Funds pledged by the Bush Administration on behalf of the United States for aide to victims of the greatest natural disaster in the history of mankind: $35 million.

Funds being spent by Republican supporters on the inauguration parties for the worst President in the history of the United States: $40 million.

Efforts made to convince sentient human beings that the Bush Administration or its Republican supporters understand the meaning of the phrase "Moral Values" or the word "Compassion": Pointless.

Arguing that the initial Ohio recount was flawed due to a lack of uniform standards throughout Ohio (Florida 2000, Bush v Gore, anybody?) attorneys for the Green and Libertarian Parties filed in Federal Court this afternoon to have Ohio counted again. This time, according to the law...

From the AP article...

We congratulate the Greens and Libertarians again for aggressively standing up for democracy, and expect that all good Americans (even Republicans) will support their call for standards to be followed and the rule of law to be strictly applied.

In not-unrelated news...

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) has announced in a letter released today that he will officially object to the Ohio Electors when a joint session of Congress convenes on January 6th to either ratify --- or set-aside, as the case may be --- the official results of the Electoral College.

In his letter, Conyers, who has been leading the Minority effort in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to investigate the hundreds of reports of Election Irregularities, Supression of Voters, and possible Recount Malfeasance, states "I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

William Rivers Pitt of Truthout has more details.

RAW STORY has Conyers' actual letter to all of the U.S. Senators.

In support of Conyers efforts, please use this link to send a letter to several Senators asking them to join in the contest of what has clearly been a desperately flawed election in Ohio, and several other states!

There are a number of other Actions that we will be recommending all good American Citizens take over the next week or two, including attending rallies in Ohio on January 3rd, in DC on January 6th, and even hitting the streets to join a round the clock vigil at John Kerry's house. Information on the rallies can be gathered from The "We Do Not Concede" Coalition whose efforts The BRAD BLOG heartily endorses! Info on the Kerry vigil is right here.

More on those Actions, and others, as we find time to breathe while covering the continuing developments in the Clint Curtis story and other related matters...

In a story yesterday, we alluded to "public documents and email which seemed to directly contradict statements made by Feeney" to the Florida Commission on Ethics which investigated some --- but not all --- of the serious charges Clint Curtis has recently made in a sworn affidavit and public testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee concerning Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL).

Some of the information we alluded to was based, in part, on an October 12, 2002 Daytona Beach News-Journal piece headlined "E-mails at odds with Feeney denials".

We'd seen the article some time ago, but as it was not publicly available other than via purchase at the The News-Journal Print Archives we hadn't linked to it specifically or discussed it in depth.

A linkable copy of that original 2002 article has now been found via The Wayback Machine (an Internet archive/cache site), which allows us to look in a bit more detail at the contradictory statements made by Feeney at the time to the Florida Commission on Ethics which was investigating charges against the then-House Speaker of the Florida Legislature.

Feeney, now a U.S. Congressman who sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and several of his surrogates have recently pointed, on a number of occassions, to the findings of that Commission citing their conclusions of "no probable cause" as his defense for the charges being made by Clint Curtis.

Those findings were alluded to in a threatening letter from Feeney's attorney to The Seminole Chronicle, who wrote a recent article on the matter; in another nearly-identical threatening letter to The Chronicle purported to be from a Yang Enterprise, Inc. (YEI) attorney; and again just today in an off-the-record interview by Feeney, which was used in an article published by The Oviedo Voice. (More on that article here hopefully later today).

As the findings of that commission seem to be the main, if not sole, defense that Feeney is using to answer to Curtis' charges that Feeney was involved in a "vote-rigging" conspiracy in 2000, it would seem that some of the contradicting information discovered in the 2002 News-Journal article (and there were a series of them) has become rather relevant again.

We've already pointed out that 6 of the 8 appointees to the commission were appointed to it by and/or had close ties to either Feeney himself or his one-time running mate Jeb Bush (Feeney was Bush's running mate during his first unsuccessful run for Florida Governor in 1994).

We also pointed out that --- in apparent contradiction to Florida state law --- the two people having filed the charges in the first place with the commission, Clint Curtis and his then-boss at the Florida Dept. of Transportion (FDOT) Mavis Georgalis, were never interviewed at all by the commission.

And as well, we pointed out that the commission wasn't even investigating the alleged "vote-rigging" conspiracy now being discussed amongst Curtis' charges.

But let's take a look at some of the specific troubling information that the News-Journal's Laura Zuckerman uncovered during her investigation into those Emails back in 2002.

Many of both YEI and Feeney's current apparent strategies of denial, dismissal and multiple contradictory statements about the charges seems to have already been in full play even back in 2002, despite strong evidence which contradicted many of their public statements on the matter...

After receiving a faxed letter from Congressman Tom Feeney's (R-FL) attorneys last week threatening legal action, The Seminole Chronicle has now received a second such letter, this time from the attorneys of Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI).

The language in both letters to The Chronicle is remarkably similar, and in some cases, virtually identical suggesting a collusion between the two different parties in an attempt to silence the local weekly in Feeney's hometown from reporting on the growing "vote-rigging" scandal.

The certified letter, with the signature of Michael A. O'Quinn of "Fowler and O'Quinn, P.A.", (though confirmed by The BRAD BLOG to have in fact been signed in his name by his paralegal, Rebecca Saylor, who has told us that "Michael O'Quinn is currently on a boat in the Bahamas" and will not be back to work until January 3rd) asks Feeney's hometown newsweekly, to "place your liability insurance carrier on notice of YEI's intentions in this regard" and requests that they "forward to the undersigned promptly the name of said insurer, the policy number of said liability policy, and the coverage limits thereunder."

The YEI attorney, Michael O'Quinn is a large campaign contributor, along with Dr. and Mrs. Yang, to Feeney, and served as Feeney's law partner for many years until 2002. "Fowler and O'Quinn, P.A." was previously known as "Fowler, Barice, Feeney and O'Quinn, P.A."

This is the second legal threat to The Chronicle since they published their initial story on the sworn affidavit and sworn public testimony by software programmer Clint Curtis.

Curtis's affidavit and testimony charged that Feeney conspired with YEI to create a "vote-rigging software prototype" in 2000 when Curtis was employeed by the firm and Feeney was their corporate counsel and registered lobbyist even while he was a member of, and then Speaker of the Florida Legislature.

The BRAD BLOG originally broke the news of Curtis' affidavit on December 6th.

Both the Feeney attorney letter from John P. Horan, and the YEI attorney letter from Michael A. O'Quinn refer to the charges by Curtis as having been "fully investigated by the State of Florida Commission on Ethics" and state identically that "The Commission found that 'there was no probable cause' to believe the assertions and dismissed each complaint."

In our response to the original letter from the Feeney attorney, we pointed out that 6 of the 8 members of that "State of Florida Commission on Ethics" were appointed by and/or had close ties to either Tom Feeney or Feeney's former running-mate for Florida governor, Jeb Bush.

As we mentioned, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported in a series of articles on the matter in 2002 that the commission's investigation --- in apparent violation of state law --- never interviewed the original investigator of the claims or the two key witnesses making the claims (Clint Curtis and Mavis Georgalis) before releasing their findings of "no probable cause".

Also in apparent violation of state law, the commission did not bother to examine public documents and email which seemed to directly contradict statements made by Feeney, who was reported to have been interviewed by the commission.

It must also be pointed out that the scope of the "Florida Commission on Ethics" investigation into the charges against Feeney did not even include the "vote-rigging" charges being alleged by Curtis and upon which The Chronicle's story reported.

It was, however, the virtually identical language in both letters that immediately caught our eye, strongly suggesting the direct coordination of this latest legal strategy between Feeney and YEI in a joint and concert effort to suppress reporting of the growing scandal.

Given the years-long tenure of Feeney as YEI's corporate attorney and his personal relationship to his old law partners at his old law firm who still represent YEI, such an attempt to work in concert between the two parties is not difficult to imagine.

That, despite Feeney's recent claims to MSNBC that "his only connection to Yang Enterprises was as an attorney prior to 2002."

As we've previously noted, the 2004 "Tom Feeney for Congress" campaign headquarters are located, even today, inside the YEI Building at 1420 Alafaya Trail, Oviedo, Florida 32765.

"Tom Feeney for Congress" is in Suite 103, according to his official campaign website. YEI's corporate address is in Suite 200, according to their website.

Here is a side-by-side look at the virtually identical language in each of the letters sent over the past week to The Seminole Chronicle by attorneys claiming to represent the two different clients...

Good news to those of you who have been asking us about this, we've finally added an RSS Feed for The BRAD BLOG.

It can be added to your RSS reader at this address: https://BradBlog.com/BradBlog.rdf

For those unfamiliar with RSS, it's ostensibly a syndication feed that allows folks who use RSS-capable readers to "subscribe to our feed" (it's free, of course) to receive automatic notification when new items are added to The BRAD BLOG. Here an article with more info on RSS at Wikipedia.

During our testing and set up, we have been using the RSS reader called PLUCK, a free application that works with Internet Explorer and can be downloaded for free here. There are many such RSS readers out there, however, and most are free. Here's a listing of many downloadable RSS Readers for many different operating systems.

And MyYahoo users can now add our syndicated feed to their customized MyYahoo pages! Just click the "Add to MY YAHOO" graphic now in the right navigation sidebar and you're done!

As we've just unleashed RSS here, and are just learning about RSS ourselves, please feel free to let us know via comments or email if there are any adjustments we may still need to make to ensure that the feed is working properly and is as convenient as possible for RSS users.

Thanks to all that have waited so patiently for us to find the time to get it added, and to our great friend Ronny Brodin for handling the bulk of the tedious technical details!

The Local Weekly Wars down in Oviedo, Florida look to be heating up with the older of the town's two weekly papers, The Oviedo Voice, entering the Tom Feeney (R-FL)/Yang Enterprises, Inc./Clint Curtis "Vote-Rigging" fray last week after The Seminole Chronicle's coverage (discussed here, and again when Feeney's attorneys threatened legal action here) the week before.

The story of Curtis' affidavit stating that U.S. Congressman Feeney, of Oviedo, allegedly conspired to create a "vote-rigging software prototype" in October of 2000 was first reported by The BRAD BLOG in early December.

In a front page splash, The Voice promised readers in their Dec. 23 issue: "Charges against Feeney answered in next issue".

They also take a couple of shots in the bargain at both The BRAD BLOG and/or their cross-town competition at The Chronicle even while making at least one sizeable factual error in the four graf splash.

First the error; They describe a meeting they had in their offices with Christopher Bollyn, a reporter for American Free Press. Bollyn, in their article, is described as being "a contributing writer for 'The Brad Blog'".

While we spoke for the first time in our lives to Bollyn on Wednesday afternoon just last week --- several days after his meeting with The Voice, when he subsequently sent us some photographs taken during his investigation of issues related to this story in Florida (several of which we used with his permission in this blog item) --- we assure you that the royal "we" frequently used by The BRAD BLOG is but a quaint arcane literary affectation.

In other words, we, Brad Friedman, work alone and currently have no "contributing writers" on our staff --- of one --- other than ourselves...

From Reuters...

Mr. Ayar will not be running for Secretary of State in Ohio anytime soon.

Any further questions?

(Thanks BRAD BLOG commenter MikeyCan for the heads up!)

Sent in by our friend Corey K, and with apologies to the good people of the Sunshine State. Would that this were the only such email/comment we've received along these lines of late since beginning our reporting on the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney "Vote-Rigging" scandal. Unfortunately, it's just one of many similar...

It's amazing how irresponsible some members of the so-called "Mainstream Media" can be. Even while they sniff at us lowly "bloggers" and "Internet-only news sites" for what many of them see as a lack of journalistic integrity, failing to provide proper context for stories and reporting information without properly vetting or confirming it first.

It's hard to argue with those criticisms towards many Internet blogs and news sites. But it's equally hard to stomach it when we've seen so many similar failings from the Mainstream Media themselves. And when they screw the pooch --- from their much larger media platforms --- the consequences can be much more disastrous.

Case in point, the now infamous failings of the New York Times' Judith Miller in her reporting running up to --- and arguably helping America towards --- the war in Iraq based on highly suspect or out and out misinformation. I don't wish to pile on there, but it's a case where the Mainstream Media failed to properly vet anonymous sources, give the appropriate context, and the results were, to say the least, somewhat disastrous for this country. That is just one such example, and an easy one to point to for context.

And then we have MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who, as we pointed out several days ago, ran a disastrously irresponsible piece on his MSNBC run "Bloggermann" site. So disastrous, in fact, that even a Countdown producer we spoke with about it refused to stand by the report above and beyond saying "This was Keith Olbermann's writing. He didn't work with me or anyone else on this."

As we reported, the most reprehensible failing in Olbermann's original quick hit piece on Clint Curtis (scroll down to item #4 at this link) was that he allowed an unnamed anonymous source, (described as "the attorney for the firm for whom Mr. Curtis worked") to suggest that Clint Curtis "has previously threatened the firm and its top officers, in writing, and that they were sufficiently concerned to file a police report as a result."

We pointed out in our reply to what amounted to little more than a smear piece by Olbermann that at the very least, since this anonymous attorney claimed there was a threat "in writing", that Olbermann should have reviewed that purported "writing" before passing on the information from an anonymous source. (By the way, that would have been at least the third response on these matters from either Yang Enterprises Inc. [YEI] or their Attorneys, but the first time they've bothered to mention a written threat and/or police report in re: Clint Curtis...make of that what you will).

Neither did Olbermann bother to even check with the Oveido Police Department --- where YEI is located --- to confirm if in fact such a report had been filed.

It probably now goes without saying, that Olbermann didn't bother to get comment from Curtis at all on any of the matters he reported on, though one would think that a responsible journalist would have at least attempted to do so before posting such scurrilous allegations.

Well today, Olbermann decided to comment again on his blog, to what he described as "a handful of e-mails" complaining about his coverage last week on this story. That comment is linked here (scroll down to the bulleted text).

Since I'm busy working on actual reporting of the rapidly moving events in this whole troubling story, I'll allow the bulk of his comments, sorry as they may be, to stand on their own. (See the red "Special Coverage" sidebar at right, for the key articles published by The BRAD BLOG on the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Inc. matter so far.)

But two items are very noteworthy, and I'd be remiss if I did not point them out. With vigor...

Congressman Tom Feeney's (R-FL) attorneys have sent a letter threatening the editors of Florida's Seminole Chronicle intimating possible legal action in light of the news report filed by Editor Alex Babcock last week concerning allegations made in a sworn affidavit [PDF] and in sworn public testimony before members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee by software programmer Clint Curtis.

The story of Curtis' allegations and affidavit was originally reported by The BRAD BLOG several weeks ago. Curtis has alleged, among other things, that Feeney conspired, in an October 2000 meeting, to have a "vote-rigging software prototype" built by Yang Enterprises, Inc. --- a company for which Feeney at the time served as corporate counsel and registered lobbyist even while he concurrently served as Legislator, and eventually Speaker of the Florida House. Feeney was the running mate to Jeb Bush during his first failed bid for Governor of Florida, and is now a U.S. Congressman from Florida's newly created 24th Congressional District. He also now sits on the U.S. House's Judiciary Committee.

The letter from John P. Horan of "Foley and Lardner, attorneys at law", was faxed to Babcock at the Seminole Chronicle office earlier this week. It alleges the newspaper's report "constitute[d] a serious departure from accepted journalism standards and a breach of the Chronicle's fair reporting privilege."

Horan goes on to accuse Babcock of reporting "in a sensational, reckless and unfair manner," and claims that "This conduct exceeds all known bounds of bias and constitutes a reckless disregard for the truth."

According to the letter, Horan's charges on behalf of Feeney, stem from his claim that "These assertions were fully investigated by the State of Florida Commission on Ethics which found that 'there was no probable cause' to believe the assertions and dismissed each complaint."

However, BRAD BLOG research into those ethics charges filed against Feeney, and their supposed "investigation", has revealed that the commission referred to, and the investigation itself, appear to have had serious flaws and conflicts of interest involved. Many of which were reported at the time of the commission's findings by a number of Florida newspapers.

For a start, six of the eight members of the "Commission on Ethics" which Horan's letter refers to, were appointed to the commission by and/or have direct ties to either Tom Feeney or his old running-mate and then Governor, Jeb Bush!

On October 17, 2002, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported on the "Commission on Ethics" findings that Horan uses as the only basis for criticism of the Seminole Chronicle's article.

The News-Journal reported on those findings by revealing that neither the investigator looking into the ethics complaint nor the two key witnesses in the case were ever even interviewed by the commission! Despite a state law that requires them to do so!

As well, public documents in the case --- including Email which directly contradicted statements made by Feeney to the commission during the "investigation" --- were similarly never investigated, also in apparent violation of state law, according to the paper.

From just one of several articles on this from the Daytona Beach News-Journal...

Precisely seven weeks after Election Day 2004, and exactly one week after the Electoral College met to cast their votes, The New York Times has filed what, by my count, is their second serious article on Voting Irregularities in the 51 days since our last terribly flawed election.

Their first landmark effort was an article just last week by Tom Zeller, Jr. on which we also commented with our recognizably snarky, but always-lovable, demeanor.

Today's outting --- also inked by new BRAD BLOG best friend, Zeller (and others) --- finally puts the paper of record on record as admitting there were "Voting Problems in Ohio". They even go so far as to admit, "Certainly there were problems on Election Day."

Luke-warm, and a good nominee for the BRAD BLOG "Understatement of the Year Award", but for now, in the generous spirit of Christmas, we'll take it!

After a few quotes from an Ohioan who's vote failed to count this year because the provisional ballot he was given when his name didn't appear at the precinct to which he'd recently moved, was rejected because it wasn't dropped into the bucket at the precinct where he used to live, the Times piece mentions what they should have mentioned --- in spades --- on the morning of November 3rd:

Dead-on sentiment. Wish they had joined the party earlier. But again, it's Christmas, so in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior (well, not mine, I'm Jewish...but, hey, it's Christmas!) we'll turn the other cheek.

Back to The Times...

In yesterdays item on Election 2004, we reported on the 10 vote lead by Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire after a hand recount of all ballots in the state of Washington.

With the remaining 700 previously uncounted absentee ballots from Kings County now added to the final results, AP has declared Gregoire the official winner by a convincing 130 vote margin.

The BRAD BLOG originally learned of this news via the Fox News crawl, so we must assume the final count is accurate.

While we are again reminded of the value of being able to count the actual votes of American citizens by hand in close elections when necessary, there are, unfortunately, according to the AP report, some sore losers in the Republican Party who can't seem to let go of the official results and move on.

Several GOP conspiracy theorists and extremist Rightwing bloggers continuing to desperately challenge the election results.

They are charging fraud in the election, along with changing rules and manufactured votes. As well, these extremist from the far rightwing of the Republican party may be preparing to contest the results further due to violations of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.

After several Republican trial lawyers have clogged the courts during the manual recount by filing frivilous lawsuits throughout the process --- only to have such embarrassing challenges roundly rejected by conservative and strictly constitutionalist rulings in several Washington courts, including their Supreme Court --- we can only hope that these extremist whackos will soon be able to set aside their divisive partisan agendas, remove their tinfoil hats once and for all, realize that their candidate got beaten fair and square and quickly get over it for the good of the state.

For some reason, however, we have a feeling they'll have trouble facing the fact that their team lost and that the people of Washington have clearly spoken by giving a broad statewide mandate to the Democrats. The voters there have issued a clear rejection to failed Republican policies along with their ill-conceived agenda.

The BRAD BLOG wishes to congratulate Governor-Elect Gregoire on her triumphant victory of good over evil in the Evergreen State!

A severe snowstorm at the Southern District courthouse in Ohio, which closed the building today, has evidently delayed the filing of papers by John Kerry in support of the ongoing Ohio recount by the Green and Libertarian parties. Reportedly, Kerry's filing will be made either tomorrow or Monday --- whenever the courthouse is next open for business.

The details of the filing were first reported this morning, prior to the courthouse closure, by William Rivers Pitt at Truthout.org:

RAW STORY has been able to confirm with a source that "Kerry will engage in a new action" but was unable to report further details.

The BRAD BLOG has not yet been able to independently verify the Pitt report, but as it's a potentially notable development, and as folks are drifting away for the Christmas holidays, we thought we would make the information available at this time. We will, of course, be keeping an eye on these developments.

As well, there have been some further developments in the Clint Curtis story which we have been working on for much of the day, and which we hope to be able to report on later this evening (or tomorrow at the latest).

Please check back soon for news on those developments.

We continue to be unable to report as many Election 2004 Irregularity issues as we might like due to developments in the continuing Clint Curtis story. Some of those developments we've reported on here (see the "Special Coverage" sidebar at right), others we are still unable to discuss publicly. But there is more to come.

We take some comfort, however, in the fact that there are now many more folks covering the story than there were in the lonely days just after November 3rd.

So while we stay on top of Curtis coverage like a dog with a bone, we offer a few recommendations for superb coverage of all the latest breaking Election 2004 items (and there have been many of them of late!).

We recommend daily reads at CannonFire, Democrats.com, the Columbus Free Press, and of course, RAW STORY. There are many, many more folks doing similary exhaustive and important coverage right now, many such sites will be linked from some of those that I just mentioned.

But to get momentarily back here to the growing confidence crisis that is quickly eroding the very core of our democracy...even while the Mainstream Media shamefully fails America by missing the story entirely...here are several of the latest and most noteworthy developments in this saga, and a few opportunities for the people to stand up for the country we love...Because somebody's got to...