Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Ali Shalal Qaissi was the mayor of a town near Baghdad before he was arrested and taken to Abu Ghraib prison. While detained, Mr. Qaissi was subjected to torture including electrocution. He says, "I felt my eyes popping out. Once I bit my tongue and and blood started coming out of my mouth."

Mr. Qaissi underwent psychological and physical abuse techniques developed by the CIA and perfected at Guantánamo by General Miller. Under orders from Secretary Rumsfeld, General Miller spread his school of torture developed at Guantánamo to U.S. detention centers in Iraq and other secret prisons throughout the world. Take a look at this video interview with Professor Alfred McCoy for more information about how the Bush Administration has made torture a permanent policy of the U.S.

The New York Times initially reported that Ali Shalal Qaissi was the prisoner in the now-famous-picture of a hooded man standing on a box with electrical wires connected to his hands. While the media has produced only a few articles on the Ali Shalal Qaissi's horrifying story, scores of articles have been written about the fact that The Times may have misreported the exact photo in which Qaissi was pictured.

During Ali Shalal Qaissi imprisonment, his wounded hand was infected after "a US soldier stamped on it." As reported in the video, Qaissi's deformed hand makes him easier to identify in the photos.

UPDATE: VIDEO - CNN Reports on "Hooded Man" Photograph Confusion

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CNN's Kyra Phillips interviewed Salon.com author Michael Scherer who is challenging The New York Times assertion that Ali Shalal Qaissi appeared in the most famous of the Abu Ghraib "hooded man on box" photo.

CNN's interview (and many other reports in the media) focus on an error made The Times. Mr. Qaissi's claim that he was tortured in Abu Ghraib and that he appeared in one or more of the "hooded man on box" photos has not been challenged. Nonetheless, all of the attention on mistakes in reporting may taint Mr. Qaissi's reputation and hurt his efforts to bring attention to the atrocities being committed by our government.

At one point in this interview, Kyra Phillips actually asks "... are these prisoners trying to capitalize on these pictures? Are they looking for opportunities to make money?"

Tom Feeney, the corrupt, lying U.S. Congressman from Florida's 24th District (the one who is alleged by Clint Curtis to have asked him to create vote-rigging software) is usually the picture of cockiness. Not so of late.

As reported by Orlando Sentinel today, it looks like Feeney is doing a bit of pre-emptive damage control now that he knows Clint Curtis is gunning for his 24th district seat:

And who knows better from "complete lies" than Tom Feeney?!

(Want to take a polygraph test to back up your assertions, Mr. Feeney? We suspect not, since Clint Curtis already has.)

Please support Curtis' campaign to dethrone Feeney and expose the beast at www.ClintCurtis.com. Right now, Curtis needs financial contributions of any size as Feeney is playing big time for big money from his big base in the very "red" district he carved out for himself in Florida when he was Speaker of the Legislature down there.

If Curtis can survive the primary, a head-to-head matchup with Feeney may do more than anything we've seen in this country so far to bring the Electronic Election Fraud issues front and center into the national spotlight! Now's the time.

"I don't do personal attacks...We don't do personal attacks."
-- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, 2/23/06.

MediaMatters.org disagrees...and has the evidence to prove it.

Do we feel sorry yet for Bill making such a continuous yutz of himself? Over and over...and over...again? Nah.

Meanwhile...Down in "the Sunshine State"...

This story is just incredible.

For those just jumping into this tale, SoS Cobb (Jeb's recent political appointee) has been threatening Leon County's elected Election Supervisor Ion Sancho because he revealed that the Diebold voting machines in Florida and elsewhere can be hacked and flipped without a trace being left behind.

In the bargain, all three Voting Machine Companies certified to do business in Florida have now refused to do business with Sancho. Nonetheless --- and incredibly --- the state is now targetting [PDF] the heroic Sancho with threats to remove him from his elected position.

All, at the same time that Florida sent a "technical advisory" to all Election Supervisors in the state, warning them of what Sancho found --- but without mentioning their friends Diebold by name, and certainly not bothering to laud Sancho for discovering a huge electoral integrity issue in the "Sunshine State."

And now, a meeting with officials which is supposed to be open to the press and the public --- on the first day of Florida's phony "Sunshine Week", celebrating open government (no, seriously) --- results in closed doors, reporters tossed and calls to the police.

Just amazing...Please read on...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Senator Russ Feingold delivered this speech yesterday on the Senate Floor offering a resolution to censure President George W. Bush over illegal wiretaps.

The video runs about 25 minutes and is lower quality. We are not able to offer a Windows Media version because of the size. An MP3 Audio version is available.

Senator Feingold offers the resolution in PDF format on his website. The Raw Story has the complete text of the speech.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: That speech, by the way, starts this way, and then gets even better...

The Democrats have another opportunity to fail to do their jobs here. Looks like, aside from Feingold, they're prepared to take advantage of that opportunity. Call your Senators. Ask them if they support Feingold's Censure. If they don't, ask them why not. Firedoglake has helpful numbers and tips for ya.

Continuing in an exclusive BRAD BLOG series of Voting Machine Vendor and Election Fraud whistleblowers, another insider, from yet another voting machine company, has now come forward to reveal a myriad of known problems inside both the company and in several states and counties with whom they do business.

During last Tuesday's Primary Election in the state of Texas, scores of "computer glitches" --- as voting officials and electronic voting machine vendors like to refer to them --- were revealed occurred across the state. Many of those "glitches" occurred on electronic voting equipment manufactured and supplied to various counties in Texas by the Hart InterCivic company.

One such "glitch" occurred in Texas' Tarrant County, which encompasses Fort Worth. That "glitch" resulted in some 100,000 votes being added to the result totals across the county's paperless Hart-Intercivic "eSlate" touch-screen voting system.

Election Officials in Tarrant claim they didn't look into the problems on Election Night as the problem emerged because, as reported by the Star-Telegram last week, "they were dealing with a new system, new procedures and some new equipment."

The BRAD BLOG can now report, however, that according to a Hart InterCivic company whistleblower --- who also happened to have later worked as an "election programmer" in Tarrant County --- the problems with Hart InterCivic's systems in Tarrant County, Texas and elsewhere are not new at all. Not by a longhorn long shot.

Letters sent by William Singer of Fort Worth, a former Hart InterCivic "technical specialist" and Tarrant County election worker, to state officials back in July of 2004 warned of exactly such problems. The letters, obtained and published here for the first time exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, reveal that serious problems and concerns of possible election system meltdowns were already apparent with the Hart machines in Tarrant County long ago. However, the warning letters were all but ignored by both election officials and even state law enforcement officials.

The "glitch" in last Tuesday's primary, as reported the Star-Telegram, "caused Tarrant County to report as many as 100,000 votes in both primaries that never were cast." After the problem was discovered, they report, "the local turnout [dropped] from a possible record high of about 158,103 voters to about 58,000."

A review of several notarized letters sent by Singer to officials in both Texas and Ohio in 2004 warned of fraudulent activities, buggy software and hardware, dysfunctional testing and development procedures, unsecured working environments and possible criminal behavior by both Hart InterCivic and Election Workers in both states.

Singer --- who eventually resigned from the company and ended up working as an Election Programmer for Tarrant County, where last Tuesday's "glitch" occurred --- wrote of allegations that Hart illegally supplied specially prepared machines for testing to state election officials. Along with doing so, they also withheld a number of known security, programming and hardware flaws during official review and certification of the systems.

TROUBLE IN TARRANT COUNTY, TEXAS...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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As the third anniversary of the Iraq War nears, President Bush and other administration officials will begin delivering speeches today designed to bolster public opinion of the Iraq war. President Bush's first speech will focus on the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the readiness of Iraq troops.

Former presidential advisor David Gergen says that a PR campaign is the wrong direction. He says that the White House should tell the truth about the situation on the ground in Iraq.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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CNN's Soledad O'Brien proved to be an effective proxy for the GOP noise machine as she challenged Feingold's proposed censure of Bush with flurry of misleading Republican talking points.

Not to be too critical of Soledad but she may be in over her head by sparring with Senator Feingold on the subject of illegal wiretaps.

Senator Feingold introduced the censure proposal yesterday on ABC This Week. You can see the full interview with George Stephanopolous here.

Feingold is expected to introduce the censure resolution in the Senate today.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The March 6 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

Tomorrow (Monday) The BRAD BLOG will feature yet another Voting Machine Industry insider who is stepping forward with yet more troubling information and documented accusations about the way his company --- and at least one county in Texas, where there were notable problems in last Tuesday's primary --- have been running elections. Damning complaints about Fraud, Mismanagement, and possible Criminal Behavior were made about many of the alleged problems as long ago as July 2004. We'll have the documentation. The complaints were all but ignored, surprisingly enough (irony inserted there), by both public and company officials. We'll have a full feature on those complaints and warnings on Monday...We believe you'll not want to miss it!

It's been an incredibly busy time here at The BRAD BLOG, in case you haven't noticed. Just scroll down last week's list of stories to get an idea of what's been going on --- at a furious pace. And there is much more on the way. For an audio review of some of last week's best stories, you may wish to listen to my weekly appearance last Friday with the good Peter B. Collins of KRXA 540am wherein we discussed as many of last week's stories as we could fit into one 40 minute appearance [MP3].

A few other quick Sunday items of note...

VoteTrustUSA has begun a campaign in support of Ion Sancho... Sancho, as readers here know, is the Election Supervisor in Leon County who exposed the security flaw in Diebold's optical-scan voting equipment which allows a hacker to completely flip the results of an election without a trace being left behind. Sancho is under attack for this good deed by the State of Florida themselves and yet he's fighting back as best as he can. Click here to send email support for Sancho's efforts!

Stephen Heller, the whistleblower who revealed Diebold's plan... to break the law in California has set up a legal defense fund since being charged with three felony counts. We wrote about Heller previously and the excellent Tribune Media Services columnist, Bob Koehler, covered his story this week as well in a great column. Here are some comments from Heller's wife. He is in need of funds to fight against the bad guys. So, donations can now be made via the Stephen Heller Defense Fund website.

Lastly, for now... and not important at all, but kind of fun. Please Vote for BRAD BLOG in any or all of the 6 categories for which we've been nominated in the Koufax 2005 Weblog Awards! If you're so inclined. We'd much appreciate it! And thanks, as ever, for all the great support!

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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This month, the ACLU premiered "Voting Rights". It's the latest in a series of "The ACLU Freedom Files" documentaries. The program premiered March 9th on LinkTV and March 11th on CourtTV.

The "Voting Rights" episode highlights some of the ways in which populations of minority voters have had their political power stifled by officials representing the majority voters. The program calls attention to the pending expiration and continued need of the Voting Rights Act.

This video contains about 9 minutes of clips from the full 30 minute documentary. The ACLU should have the full video for download soon. Check your local listings for additional show times on CourtTV and LinkTV.

Cleveland Plain-Dealer promises a feature article on Diebold's new CEO (and former head of its Elections Division) Tom Swidarksi in tomorrow's Sunday paper. (UPDATE: That interview is now posted here.)

In their preview for that article, they refer to his plan for "cutting $100 million in operation costs" and Diebold's "core business of selling and servicing ATM's and security systems."

"But it's the company's smallest business segment - electronic voting products - that occasionally envelops Diebold in controversy," they report. "And that fanfare contributed to the downfall of Swidarski's predecessor, Walden O'Dell."

The article tomorrow is, apparently, based on a video-taped interview with Swidarski which is available online here.

Despite being Diebold's "smallest business segment," approximately half (or more) of that interview is dedicated to their "Elections Business". Most newsworthy, perhaps, is Swidarski's continued failure to say whether or not he plans on selling off that part of Diebold. Previous interviews have given that same indication. It seems clear, they're looking to get the monkey off their back. Who can blame them?

For a transcript of the key parts in the interview concerning their "Elections Business," followed by a few of my thoughts about that, along with what I feel is a friendly invitation to Mr. Swidarski...from me...see below...

As reported yesterday by BRAD BLOG - Summit County, Ohio is testing the memory cards for their new ES&S optical scan machines. Unfortunately their first test revealed that 30% of those cards failed, and as replacements were brought in, the cards continued failing.

Such memory cards are used in electronic voting machines to store the tallied votes. Similar cards were found to be hackable in Diebold optical scan machines after a targetted "hack test" was specfically performed on them in Leon County, FL, recently.

Today, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that a new batch of cards was supplied by ES&S to Summit County for the tests. And they are failing less often! Now only 10% of the time !

Lisa A. Abraham of the Beacon Journal reports:

I took the opportunity to send the Beacon-Journal's Abraham an email asking a very simple question: "I would really be curious what ES&S would say if they were asked how many other counties across the country have these same memory cards, and are they warning all of their customers to be on the lookout for bad cards."

Her response: "I've been asking ES&S that very question for two days now and they either won't say or don't call back. Stay tuned..."

So... I guess we stay tuned, and hope that those same bad cards do not end up on ES&S machines all over the country.

ES&S is the largest provider of voting machine equipment in America. Between them and Diebold, the two companies tally more than 80% of America's votes. (And they may be accurate in doing so 70% to 90% of the time.)

UPDATE 3/11/06: The answers to the questions many of us have asked have been answered by the Akron Beacon Journal today. The problem with the memory cards seems to be dead or low batteries. Apparently the subcontractor for the cards, Vikant Corp., a Long Grove, Ill., company has no quality control standards and just shipped out bad cards to ES&S for use in machines that will be counting our votes. ES&S, like Vikant, apparently failed to test the cards also.

On my question to Lisa A. Abraham, the Beacon Journal reporter regarding whether ES&S is trying to locate other customers who may have bad memory cards, she got an answer. Lisa reports that Ellen Bogard, ES&S spokeswoman told her:

There may not have been any complaints but I wonder how many of those bad cards may have ended up in Texas and been responsible for some of the disasters reported by BRAD BLOG last Tuesday.

FOLLOWUP QUESTION FROM BRAD: A "battery problem"? Not to be overly skeptical here, but my understanding is that these memory cards are magnetic media which are slipped into the PCMCIA slots, no? Power is supplied from the computer itself via the PCMCIA slot (if I understand things correctly), and thus no "battery" is needed on PCMCIA cards which simply store data magnetically. Am I missing something here? Does anyone here have more knowledge on this sort of thing for us? Please share in comments if you do...

In case you don't know, the ballots from the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio have never actually been counted. Or even recounted.

The "official" recount, called for by the Green and Libertarian Parties in the state, was gamed and carried out completely against state law by Ohio's Sec. of State (and Bush/Cheney's Re-Election Committee Co-Chair) J. Kenneth Blackwell.

The Green and Libertarian Parties are still challenging that recount in Federal Court. As well, two Cuyahoga County Election Officials were indicted last August for gaming that (non)recount.

And today, AP informs us, a third one has just been nabbed as well...

Amazingly enough --- or perhaps not, since this is Ohio, after all, where the rule of law no longer actually applies --- the story also reports that "All three [indicted] employees continue to work at the board."

Sure you have, Bob. We all feel much better. We guess by "best people" he means the ones who are most indicted.

(Perhaps he should consider hiring the affable Jack Abramoff to answer the phones for them during this busy season?!)

UPDATE 1/24/2007: Both Maiden and Dreamer are convicted for rigging the recount. Details now here...

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. Full details...