Guest Blogged by Daniel Borchers of Citizens for Principled Conservatism

"Has Ann Coulter reached her tipping point?"

That question has been repeatedly asked since her latest infamy at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC, March 2) and Reclaiming America for Christ Conference (RAC, March 3).

Recent Coulter no-shows at high-profile events and the scrubbing of several of her recent appearances from the video collections of conservative events seems to suggest the Republican superstar could finally be in her "last throes."

The tipping point question begs the fence-sitting answer: When will conservatives make a choice and stand for principles? Are they, or are they not, Ann Coulter Conservatives? If not, why is she still among us at all?

Does Coulter represent conservatives or not? Is she a serious political and moral authority or merely an entertainer? Which is it? And why, oh why, is she held to lower standards than anyone else?

As the Wall Street Journal observed in 2002:

Coulter seems to believe she rests secure as a celebrated conservative icon. In the immediate wake of her CPAC and RAC comments, Coulter laughed off concerns that her latest offensive statements would have any affect on her Republican celebrity stature, when she asserted on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes: "This is my 17th allegedly career-ending moment."

Why is Coulter so certain of her solid position as a mainstay and opinion leader in the conservative movement? Is it merely bombast or does her boast have merit? An exchange on C-Span’s Washington Journal is revealing. A caller questioned David Keene, the person with the final say on all things related to CPAC...

50 seconds well spent...Click play on the video at left.

That terrific video is just out from CountAllVotes.com.

The FL House is currently in the throes of either adding poison pills to, or otherwise trying to fend off Gov. Charlie Crist's long-overdue and responsible plan to bring paper ballots to the beleaguered voters of the Sunshine State. His courageous plan would do away with all of the state's horrible, disenfranchising, touch-screen DRE voting machines in time for 2008, something which even Democrats in the U.S. House, so far, have been shamefully afraid to do.

Please go visit the site and take action --- whether you're from Florida or not, you can help their campaign...which will help us all.

St. Petersburg Times, which hasn't historically been an anti-Feeney paper, calls on him to come clean. Now.

While over at the Orlando Sentinel, Scott Maxwell --- who has historically been far too kind to Feeney in light of his storied transgressions --- is still being very kind. Even if he's finally beginning to show some doubts as of yesterday:

The emailer who forwarded us the following toon, marking the 4th Anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech, aptly commented: "The amazing thing about this is that all of these people still have their jobs and appear as expert pundits in the media, while the people who were right all along are often portrayed as left-wing out-of-touch-with-reality naive nutty fools, and they don't get on the talk shows very much."

No kidding. The failure of our current corporate mainstream media in a nutshell.

But be sure to read through to the bottom of this post, for an additional stunning quote from Cal Thomas' April 15, 2003 column which Tom Tomorrow, the creator of this toon, mentioned he wasn't able to fit into this strip...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

On HBO's Real Time Friday night (click to play the video at left) Bill Maher was going over the basics of the US Attorney scandal with former New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias when conservative guest Lisa Schiffren chimed in that Iglesias was failing to understand that US Attorney jobs were political. A surprised Maher tried to clarify by differentiating the appointment of US Attorneys from their actual law enforcement duties, but Schiffren stuck to her point. In addition to condoning the selective enforcement of the law, Schiffren implies that the oath to uphold the Constitution, taken by political appointees, was also secondary to politics. And she speaks from experience as a former political apppointee!

Clearly Schriffren just earned herself a jury duty pass for the rest of her life. To understand the outrageousness of her suggestion one need not look any further than the statement Iglesias made about his firing two minutes earlier:

Essentially the White House, along with Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Senator Pete Domenci (R-NM), who pressured Iglesias directly, were upset that Igesias refused to use the power of his office to help them fraudulently win elections. In other words, Iglesias was fired because he would not help the Republican party circumvent our Democracy. And that is okay according to Schiffren!

Bush is over. If we want it. Give this one a listen/viewing. Not just for John Lennon fans, either. Be inspired...

A job very well done by my fellow VelvetRevolution.us co-founders, Justice Through Music. More details on the video at RAW STORY.

"Tom has never written a letter for Abramoff," Tom Feeney's former Chief of Staff, Jason Roe insisted in an email to the St. Petersburg Times last year. "There is no accusation of a quid pro quo. No quid pro quo exists," he claimed.

Looks like Anita Kumar --- who's been doing a bang up job on the latest Feeney news at the Times --- may have just found one...

In a related item, which we didn't get to pick up late last week, Feeney's golf junket to Scotland with Abramoff --- or as he called it, a "fact-finding trip" --- was paid for out of an Abramoff slush fund, according to documents obtained by Senate investigators as reported by the Sun-Sentinel...

In an open letter calling on former CIA Director, George Tenet to return his Medal of Freedom and donate royalties from his new book, six former intelligence officers excoriate the former Director of Central Intelligence for his complicity in overseeing the Bush Administration's misuse of intelligence to send America into an unnecessary war where more than 3,300 troops have so far been killed.

The complete letter, which pulls no punches is posted at Larry Johnson's website. Johnson is a former CIA agent and one of the letter's signatories. A PDF version of the 4-page letter is here.

Just a very few excerpts follow...

One of the newspapers often attacked by Bill O'Reilly as an example of the "liberal" media is the Los Angeles Times, currently owned by the Rightwing Chicago Tribune.

On Saturday, LA Times ran a story by Chris Kraul on the reaction of Iraqi citizens to the Iraq War spending bill battle. But no need to click on the link. Here's the summary of the "fair and balanced" story as kindly provided on the inside page of the paper edition:

So...if the bill is signed into law, some Iraqis fear it will make things worse. While on the other hand, some of them hope Bush vetoes it so US troops will stay.

That would be the "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" school of journalism, I guess.

Those quoted in the story were among the "20 Iraqis interviewed Friday in several cities after both houses of Congress passed measures that set timelines for a withdrawal of U.S. troops as a condition of funding for the war effort."

Kraul failed to quote any Iraqis who are in favor of withdrawal of U.S. troops, despite polls of Iraqis in 2004, 2005 and 2006 all showing a majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave. That last one found "70% of Iraqis favor setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces."

On the other hand, a story on George Tenet's new criticism of the Administration for ignoring pre-9/11 terrorism warnings and failing to plan for postwar Iraq is featured...on Page 18.

Darn those America/Bush hating "liberals" at the Los Angeles Times!

Guest blogged by DES

An incredibly busy week this last week went turbo-charged with the sudden re-emergence of the Abramoff Lobbying Scandal, now starring our favorite as-yet-unindicted Republican, Tom Delay's Rep. Tom Feeney (FL-24). Naturally, The BRAD BLOG has been following Feeney's follies for years, along with the heroic efforts of whistleblower, computer programmer, and now challenger for the 24th District, Clint Curtis... Click on our "Special Coverage" to catch up on all the fun in this twisted tale of corruption and vote-rigging...

The scandals continue to roll fast and furious: this last week, The BRAD BLOG exposed the connection between the cynical Republican myth of "voter fraud" and the ongoing scandal of the firings (and near-firings) of U.S. Attorneys. And the extraordinary failures of the Election Assistance Commission were already compounded when they were caught trying to hide and change the results of their own report debunking the Republican myth of "voter fraud", but now they're silencing their researchers when they don't like the results!

It's a "harmonic convergence" of scandals (or a Unified Field Theory of Corruption, if you will, plenty of snarky nicknames for this debacle to go around). Read on, dear reader, and do your best to keep up with this Great Unraveling of the Republican Culture of Corruption.

The headlines from many of last week's most notable articles follow after the jump...

Good lord. The Abramoff scandal now seems to be rotting from inside of the DoJ itself. As if it needed any help.

This from McClatchy late this afternoon (via TPM):

Get your brain around all of that if ya can, as we head into the weekend with the wheels continuing to come off this thing, with a new shoe dropping, it seems, every hour or so of late.

And if you're having trouble keeping score --- at least in the Abramoff game --- McClatchy summarizes our story so far this way:

To which we'll add: So far.

It's gonna get much worse before it gets anything close to better.

Guest Blogged by Stephen Heller

In an article from the April 24th edition of the Seattle Times, we learn that King County, Washington election officials have recommended Diebold tabulators for use in counting mail-in ballots.

According to Sherril Huff, who has been nominated by County Executive Ron Sims to become elections director, Diebold products represent "the solution with the least amount of risk."

Say what?!

I am astounded (although I guess as a regular reader of The BRAD BLOG I shouldn't be) that any election official can, at this point in time, say that ANY Diebold product is "the solution with the least amount of risk."

And Ms. Huff is recommending the purchase of Diebold tabulators BEFORE they have received federal certification.

Has Ms. Huff been living in a cave?

I'm glad to say some council members are awake enough to know this is a bad idea. They are worried about the lack of federal certification, and they seem to be aware of the various computer experts' tests showing Diebold machines to be hack-friendly and about as risk-free as Dick Cheney's hunting partners....

A statement has been released by Rosemary Rodgriguez, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)'s newest, Democratic appointee in reply to yesterday's statement by writer and researcher Tova Andrea Wang, a Democracy Fellow at the Century Foundation.

The statement comes in the wake of our report yesterday detailing Wang's statement calling on the EAC to lift the gag-order that's been placed on her, so that she might respond publicly to the controversy concerning the EAC's alteration and withholding of the bi-partisan report she submitted concerning baseless allegations of an epidemic of "Voter Fraud" in America --- despite longstanding GOP claims to the contrary.

Rodgriquez is calling on her fellow commissioners to lift the gag-order on Wang so she can speak to media and others about the matter. The EAC chairmanship comprises two Democrats and two Republicans, each appointed by the President.

Wang had previously Guest Blogged for BRAD BLOG in an article titled "Where's the Voter Fraud?", written to coincide with the release of the EAC's altered version of her original report. She was unable to speak directly to their report at the time, due to the EAC's extraordinary restrictions on her.

Yesterday, Wang's statement pointed out that the EAC had refused to even respond to requests from her legal counsel on the matter. The controversy is just the latest in the continuing erosion of EAC credibility, suggesting a remarkable inability to carry out their Help America Vote (HAVA) mandate to oversee the nation's electoral system.

This latest embarrassment adds to an ever-growing list which has drawn increased Congressional scrutiny of late. It also serves to reveal still more evidence of the panel's partisan nature, compromised sense of ethics, nearly complete lack of transparency, and utter incompetence.

And following-up on a related BRAD BLOG report revealing EAC failures, the commission has still failed to notify either public or elections officials of the newly confirmed "severe" vulnerability recently discovered in ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems. The "security hole" would allow for a vote-flipping virus to be introduced into a voting machine by a single person which could then, in turn, flip an entire county-wide election undetectably. At least one note computer scientist has described the problem as "roughly comparable" to the Diebold Virus Hack revealed at Princeton last summer and first reported here. "Which is to say it needs to be taken very seriously," warned the scientist.

Our report on that matter, early last week, included Email statements from the EAC flatly refusing to notify any of the 16 states that currently use the voting systems which are said by the scientist to feature the "serious security problem." To date, no other media outlet has picked up that report.

EAC Vice-Chair Rodriguez's brief statement calling on the EAC to end their censorship of Wang is posted [PDF] on the EAC website, but follows here below in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced that "Special Circumstances" would require them to hold a public hearing next Tuesday, 1 May in Washington DC. The "Special Circumstances"?

It seems that the state of Florida asked the EAC if they could use funds provided under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to replace their present paperless touch-screen DRE voting systems and someone at the EAC told the state that they didn't think it would be alright for the state to spend their HAVA funds for anything like going to a paper based voting system. But, the EAC representative said that the Commissioners would have to get together and vote on the issue.

So, yesterday the commission announced when that vote would take place; May 1. That's three working days from now. That's three days for the state and the state's very active Election Integrity community to prepare their statements in favor of spending the states own funds for their own voting system.

And, this public meeting that is very important to the state of Florida --- will be convened in Washington DC to ensure that the commissioners make it as hard as possible for anyone to attend and voice their opinions.

The EACs "Sunshine Notice" announcement is for a meeting that is murky and as closed as the EAC can possibly make it without directly violating federal law.