP's American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) scam as we originally broke here and followed up here, and which RAW STORY subsequently busted wide open here.

As we all reported at the time, that Baker/Carter scam was meant to do little more than give "respectable and official blue-ribbon" credence to the Photo ID scam they were beginning to perpetrate back in its nascent stages. The scam was perpetrated by the same operatives who secretly created and ran the commission in the first place, in order that folks like Fund (who, naturally, was called to give testimony to this phony commission) could later cite some sort of official elder-statesmen blessing of their disenfranchising Photo ID conspiracy which they've been using to con an otherwise gullible media/electorate.

Here's what a fuming John Conyers had to say about Fund's Baker/Carter commission testimony as we reported it in April of 2005, not long after live-blogging the entire hearing:

(Thanks to BRAD BLOG's video ace, Alan Breslauer for the stomach churning video clip!)