On Thursday we covered the announcement of hearings to be held by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in the House Judiciary Committee and by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Conyers' hearing will look at the questions of legality surrounding Bush's "Signing Statements" and Feingold will look at issues surround de-funding the War in Iraq in advance of a legislative proposal to do just that. More details, and the expected witnesses for both of those hearings are in our previous article.

The BRAD BLOG has now obtained details from Feingold's office concerning what his proposal to exercise Congressional control of the purse strings over military deployment in Iraq will and won't do. A fact sheet concerning his upcoming legislation and how the defunding and re-deployment of U.S. troops would be conducted is below.

As well, the statement lists several other historical instances in which Congress voted to hold back funding while American troops were deployed, including in 1998 when the Republican-controlled legislature included a provision in a Defense Authorization bill prohibiting additional funding for U.S. troops in Bosnia after a date-certain, unless certain assurances were given to Congress by then-President Bill Clinton.

Feingold's fact-sheet follows in full...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by Libby/CIA Leak Trial Correspondent Margie Burns

A startling detail emerged from testimony Wednesday in U.S. v. Libby: the CIA briefer for Vice President Richard Cheney and Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, kept each Table of Contents from his briefing binders when he sent the contents of the binders to shredder and burn bag. CIA manager Craig Schmall testified, matter-of-factly, in response to defense attorney questioning about those informative subject headings: “They still exist.”

Schmall’s cross-examination by Libby’s attorneys corroborates that the CIA morning briefing covered dozens of topics each day deemed important to U.S. security. Twenty-seven topics from a single day mentioned by Libby’s lawyer included terrorist strikes and threats, any actions deemed worthy of attention by foreign governments or other entities, and any significant actions by North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

Schmall, as noted in a previous post, was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s morning intelligence briefer six days a week from summer 2002 through fall 2003 and served Vice President Cheney as intelligence briefer to the end of May 2004. In winter 2002-2003, he briefed both Libby and Cheney on Mondays and Tuesdays of each week and briefed Libby on Saturdays at Libby’s home. The briefings began at 7:00 a.m. and lasted about 40 minutes; results and taskings were then typed into a database and pooled with results from briefers of other senior government officials (“principals”).

Presumably CIA briefers raised equally critical topics each morning for the president, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Defense.

Each topic was clearly titled in the Table of Contents in the daily briefing binder. Investigators should look at those tables of contents in regard to White House efforts to cover up the unraveling of the Iraq WMD fable. When bogus intelligence was floated, for example, or when reports corrected the misinformation, presumably those items were reflected in the briefings.

Schmall testified that the principals spent most of the time in briefings reading their binders, with any questions or requests noted for follow-up by the Intelligence Community.

The fragmentary list below illustrates a few of the critical events that Bush, Cheney, their top aides and their Cabinet members may have known and reacted to. The basic starting question is the same for each item:

Did this appear in a table of contents for a briefing, and if so, on what date?...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The Soup's Joel McHale zings Republicans at the beginning of this Fox & Friends clip and then smacks Fox News at the end. Sandwiched in between is some really uncomfortable banter between the three hosts about the birds and the bees and how many roosters it takes, before Brian Kilmeade ends the clip with a crude Rosie O'Donnell smear. Poor Rosie. Fox has swift boated her so often and mercilessly lately that you'd think she was the junior Senator from New York. The clip runs 0:55.

An absolutely classic and devastating segment from last night's Daily Show featuring a relentless --- if greatly deserved --- reaming of the as-yet unimpeached Dick Cheney by Jon Stewart.

Must-see video is at RAW STORY courtesy of David Edwards.

Has it been three years? Apparently. And we were so busy covering the latest Diebold debacle on Wednesday that we forgot to remember it was our Anniversary!

My unknowing gift to myself, apparently, was the huge number of sites which linked up to that story across the World Wide Interwebs in the subsequent 24 or so. But did any of those hundreds of thousands of readers leave a single anniversary tip for yours truly? Of course not

Whining now out of the way...a heads up that we'll be hitting the road shortly for a week or so. You may or may not notice. While gone, we'll be sitting in to Guest Host the mighty Peter B. Collins Show a couple of days late next week from Phoenix. Hope to have some pretty exciting guests. But more details next week.

And as we enter Year 4 here, I suspect we'll enjoy many more breathtaking plunges, climbs and g-force brownouts on the unpredictable roller coaster that is The BRAD BLOG. Hopefully we'll see some exciting changes as well.

To that end --- and as I consider making the new "Dark on Light" color scheme (selectable from the right sidebar) the default theme here in the not-too-distant future, just to blow all expectations to hell by subordinating the classic BRAD BLOG yellow-on-green (we hate for anybody to ever get too comfortable) --- please feel free to leave in comments any thoughts, suggestions, hopes, dreams or criticisms that you'd like me to consider --- technical, substantive or otherwise --- in the coming year.

Honored to have your input. For good or bad. Like Dick Cheney, I've got a thick hide and I'll just completely ignore what I don't like, so feel free to have at me.

Thanks to all BRAD BLOG readers and supporters for three years of unimaginable "success"! Couldn't be prouder to know you're here. Onward!

Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

Tom Wilkey, former executive director of the New York State Board of Elections, and now the executive director of the Election Assistance Commission, has refused to answer questions from New York election officials about the non-accreditation of voting machine test lab Ciber, Inc. A letter from a state election official describes the lack of response for requested information as "truly outrageous and scandalous." That refusal "to open the curtain that hides their soiled laundry," may lead to subpoenas by the State Board.

The ongoing secrecy, and apparent duplicity, of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) surrounding the failure of Ciber to be given federal accreditation to testing voting machines began last summer causing an unknown number of voters around the country to vote on improperly tested electronic voting machines in last November's election. The EAC failed to notify elections officials or the public about what they had already discovered concerning the poor state of testing conditions and procedures by the lab.

The EAC secrecy has been particularly troublesome in New York where Ciber has been testing equipment specifically under contract with the state. The EAC was created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 and is charged with accrediting "independent testing authorities" to examine and certify electronic voting machines. Ciber failed to gain interim accreditation when the testing duties shifted from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) to the EAC last July.

As discussed in a report yesterday --- which included a series of 'very friendly' notes between Wilkey and the current chair of the EAC, Donetta Davidson --- Wilkey’s silence may stem from his role as chair of the Voting Systems Board at NASED prior to his position at the EAC. The failures of Ciber to properly conduct and document security testing of voting machines that led to the denial of interim accreditation occurred during Wilkey’s watch at NASED where he served with his "Sis", Davidson, as he referred to her in the emails between the two.

Davidson was on Wilkey’s NASED certification board along with "ex officio" member Shawn Southworth of Ciber, Inc. Wilkey and Davidson’s silence about the failures of Ciber has angered election officials around the nation who had relied on Ciber’s certification of their voting machines in the November 2006 election.

As also recently reported, the delay in the public disclosure of the problems at Ciber, conveniently allowed both the firm's founder and its CEO the time needed to unload $1.7 million of company stock before the news would eventually be reported by the New York Times earlier this month.

New York, unlike the rest of the states, did not rush into purchase of new, expensive voting machines without public hearings and more thorough testing and ended up being sued by the U.S. Justice Department for HAVA non-compliance. Commissioner Doug Kellner of the New York State Board of Elections has reacted to the EAC stonewalling about Ciber with a call for a subpoena in hopes of getting some answers.

In an email announcement on Wednesday, Kellner expressed his outrage in no uncertain terms...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by Libby/CIA Leak Trial Correspondent Margie Burns

As noted in an earlier post, the Libby defense team has emphasized memory lapses in the first three prosecution witnesses, government figures who placed Libby at the nexus of information about Joseph Wilson’s wife. Probing, sometimes repetitiously --- or so it seemed to me, sitting in Courtroom 16 --- for variable or incomplete memories took up much of the first two days of the Libby trial, now in its third day.

This line of attack has already been picked up by rightwing media outlets, including a gloating article posted this morning by Byron York at the National Review and another on a rightwing web site called "America Thinks."

More insidiously, the same line is seeping from some large media outlets. The Los Angeles Times ran an article today saying that the "memory defense" is aided by the government witnesses' own memory lapses, and the Baltimore Sun reports that the "'busy man' defense gains some ground". The local (D.C.) ABC television station presents a more balanced report, but very brief.

As it turns out, the memory defense at this stage of the Libby trial is not supposed to be used under judicial guidelines. Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, also present in Courtroom 16 yesterday, points out that for Libby’s lawyers to plead shortness of memory, Libby himself has to take the stand as a witness, because it is his memories that are being referenced. The unremitting focus on witness memory for the entire day Wednesday seems to have resulted in a ruling from the judge that there will be no 'memory defense' allowed in the closing argument unless Libby does take the stand . . .

At the turn of the new year, we dubbed 2007 "The Year of Accountability." So, let it begin.

Two announcements were released today concerning upcoming oversight and investigative hearings in Congress on Bush Administration policy. If you can imagine such a thing.

In the House, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee --- the one which would lead the way concerning any Articles of Impeachment for a sitting U.S. President or Vice-President --- announced today that hearings would be held next Wednesday in the committee on "Presidential Signing Statements under the Bush Administration: A Threat to Checks and Balances and the Rule of Law?" (Complete media release, with details, scheduled witnesses, etc. at end of this article.)

In the Senate, Russ Feingold (D-WI) will chair Judiciary Committee hearings on "Congress's Power to End a War." In a media advisory just released, (posted in full below) Feingold refers to Congress's "power of the purse to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq so that we can refocus on the global terrorist networks that threaten our national security."

"This hearing will help inform my colleagues and the public about Congress’s power to end a war and how that power has been used in the past," Feingold is quoted in the release. As well, he promises to to introduce new legislation to do exactly that in the Senate. "I will soon be introducing legislation to use the power of the purse to end what is clearly one of the greatest mistakes in the history of our nation’s foreign policy," the senator said.

Neither of the Constitutionally mandated oversight hearings will be held in a basement broom closet, but rather in proper Congressional Hearing Rooms.

UPDATE 8:22pm PT White House says they "will cooperate." Of course they will.

The complete media releases from Conyers and Feingold, with dates, times, locations, and expected witnesses, follow below...

AP reports the following comments made Tuesday by the unimpeached Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia concerning his decision to overthrow American democracy in the 2000 Presidential Election:

We wonder what other decisions by the SCOTUS that Americans should "get over." We wonder if the voters of Florida who were denied their expressed intent to elect Al Gore should also "get over it." Doubtless, the more than 3000 U.S. troops killed by George W. Bush's unnecessary war have no choice but to "get over it."

Deceptively attempting to justify his wholly incorrect and unconstitutional decision by playing the unequally applied "Equal Protection Clause" card once again, Scalia reportedly added, "Counting somebody else's dimpled chad and not counting my dimpled chad is not giving equal protection of the law."

Interestingly enough, Scalia and the SCOTUS have stood by and allowed all forms of un-Equal Protection in Elections ever since --- from the myriad different voting systems and "standards" now used, to the myriad ways in which votes by voters in the very same county are counted differently and at different times. In other words, the repugnant democracy-hating Scalia is full of shit.

As pointed out --- though somewhat cryptically --- in the AP piece by Mark Sherman, subsequent study of the actual ballots in the state of Florida in 2000 showed that, in fact, had all of the them actually been counted (we know, it's a quaint idea) Gore would have won [PDF] the state, and thus the Presidency.

Speaking of which, Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson says: Run, Al, Run. We concur, and offer John Lennon's "(Just Like) Starting Over" as our suggestion for the campaign's victory song.

(Hat-tip Michael Roston at RAW STORY.)

From AP...

Golly. We're shocked. We wish we would have paid closer attention to that whole 2004 Ohio Presidential Election scam thing instead of ignoring it all these years.

Oh, wait, that was just about everyone else other than The BRAD BLOG, across the near-entirety of both the MSM and the bulk of the Progressive blogosphere.

That aside...as pointed out in the article, the two who were convicted in Cuyahoga County were still pretty small fish...

By way of reminder, the recount --- the one that was rigged by Ohio Elections Officials --- came by way of the Green and Libertarian Party candidates, not by way of the Democrats or John Kerry. As well, the money to pay for the gamed recount was raised by folks on the Internet, not paid for out of the $15 million or so that Kerry reportedly had left in his campaign war chest after the "Election" in Ohio.

All of that, despite Kerry's continued and then broken promise to "Count Every Vote" in 2004.

These convictions occurred in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold of some 600,000 voters. Kerry "lost" the state of Ohio, according to the history books anyway, by just 118,000 out of some 5.5 million votes cast in the Buckeye State.

In related news, today Kerry decided to quit the 2008 Election, mercifully this time before it instead of afterwards.

UPDATE 3/13/2007: Maiden and Dreamer each sentenced to maximum of 18 months in prison. Judge and prosecutor at sentencing say they still believe the conspiracy goes higher. Details...

Got a call late in the day from the folks at the Lars Larson Show to come on the show following Tony Snow to talk about the State of the Union address.

If you're not familiar with Lars, he's a hard right, fiercely "conservative", widely-syndicated national talk radio host in the Rush/Hannity tradition. If you've heard me on his show before, you'll know that fireworks usually occur. Tonight was no exception, though he was a bit more subdued than usual, and was singing a new tune from previous appearances when it comes to Election Integrity and the need for a paper BALLOT (not "trail" or "record) for every vote cast.

Lars and I talked about the SOTU, N. Korea, the dismal treatment of vets by the Bush Administration, Election Integrity, the right-wing Swiftboating of Barbara Boxer and John Kerry bowing out of the 'Clusterf#@k to the White House 2008'...

Sadly, he took no calls during the short appearance, so we didn't get to hear from his wingnut base this time around. Oh, well. Still a fun appearance, I think. But you tell me.

I've cut out the commercials (you're welcome) as well as the Snow interview just before me since it was the same old tired WH spin (you're welcome again). Enjoy our latest round of "Brad Plays Audio Whackamole!"

-- Brad on Lars Larson Show, 1/24/07 [MP3, appx. 19 mins.]

One interesting --- dare we say, hopeful --- point we just noticed about last night's speech.

In the text transcript at the White House website, the speech was written to end, curiously enough, with the following words:

"See you next year"???

Anybody ever recall such an ending to a State of the Union address?! Now why would they include something like that, one has to wonder.

But as odd as it was to include those words in the first place, what's even more interesting is that Bush didn't say them, choosing instead to end simply with "God bless."

Shall we take this as an encouraging omen? I say we do.

With more than 5600 words in his State of the Union speech, Bush couldn't cobble together five or six of them to thank our 1.6 million new American Veterans? Let alone recognize the continuing horrors they face and what our country plans to do to help them?

A press release from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America find that pretty crappy. So do we.

Why does George W. Bush hate our troops?

Guest Blogged by Michael Richardson

Election Assistance Commission Executive Director Thomas Wilkey moved to the EAC after serving on the National Association of State Election Directors Voting System Board, which he chaired.

Wilkey's current boss at the EAC is Donetta Davidson, Chair of the federal commission. Davidson is a former president of NASED and served with Wilkey on the Voting System Board, which was tasked with certifying "independent testing authorities" to perform tests on electronic voting machines used throughout America.

In 2002, the Help America Vote Act transferred testing responsibility from NASED to the EAC, which took over the duties in July 2006. When it came time to issue interim accreditation to the test labs, EAC technical specialists found that Ciber, Inc. had failed to adequately document security testing while under NASED's certification. Serving "ex officio" on the Voting Systems Board, headed by Wilkey, was Shawn Southworth of Ciber.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has since recommended to the EAC that two other test labs perform the work formerly done by Ciber. Davidson, who twice testified before Congressional hearings last year on voting machine certification, failed to disclose the problems with the Ciber test lab to members of Congress. Senator Diane Feinstein has since asked Wilkey to explain why Ciber was not issued interim accreditation and why the public and election officials around the country were not notified before the November 2006 elections.

During the six months of secrecy from the EAC about the test lab ban, Ciber founder Bobby Stevenson sold $1.6 million worth of stock in the company. Ciber CEO Mac Slinglend also did some insider trading unloading $115,000 worth of the stock while the public was unaware of the EAC action against the company.

The failures of Ciber testing that led to the denial of interim accreditation were not under the EAC watch but instead arose under certification by Wilkey's NASED's Voting Systems Board.

Can EAC Chair Davidson be counted on to properly supervise her new subordinate? Maybe not, according to emails obtained by BlackBoxVoting from 2004 when both served on the NASED certification panel. Email traffic between the pair raise questions about their relationship.

On July 15, 2004 at 2:21 pm, Wilkey emailed Davidson: "You are actually reading your emails...WOW!!! Yes I will see you on Saturday. I get in about 9 pm so we will have a nightcap if you are not out partying on Bourbon Street. Love, Your New York Brother."

Two weeks later on July 29, 2004, after the nightcaps in New Orleans, Davidson sent Wilkey an email: "My Dearest Brother, Life has not slowed down, but I am staying out of trouble. Hope to talk to you soon, on the PHONE. That way I get to hear your voice. Love your Sis."

Now the cozy relationship between the two former NASED regulators can blossom at EAC where Wilkey reports to Davidson.

Wilkey's role in certifying electronic voting machines goes back a long way. According to his official agency biography, Wilkey helped draft the first voting system standards in country back in 1983 while working with the Federal Elections Commission.

"An early proponent of the creation of the National Association of State Election Directors, Wilkey has served as secretary, treasurer, vice-president and was elected president for 1996-1997. In January, Wilkey was named chair of NASED's Independent Test Authority Accreditation Board, which reviews and approves laboratories and technical groups for the testing of voting systems under NASED's national accreditation program. He was reappointed chair in 2000."

Wilkey's watchdog role over voting system security also gained him appointment to an advisory board of the Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program, which assists six million military and overseas voters. Ciber, one of Wilkey's NASED approved test labs, since banned, conducted the security testing of the FVAP computer system.

Now "New York Brother" and "Sis" are tasked with protecting the voting machine security for the entire nation. The earlier role of the two EAC leaders in oversight of Ciber's lax work that led to non-accreditation may well be the subject of Congressional hearings before the year is out.

Ed Note: Several important updates now added to the end of the story...

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else... now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you're not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?).

The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you've been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system, who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election.

But the folks at Princeton who discovered the hack (after our own organization, VelvetRevolution.us, gave them the Diebold touch-screen machine on which to perform their tests) had resisted showing exactly what the key looked like in order to hold on to some semblance of security for Diebold's Disposable Touch-Screen Voting Systems.

But guess what? Diebold didn't bother to even have that much common sense.

This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website's online store! (Screenshot at end of this article.)

Of course, they'll only sell such keys to "Diebold account holders" apparently --- or so they claim --- but that's hardly a problem. J. Alex Halderman, one of the folks who worked on the Princeton Hack and tried to keep the design of the key secret for obvious reasons, revealed Tuesday that a friend of his had found the photo of the key on Diebold's website and discovered that was all he needed to create a working copy!

As Halderman writes...