Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

In my previous piece, "Prosecute or Perish", here at The BRAD BLOG --- in which I argued that criminal investigations and, where appropriate, prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal for war crimes was not merely mandated by our treaty obligations but vital to preserving our constitutional democracy and the rule of law --- I referenced an allegation by Seymour Hersh that the Bush regime had created a highly secretive "executive assassination ring" which reported only to Dick Cheney's office and which had "been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people and executing them and leaving."

How can a nation that calls itself just convict the Japanese officers who waterboarded my father, yet refuse to so much as investigate high officials from our own government who authorized the same war crime and, as newly alleged, even much worse...

And speaking of Phoenix, there's this from Carlos Miller:

Read the rest of the story for details. It's pretty amazing. Journalist/Blogger Pataky is our most recent new hero. And Journalist/Blogger Miller, who covers the story, is no slouch either given what he's had to go through in a similar vein to Pataky.

- Special Report by Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The 400 previously rejected absentee ballots in the Coleman/Franken U.S. Senate race in Minnesota won't be the only ballots being carefully counted next week. Neither will the more than 5,000 being counted in the NY-20 U.S. House special election where (fewer than) 25 votes, out of 150,000 cast, currently separate the winner from the loser.

A hand count of thousands of paper ballots that could trump all of the above, at least in regards to national importance, will quietly occur next week in a highly-secured Maricopa County, AZ, facility, as part of a years-long criminal investigation. Ironically, coming as late as it does, three years after the election, the results of the count, no matter what they may be, will not affect the actual outcome of that election --- even if it is found that the results were originally rigged by elections officials.

After almost three years; hundreds of legal documents; scores of hours in courtrooms; precedent-setting legal findings forcing the public release of Diebold computer databases supposedly recording how citizens voted in their own elections; allegations of potential hacking and fraud believed to have been possibly carried out by election official insiders; indications of tampering described as the result of "human error" by a report commissioned by the state AG, as part of a criminal investigation subsequently described by critics as a "whitewash"; arrests of local election integrity advocates; and lord knows how many articles documenting it at all here at The BRAD BLOG over those years, the paper ballots from the curious 2006 Regional Transit Authority (RTA) election in Pima County (Tucson), AZ, will finally be counted, beginning next Monday, as part of a criminal investigation being carried out by the state's Attorney General.

The hand-count of all 120,821 ballots from that special election will be carried out not in Pima, but under the supervision of "certified professionals who work for the Maricopa County (Phoenix) Elections Department," according to a 2-page letter [PDF] sent by the AG's office to the chairman of the Democratic Party of Pima County. The "strictly-monitored" count will either settle, once and for all, the matter of whether that election was conducted fraudulently by election insiders manipulating the vulnerable electronic Diebold tabulation system --- or it won't...

In yet another Constitutionally conservative ruling, from yet another state Supreme Court, the very American values of equal protection under the law and protection of the minority against the tyranny of the majority (and against the tyranny of Big Government intrusion into private lives) have been upheld in Iowa today!

In addition to real Constitutional conservatives who should be rejoicing today, true Fiscal conservatives should also appreciate today's ruling, which is bound to be a boon to the state's economy since "There are no residency rules for marriage in Iowa, so the rule would apply to any couple who wanted to travel to Iowa."

Welcome into the light of civilized society and equality for all, Iowa! That's three states down (MA, CT and IA), with just 47 more to go!

UPDATE: As the emailed headline linking to the following article was so darn good, we just had to offer them a link for their good work: "Court Decision Deals Gay Opponents a Hard Blow"

FURTHER UPDATE: Steve Benen at Washington Monthly points out: "In recent years, four state Supreme Courts have ruled in support of same sex-marriage...And what do all four have in common? Each was appointed to their respective state Supreme Court by a Republican governor." Those darn 'judicial activists' strike again!

While out on the stump for VA's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, former Gov. Mike Huckabee made an hysterical joke to the laughing assembled crowd of Republicans, instructing them to "Do the lord's work" by not letting voters to the polls if they don't plan to vote for McDonnell.

Of course, it was just a joke. Who in the Republican Party would ever do such a thing in this country?!

Well, other than the guy in the video on the right, Paul Weyrich, one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican vote suppression movement, who, until he recently died, was a regular, legendary consultant to the nation's top Republicans, and also another hysterically funny Republican Baptist just like Huckabee.

McDonnell's Democratic opponent in the VA race, former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, wasn't laughing. He sent a letter to supporters describing Huckabee's comment as "no joking matter," noting: "People died for the right to vote in this country, and we have to protect it." Rachel Weiner has the full letter tonight at HuffPo.

Beyond that, we'll spare you the photographs of the who-knows-how-many African-Americans who not only were kept from voting in this nation by others just "doing the right thing" and "the lord's work," but who were strung up in trees by their necks in order to keep them from voting and to send the hilarious message to others that they'd best not be let out of their "driveways" come Election Day. We'd go on, but it's all just so funny, we can't even keep typing.

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Democrats in Congress join the fight for climate legislation; the gray wolf gets de-listed; billions of fish needlessly killed each year by power plants; flame-retardants in your water... PLUS: the fish you eat are guaranteed to be zit- and depression-free (even if they get sucked into your friendly local power plant)!... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, hate mail, love letters, fish with zits? 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): There's gold in them thar deep sea trenches just sitting there asking to be mined, but will the U.S. get shut out?; extremely rare dolphins spotted in coastal India; OPEC says don't blame oil for climate change!; a federal judge halts streamlined "nationwide permits" for Mountaintop Removal coal mining while a coal-fired power plant in Ohio announces it's leaving coal behind for good.... See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

Perhaps one of the funniest bits ever on Colbert. If you didn't see it last night --- or Glenn Beck's multiple, recent insane breakdowns on the Fox "News" Channel --- this video is a "Must Watch"! (Video courtesy RAW STORY)...

[Update 4/1/09: Murphy's lead shrank to just 25 votes "after local election officials began double-checking totals and their math today".]

Can't you citizens make up your minds?! Please?! The NY-20 U.S. House Special Election held today to fill the vacant seat of now Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is, of course, too close to call. Big time. Sigh.

The Democratic candidate Scott Murphy leads the Republican Jim Tedisco by just 65 25 votes out of more than 150,000 votes cast at the polls (lever machines, the last state to have them), with 100% of the precincts now having reported in tonight. It would be quite a come-from-behind victory for Murphy if he's able to pull it off, as Tedisco had been leading in the polls, in the heavily Republican district, until just a few days ago.

Of course, this will all now come down to the absentee ballots cast in the race. Just like Minnesota. The NY Board of Elections must now work out a schedule for their counting, as there are still a number of days for those to come in. It's being reported tonight that some 10,055 absentee ballots went out, "including 1,882 military and overseas ballots, of which 5,907 total had been returned" so far.

As Gregg Levine at FDL noticed earlier this afternoon, in a peculiar legal move, the NY Republican Party filed a strange legal motion [PDF], long before the polls were even closed, including this pre-emptive election challenge:

That part of the motion, Levine reports in a followup was "struck out by the court on the spot". They didn't buy the old "heads I win, tails you lose" routine from the GOP, apparently.

But the last graf of Eric Kleefeld's TPM coverage of the NY-20 race tonight deserves an all-time special prize:

UPDATE 4/8/09: Over the past week, the lead has shifted back and forth several times between Murpy and Tedisco in advance of the hand-count of some 7,000 absentee paper ballots set to begin today. We've got a quick update on the week's roller coaster ride as the count gets underway, now posted here...

Just in from St. Paul, the 3-judge panel in MN's U.S. Senate Election Contest have returned to issue a ruling...

• The court's ruling is posted in full here [PDF]

Al Franken's attorney Marc Elias says: "We are pleased...Obviously, the math is going to be very difficult for former Sen. Coleman and his lawyers at this point."

Former Sen. Norm Coleman's attorney Ben Ginsberg admits: "It is pretty much of a longshot with that few ballots being put in play...We are disappointed. But we feel the court is wrong and we will appeal." During a teleconference this afternoon he strongly hinted they plan to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

Earlier this week, Republican Sen. John Cornyn, chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (RSCC) threatened "WWIII" if the Democrats seat Franken before they appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, and even if those appeals take "years."

After reviewing evidence for some 980 previously rejected absentee ballots, as submitted for consideration by both candidates, the judges found that just 400 of them met likely grounds for being opened, counted and added to the final results, though only once they are able to review the actual ballots themselves will they know for certain. They rejected Coleman's plea to use lenient standards for determining which ballots should be counted, holding instead to the strict rule of law, and allowing ballots only for possible counting if they were clearly, legally cast, according to very specific state parameters.

The judges review, they took pains to point out, was exceedingly thorough...

Due, in no small part, to the concerns expressed in our February analysis of the January draft version of this year's Election Reform bill being introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) in the U.S. House, along with a bit of "lobbying" his office for a key change after the publication of that article, the updated version of the bill [PDF], said by his office to be the "final" one before introduction, has been slightly --- one might even say, significantly --- improved to meet one of our major concerns.

Still, while there is a lot of much-needed reform in this federal legislation, there remain many concerns with it as well. So let's take a quick, updated look at the good, the bad and the ugly in the soon-to-be-introduced "final" version of Holt's "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2009"...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Obama gets tough with US automakers while a new electric car looks for a manufacturing plant; Earth Hour vs. Earth Haters; PLUS: The White House vegetable garden makes some people very uncomfortable; AND: If you're "green-curious", the Sierra Club has the site for you ...All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, hate mail, used cars? 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): Prescription drugs found in fish, and the world's first biodegradable chewing gum (because you didn't know conventional gum wasn't biodegradable, now did you?). See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

There's folks to the right of Ann Coulter? Well, yeah, since Coulter is little more than a phony "conservative" opportunist (and voter fraud felon). We always enjoy it, of course, when these guys eat themselves alive. So who are we to stop them? And we're equally glad to know that the cowardly Coulter also now runs away during interviews with them on the radio, just as she did with us way back in 2005.

Here's the latest video campaign, launched by the anti-choicers on the right, wherein Coulter can't run fast enough...over and over again. As Coulter's '08 endorsed Mitt Romney is likely the closest thing resembling a "legitimate" front-runner for 2012 --- at least by GOP standards --- it'll be fun to watch this internecine fight ramp up between now and then...

(Hat-tip Wendy Norris, who has more at Colorado Independent)

I could use a toon break...

(Hat-tip, BRAD BLOG toon sherpa Pokey Anderson!)

As we wait for the 3-judge panel in Minnesota to issue their verdict in former Sen. Norm Coleman's U.S. Senate race, in which the Democratic challenger Al Franken was found to be the winner by a bi-partisan state canvassing board, D.C. lawmakers are cranking up the political battle which awaits beyond that decision, which could come any day now, and its predictable appeal to the MN Supreme Court by the loser (who will "probably" be Coleman, according to his own attorney).

Sen. "Big Bad" John Cornyn (R-TX), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Conspiratorial Committee (NRSC), is now threatening "World War III" if the Dems try to seat Franken before a U.S. Supreme Court appeal is completed, or even a new federal suit that could be filed by Coleman in U.S. District Court if he chooses...even if those additional judicial processes could take "years"...

Tesla Motors revealed its all-electric Model S sedan last week in Los Angeles. At half the price of its Roadster model, which was $109,000, the Model S will be priced at $49,900 after tax credits ($57,400 before such credits). "After factoring in savings on gas," Tesla points out, that's "comparable to a $35,000 Ford sedan," the New York Times reports. A blog item from the Times describes the Model S as "sleek, sporty and sexy."

Tesla hopes the price tag will come down to "less than $30,000," as the price "will presumably go down as the technology improves." They plan the manufactured version to get 300 miles to a single charge, with a 45-minute recharge time.

While the company has raised millions from private investors, they need still more to be able to set up a production plant, which they plan to do in Southern California. But, for the moment, they are waiting on federal loan programs, as the credit market has otherwise locked up, according to the Times.

In the meantime, Detroit's big three automakers are also asking for federal funds and, in advance of President Obama's announcement of plans for the auto-industry, he has reportedly demanded that GM's CEO step down. So let's add one plus one here...