As the New York Times is now reporting in tomorrow's edition that Libby will be indicted, the investigation of Rove will continue under an extended grand jury term, but that "people involved in the case did not rule out the disclosure of previously unknown aspects of the case"... A picture of an apparently obsessed Dick Cheney, aided by his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby seems to be emerging more and more clearly as investigations by both Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the Senate Intelligence Committee move forward.

As well, evidence continues to come to light which further connects the once-disparate dots in the Adminstration's by-any-means-necessary march to war, their "fixing" of "facts and intelligence around the policy" of selling the war through "a conjunction of WMD and Terrorism" (as described in the Downing Street Documents), and the eventual desperate outing of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame/Wilson in order to hold off the collapse of the trumped-up house of cards on which the entire boondoggled case for war was built.

Murray Waas has an excellent report in The National Journal today describing the pieces as they come together and the picture begins to get clearer and clearer.

In the report, Waas also breaks the news that Cheney and Libby overruled "advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers" in deciding to withhold crucial documents requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee for their 2004 investigation into pre-war intelligence.

You'll recall the report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) prior to the '04 Election which focused on the CIA's failure to get the intelligence on Iraq's WMD right. Roberts, at the time, had promised the second part of the report --- focusing on the Administration's misuse of intelligence in making their case for war --- would come only, and conveniently, after the Presidential Election.

That promised report is, so far, nowhere to be found. Though Waas reports the Committee is still at work on it. In light, however, of the information that Cheney and Libby withheld docs from the Committee, Waas reports:

Though that wouldn't do, of course. Not in an Election Year, as Waas continues:

Of course not. Then the American People might have had to make an informed judgement on whether George W. Bush should continue in his previously-unelected position as President of the United States.

Waas's full article is a must read, if only to begin to understand the depths to which Cheney and his office went to keep their genie in the bottle while their case for war was beginning to unravel and as the criminal investigations now begin to work their way into the heart of both Cheney and Bush's offices.

Meanwhile, a former covert CIA operative and one-time classmate of Valerie Plame's at The Agency speaks very slowly to Wolf Blitzer in order to help him finally understand what's at stake in the matter of the unprecedent White House outing of Plame. Johnson has been valiantly attempting to fend off the tsunami of wingnut lies being floated in the media concerning the Plame case for some time. Today he got the chance to try and school Blitzer just a bit.

Crooks and Liars has the video, and maybe --- just maybe --- the facts in the case will begin to sink into Wolf's brain as the spin and smears from the GOP liars and apologists hopefully soon become the dog that just won't hunt anymore. Or am I still far too optimistic about these things? We shall see.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Election Fraud in Florida? Ohio? Chicago? Not this time…How about Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth most populous county in the United States. Yes, sunny, laid back Arizona seems to be a hotbed of electoral intrigue, dispute and possible malfeasance.

It seems that the results of the September 7, 2004 Republican Primary now has Republicans turning on and challenging fellow Republicans in both the state legislature and in the media. Also emerging are stunning reports that county jail inmates --- some of whom have admitted to ballot tampering! --- were being used to handle ballots in the county in exchange for early release!

In an article in the Phoenix New Times out today --- headlined "Pandora's Box - Is Arizona's Speaker of the House afraid of what might happen if the truth is learned about a local election?" --- reporter John Dougherty tells a tale of apparent election fraud, a quid pro quo offer, new votes that appear like magic, failure by an assistant county attorney to serve a subpoena, political pressure, and one hell of a mess.

The story covers the strange tale of Maricopa County District 20 Republican Primary state Representative candidate, John McComish who went from four votes behind rival Anton Orlich, after the primary votes were counted, to 13 votes ahead after a recount held on September 21, 2004. In between those two counts 489 new votes mysteriously appeared in the totals.

The incident led to a date in court (that's what Republicans do when they don't like the results of elections…too bad more Democrats don't take the cue) for which the Assistant County Attorney neglected to serve a subpoena on the Election System and Software (ES&S) representative who has an office in the county elections offices. The lack of a witness from the major American Voting Machine company to answer questions about potential machine malfunctions that resulted in the unexplained new votes forced the judge to go ahead and certify results of the election according to the recount. The county Election Director could provide no explanation that made any sense as to where those 489 additional votes came from. Freedom of Information Act requests for records from the County Sheriff --- who was supposed to provide guards for the ballots --- have been ignored…

Just in from the Toledo-Blade. One of the top GOP moneymen for Bush/Cheney in Ohio, and for Republicans nationwide, Thomas Noe joins the ignominious ranks in the ever-swelling Republican "Culture of Corruption".

Apparently, Republicans are seemingly unable to "win" elections without cheating... Go figure. [emphasis added]

Keep your eyes on this one, since Noe had connections to all the major Republican players, from the indicted Ohio Governor Taft, to Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell, to Schwarzenegger in California to Bush/Cheney etc. Let's see if they all start singing soon...This is gonna get ugly.

We'd also suggest you keep your eyes on Noe's wife, Bernadette, who --- as BRAD BLOG reported previously --- appears to be tied into this scheme vis a vis her her dual role as chairman of the Lucas County, OH Republican Party and the Lucas County Board of Elections. It appears that Ms. Noe was one of the key players in the Ohio Republican Party's proven gaming and/or theft of the 2004 Presidential Election in the state via her Board of Election's "gross failures" to secure ballots, voting machines and the manipulation of the Green/Liberatarian-requested recount which followed the election.

UPDATE: The Blade updates its own story after the Press Conference...A three-count indictment for Noe...

FURTHER UPDATE: AP picks up the story (headline: "Major Republican Donor Indicted in Ohio"), and adds some background...

FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE: The DNC posts a helpful little rap-sheet on Noe and his dirty dealing with Bush and the RNC. Released along with this statement from Communications Director, Karen Finney:

Apparently the situation isn't dire enough. At least not enough to merit the coverage deserved by the media in the wake of Wilma's devastation in Florida. Either that, or there's not enough whipping wind and rain to rate full Multi-Colored-Slicker Team Coverage (read: pointlessly stupid photo ops) for the cable "news" nets to cover the story. Or maybe it's just that it's brother Jeb's state, and the Administration doesn't have a governor to conveniently blame for their own failure to do anything right.

Whatever...Our friend Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY is caught in the mess. She lives in South Florida. She filed this report on the situation from a pay phone near her home...

The print ad that we (VelvetRevolution.us) are running in this week's Washington D.C. City Paper. [Click it to read full ad]...

The video ad that OpTruth.org (an organization of Iraq and Afghanistan War vets) is now running on Fox "News", CNN and elsewhere. Notable if only because I believe this is the first time this non-partisan group of vets has finally called for an Exit Strategy. [Click it to watch full ad]...

Our friend, Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services latest column, "Impeachable Offense" begins thusly...

...and ends thusly...

Koehler's columns are run on an optional basis by TMS' media clients around the country who chose to do so. The latest column in full, quoted above, should be available at this link within the next 24 hours or so. Few TMS client papers picked up his terrific pieces questioning the validity of Election '04 and calling for an accountable and inclusive Electoral System/Democracy. It'll be interesting to see how many papers pick up the above column...And how many don't...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

45% of Iraqis believe that attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, and 82% are "strongly opposed" to the continued presence of "coalition" troops, according to a "secret poll" conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team. Results of the poll have been leaked to Britain's Sunday Telegraph.

Astute readers may recognize some of these conclusions after seeing articles on the weekend from Reuters or Yahoo. But Saturday's report from Reuters barely scratched the surface, and Yahoo did only a bit better on Sunday.

For the full report, you have to go to the source: Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops.

Among the survey's other conclusions:

But aside from all this "security" nonsense, things are going pretty well, right?

Um ... no!

Any wingnut will tell you that these very inconvenient facts don't matter much, because they are only temporary, and the situation will surely change because we have brought "democracy" to Iraq, complete with a historic new "constitution".

However ...

Blogged an item over at HuffPo over the weekend and they just got to posting it today.

It's called, "Pssst....Mainstream Media...The Government May Collapse at any Moment...Don't Tell Anybody!"

Enjoy!

Click the photo for more info, but as an aside, as we pass this horrible milestone, we were honored recently to witness the work of the brilliant and prolific Freeway Blogger firsthand along the 101 Freeway as we made our way back to Los Angeles from Portland, OR. We caught several of the above signs as well as "The War is a Lie".

Be an American Hero in your home town and join the good FB in his campaign to inform millions of citizens on the highways and byways of America! And have fun doing it!

I just finished a radio appearance a couple of hours ago with our friend Peter B. Collins on KXRA 540AM up in Monterey, CA. Peter was joined, in studio, by Tony Anchundo, the Registrar of Voters in Monterey County, CA for a demonstration of a brand-spankin' new Sequoia DRE (touch-screen) voting machine that Achundo was very proud to announce would be in use for the first time in the special State Election coming up out here on November 8th.

Achundo walked Peter through the use of the machine, which prints out a "paper record" (as Achundo referred to it) that voters are to "verify" before leaving the voting booth. That "paper record" is printed on a small thermal-ink roll of paper, akin to what you get with a credit card purchase, and stays behind plexiglass, never to be touched by the voter.

The votes, however, are counted on a "memory cartridge" in the machine, not on the "paper record." This raises the question (which I attempted to ask many times, in many different ways) as to what good that "paper record" actually is in the first place...beyond giving the voter a completely false sense of security and confidence.

I was able to get Anchundo to confirm that the entire technology used to count votes in Monterey County, California will have to be "faith-based". We'll just have to "trust" him, and his 30 years of experience as Registrar, that everything is fine and that votes will be counted accurately.

Peter has asked me to to join him by phone for the hour to help ask questions of Anchundo. I was happy and honored to do so. The results of the hour, I believe, are astounding.

The audio of the full hour is here in MP3 format. I think BRAD BLOG readers will find it as enlightening --- and troubling --- as I did.

[UPDATE] Here is a full transcript of the hour! It should be very useful to have a "paper record" of the conversation for the future. Perhaps for November 9th.

As the front page of Monterey County's website says, "The most serious threat to our democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved. The quality of our leaders and the direction of our Country depends on the participation of our people." I've therefore include Contact info for the Registrar's office at the end of this post, so you folks can participate as you see fit.

Amongst the many highlights (based on my short-term memory) of the hour just spent with Peter trying to get direct answers from Anchundo on a variety of related issues (and you'll likely come across many more yourself)...

Rosa Parks, 1913 - 2005

Last Thursday was a record day here at BRAD BLOG, exceeded only by the following day, Friday, when we had nearly 70,000 unique readers. Saturday, which is usually way off because it's the weekend, beat Thursday's total.

In all, we saw well over 200,000 unique readers stop by here since Thursday.

And, in all those days, we received one single donation for $10.

The BRAD BLOG is, and always will be free to all readers. But we sure could use some help in the form of DONATIONS to allow me, and those Guest Bloggers and helpers who give so generously of their time and hard work (and in the case of David Edwards, his bandwidth for videos!) to keep up the tireless work and investigative reporting that more than 200,000 of you have come to enjoy over the last few days alone.

If you can DONATE ONLINE with Credit Card or PayPal we'd certainly appreciate the support!

If you'd prefer a snail-mail donation, those can be sent to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

I hate asking at all, but I have no choice. The support would also make it just a bit easier to keep doing what we're doing, while being able to eat and have a place to sleep at the same time --- Thanks for whatever you can do, at least until those evil billionaire funders we hear so much about show up with an enormous grant to save the day!

Guest blogged by David Edwards

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Guest blogged by David Edwards

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This report from tonight's episode of MSNBC's Hardball suggests that Fitzgerald has expanded the 'traitorgate' investigation to include the forged documents that the Bush Administration used to mislead Americans into thinking that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.

The report also says that Judy Miller's source, Ahmad Chalabi, was responsible for the forged documents.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

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Just as he did for his mugshot yesterday, Rep. Tom DeLay continued to smile throughout his first day of court today.

In a statement to the media, DeLay said, "You may be surprised to hear this from me today but I find this is a very good day." We are pleased that DeLay appreciates spending time in court and sincerely hope that he continues to enjoy much more of the same.

Today's court appearance was little more than an opportunity for DeLay's legal team to spin the charges against him as partisan. What is most striking is the lack of voices in the media to balance DeLay's spin. Even so, it was a day long anticipated and every moment of the process may be worth savoring.

We have put together some video highlights from CNN, MSNBC and FOX News as they were broadcast live this morning. How do you rate the media's coverage of this event?

Republican talking head, author and gadfly, Ann Coulter spoke to an audience of supporters in Gainseville, Florida last night at a fundraiser for the Alachua County Republican Party, who paid $30,000 to have Coulter speak.

According to an article in today's Independent Florida Alligator, Coulter --- who makes her living, in no small part, by enjoying her Free Speech rights under the First Amendment --- pleased the rabid attendees by denigrating the U.S. Constitution...

And they accuse the Left of hating American Values???

Can we serve you some more hypocrisy with that helping of hatred, Ann?

(In case you missed it, please see BRAD BLOG's exclusive report from yesterday concerning the Conservative group which is denouncing Ann Coulter and creating an Anti-Ann documentary.)