I was asked by the Guardian UK earlier this week to write a piece about the latest ACORN. Thought it was to run yesterday, so hopefully it'll run today. [Update: Just heard from the Guardian with some good news, as they've decided to run the piece I wrote for them in their paper version on Monday, so it'll run online Sunday night. || FURTHER UPDATE: That piece is now posted here.] But until then, Joe Conason over at Salon has posted a similar, if longer, piece, "In Defense of ACORN" in which I'm mentioned by name in regard to one of the (many) great hypocrisies in all of this silliness:

Conason also highlights another superb (and yes, classically wingnut hypocritical) point which I didn't note in my own piece...

Broke the news on air tonight. 4,000 word cover story on FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in The American Conservative to hit stands and web early next week, by former CIA agent Phil Giraldi.

Here's the teaser from TAC...:

Good. Rightwingers are covering it. So hopefully that means the "liberal media" will now pay attention!

UPDATE 9/18/09 1:15pm PT: Sibel posted the cover over at her site, and I've added it above. She also notes that the story is available online to subscribers on Monday when they'll release "a major press release" along with the print version out the same day. The story should then be available to all online on Tuesday.

The cover title: "Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?: The gagged FBI whistleblower on espionage, al-Qaeda, and secrets for sale"

In an email she just sent me just now, she notes: "We've been getting foreign MSM inquiries; tons. Zilch here; so far..."

Not much of a surprise by now. After all, what U.S. media would possibly care about members of the U.S. Congress (both Republican and Democratic) and high-ranking State and Defense Dept. officials taking bribes, being blackmailed, and enabling the theft and sale of U.S. nuclear secrets? Even if the allegations came under sworn and video-taped deposition by a former FBI translator who overheard such things first hand. Non-story, apparently.

UPDATE 9/21/09: I've now gotten a look at the final version of the story. 'Explosive' may prove to be an understatement. Details now here...

Just got called in, at last minute, to guest host for Angie Coiro's Live from the Left Coast on San Francisco's Green960am (KKGN). If you're not in SF, you can listen online from 6p-8p PT tonight (Thursday), log onto the live blog chat room at AngieCoiro.com, and/or give us a call at 866-960-5733!

What will we talk about? You'll know, like me, just as soon as I start talking about it!

(May have a bit of breaking Sibel Edmonds news during the show, btw, so tune in for that too! - UPDATE: Here ya go!)

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Fun show. First hour on what the hell to do about Dems, second hour with Norman Solomon of Institute for Public Accuracy, just back from Afghanistan, on the mess we've got there, and what can possibly be done now. Archives should be posted at LFTLC.com soon! Thanks all!

AUDIO NOW AVAILABLE: You can listen online over at the lftlc.com website...

• Hour 1 on ACORN, Obama, Democratic failures and a bunch of phone calls
• Hour 2 w/ Norman Solomon on Afghanistan

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Interior Dept. kicks oil industry out of bed --- literally!; EPA to start regulating toxic wastewater from coal-fired power plants; Fastest electric motorcycle in the world breaks speed record... PLUS: Corporate "free speech" could get even worse...much... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Clean energy to create more jobs than coal; Nestle Gives Up on McCloud Water Bottling Plant; Antibiotic resistance clue found; Google says We're Going into the Solar Mirror Business; UN: Gaza water supplies in danger of ‘collapse,’; Solar Filling Stations: On-Demand Fuel for Electric Cars and Bikes ... PLUS: A message from Van Jones...

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

Okay. Allow me to be as fair as possible, right off the top, following that headline. The all-day symposium which LA County Registrar/Recorder & County Clerk Dean Logan was kind enough to personally invite me to attend today at the California Institute of Technology, put "Technology" before "Democracy" at least in the title of the event...

...So technology came titularly before democracy, if not more so, as I good-naturedly chided Logan this afternoon. Though, in truth, it also tended to take the lead in at least those parts of the day that I was able to attend. But its hard to blame Logan for that. It's become the trend in the "election industry" over the last few years, where techno-scientists, private corporations and others (both well-meaning and less so) have seized the day (and the tax-payer dollars), to place techno-"solutions" far ahead of the real needs of citizens and their Constitutional requirements for true, democratic self-governance.

To his credit, that wasn't necessarily Logan's purpose in scheduling or naming this symposium, meant to begin opening the process of selecting a new voting system for the nation's largest voting jurisdiction to selected "stake-holders". And the good news is, the ultimate solution (complete transparency) to our voting system woes, did tend to bubble up towards the top, to the apparent surprise of some, as the day worn on...

-- Brad Friedman

[While I was off the grid for a brief vacation for a week in August, a short Op-Ed version of a piece I wrote for Commonweal Institute, where I am a Fellow, was published at CommonDreams.org. Unfortunately, I was off the grid, so couldn't respond to some of the off-base coments left on the piece over there. In any case, here now is the full-length version of that Op-Ed. -BF]

Last March, the country's highest court found that secret, computerized vote counting was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the country was Germany, and the Constitution violated by e-voting systems was the one that the U.S. wrote and insisted Germans ratify as part of their terms of surrender following WWII.

Paul Lehto, a U.S. election attorney and Constitutional rights expert, summarized the German court's unambiguous, landmark finding:

• "No 'specialized technical knowledge' can be required of citizens to vote or to monitor vote counts."
• There is a "constitutional requirement of a publicly observed count."
• "[T]he government substitution of its own check or what we’d probably call an 'audit' is no substitute at all for public observation."
• "A paper trail simply does not suffice to meet the above standards.
• "As a result of these principles,...'all independent observers' conclude that 'electronic voting machines are totally banned in Germany' because no conceivable computerized voting system can cast and count votes that meet the twin requirements of...being both 'observable' and also not requiring specialized technical knowledge.

After the verdict in the case --- filed by a computer expert and his political scientist son --- Lehto wondered how it could be that open, observable democracy is seemingly an inviolable right for "conquered Nazis," but not, apparently, for citizens of the United States...

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

I was strolling through my local county fair this summer, a small fair, a friendly fair, where cows, sheep, and pigs outnumber food vendors.

The Republican booth caught my eye, but not because of the red, white, and blue decorations. What caught my eye was the sign they'd posted, the sign that summed up the one key issue of importance to local Republicans.

What would it be, in this raucous political summer of 2009? Anger over bailouts, fear over death panels? No. The number one issue for Amador County Republicans: "Save Talk Radio."

I hadn't realized that the industry that just signed a $400 million contract with Rush Limbaugh needed saving, but they thought so; they even had a petition to save it...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Good news for the U.S. auto industry? Obama says 'YES'!; Good news for opponents of mountaintop removal? EPA says 'YES'! Good news for fans of clean water? The New York Times says 'NO'! Can't win 'em all... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Geothermal-rich Iceland Fast-Tracks Electric Car Charging; Nuclear plant monitoring finds small amounts of radioactive isotope in water; Hawaii Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids; Panasonic introduces new LED bulbs that shine for 19 years ... PLUS: Concept City of the Future: A Desert Oasis for a Drought-Stricken Future...

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

As we recently noted in some detail, Diebold's election division (now calling themselves Premier Election Solutions) has been purchased by their larger rival ES&S who, as we described at the time, has a well-established record for being tops in the election industry, both in size, and when it comes to thuggish, mafioso-like business tactics.

Saturday's Evansville Courier & Press highlighted just one minor example of such tactics:

While that one case is fairly small potatoes, it's fairly representative of the way this company does business. In the meantime, while the teabaggers have their panties in a collective wad about imaginary things they fear may someday happen to take away their rights, right now, immediately under their noses --- the same noses which failed to notice the stench of the unprecedented raping and looting of the federal government by their own Republican pals over the last eight years --- their right to a transparent, verifiable, citizen-overseen public election has also been stolen from them. Yet they're too busy watching Fox "News" and drawing pictures of Barack Obama as The Joker to notice.

With the ES&S takeover of Diebold/Premier, their nearest competitor, the privately-run election Goliath now has an un-overseeable lock on virtually every election in the United States of America.

Take a look at these two startling maps --- showing control of U.S. elections, before and after the takeover --- which Glenn Beck has yet to instruct his brain-dead zombies to give a damn about...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

Last week, in his address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama correctly noted:

That was the easy part. Anyone who has paid attention understands that the core problem lies in the profit motives of the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Thus, the President's diagnosis of the U.S. health care system was accurate, but did he prescribe "change we can believe in?"...

[Now updated with audio archives at bottom of article.]

I end this week of guest hosting The Mike Malloy Show LIVE from Los Angeles on the eighth anniversary of 9/11.

As ever, I'll be 'Bradcasting' from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) and hope you'll join me. Also, please join the conversation during the show in our new, handy-dandy chat room facility below.

My thanks to many this week, but especially to Mike and Kathy Malloy for allowing me the honor of borrowing their microphone to speak with you across your public airwaves all week. The audio archives from all of our shows this week are now online and recommended (particularly last night's show!) here:
MON • TUE • WED • THU

So far scheduled for tonight...

• JOHN FARMER, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, author of The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11.
• Plus, remembering 9/11, all we've lost since that day, your calls at 877-520-1150, and whatever else may come up along the way...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams here or here!

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show, hosted by "Agent 99"! Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE AND AUDIO ARCHIVES: Thanks for a great week, rock stars! It was my honor to sit in with you all week!

Commercial-free archives from tonight's show are posted below (each "Hour" is about 38 mins.). My thanks to the very busy Ben Burch from WhiteRose Society! The archive of tonight's Chat Room discussion from during the show, is also posted below. Enjoy 'em all and pass 'em on!...

During my interview last night with 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Mike Malloy Show (which I've been guest hosting all this week), the man who used to personally deliver the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefings to George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan, among other Presidents, offered an extraordinarily chilling thought --- particularly coming from someone with his background.

In a conversation at the end of the hour (audio and transcript below), as I was trying to pin him down for an opinion on whether or not he felt it was appropriate for CIA Director Leon Panetta to have reportedly attempted to block a lawful investigation into torture and other war crimes committed by the CIA, McGovern alluded to a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and noted he felt it likely that both Panetta and President Obama may have reason to fear certain elements of the CIA.

"Let me just leave you with this thought," he said, "and that is that I think Panetta, and to a degree President Obama, are afraid --- I never thought I'd hear myself saying this --- I think they're afraid of the CIA."...