A couple of quick updates, and a few notable developments in the status of the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) case between the Republican 2nd-District U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt and her independent '08 (and now, Democratic '10 ) challenger David Krikorian.

This is the case which resulted in the recent stunning deposition of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, as Schmidt has alleged "false statements" by Krikorian when he claimed that she accepted "blood money" from the Turkish Lobby in exchange for opposing a Congressional vote on the "Armenian Genocide" resolution. He says her campaign received more money from that lobby than any other member last year, after which she became the co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Coalition. That, despite the paucity of any actual ethnic Turks in her district.

Krikorian offered a few interesting status updates on the case to The BRAD BLOG, late last week during a phone conversation...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Lanny Davis is an exceptionally talented lawyer, so much so that his close friend, the infamous Watergate mastermind, G. Gordon Liddy, reportedly said that Davis "can defend the indefensible.”

After watching Davis's skillful, yet deceptive, Aug. 7, 2009, performance on Democracy Now (video below), I had to admit that this is one of the few Liddy assessments with which I can concur.

It was supposed to be a debate between Davis, who represents a group of Honduran business elites formally operating as the Latin American Business Council of Honduras (CEAL), and Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University, pertaining to recent events in which, as reported by The New York Times, "Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup after betraying his own kind: a small clique of families that dominates the economy." Zelaya imposed "a 60 percent increase in the minimum wage" in a nation where, per a Business Week article, quoted by Grandin, "two-thirds of its 7.8 million citizens live below the poverty line...The country has one of Latin America's most unequal distributions of wealth."

A well-prepared Davis, seeking to defend the indefensible, had no intention of permitting real debate. His strategy was to dominate the discussion and denigrate any comments that did not square with his distortions as "ideological rants." His dissembling would later be exposed in a fact-check article authored by Grandin, who had trouble getting a word in edgewise during the "debate."

Where dissembling economists serve as Empire's 'Economic Hit-Men,' the careers of self-described 'liberals,' like Davis, suggest the existence of an attorney/ lobbyist class who act as little more than Empire's bought-and-paid-for consigliare.

While Davis's slick performance, which began with an unwarranted assault on Amy Goodman's impartiality as a moderator, should be seen, the core issue to be addressed here pertains to the fact that Davis, who served as Special Council to President Bill Clinton, actively supported Sen. Joseph Lieberman's (I-CT) campaign against Ned Lamont and the Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, describes himself as a "liberal."

Perhaps. But if so, that only makes ever clearer the difference between Davis's brand of "liberalism" and true progressive values...

From RAW's coverage of Cheney's upcoming "interview" on Fox in which the war criminal continues his public defense/deception on his use of illegal torture against detainees [emphasis ours]:

Just prior to that moment, according to the transcript, Cheney also says: "The fact of the matter is the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us those opinions had every right to give us the opinions they did. Now you get a new administration and they say, well, we didn't like those opinions, we're going to go investigate those lawyers and perhaps have them disbarred."

I don't believe I've seen any noteworthy discussion about disbarring any torture lawyers in the public domain other other than from VelvetRevolution.us' DisbarTortureLawyers.com campaign [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is co-founder of VR], and certainly not from the Obama Administration, with which we have no relation...not by a long shot.

So, unless I'm wrong, it seems we (VR) have succeeded in getting Cheney's attention, at least.

Good. Let's hope they're all disbarred for the shameful example they've proven to be to both their country and their profession.

But disbarring Cheney's torture attorney stooges is hardly enough, of course. And no doubt, that's why he's kicking back into full save-his-ass mode this weekend, in light of Holder's announced torture probe following the release of the CIA Inspector General's devasting torture report [PDF] and more CIA docs said coming on Monday. Yes, it's another full media blitz from the Cheneys, as both he and Mary Liz will be making appearances on the Sunday Shows this weekend where Republican Insiders are allowed full, unfettered access to our public airwaves, allowed to lie with impunity, with the assurance that nobody will counter or fact-check them, and where they will even be able to refer to stories they've previously planted in major papers via "anonymous sources" as proof of the case they will make. (See both Greenwald and Wheeler today on how WaPo has now completely discredited itself, Judith Miller-style, once and for all).

So with Cheney defending his stooge lawyers, and on full-throated Orwellian attack yet again against Team Obama's so-far pathetic baby step towards accountability, I'm reminded, for some reason, of the scene from Rambo in which he's been captured, detained, tortured, and shackled, before being allowed by his captors to radio back to his base to prove he's being held by the enemy, but is still alive. With everything absolutely stacked against him, he asks to speak to the man on his own team who, as it turns out, turned traitor to allow him to be captured in the first place, leading to one of the great twists in 80's action film history.

The quick scene follows. Replace "Murdock" with "Cheney," and Rambo with me, and that's a little bit of how I'm feeling this afternoon...

[Message to Secret Service: No, that is not a threat of violence. Thank you.]

I have come to see very little difference between CIA chief Leon Panetta's reported attempts to intercede in a Dept. of Justice investigation into Bush/Cheney Era war crimes and illegal torture by members of the CIA, and the reported attempts of folks like former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and former Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) to similarly inject themselves into a DoJ investigation (in their case, to force one over phony "voter fraud" allegations and other politically-based investigations of Democrats) leading up to the U.S. Attorney Purge under George W. Bush.

Why should the Director of Intelligence have any say within the DoJ and/or White House administration, over what and who is investigated when crimes have allegedly been carried out?

The fact that he has been attempting to do so --- as reported recently, including as late as today by the New York Times --- seems clearly inappropriate, and should lead to his immediate dismissal or resignation as far as I'm concerned...

Phil Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, is one of the few in the U.S. "mainstream" media (of a sort), who has bothered to cover --- and cover responsibly --- Sibel Edmonds' story in the past.

Today over at The American Conservative --- that's right, The American Conservative --- Giraldi notes this week's release of Edmonds' remarkable deposition video and transcript, appropriately under the headline "Sibel Edmonds Speaks, But No One is Listening"...

The other interview Giraldi refers to there is the one I did with Edmonds a month or so back while guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show. That one made mainstream news headlines around the world...except for in the U.S., of course, where it doesn't matter in the slightest...after Edmonds expert Luke Ryland covered what he described as the "bombshell" within it. (Links to the audio and the transcript of that interview at that last link.)

Giraldi, at The American Conservative --- did I mention his quick article was at The American Conservative? --- goes on to note that "Edmonds is a credible witness who is ignored by the mainstream media and congress because her tales, if true, would be devastating to both political parties and to the Israel and Turkish lobbies," and then asks: "Now that she has testified under oath and in considerable detail making very specific accusations isn't it time for someone in the administration to review the FBI files and stand up to say whether her accounts are true or not?"

Well, one would think that, no? Silly, one.

Scott Horton of AntiWar.com however, who has covered the Edmonds deposition earlier this week), interviews Giraldi about the Edmonds deposition today. That 26 minute interview can be heard online here. (They also speak a bit about Holder's recently announced torture investigation, and Giraldi, an actual conservative, as opposed to a fake one, as well as a former CIA analyst, believes the announced investigation does not go far enough.)

I hope to help encourage more coverage/investigation of the Edmonds story in the coming days, with some pieces in which I'll try to help the poor poor resource-less mainstream media out by putting the matter, and the deposition, into a few more accessible bite-size chunks for them. The way you might cut up a piece of steak for a child, I guess. Also, I've doing my best on the radio over the last couple of days to further help get the word out. (You can too, by Digging and Redditting and emailing etc. please!)

Here are a couple of those recent appearances. One on the Malloy Show on Tuesday, and another one yesterday, in studio on KPFK, our local Pacifica station here in Los Angeles, on Roseanne Barr's program (though she was off this week). Both radio interviews follow below, and the latter includes a bit of new news at the end which I haven't yet had time cover here on the blog, but hope to soon...

Now available on Apple iTunes!
Subscribe for FREE here!...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Happy Anniversaries --- sort of; The Politics of "Fracking"; How about some weed-killer in your drinking water?... PLUS: Another sad loss for the environment... 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' (links below): Yummy: Industrial pig farming, salmonella, and the National School Lunch Program; Dairy farmers brace for climate change; Groups target GOP on cap-and-trade; Toyota tops list of Cash for Clunkers winners; Africa wants $67 billion a year in global warming funds; The fallacy of climate activism... PLUS: The sticky problem of how to measure miles per gallon when it's all electric...

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

Collect and trade 'em all!

[Hat-tip Jeremy Scahill]

Americans finally stand up against the phony, democracy-hating town hall disrupting bullies. VelvetRevolution.us (of whom The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder) was there to document it last night...

Will this event receive as much coverage in the corporate media as those where the wingnuts weren't outnumbered and shouted down?

And...as we've asked before...how long will this keep escalating before someone ends up dead? (And I'm not referring to those thousands of Americans already dead because a bureaucrat from the corporate healthcare industry was allowed to come between them and a doctor to help deny them healthcare.)

In an update to his story detailing some of the most disturbing revelations about illegal and unconstitutional methods of torture used by our own government, in our own name, as revealed in the less-redacted 2004 CIA Inspector General's report [PDF] released on Monday, Glenn Greenwald replies to those who'd written in support of such illegal behavior as follows [emphasis his]...

Moreover, yesterday Greenwald took on Rep. Peter King (R-NY)'s outrageous and ignorant defense of torture and of breaking the law and disregarding the U.S. Constitution, along with the other pretend Thomas Paines out there (such as Glenn Beck), who appear to have absolutely no understanding or interest in the either the Rule of Law, the Constitution, or just how far afield they are from the actual words of Paine himself.

It's a must-read, though mostly for folks like Beck and King who likely won't be bothered by information that specifically undermines their own warped, twisted, sick, anti-American worldview.

Now available on Apple iTunes!
Subscribe for FREE here!...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Your "socialist" National Parks; Oceans warm, Taiwan floods, Greece burns; Coming soon: Cash for Refrigerator Clunkers! ... PLUS: McCain goes nuclear... 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' (links below): U.S. Senators fight fake grassroots "astroturf" campaigns and strengthen clean energy legislation; India's breadbasket faces water shortages; Hospitals May Face Severe Disruption From Swine Flu ... PLUS: French Winemakers Sound Alarm Over Climate Change...

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

Just over two weeks ago, FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was finally allowed to speak about much of what the Bush Administration spent years trying to keep her from discussing publicly on the record. Twice gagged by the Bush Dept. of Justice's invocation of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege," Edmonds has been attempting to tell her story, about the crimes she became aware of while working for the FBI, for years.

Thanks to a subpoena issued by the campaign of Ohio's 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian, her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey are seen and heard here, in full, for the first time, in her under-oath deposition. Both the complete video tape and transcript of the deposition follow below.

Though there was much concern, prior to her testimony, that the Obama Dept. of Justice might re-invoke the "State Secrets Privilege" to keep her from speaking, they did not do so. Nor did they choose to be present at the Washington D.C. deposition.

The BRAD BLOG covered details of some of Edmonds' startling disclosures made during the deposition, as it happened, in our live blog coverage from August 8th. The deposition included criminal allegations against specifically named members of Congress. Among those named by Edmonds as part of a broad criminal conspiracy: Reps. Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Tom Lantos (D-CA), as well as an unnamed, still-serving Congresswoman (D) said to have been secretly videotaped, for blackmail purposes, during a lesbian affair.

High-ranking officials from the Bush Administration named in her testimony, as part of the criminal conspiracy on behalf of agents of the Government of Turkey, include Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, and others.

During the deposition --- which we are still going through ourselves --- Edmonds discusses covert "activities" by Turkish entities "that would involve trying to obtain very sensitive, classified, highly classified U.S. intelligence information, weapons technology information, classified Congressional records...recruiting key U.S. individuals with access to highly sensitive information, blackmailing, bribery."

Speaking about current members of Congress during a break in the testimony, Krikorian told The BRAD BLOG that "for people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence." (More video statements from Krikorian, Edmonds and attorneys from all parties, taped before, during, and after the 8/8/09 testimony, are available here.)

Edmonds' on-the-record disclosures also include bombshell details concerning outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's front company, Brewster Jennings. Edmonds alleges the front company had actually been shut down in August of 2001 --- three years prior to Bob Novak's public disclosure of the covert operative's identity --- following a tip-off to a wire-tap target about the true nature of the CIA front company. The cover was blown, Edmonds alleges, by Marc Grossman, who was, at the time, the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. State Department. Prior to that, Grossman served as ambassador to Turkey. He now works "for a Turkish company called Ihals Holding," according to Edmonds' testimony.

An unclassified FBI Inspector General's report, released on her case in 2005, declared Edmonds' classified allegations to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI." In 2002, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then the senior members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to her allegations. And in a 2002 60 Minutes report on Edmonds' case, Grassley noted: "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

The 8/8/09 deposition was brought by Krikorian as part of his defense in a case filed against him before the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH). The 2nd district Congresswoman has accused Krikorian, an Armenian-American who ran against her as an independent in 2008, of "false statements" during the campaign last year alleging that she had accepted "blood money" from Turkish interests. Krikorian says that Schmidt, co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Committee, accepted more money from Turkish interests during last year's campaign than any other member of Congress, despite few, if any, ethnic Turks among her local constituency. He has suggested she may have been instrumental in helping to hold off a Congressional vote on a long-proposed, much-disputed resolution declaring the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI as a "genocide" by the Turks.

Edmonds herself happens to be a Turkish-American, though she was recently attacked by the Turkish Lobby, following her long-sought, long-blocked testimony.

The complete transcript of Sibel Edmonds' under-oath testimony, may now be downloaded here [PDF]. The complete video-taped testimony follows, in five parts, below...

[8/26/09: Updated at bottom of article.]

After many weeks of speculation, and embarrasingly bad media coverage, Attorney General Eric Holder has finally named a Special Prosecutor to probe the use of torture by the Bush/Cheney Administration. The announcement comes on the same day that a redacted version of a 2004 Inspector General's report [PDF] on the CIA's use of torture was also released. RAW STORY has a good backgrounder on the announcement.

The prosecutor, John Durham, a career DoJ attorney from Connecticut, has already been investigating the CIA's destruction of torture video tapes, and has been described by AP as "one of the nation’s most relentless prosecutors."

The IG's 122-page report details the beating and death of detainees, threats of violence, death and sexual assault to their family members, and other techniques used by U.S. government interrogators that were "inconsistent with the public policy positions that the U.S. has taken regarding human rights."

Shortly after the announcement today, U.S. House Judiciary chair John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) released a statement applauding the appointment of the Special Prosecutor and calling for a 'broad mandate' to prosecute not just 'frontline personnel,' but also the 'policymakers and lawyers' who created the "conditions where such absues were all but inevitable to occur."

"Seeking out only the low-level actors in a conspiracy to torture detainees will bring neither justice nor restored standing to our nation," says Nadler in the statement (posted in full below)...

Or, maybe, mind-blogging...

Though having been accused once or twice of a God Complex, I'm now prepared to reveal this startling photo admission...

Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning

Appearances by single-payer advocates on corporate mainstream media are few and far between --- all the more reason that when a golden opportunity arises, single-payer advocates must take care to appropriately frame the base-line issue of health care reform.

While there can be no doubt that a single-payer system, which President Obama concedes, provides the only means by which every American can be "covered," is the most cost-effective, the issue is really more basic.

It's about the immorality of treating the health of our people as a commodity; that those who seek to perpetuate a system designed to create obscene wealth for a few insurance company CEOs and their Wall Street investors are advocating nothing less than a death sentence for more than 18,000 Americans each year...

Guest blogged by Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite.Org

Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who oversaw New Mexico elections for ten years, was indicted last Wednesday on 50 counts including fraud or embezzlement, money laundering, tax fraud, tax evasion, illegal kickbacks, tampering with evidence, and conspiracy.

Like last year's indictment of 13-year Monterey County, CA, Registrar of Voters, Tony Anchundo on 43 criminal counts, and last March's indictment of six Clay County, KY election officials [corrected from "KS"] for changing votes at voting machines and showing others how to do it, Vigil-Giron's indictment reminds us that democracy thrives on checks, balances, and transparency --- and is threatened by conditions that force us to trust in election officials.

Ion Sancho, Leon County Supervisor of Elections in Florida, and Freddie Oakley, Yolo County Registrar-Clerk in California understand that threats to elections come from the insiders. They warn us --- in their speeches and writings --- not to trust election officials. Vigil-Giron's indictment warns us in a more sensational way...