We've said it before...and say it almost everytime we speak anywhere publicly in fact...but if you need any more proof that the actions of one person can make a difference, allow us to offer just a few more recent examples of the actions taken by just a few of the good BRAD BLOGGERS out there.

We're sure we could offer loads of similar examples from several score more of you, but these two folks have jumped out of late and we're happy to add to the noise they've already made.

Last week, a frequent BRAD BLOG commenter (whose name we'll leave out, since we didn't get express permission to mention it --- they can take credit for here in comments if they are so inclined) made a bit of news after sending a letter of complaint to the Tennessee Department of Health complaining about Sen. Bill Frist's videotaped (and incorrect) "diagnosis" of Terri Schiavo a few months back.

The letter, apparently, has triggered a review of Frist's actions, according to the return letter received from the Director of Investigations for Health Related Boards.

All we can say is: Well done!

And another BRAD BLOG commenter, Sheila Leavitt, has been bravely making noise for quite a while. She seems to have little fear when it comes to speaking out rather publicly and for that alone (sadly enough) she deserves a round of applause in this chilling day and age.

That's her on the right as photographed by AFP on the day Conyers was delivering the Downing Street letter to the White House.

Today, Sheila made the news again as she was featured in a great Boston Herald column.

We're not certain, but it may be her car that caught the attention of the Herald reporter

In an email exchange we had today, Sheila told us, "My medium is cardboard, just as yours is words in the computer. Each of us only needs to do what we do best, and do it with love and persistence, don't you think? Eventually, maybe things will get better."

Yes, we think maybe eventually it will.

Since the Herald site is subscription only, here's a few more grafs than usual from today's article on Sheila, some of the thugs she's faced down in the course of bravely speaking out, and, of course...a must-see EXCLUSIVE BRAD BLOG photograph of...Sheila's car...

Just in from AP...Time Magazine's Matt Cooper looks to be ready to talk.

New York Times gets back into the reporting game with two stories in one day on Trouble in Tom Delay Land.

In a short piece by Philip Shenon, it's reported that the U.S. House Resources Committee has asked the Dept. of Justice to widen their criminal investigation into Jack Abramoff, the "Washington lobbyist whose ties to Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, and other prominent lawmakers are the subject of inquiries throughout the government."

The request, sent in a letter last week, according to the Times, "cited a flurry of accusations of wrongdoing involving Mr. Abramoff's multimillion-dollar lobbying on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands, a small American commonwealth in the Pacific."

What we find most notable here is that a House Committee, all of which are headed by Republicans, has finally taken any kind of proactive stance in any of the myriad criminal corruption scandals now rocking Capitol Hill (or at least percolating just below the surface, even if they haven't shown up "in person" yet in the Committee Hearing rooms --- basement broom-closet hearings held by Democrats notwithstanding.)

It is, as the Times points out, "the first known request by a Congressional committee for prosecutors to review accusations of criminal conduct in the lobbying activities of Mr. Abramoff, who was one of the most powerful and best-paid Republican lobbyists in Washington."

We'll not bother to ask "what took you so long", but rather take heart in that action of some sort may finally be beginning.

As to how the Northern Marianias and Abramoff will all come back to bite delay, Shenon explains...

...But that's not all the Times has today on Abramoff/Delay!...

In an open letter to John Tanner, Chief of the Voting Section of the Dept. of Justice, Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press responds to the unrequested and blatant whitewash "report" that the DoJ published last week on disenfranchisement (or a lack thereof, as the the DoJ "report" characterized it) in Franklin County, OH.

Fitrakis has been on the ground since Day 1 (and before) in Ohio, and knows whereof he speaks.

The more one looks at the outrageous "report" from the DoJ, the clearer it becomes what a despicable obfuscation that particular piece of propaganda was meant to be. For our money, the DoJ "report" represents perhaps one of the most chilling set of tea-leaves we've seen so far as an indication of just how cooked this DoJ now is, and to what lengths they are prepared to go in order to mislead the American public and media away from the truth.

We're not particularly prone to hyperbole, but we find this small indication of what the DoJ is now made of to be particularly troubling. Anyway, read Fitrakis' rebuttal to get a sense of how outrageous that "report" actually was...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The following important message has just arrived from our friend Steve, and I encourage you to read it carefully.

{UPDATE July 5th by WP}: Here is a full list of the flyers now available:
in MS-Word format
in HTML form
as a JPEG image
another place to get the JPEG image
Thanks to Torqued for all these extra goodies and of course thanks to Steve as well ...

IT'S YOUR TURN NOW!! Chat this up; tell all your friends; link to these flyers wherever you can; print and copy and plaster them all over the place {but not on cars! that's dangerous and annoying and in some places it's illegal} ... anything else you can think of.

ALSO: If you have any other good ideas about how to publicize the BLOGATHON, please don't keep them to yourself. Consider the rest of us. We want to know! Thanks as always.

Now let's get moving!

Brad's Friskies Fund...

{Ed Note: Bumping this up to the top for a bit so that you catch the couple of updated links added yesterday and today.}

As you all likely know by now, Lawrence O'Donnell has fingered Rove as the leaker to Time's Matt Cooper in the Valerie Plame investigation.

This morning O'Donnell offers further developements on the issue...

UPDATE 7/4/05: More coverage today by O'Donnell. This time on Rove's emerging Clintonesque Defense.

UPDATE 7/5/05: And today O'Donnell has three questions for Rove's Attorney...

ALSO...Democrats circulate Congressional Letter calling for the resignation of Karl Rove.

Featuring four classic BRAD SHOW interviews celebrating the Independence of the American Spirit! Starring...

With a bit of CIA Analyst RAY MCGOVERN thrown in for good measure. And speaking of Ray McGovern, thanks to BRAD BLOGGERS Valley Girl, Kira and Kat our full interview with him from 6/11/05 has now been lovingly transcribed for your reading pleasure. Thanks guys! You rock!

And speaking of Freeway Blogger (and rocking), his Summer of Truth kicks off this weekend! Check it out! And get to work! This democracy ain't gonna save itself you know! (Photo at left, FB's response to Bush's call for flying the flag this weekend in support of the troops)

The BRAD SHOW returns with another all-new and exciting LIVE episode next week! During the BRAD BLOGathon!

There is almost no other way to put this, but we are simply floored by the report just released by the Department of Justice concerning the Franklin County, OH elections.

If there ever was a report which could be called a whitewash, this would be the very dictionary definition --- with the emphasis on WHITE.

The DoJ four-page report, based on dodgy figures, uninvestigated charges and undocumented information and details, simply concludes that "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a non-discriminatory manner", that "no violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act" was found and they "are thus closing our file."

In truth, a detailed analysis of the flaws in this report, and an unwaivering condemnation of this reprehensible piece of "official documentation" is needed. But as folks are disappearing for the Holiday Weekend, we're afraid any analysis we took the time to compile right now would likely get lost in the holiday news-hole. So, for the moment, we're gonna dump these documents here and leave the detailed analysis and shouts of outrage and condemnation to BRAD BLOG readers. If we can follow up a bit more after the holiday, we will.

Essentially, John Conyers' office requested a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice investigation back in January on a number of very troubling matters related to Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election on behalf of the minority members of the Judiciary Committee. (Letter requesting a Special Prosecutor from the DoJ is here [PDF]. Coverage of it by RAW STORY is here, and BRAD BLOG's own reporting at the time, which led to one of the complaints in the letter to the DoJ, is here.)

Amongst the items for which Conyers' January 14, 2005 had requested an investigation at the time --- according to the response to the report Conyers sent on Wednesday --- were "serious charges concerning Voter Intimidation and Misinformation; Improper Purging and other Misconduct; Caging of New Minority Voters; Misuse of HAVA Funds; Tampering of Voting Machinery and Records; Perjury by a County Board of Election Official; and the Misuse of the Great Seal of the United States on Secretary of State Blackwell's Personal Campaign Materials."

While no "substantive response to the many instances of voting irregularities and civil rights violations in the state of Ohio" about which Conyers' submitted evidence has been forthcoming by the DoJ since that January letter, apparently someone within the DoJ took it upon themselves to conduct --- and as we've said WHITEWASH --- an investigation concerning what happened in just one county in Ohio.

The DoJ's resulting four-page report, conducted by "The Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division" and sent to Franklin County officials on Wednesday, is a masterwork of obfuscation, disinformation, misinformation, smoke and mirrors and out and out lies. And remember, it comes directly from your Department of Justice.

As we've said, a more detailed point-by-point analysis of the outrage is called for. But for now, we feel it's important to get the information out as is so folks can see with their own eyes what has "flabbergasted" Conyers' as according to the response he sent in reply to the DoJ yesterday.

There is, however, at least one paragraph which jumped out at us, but that Conyers' reply does not deal with directly (understandably, frankly, since there is so much to be "flabbergasted" about in this DoJ report!). We feel this one is important to point out as we find it particularly disconcerting for what the future may hold in Ohio [emphasis added]:

Yes, you read that right. Franklin County's "bi-partisan" Board of Election has just now "purged" 114,000 voters from the rolls! Tee-ing things up nicely, it would seem, for many more thousands of voters to find themselves suddenly ineligible to vote when they show up at the polling place in 2006!

Over one hundred thousand voters scrubbed from the voting rolls in just one Ohio County alone by their presumably "bi-partisan" BoE. That, while we have learned over the past several months how these Ohio BoE's are certainly not "bi-partisan" as Blackwell and their other defenders continue to maintain since a) There are "Democrats" on these boards who are specifically plants, in other words, "Democrats" in name only and b) All BoE members serve at the partisan pleasure of the distinctly partisan Secretary of State and Bush/Cheney Co-Chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who has routinely threatened BoE members with dismissal if and when they refuse to follow his personal partisan edicts.

But that's just one of the outrages. We'll let Conyers' handle a few more. Here is his response to the DoJ report first, followed by the complete report itself by John Tanner, the Chief of the DoJ's Voting Section. Prepare to be appalled...

Wonder if the Democrats are starting to wish --- right about now --- that they'd fought harder for every vote to be counted last November.

Anyway, getting pounded here for the moment with email, news, tips and more, and must go on Tony Trupiano's radio show (3pm ET, 12noon PT) so I'll be out of the loop for more than a bit. Therefore...discuss amongst yourselves...

Looks like Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org gets the first words out on ElectionAssessment.org's hearing yesterday in Houston which was set up as a counter to the phony hearing that occurred today by the now-discredited Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission. (Details explaining both hearings here. Be sure to enjoy the comments on that itme by the way, and note our own personal restraint in not posting our private communications with Mr. Lowenstein who is privileged enough to sit on the Baker/Carter Commission, but doesn't believe he needs to hear from American Voters who are concerned about the dangers it poses to our Electoral System. But we digress...)

It doesn't look as if C-SPAN covered the 2nd and final Baker/Carter Hearings today, as they did with the first one. Which is fine by us. As the first one was filled with little more than misleading disinformation presented by a stacked deck of ringer "witnesses" who morphed the real problem of Election Fraud into the non-existant "problem" of Voter Fraud. As a matter of fact, the only thing much resembling media coverage of either meeting beforehand was the Press Release issued we issued from Velvet Revolution.

In her quick message board reply, Harris, just one of the many witnesses at ElectionAssessment.org's hearings who should have given testimony to and/or been sitting on the Baker/Carter Commission itself, gives some insight into how things went at thos hearings...

She has more in her post, including what should make for some very interesting video tape to come soon!

(That tape, by the way, will be available on DVD for Dr. Pastor, with whom we've exchanged pleasantries ourselves in the past, and the rest of 'em on the Baker/Carter Commission...if you haven't already let them know about that fine opportunity, you may still do so here.)

(Hat tip BRAD BLOG commenter and BRAD SHOW caller, Catherine A. from Ireland for the link to Bev's post!)

Feeling scandal fatigue towards what is increasingly being revealed to be an indescribably filthy Republican Party / Bush Administration? Too bad, get ready for a bit more.

In just one of the increasingly too-many items that BRAD BLOG has been unable to find the time to investigate properly and report on of late, is the story of political operatives Sproul & Associates and the enormous amount of money they were paid by the Republican Party before, during and after the 2004 Presidential Election for services-still-unknown.

We had received some of the early tips on this matter based on the tireless digging of John Brakey (he, of the similarly under-reported Arizona Electoral Fraud "Rosetta Stone" investigation) but were unable to find the time to investigate and report on it properly. Thankfully, Mark Crispin Miller was able to find the time and has filed his first report on the matter today.

Miller does a fine job of making sense of a very complex set of numbers, representing millions of dollars paid to the firm of the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition.

Those numbers have since been changed, re-dated, re-apportioned, re-described, re-catagorized, disappeared and otherwise gamed in their filing of same by the RNC to the Federal Elections Commission since the November election, and even within the last few weeks!

Those of you paying close attention may remember former employees of Sproul's firm, Voters Outreach of America, alleging that the firm had shredded thousands of voter registration forms in a number of states prior to the election. Democratic voter registration forms only, mind you. They are reportedly now under criminal investigation in the state of Oregon related to such charges.

In any case, if you're not too exhausted already by the myriad other Criminal Enterprises being revealed daily as Business-as-Usual by George W. Bush and his Republican Party win-at-all-costs Partners-in-Crime, you may want to get a load of this one.

Is there no end to the corruption these guys are capable of?!

At least we can rest easy knowing that Bush didn't get a blowjob in the oval office (that we know of). If that had been the case, we're certain that Congress and the American Corporate Media would finally have found something criminal enough to merit a thorough investigation on behalf of the American People.

Long Live the Bloggers!

It seems to us that if these were normal times --- when we weren't far far through the looking glass already --- a story such as this would have been front page news. For days on end. At least. Such as things are, however, here in Bizzarro World (previously known as America) this story ran on p. 12 of Tuesday's LA Times...