All eight defendants in Clay County, Kentucky's election fraud trial have been found guilty today by a federal jury. Six of those eight were high-ranking election officials, including the county clerk, a circuit judge and the school superintendent. The conspirators were charged with having manipulated federal elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006 by buying and selling votes and manipulating electronic voting machines.

According to AP, each of the now-convicted felons could face up to 20 years in prison for what prosecutors had described as a conspiracy to manipulate elections for decades in the rural, heavily Republican county.

In additional to federal racketeering, several of the defendants were also convicted of charges that included mail fraud, extortion and laundering money used to buy votes.

The BRAD BLOG has been following this story since the conspirators were originally arrested in March of last year, and as details of the election officials' manipulation of ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines has emerged...

Guest Editorial by Frank Schaeffer

With the Senate having now passed the final reconciliation changes to the health care reform bill, the Republicans from their "Tea Party" wing to their high priest of hallucinatory fantasy; Glenn Beck, are about to pay a historic price for the biggest miscalculation in American political history since Charles Lindbergh sided with the Germans. The pundits all have it wrong. Obama's victory on health care reform will result in the Democratic Party retaining the majority in both houses of Congress as well as Obama winning a second term.

Disclosure: As a former Republican and Religious Right leader who quit the movement in the mid 80s (for reasons I explain in my book Crazy For God) let me tell my progressive friends and all reality-based people why and how the Republican Party just consigned themselves to defeat by (amongst other things) opposing health care reform...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Lights Out this Saturday for Earth Hour; Hottest summer Down Under; It's official, liquid corn is bad for you; Ford saves money by saving energy... PLUS: Fun with sausage-making: Climate change legislation in the wake of health care reform ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Disputed island 'vanishes,' say scientists; Oilfield co. failed to report fracking violations; The 12 Most Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggies; Downsizing Detroit; NASA: Global cooling is bunk; It's official: China takes lead over U.S. in clean-power investment... PLUS: The Economist on the science of climate change ...

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

I appeared earlier this afternoon on RT (formerly "Russia Today"), an English-language Russian news service seen in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Despite yesterday's six-months-late admission from the New York Times that they were repeatedly bamboozled by the Rightwing con-artists who produced deceptively edited hit videos in order to take down ACORN (which they successfully did), U.S. television --- including those so-called "liberal" bastions like CNN and MSNBC --- don't seem to much care that the entire thing was a hoax from the jump. At least they've yet to cover it, while RT has done so with at least three live hits over the past 24 hours.

Once again, RT seems to have more interest in issues that actually effect Americans than American broadcast news outlets do. Here's my choppy web-cam appearance earlier today.

Yesterday, my colleague and friend David Swanson was also a guest on RT to discuss the ACORN issue, as was nationally syndicated radio host Thom Hartmann. Both of those short segments are posted below and well worth watching...

This is an exceedingly disturbing report from last night's Rachel Maddow Show on the rising wave of terrorism by Rightwing extremists --- now known as the Republican Party --- in the wake of the passage of healthcare insurance reform.

I've long warned, and stand by the disturbing prediction again today, that someone will end up dead before this is all over. Where, oh, where, are the responsible GOP leaders who ought to be denouncing what's going on here loudly and clearly?

It's somewhat remarkable that Maddow never uses the word "terrorism" in this report, despite this meeting the very definition of the word. (Ed note: Please see correction on this point below.)

Since Maddow's report last night, things have only gotten reportedly worse. In VA, according to Politico, a tea bagger has posted what he thought was the home address of Democratic Rep. Thomas Perriello, inviting others to "drop by" and lend a "personal touch" to their opinions on the freshman Congressman's vote on health insurance reform. The address, however, turned out to be that of his brother who has a wife and four children under the age of eight.

Officials are now investigating a severed gas line at his brother's home.

Watch Maddow's report. This story ought to be the lead of every broadcast media outlet right now (and it certainly would have seen wall-to-wall coverage on Fox "News" had these been Republican offices vandalized by domestic Democratic-leaning terrorists.)

Also, please consider signing on to Velvet Revolution's StopDomesticTerror.com campaign before it's too late again. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR. Hat-tip: BRAD BLOG reader "PS".]

CORRECTION 3/26/10: Not sure how I missed it --- must have been jotting down a note at the moment she mentioned it --- but in fact, Maddow did note that some of these acts sound very much as if they are "close to the legal definition of terrorism in this country." She did so at appx. the 8:30min mark in the video above. My apologies for the oversight, and my thanks to BRAD BLOG commenter Lora for pointing it out.

Last night, the New York Times issued a pathetic "correction" in which the paper finally admitted it had gotten one very important element of the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax story wrong by reporting on at least four occasions that Rightwing activist James O'Keefe had dressed in his ridiculous 70s-era blaxploitation "pimp" get-up while secretly video-taping low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers last Summer. He didn't. That was a lie by O'Keefe and his publisher Andrew Breitbart, and it was forwarded uncritically by the New York Times over and over again.

After two months of my badgering the paper's Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock and its Public Editor (ombudsman) Clark Hoyt about it --- and after each offered all sorts of extraordinary excuses (see here and here for just a start) as to why they stood by the paper's demonstrably inaccurate reporting --- the "paper of record" was finally, and begrudgingly, forced to admit it was wrong on that one element, and has issued a correction to it.

The "correction" came six months after the Times first damagingly misreported the story, and was followed by repeated similar misreports. It also came on the same day that the four-decade-old community organization announced it had been forced to close shop in the wake of the phony scandal, which was helped along by the gross misreporting by the Times and many others that followed suit.

But the Times' correction still made it a point to include the false notion that, while O'Keefe didn't dress as a pimp in ACORN offices, he still "represented himself" as one, by "posing" as a pimp.

Well, no, as we've shown time and again, he didn't do that either. He posed as the law school student (or sometimes a banker or politician) boyfriend to Hannah Giles who was dressed similarly to a prostitute. During the secretly-taped interviews, they both told the low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers they were trying to save her from an abusive pimp who had attempted to stalk and kill her.

Yet, the Times is still standing by its inaccurate reporting.

So, to help them out, here are just a few more examples of O'Keefe "posing as a pimp," as the New York Times, the "paper of record," would have you believe, as taken from O'Keefe's own unauthenticated text transcripts...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: World Water Day; Remembering a champion of conservation; Record Canadian winter, record Beijing dust storm; No ban for the Bluefin Tuna (Sorry, Charlie!)... PLUS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce grows its own astroturf group!... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': USDA's Organic regulators let offenders slide; Study backs efforts to save Delta fish; Washington becomes 5th state to outlaw BPA; Global cooling is bunk: study; Does Health Care Affect The Climate Debate At All?; Oil Co. CEO says refiners won't invest if EPA regulates; Ford to save over $1 mil by turning off computers; EPA boosts chemical restrictions for water ... PLUS: The Best Argument Against Global Warming ...

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The once-great New York Times has now become the new shame of this nation. Tonight they have run a "correction" concerning their repeated misreporting of the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax for tomorrow's papers. And, as you'll see below, it's pathetic --- simply pathetic --- and still inaccurate.

It has been...

• ...six months after the New York Times ran their first incorrect story on the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax;

• ...five months since their ombudsman and reader's representative Public Editor Clark Hoyt (Public@NYTimes.com) chided the paper for waiting "nearly a week" before reporting on the phony videos, and announcing the assignment of a new editor to specifically follow "the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio";
• ...almost four months since the former MA Attorney General correctly reported [PDF] what had really gone on in those ACORN offices (though his report was entirely ignored by the NYT until last weekend);
• ...two months after their Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock (SeniorEditor@NYTimes.com) wrote via email that James O'Keefe "appeared on a live Fox show wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN's offices...We believe him. Therefore there is nothing for us to correct";
• ...two months after Hoyt (Public@NYTimes.com) wrote via email to back up the editors and the paper's reporting to say that "The story says O'Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time";
• ...two days after Hoyt finally admitted in his column that "The Times was wrong…and I have been wrong in defending the paper's phrasing" and that "Editors say they are considering a correction";
• ...and on the very same day that ACORN announced they were shutting their doors on April 1 following a lack of funding, in light of the damage done by the highly-doctored, falsely promoted and inaccurately reported hit videos released by known Rightwing partisan propagandists and liars...

...the "paper of record" has issued a correction for tomorrow's papers, in which they repeat the falsehood that James O'Keefe "posed as a pimp" in ACORN offices. He didn't. He posed as the fake prostitute's law school boyfriend trying to help save her from a pimp who had stalked and threatened to kill her, as a review of even O'Keefe's own unauthenticated text-transcripts show.

Here is the absolutely shameful squib published tonight on the web, and running in tomorrow's paper, along with just the shortest explanation of how they are still getting it completely wrong, but don't seem to care...

In case you were wondering if ACORN's announcement today that they will soon be closing their doors will have any effect on my campaign to demand accountability from the people and institutions (e.g., the NYTimes, but many others as well) culpable in their demise, rest assured it will not --- other than to serve as yet another reminder of why such accountability remains an imperative here at The BRAD BLOG.

As I have long tried to impart, it's not about ACORN or even the liars, cretins, partisan scam artists, and democracy haters who schemed to take down the group. It's about those whose responsibility it was (and still is) to keep the cretins from being able to do so. About those whose responsibility it is to protect our democracy from all enemies, foreign and domestic. On those particular points, after I cool down a bit, I will have much more to say tomorrow --- and the day after, and the day after, and the day after...

This seems like a good moment to remind those who haven't seen this, or have forgotten about it, to once again run the short video (just 40 seconds) of Paul Weyrich, the still-revered founding father of the modern day "Conservative" Movement and the godfather of the GOP's modern-day voter-suppression movement. This is from his 1980 speech to 15,000 preachers at a Dallas convention where he shared the podium with both Jerry Falwell and Ronald Reagan.

This is what the GOP's campaign against ACORN --- and democracy --- was always about...

Weyrich passed away in December of 2008. His dream lives on.

Just one day after the New York Time's Public Editor Clark Hoyt finally admitted that both he and his paper were "wrong" in the way, for the last six months, they unskeptically and inaccurately covered the Rightwing hoaxsters who released doctored-up, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped hit videos targeting the national community organization ACORN, largely for their work in legally registering hundreds of thousands of low-income voters so they could have their voice heard in their own democracy, the group is announcing that it will be "bringing its operations to a close".

We should take the time to note here, since the corporate mainstream media likely will not, that there is no evidence that any vote has ever been cast illegally in any election vis a vis an improper registration by an ACORN worker. Of the very few ACORN workers found to have submitted illegal registrations, almost every one of them was turned in to officials by ACORN themselves. Again: no voter ever registered improperly by an ACORN worker has ever cast a single vote in any election.

The following statement has just been sent to The BRAD BLOG by ACORN spokesperson Kevin Whelan concerning the group's plan to shut down:

Neither Andrew Breitbart nor James O'Keefe, the partisan propagandists who created and published the scam videos which ultimately helped to destroy the valuable community group, could be reached for comment to learn whether or not they planned to target widows' and orphans' groups next.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, however, issued the following statement over the weekend as a reminder of the group's successes, in light of the now-successful years-long Rightwing hit job intended to cripple the organization for having the temerity to be one of those thousand points of light you've heard about, helping the neglected and the poor in our society --- more than 400,000 low-income families in 75 cities --- the folks who need such help the most...

And the far-too-rarely bestowed BRAD BLOG "Intellectually Honest Conservative Award" goes today to David Frum, former speech writer for George W. Bush, for his article last night on "Waterloo". Here are a few money quotes:

UPDATE 3/26/10: Frum is fired by rightwing American Enterprise Institute, where he's been employed since 2003, after having the temerity to pen the above. Guess the Right isn't into that whole "liberty" and "free speech" thing as much as they pretend to be. Who knew? Details...

"The Times was wrong…and I have been wrong in defending the paper's phrasing."

Even as the New York Times once again misreported the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax on its pages in a report on the community organization's possible declaration of bankruptcy in Saturday's paper, their Public Editor (ombudsman) Clark Hoyt finally admits in his column tonight, for tomorrow's paper, that both he and the paper were "wrong" in their reports about rightwing dirty trickster James O'Keefe's "pimp" costume, adding that "editors say they are considering a correction."

Considering?! What exactly would be the hold up?

The paper and Hoyt, as The BRAD BLOG has been detailing for nearly two months now, were out and out wrong in their reports about O'Keefe, and what his highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped videos misleadingly suggested to show, and in their failure to report exculpatory information, such as the refusal to release the unedited raw videos made by the rightwing propagandists, as well as the results of an investigation by MA's former Attorney General [PDF] finding no "pattern of illegal conduct" by ACORN employees as seen in the videos as published by the rightwing media mogul and fabulist Andrew Breitbart.

More than a month and a half after the paper's Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock, first attempted to defend the "paper of record's" reporting by pointing to Fox "News" and the accused felon O'Keefe himself in support of their inaccurate reports, as we exclusively detailed here, and more than a month and a half after Hoyt himself offered similar excuses and was shown that he was absolutely wrong, as we exclusively detailed here, the Public Editor offers his extremely reluctant mea culpa tonight in "The Acorn Sting Revisited" [emphasis added]:

Hoyt also conceded in his long-overdue admission that the paper erred in failing to ever mention (until a story in today's paper finally!) the independent findings of former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger which were released on December 7th of last year....

Much needed weekend comedy/satire break... I can't even conceive of Jon Stewart not winning any Emmy for his remarkable channeling of Glenn Beck, which aired on Thursday night. It's just about as "MUST SEE" as they get...

And, later that same night, Stephen Colbert piled on to the psychotic menace to society that is Glenn Beck as well...

We missed this one recently (as did the tax-payer "watchdogs" "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Government" for some odd reason):

But by all means, let's focus instead on ACORN, which helps some 400,000 low-income families in 75 cities with basic needs, because they've received an average of $3.5 million in federal dollars to help with their efforts for each of the last 15 years.

That's "million" (with an m), as opposed to the "billions" as still misreported by James O'Keefe and the other journalistic malpracticers at "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Government." Six months ago, in a still-uncorrected item at Breitbart's website --- their first one on the phony ACORN "pimp" hoax videos --- O'Keefe mis-reported that ACORN "receive[s] billions in tax money."

Oh, and in addition to the actual billions (with a b) that we may have been defrauded of via phony contracts in Iraq during the Bush regime, the same story linked above also notes:

Now let's go do our moral duty and protect the tax-payers against "big government" corruption by taking down those those bastards at ACORN!

After being largely off grid for the last several days on an unrelated job, and a harrowing late-night flight back from Portland on Alaska Air (I blame Palin), I'm finally getting back to work today. Lots to catch up on over next several days.

Feel free to let me know in comments here if there's anything you believe may need my attention, or that you think I may not know about but may want to...

P.S. We ticked up over 1,000 followers on Twitter at some point over the last day or two. Congrats to @bcctmv who seems to be the 1,000th! If you're not following @TheBradBlog there yet, what's the hold up? You're missing lots of fun stuff that doesn't make it over here to the blog!

Also, our Facebook page (started much later) is now nearing 700 fans. If you want to spread the good word over there, it's much appreciated! Please jump in if you're a FB user!