RAW STORY has an early release of Gore's full statement replying to the attempted obfuscation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in reply to Gore's speech yesterday.

Letting you know here, since the Mainstream Media will likely ignore it --- as they did with Gore's speech yesterday. Or misrepresent it and twist its facts. As they did with Gore's speech yesterday.

I'll leave others to embarass the Trolls when they try to retread the Gorelick "Blackbag" physical search nonsense (not covered by FISA!) here in comments. I'm taking a few hours off...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

NBC's Today Show reports that the president is demanding that critics "disagree responsibly" about Iraq. Bush says that criticism of the Iraq war is "defeatism" that is hurting the troops morale.

Paul Hackett is a veteran of the Iraq war who is running for the Senate in Ohio. Hackett disagrees with the president's accusations. Hackett says that the troops debate the war just like other patriotic Americans. The troop morale in Iraq remains high.

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

In Virginia today, Omnibus election bills requiring voter verified paper records, mandatory hand counted audits, and public disclosure of voting system software have been introduced in both chambers of the state legislature. Virginia Verified Voting and The New Electoral Reform Alliance for Virginia together with VoteTrustUSA have launched a citizen action in support of legislation introduced in the Virginia legislature. Concerned citizens in Virginia are urged to visit the Virginia Action Page where you can send a message to your state legislators calling on them to support accurate and verifiable elections....

Guest blogged by David Edwards

In an interview with 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace, Rep. John Murtha says that Iraqis are already in the middle of a civil war. He says that the political reality of U.S. elections will be one of the reasons that most troops will be redeployed from Iraq by the end of this year.

Video in Streaming Flash format...

Crook and Liars has other video formats.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The January 9 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!...

A new Zogby Poll, just announced, to be officially release tomorrow shows that a majority of Americans would support Congressional consideration of the impeachment of George W. Bush if, in fact, he wiretapped U.S. citizens without obtaining a legal warrant to do so!

Earlier today, we posted a video of Arlen Specter, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, admitting on ABC's This Week that "impeachment" was one of the first remedies for the illegal wiretapping by a President of U.S. Citizens.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

George Stephanopoulos interviewed Senator Arlen Specter on today's edition of ABC's This Week.

On the issue of warrent-less NSA Wiretaps authorized by the president, Stephanopoulus asked Specter what the possible remedies would be if the president's actions were found to be illegal. Specter replied, "...Impeachment is the remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution..."

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John Nichols over at The Nation seems to have what appears to be some good inside skinny on Al Gore's speech in DC on Monday. Here's a small taste...

With Barr on board, and the event being co-sponsored by the Liberty Coalition, it's gonna be a helluva lot harder for the wingnuts to try and discredit Gore here. Though, no doubt, they're busy this weekend plotting exactly how they hope to do so.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Dick Marty, a Swiss Senator, is leading the Council of Europe's inquiry into reports that the C.I.A. operated secret prisons in several European countries. Marty is also looking into other C.I.A. activities including the use of European airports and airbases for U.S. rendition flights along with kidnappings and torture on European soil.

Investigators are scheduled to complete a preliminary report on January 23rd. Dick Marty gave a press conference where he shared some of his early conclusions.

Marty accuses the U.S. of violating civil rights. He also says that European leaders have known about the U.S. crimes. Several European leaders are complicit because of their "shocking" passivity. Marty has no doubt that the secret prisons exist and that the U.S. activities in Europe are illegal.

BBC has documented more of Dick Marty's allegations in this article and the following video report.

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Guest blogged by David Edwards

A U.S. air strike in Pakistan targeted the al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. The attack destroyed 3 houses in small village near the Pakistan border. 18 people, including women and children were also killed.

Pakistan officials and other sources are reporting that al-Zawahri was not killed in the attack as previously thought.

Pakistan condemned the air strike because of the loss of civilian lives. Today, hundreds of people in Pakistan protested the U.S. action.

Additional Reporting by John Gideon

Are the voting machine vendors now teaming up against an election official who dared reveal the vulnerabilities of their voting machines?

As you'll recall, Ion Sancho, Leon County, Florida's courageous Supervisor of Elections stood up against both the state and Diebold and said that he would never again use Diebold's voting equipment after he allowed for a test which demonstrated their election equipment was easily hackable. The results revealed an electronic optical-scan election on Diebold equipment could be flipped without a trace being left behind.

After dumping Diebold, Sancho made a deal to buy machines instead from Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) on the promise that they would supply their optical scan machines for use along with the AutoMARK system which prints a countable paper ballot. AutoMARK has an agreement to allow ES&S exclusive marketing rights for their machines.

But a strange thing happened after Sancho's agreement with ES&S and just prior to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadline on January 1, 2006. As reported by Susan Pynchon of Florida Fair Elections Coalition, a voice-mail message was left on Sancho's cell-phone on December 29, 2005 by Gary Crump, ES&S Chief Operating Officer. Crump was calling to inform Sancho that the company had decided to deal only with long-time customers due to equipment deadline considerations. Pynchon says that statement is "patently untrue, since ES&S went ahead and contracted with Volusia County, Florida after agreeing to sell to Leon County."

Pynchon goes on to offer some possible reasons for this odd betrayal and what the Leon County Manager had to say about it:

So what the hell is going on here? Black Box Voting has still more details in the bizarre on the story, though we're still left wondering what the real skinny is on this one!

If we can learn anything more, you'll be the first to know.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

In Arizona there has been a quiet (media nearly silent) battle about the Precinct 20 vote in last November's election. There may have been election fraud, machine mistakes, procedure mistakes, or no problems at all. Doug Jones, UofIowa, was asked by a state senator and a local newspaper to look at everything that he could look at and then report back. His report is an amazing read. In New Mexico Governor Richardson and the SoS are now fully in favor of a vvpat. It's amazing what a lawsuit can do to frame your thinking. And in Florida, ES&S has turned on Leon County and refuses to sell their equipment to the county. Those of you who have responded to the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA have sent 15,372 emails to the EAC along with 1890 letters demanding the ITA be made to do their job....

We're shocked --- shocked! --- to learn that Bush was actually using illegal wiretaps on American citizens prior to 9/11.

Jason Liepold has the skinny at TruthOut:

It looks like the Rightwing may have found a replacement for the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), the GOP front group set up to smokescreen against true election reform and transparent democracy. The ACVR has been mighty quiet of late, which we might like to attribute to their having been thoroughly discredited and rendered mostly impotent due to some longterm, airtight, crack reporting here by The BRAD BLOG about their attempted democracy-hating scam.

But now, a West Coast "non-partisan" conservative think-tank called Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) may be stepping in to fill at least part of the void in the person of TechNews World columnist and PRI Director of Technology Studies, Sonia Arrison. Arrison has been op/ed'ing and releasing "white papers" lately rallying against voter-verified paper ballots for electronic voting machines. Her reasons for being against transparent democracy are both bizarre and seem freshly pulled out of her hind quarters (or out of those of Diebold's).

We'll look at some of her already-discredited charges in a moment, but let's take a look at this PRI group. Their staff seems to be a who's-who of Canadians, staffers of former-California Governor Pete Wilson, former staffers of Tom DeLay ally Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), and other "conservative" "thinkers".

PRI seems to be little more than yet another dirty dot in the massive now-metastasized matrix of "conservative" think-tanks, phony trade-associations, lobbying firms, consultants, columnists, politicians, "reporters" and other media pimps who are part of a wickedly tentacled network of people and organizations meant to prop up wingnut causes in the press while firing up the unquestioning, lockstep "grass-roots" believers...

As we reported yesterday, indicted former House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R-TX) had threatened television stations with litigation if they dared to air a 30-second spot exposing his corruption and calling for him to resign.

According to House Chronicle today, it looks like at least four Houston stations (DeLay's home district), have rolled over for the once-powerful (and apparently still powerful) Republican pol:

The ads, one for TV concerning DeLay, another for radio about the soon-to-be-indicted Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) were created by Campaign for America's Future. They can be seen and heard right here.