I wrote a bit about this after last year's elections, though from a different direction. But, given the recent remarks by President Obama (and more than a fair bit of questionable reporting about those remarks), its worth adding a few more thoughts here.

Over the years, I've seen folks misinterpret The BRAD BLOG's coverage of voting and elections and voter suppression by presuming that by covering these things, it's the same thing as telling everyone to vote.

In fact, I strongly believe in the right to not vote. While I think it's a counter-productive response to pretty much everything --- including the misguided and lazy notions that "elections don't really matter" or "both parties are the same" --- I would fight for your right to not vote under our existing system as vigorously as I'd fight for your right to vote (if you want to) and to have that vote counted, counted accurately and in a way that everyone can know that everyone's votes have been counted accurately.

With that in mind, it was interesting to see the reactions to President Obama's statement last week in Cleveland which some, including CNN and, naturally, the ever-outraged Fox "News", took it upon themselves to interpret as a call for "mandatory voting" in the U.S...

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The call for the impeachment of U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller is now making its way onto the airwaves in a number of Congressional districts around the country.

The women's rights group UltraViolet, which describes itself as "an online community of over 600,000 women and men who want to take collective action to expose and fight sexism in the public sector, private sector and the media," is now airing radio ads calling for the impeachment of Fuller in the wake of the federal judge's arrest last year on domestic battery charges.

The :30 second spots (posted below) are said to be "airing in GOP house districts in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, California and Virginia urging members of the [U.S. House] Judiciary Committee to remove Alabama Judge Mark Fuller from the bench for assaulting his wife."

Citing The BRAD BLOG's recent publication of the complete, chilling audio from the 911 call by Fuller's wife Kelli, which seems to contradict new "self-defense" claims being advanced by Fuller's Birmingham attorney Barry Ragsdale, the group argues in a recent mailing to media that "The 911 call makes clear that Judge Mark Fuller is not fit to sit on the bench in Alabama and highlights the need for Congress to take action immediately."

A press release sent out to announce the release of the radio ads, notes that UltraViolet is "sounding the alarm about an Alabama judge who was arrested for assaulting his wife last August but remains on the Federal Bench"...

A few weeks ago, our legal analyst Ernie Canning warned how the U.S. Supreme Court's pending decision on whether or not to hear the ACLU's challenge to the Wisconsin GOP Photo ID voting law might be the last chance before the 2016 Presidential elections to determine the Constitutionality of such laws.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided not to grant cert in the WI challenge in the Frank v. Walker case. The decision is not a ruling on the merits of the case or the Constitutionality of the law. It simply means that, for now, there were not four votes on the Court to hear the ACLU's challenge at this time.

It also means that, barring further court action or a quick decision on a similar law out of another state, polling place Photo ID restrictions on voters will be allowed in the Badger State in 2016. That, despite the fact that the federal trial court found, when striking down the law as unconstitutional and a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last year, that the new Republican-enacted law may serve to bar some 300,000 disproportionately Democratic-leaning and already lawfully registered voters from casting a ballot in the state's Presidential election.

There is also more than a bit of irony in this matter, in that, after U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman soundly rejected the law in 2014 --- finding that "evidence adduced at trial demonstrates" WI's Act 23 "disproportionately impacts Black and Latino voters" and that the law would "prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes" --- the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals deadlocked (disingenously) 5 to 5 on whether to stay the original ruling. That deadlock meant the stay would be granted and the WI law would be allowed, barring further court challenges, despite the fact that 6 federal judges had voted to strike down the law, while just 5 had voted in its favor. To make matters worse, Act 23 had also been struck down previously in state court as a violation of the state constitution as well. Nonetheless, in this matter, a minority of judges successfully ruled against the majority.

All of that, despite a blistering dissent filed in last year's 7th Circuit Court WI decision by against the law (and all such laws) from revered conservative 7th Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner. Posner's original ruling in favor of a Photo ID restriction law in Crawford v. Marion County, Indiana, was the basis of the first such case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, upholding Indiana's Photo ID law in 2008. So his unambiguous reversal on the issue, now that we know much more about such laws, was noteworthy and, opponents of the law had hoped, convincing to the Supremes who have, for many years, favorably cited the legal scholar's opinions.

Though the 7th Circuit's decision to temporarily stay the original ruling striking down the law was later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court last year --- on the basis that the stay was made too close to the election --- the discriminatory law is now back in place in the state. The refusal by the Court to grant cert this weeks means that it will likely remain in place as the next Presidential election begins.

Some watching these matters closely, however, believe that Monday's decision by SCOTUS to not hear the Wisconsin case may ultimately be a good thing, perhaps "a blessing in disguise"...

Another new Internet Voting system, another major vulnerability to massive election fraud discovered along with it. This time in Australia, as reported by ABC:

Well. If the people who run it said it was fixed, why worry? (Just because they also said it was secure in the first place? Silly you.)

"Just because they've patched this particular bug that they've been specifically notified of does not mean that they've fixed the fundamental questions around the security and verifiability of the system," said University of Melbourne's Vanessa Teague, who discovered the security vulnerability. "If anything the existence of this one particular bug serves to bolster the argument that these kinds of bugs are probably inevitable in these kinds of systems"...

This weekend, Washington Monthly blogger (and too-occasional BRAD BLOG guest blogger) D.R. Tucker cited the "Intellectually Honest Conservative" award The BRAD BLOG graciously offered recently to Texas Republican Rep. Sarah Davis.

He notes that while he kinda sorta mostly agrees with us, he has a complaint.

We granted the rarely-bestowed award to Davis last week for her courageous stand in favor of women's rights in Texas, where every other GOP lawmaker in her state Legislature is actively trying to remove them. She offers a (truly) conservative basis for her stance, arguing that Government has no business inserting itself into health decisions between a women and her doctor.

Where Tucker takes issue is that he believes if Davis really cared about women's rights she'd have no choice but to "leave her misogynist party and [tell] her right-wing colleagues to kiss her Tex-ass."

In making the case, he offers up an interesting anecdote worth sharing about Mary Crisp, for those of us who didn't know about it. She was the first female co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She had worked her way up from a party volunteer to eventually become one of its top officials before, essentially, being pushed out of the role by Ronald Reagan in 1980, thanks to her stance on abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment --- the latter of which the GOP had long supported...until they didn't anymore...

Out here in California --- for those of us now living directly "on the front edge of a climate crisis", as MSNBC's Chris Hayes describes it in the interview below --- it's both extraordinarily unusual and incredibly welcome to hear a politician with ambitions for higher office speak as frankly as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) does here.

But with temps in the high 90s over the past week here in Southern California (in March!) and new data from NASA finding the state may well run out of surface water completely in just a year's time, it's very good to see someone with the courage to say what needs to be said.

Newsom describes the state's voluntarily water conservation measures to date, in the face of our record-shattering drought, as "small ball".

"I think we're going to have to move to mandatory rationing," he notes bluntly. Hayes appears surprised in response, noting that calls for mandatory rationing are "essentially anathema in American political vocabulary."

"This is serious," Newsom responds in turn, detailing the crisis the state is now facing. "This is Code Red".

"We can call for voluntary rationing because that polls better, or we can lead. And I guess at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves 'Are we just stewards? Or are we gonna step up and step in and actually share our private thoughts --- trust me, private thoughts are ample around some requirements for mandatory reductions --- or we can continue to play the finger in the wind politics that, frankly, has put us in this crisis in the first place."

Watch:

What we've been referring to of late as the Politics of Stupid regime that we are all forced to live under since the GOP takeover of both the U.S. House and Senate, is living up to its name once again today.

The Republicans who now control the once-honorable and formerly-esteemed U.S. House Judiciary Committee go full "BuzzFeed" (Plus sexism! Minus amusing!) with this incredibly embarrassing page posted on Wednesday as a "Press Release" in opposition to the President's Executive Actions on immigration.

Here's a partial screenshot...

You'll have to click on it to get the full idea (cuz, ya know, all those are animated "ditzy girl" GIFs are just so delightfully hysterical.)

By way of reminder, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, now led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), is the esteemed body where such things as impeachment of U.S. Presidents and federal judges, etc., are carried out.

So embarrassing. And, frankly, so very dispiriting. Maybe that's the point.

UPDATE 3/20/2015: Since we published the above yesterday, a few other websites have also begun to notice (and deride) this shameful "press release". Moreover, they've also raised one or two points that we didn't mention here.

TPM, which is covering this as its top story for the moment, notes the irony of a "press release" regarding immigration reform in which "all 10 GIFs included in the press release depicted white characters or celebrities."

And ZDNet, who describes the "press release" as a "new low" even for Congress, also notes that the GIFs in question, all taken from popular films or TV shows, may well be in violation of copyright laws and "anti-piracy laws" that members of this same House Judiciary Committee have been attempting to pass since 2011. Oops.

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On this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, we air, for the first time, the complete EXCLUSIVE audio obtained via public records request from the Atlanta PD, that appears to contradict 'self-defense' claims by U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller following his arrest on domestic battery charges last year after his wife called 911 claiming he was "beating on her".

I also update my report on Fuller with new comment in response from Fuller's attorney, Barry Ragsdale.

Also on this week's show: Breaking news on today's shootings in Tunisia and Phoenix; Questions about Israel's election results; Donald Trump claims he's entering the 2016 GOP Presidential race (Dems celebrate); Oregon institutes Universal Voter Registration; and Desi Doyen joins us to explain the "impending disaster" of Friday's solar eclipse in Europe and, as usual, for the latest Green News Report...

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I am prepping for today's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, so don't have time to offer much detail at the moment. But, as so many have been dropping me email asking for my thoughts on yesterday's election in Israel --- and, specifically, the disparity between the reported final results and the earlier Exit Polling numbers --- I just wanted to say, I've been poking around to see what, if anything, I can make sense of.

I never like to go off half-cocked on issues like this, so, as usual, I won't have anything here unless it's hard and independently verifiable.

For the short term then, please see Josh Marshall's take on the Exit Poll/Final Results disparity here. (That's not an endorsement, just a link to one person's take. One person who, though he has some history of being not-skeptical-enough about polling numbers and election results, has been following this election and its polls very closely for some weeks. Moreover, he had at least some limited access to data from the Exit Polls in Israel as they were coming in yesterday. So his insight is useful.)

Also, for those asking about about Israel's voting system --- specifically, how they cast and count votes and whether they use an e-voting system --- my understanding is that all voters are still using the country's hand-counted paper ballot system, though some plans are in the works to move to an electronic system in the near future.

To my knowledge, however, yesterday's election used Israel's paper ballot system --- in which a paper card representing one of the parties on the ballot is selected by the voter, enclosed in an envelope, placed in a cardboard box, and then counted by hand at central headquarters after polls close --- rather than the e-voting system referenced in the news article above from December of 2014.

If anyone has information to the contrary, or additional details you feel I should look at, please feel free to note them in comments below or send to me direct via email here.

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Oh, look! A glimmer of common sense rationality in an otherwise World of Stupid of late!

As readers know, I'm no fan of Oregon's all Vote-by-Mail elections. (Yes, I understand most of you Oregonians love it. Save your hate mail and/or read this and this and this and this and this.) Nor am I a fan of Washington Post's mostly terrible editorial page. But on this matter, both the state and the paper have it right...

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[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the attorney of Federal District Judge Mark F. Fuller (11th Circuit, Alabama, Middle District) says Fuller was simply "defending himself" against his wife when she called 911, said she was being beaten, requested an ambulance, and was then found bloodied by police in an Atlanta hotel room in August of 2014.

That claim would appear to be at odds with the available audio evidence from the 911 call, segments of which were aired on MSNBC last year, and since obtained in full by The BRAD BLOG via public records request from the Atlanta Police Department. We publish the audio, in full, below for the first time, as it appears to contradict new claims by Fuller's attorney.

The interview with the LATimes also appears to confirm that the special five-judge panel convened by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to investigate the disturbing incident and make recommendations for action to that Circuit Court's Judicial Council is investigating very similar claims of domestic violence and substance abuse made by Fuller's first wife Lisa during their 2012 divorce proceedings.

According to the paper's Timothy M. Phelps, Fuller's Birmingham attorney "and longtime friend" Barry Ragsdale explained during a lengthy recent interview that the incident last summer which led to the arrest of Fuller at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlanta began after Fuller's current wife Kelli accused the judge of having an affair with his law clerk. That claim is consistent with the initial police report, though Ragsdale --- who has also dismissed allegations of infidelity and abuse made by Fuller's first wife as little more than "nonsense" and "gossip" --- goes a bit farther in defense of the judge this time...