Dead-on op/ed about the Gannon story in The Oregonian once again debunking the myth of the "liberal" media...

Our only quibble, the unbylined author's line: "Bloggers on the left are no less bullies than those on the right." On that issue, the writer couldn't be more incorrect. Otherwise, a good, short, to-the-point read worthy of encouraging us all to make even more noise until those bastards pay attention.

Have we mentioned lately that we have an "Email it to someone!" button at the bottom of every article?

Documents from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) recently obtained by The BRAD BLOG confirm yet another of Clint Curtis' stunning allegations against Oviedo software firm Yang Enteprises, Inc. and Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL).

The documents, released exclusively here, in full, by The BRAD BLOG, show that, according to Federal officials at the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, convicted spy and Chinese national, Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee) had been --- as Curtis alleged, first in 2001 and again in his sworn affidavit [PDF], --- an illegal alien during the period that Curtis worked with him at YEI.

According to the report --- published as part of a three-year investigation spurred by the charges of Curtis and another whistleblower at FDOT who first reported in 2001 on alleged wrong doing at YEI --- Nee's legal alien status in America had expired on December 31, 1999.

From the report...

The report also shows that YEI --- who has on several occassions denied that Nee was ever an employee, or even a consultant at YEI --- petioned the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on Nee's behalf to extend his visa sometime during 1999!

The report goes on to say, "That request was disapproved by INS based on a lack of information on the application for Nee submitted by YEI."

The BRAD BLOG has previously published records showing "Weekly Time Reports" from YEI which demonstrate that Nee did, in fact, work for YEI. The OIG's recent report, as well, further confirms that fact. (We will have more from the FDOT IG's recent report later this week as we finish studying the documents.)

During the period in which Nee was working for YEI, Feeney was their general counsel as well as their registered lobbyist. All that while he also served as the powerful Speaker of the Florida House at the same time. Feeney, who was a one-time running mate to Jeb Bush and currently sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee from Florida's 24th district, was charged, by Curtis, with having asked him to build a "vote-rigging software prototype" while Curtis was a YEI employee.

Previously, we had published a number of emails from several company employees, including Nee himself, indicating that Nee worked at the firm after 1999, when his legal alien status would have lapsed and when Feeney was working with YEI to help them procure large contracts with the state and others, including NASA.

One of those emails, from Mike Cohen, YEI CEO's executive secretary, indicates that he was aware that Nee was illegal (the misspellings are Cohen's):

And on April 15th, 2001, the day after the above email from Cohen, Nee himself wrote to Curtis indicating his work at YEI where Curtis had recently resigned due to the alleged shenanigans at the company:

Mike Cohen, discussed in a recent article here as having filed a potentially false police report against Curtis, was said to have been present along with YEI CEO, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang, during the October 2000 meeting at YEI when the vote-rigging software was alleged to have been discussed by Feeney.

It is not clear in the OIG's report why it took until August of 2004 to confirm Nee's illegal alien status since Curtis had reported him as illegal to several officials as long ago as early 2001.

There are indications in the report, however, that Federal Officials, for unexplained reasons, refused to supply information to the OIG on Nee's alien status until after Nee's federal indictment on three charges of espionage for having attempted to ship chips used in the Hellfilre anti-missile system to the People's Republic of China had been completed.

No explanation is given in the report for the delay from Federal Officials on releasing information about Nee's alien status, but it does go on to say that:

Nee's indictment was the result of a four-year federal sting operation by ICE who, in describing the arrest on their website (Ed Note: Page was archived off of the ICE site, here is a version of the page we saved before it was removed), had explained that each of the three charges was punishable by "up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines."

The plea agreement eventually struck, in July of 2004 between Nee and the Feds on Count Three of the indictment, quotes him as having said, "that business has been slow in the last year and that he had only sent parts out of the country ten to twenty times..." [emphasis added]

It also specified that the one count on which Nee was pleading guilty "carrie[d] a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, a term of supervised release of not more than 3 years, and a special assessment of $100 per felony count thereafter."

However, as first reported exclusively by The BRAD BLOG last December, Nee was eventually sentenced in October of 2004 to a total of just three years probation and a $100 fine.

Nee still resides near YEI in Oviedo, FL.

Curtis' allegations about Nee were just one of many made by the software programmer about improprieties at YEI. The startling allegation that Feeney had asked Curtis to create the "vote-rigging software prototype" while at YEI continues to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill.

Both Feeney, Cohen and YEI's attorneys have denied those allegations, but then again they've denied a number of related allegations as well. Many of those denials, however, have already been proven false by continued reporting on this matter since December at The BRAD BLOG and elswhere.

To date, none of Curtis' allegations have been in any way proven to be untrue. And, in fact, many of them --- including this latest information showing that Nee was an illegal alien, as Curtis charged long ago --- have, in fact, proven to be completely accurate.

The BRAD BLOG will, of course, continue to report on this explosive developing scandal...

The rightwing extremist online "news" site, World Net Daily uses the word "homosexual" over ten times in today's man-handling attack against what they describe as "the nation's homosexual press" in apparent defense of alleged Republican Homosexual Prostitute and White House-friendly "Reporter", J.D. Guckert (a/k/a Jeff Gannon). Notably, the article was written by WND Editor & CEO, Joseph Farah.

In some sort of sudden hop (or skip?) into the Defending-Guckert/Gannon hottub, the heterosexual publication, WND, lumps online news site, RAW STORY into what is variously described in a single article as:

"the nation's homosexual press"
"homosexual-friendly publications and blogs"
"the homosexual press"
"homosexual activists"
"homosexual publications"
"offline homosexual papers"

...Setting aside that we weren't aware that publications had the ability of fornicating with other publications of the same sex, we are left to wonder, does The BRAD BLOG, whose author is heterosexual, but who does cover issues of interest to the gay community (or "gay", as the theocratic publication, WND, quaintly uses the word) qualify as well as a "homosexual publication"? Or does our unfortunate straightness simply lump us in with the presumably less-light-in-the-loafers "homosexual-friendly publications and blogs" instead?

Either way, we couldn't be prouder and louder, and will be certain to play a few show tunes in the background for celebration as we prepare our next report...

...CONTACT...
Joseph Farah
Editor and CEO WorldNetDaily.com

Picking up on some of our shop talk from over the weekend...Radio Free Blogistan runs an interview today with Larisa Alexandrovna, associate editor and reporter for the excellent internet-only news site, RAW STORY.

Alexandrovna has been responsible for a number of RAW STORY's finest scoops of late, and is the organizer behind the recently announced effort to develop the Open Source Press Association (OSPA), an independent alternative to the Associated Press to be comprised of indy media groups and investigative bloggers. She's also one feisty and determined reporter as The BRAD BLOG can personally verify.

She gives The BRAD BLOG an appreciated plug in the interview, which runs a bit too long and is full of typos, accidentally pointing up yet another key element currently too-absent from the blogosphere (ours being no exception): Editing. Perhaps that alone is reason to hope the OSPA shapes up quickly to fullfill its mission as she envisions it.

Why did an illegal alien who was an admitted and convicted spy for China receive just three years probation and a $100 fine? Does everyone caught spying on America recieve such treatment? Or only those who are friendly with Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) and friends? ...DETAILS ON MONDAY...

It's all a bit too much "shop talk" even for me. But, in truth, the discussion of blogs, bloggers and blogging affects all of us here in one important way or another.

Either because one of us happens to be the author of this blog, a commenter on this blog (yes, you too could be held responsible one day for what you say, whether we like it or not!) or because we're just all citizens of this country and/or this world, and --- contrary to what happens in Vegas --- what happens in America doesn't necessarily stay in America. Unfortunately enough for those of you not here in America.

So there's a Blog versus MSM or MSM versus Blog or, more ominiously, The Law versus The Blogger and The MSM firestorm a-brewin', and you folks should well be paying attention to it. Inside baseball or otherwise.

Adam L. Penenberg, in this week's Wired News, shares a reminder, and a legal opinion or two, that, as the headline says, avers there is "No Protection for Bloggers".

In the bargain, he also reminds us that there is precious little protection for MSM reporters as well in this day and age. And as much as we might like to see Judith Miller of The NY Times spanked hard and/or possibly sent down for a week or two of "rehab" at Gitmo for her transgressions at the “Gray Lady” in the year prior to the War on Iraq in which she personally played no small part in helping us get there in the first place, we find it more than a bit appalling that she may be facing 18 months in jail for not disclosing a source for a story she never even reported.

In the meantime, Robert Novak, who did report the story on Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, being a covert CIA operative and has admitted to having at least "two senior administration officials" as sources for it, has somehow gotten off scot-free.

We guess it's not actually what you know, but who you know. Or so it would seem in the case of undercover-CIA-operative-outer Novak, of whom Poppy George HW's quote from 1999 would seem to more than aptly apply: "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." (Source: 4/26/99, Speech at "Dedication Ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence", full speech at the CIA website...ed note: I do not believe I will make it through another four years of this kind of irony without my head actually exploding)

But back to Penenberg's piece, whose final grafs inspired this article. Here they are:

Yes, it is. (ed. Note: And yes, our head may indeed explode if this intolerably cruel irony keeps up.)

Inside baseball or not, the tide is turning. And quickly. The barbarian bloggers are at the gate, and the MSM, along with The Law is going to spend the next few months and years figuring out what to do about it.

One of Judge Sentelle's poor pajama'd bloggers may someday find themselves as the unfortunate test case in determining just who is a "journalist" and who isn't, while even the "journalists" find out they may have no more protection in this majesty's kingdom.

So, is it too early to turn our earlier shameless plea for donations into a necessary collection for the official BRAD BLOG Legal Defense Fund?

Let us hope so.

As the pointless dying continues unabated...

As requested...The Gannon/Guckert scandal is moving quickly. AmericaBLOG and RAW STORY are both all over it. I'm working on a few things, so can't add to it for the moment. But you can. As you wish. Right here...

The story of CNN's bogus North Korean nuke plant photos seems to have legs of its own, as links to our original exclusive report (and its followups here and then here) continue to sweep around the net with surprising popularity.

And in print, The University of Texas' Daily Texan picks up on the story of the Iran/N. Korea/Iraq satellite photos (all of the same nuclear facility as it turns out, presumably in Iran) which ran on CNN's website, and then were found also to have been running at least a year earlier on the U.S. government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website at least a year prior to having shown up on CNN. On RFE/RL they were variously used to illustrate nuke or WMD sites in Iran, North Korea and Iraq!

The unbylined Daily Texan opinion piece points out the troubling "easily duped" state of the U.S. media by describing it as "whacky-tragic". They follow up our reporting with a similar statement from a different RFE/RL employee than the one we spoke to. Though, notably, like us, it seems they were similarly unable to get any statement from CNN on the matter.

Advancing the story a touch, their piece closes with...

We appreciate that they've given "blogger Brad Friedman" credit for first reporting the story. And our thanks to BRAD BLOG reader "Ziggyczar" for bringing the piece to our attention!

We have continued over the last week to get comment from CNN, and will continue to do so. We will, of course, report here when and if we are able to get one.

In a text-book case of everything that the MSM might appropriately use to illustrate everything that can be wrong and dangerous about bloggers and blogging, a report filed just before Christmas on the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI) vote-rigging software scandal was published by a blogger.

The report included demonstrably false information passed on by the blogger on behalf of both Feeney and an unnamed attorney from YEI. The report was so poorly researched, so scurrilously irresponsible and so inappropriately damaging to a single American citizen, that if all blogs articles were like this one, we'd be the first in line calling for the immediate abolition of all such Internet web logs.

Unfortunately, that reprehensible report was filed on the "Bloggerman" blog of the mainstream media's (or MSM's) own Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's prime-time Countdown program.

As we reported back in late December of last year, Olbermann gave a wonderful Christmas gift to Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) and his longtime friends and clients at YEI by filing a one-sided, unconfirmed and unverified report on his blog, sourced only by Feeney himself and YEI's unnamed attorney.

The victim was, of course, Clint Curtis, who Olbermann didn't even bother to reach for comment before giving Feeney a national platform to say that Curtis had "slandered and defamed a lot of people." Neither did Olbermann give any examples of who Feeney was claiming to have been slandered nor how they were defamed.

(Attempts to reach Olbermann for comment after he posted his blog item went unanswered, but his producer, who asked to remain unnamed, distanced themselves from the "reporting" by telling The BRAD BLOG that "this was Keith Olbermann's writing. He didn't work with me or anyone else on this.")

There was a fair amount of other inaccuracies in his report, but it was this following chestnut, apparently not fact-checked in any way, from an unnamed YEI attorney (believed to be Tom Feeney's old law-partner and current contributor, Michael O'Quinn) that has really ticked us off over the last two months:

...And what might have been, for actual reporters, a promising lead or break to look into in order to advance the story and perhaps add a new dimension to it, was dumped wholly unfact-checked on an eager public from Mr. Olbermann's high-profile perch.

The BRAD BLOG has spent the last two months attempting to track down this anonymously claimed threat to "the firm and its top officers". A threat, mind you, that was described as being "in writing" and apparently so threatening that it required a police report be filed.

Olbermann, apparently, thought it perfectly proper to pass that information on to the nation without asking the unnamed attorney if he might be allowed to review the alleged "in writing" threat, or to even contact the police to find out if, in fact, any such report had ever been filed.

Well, The BRAD BLOG did both.

After nearly two months trying to track down the unchecked Olbermann report, we've finally located the supposed threatening writing as well as the police report which was indeed filed. Though it was not filed at YEI's local police precinct in Oviedo, FL. Nor by "the firm" or its "top officers".

It was filed in Winter Springs, FL, the next town over, at the local police precinct of Mike Cohen, Curtis' co-worker and the executive secretary, at the time, to YEI's CEO, Mrs. Li-Waon Yang. The letter "sufficiently concern[ing] to file a police report" as Olbermann described it, seems very clearly meant as an attempt by Curtis to help his former friend and co-worker, Cohen, not to threaten him...

Please go vote for us in the finals of the 2004 Koufax Awards if you haven't already! The big guys with more readers get more votes! So let 'em hear from you! But only vote once per Finalist category! This isn't Florida, ya know!

The text which is a bit too small to read up there says...
LITTLE GUY ON LEFT: "Tell them to go to bloggery"
LITTLE GUY ON RIGHT: "Too late I fear"

Too late, indeed.

(Hat tip to BRAD BLOG commenter "Charles" for the find!)

Of the 14,000 sites that Popdex.com claims to "crawl" to "determine the most popular links on the Internet", it seems that our exclusive from Monday on CNN's Identical Nuke Plants in both North Korean and Iran is, as of this posting, the #1 most popular link on the Internet!

Seems a bit difficult to believe to us, but there it is. We'll take it!

Long time BRAD BLOG readers will recall our (fairly) regular "Daily Show Moment"; a somewhat regular staple here featuring a "best moment" from a previous evening's The Daily Show.

We admit we became somewhat disenchanted with them after the election and their lack of coverage of "Election Irregularity" issues. Just as we became somewhat disenchanted with a number of (theoretically) progressive bloggers who displayed some revealing "true colors" vis a vis their timidity in covering such issues at a time when we needed all hands on deck.

It's clear, at the very least, that the eventual historical challenge to the Ohio Electoral Votes in Congress on Jan 6th, 2005, at least validated the concerns that a few of us bloggers were willing to discuss openly and report vigorously on after November 2nd. (And it was amusing to watch some of those other bloggers begrudgingly cover the Congressional Electoral Challenge event on Jan 6th...But we digress.)

So it was, last night, with no small amount of interest, that we noticed, in the wake of the Gannon/Guckert Scandal, The Daily, for the first time to our knowledge, had finally acknowledged that blogs actually exist! Let's hope that was a watershed moment for the real news-breakers of late having finally cracked into the "mainstream".

With that in mind, here's an amusing moment or four from The Daily Show's notable blog-o-rama from last night as their entire first segment was devoted to blog-related matters...