Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday our friends at OpEdNews.Com featured an article that includes an interview with the former CEO of AccuPoll, a voting machine vendor that recently went bankrupt. In the article by Sean Greene of electionline.org the CEO, Dennis Vadura is quoted as saying:

Now, finally, an industry insider and 'mover-and-shaker' has stepped forward to echo what many of us have been saying for the past two or three years. The remaining vendors are doing all they can to prove that Mr. Vadura is right. That fact is borne out by the following two stories:

In Nebraska, home state for Elections Systems and Software (and home of one of the owners of this private corporation, Omaha World-Herald), 69 of 93 counties do not have their paper ballots for early voting even though early voting began on Monday. Nebraska joins Indiana and other states that are not able to conduct elections because ES&S cannot provide the ballots that they are contractually responsible to deliver. In defense of it's partially owned subsidiary, the World-Herald misinforms it's readers with this gem:

There is no new type of ballot required by HAVA and there is no standardized form for optical scanners. This is all just hype to cover-up for the failure of ES&S to do its job.

In another indication of a vendor's failure to meet its contractual duties, the Richmond (IN) Palladium-Item reports that Fidlar Elections, a mid-west representative for Diebold, has failed to deliver paper ballots to 11 Indiana counties that can be read by optical-scanners. The state's mandated absentee voting (early voting) began on Monday and the bad ballots were not reported until Tuesday so all voters who voted on Monday are now being given an opportunity to vote again, when good ballots are received.

Quality control? Apparently not, after all its just elections. As Mr. Vadura correctly states, "You just have to look at the litany of problems and it points at one thing, bad fundamental design, and not enough checks and balances".

Yesterday our friends at OpEdNews.Com featured an article that includes an interview with the former CEO of AccuPoll, a voting machine vendor that recently went bankrupt. In the article by Sean Greene of electionline.org the CEO, Dennis Vadura is quoted as saying:

Now, finally, an industry insider and 'mover-and-shaker' has stepped forward to echo what many of us have been saying for the past two or three years. The remaining vendors are doing all they can to prove that Mr. Vadura is right. That fact is borne out by the following two stories:

In Nebraska, home state for Elections Systems and Software (and home of one of the owners of this private corporation, Omaha World-Herald), 69 of 93 counties do not have their paper ballots for early voting even though early voting began on Monday. Nebraska joins Indiana and other states that are not able to conduct elections because ES&S cannot provide the ballots that they are contractually responsible to deliver. In defense of it's partially owned subsidiary, the World-Herald misinforms it's readers with this gem:

There is no new type of ballot required by HAVA and there is no standardized form for optical scanners. This is all just hype to cover-up for the failure of ES&S to do its job.

In another indication of a vendor's failure to meet its contractual duties, the Richmond (IN) Palladium-Item reports that Fidlar Elections, a mid-west representative for Diebold, has failed to deliver paper ballots to 11 Indiana counties that can be read by optical-scanners. The state's mandated absentee voting (early voting) began on Monday and the bad ballots were not reported until Tuesday so all voters who voted on Monday are now being given an opportunity to vote again, when good ballots are received.

Quality control? Apparently not, after all its just elections. As Mr. Vadura correctly states, "You just have to look at the litany of problems and it points at one thing, bad fundamental design, and not enough checks and balances".

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Yesterday, Mr. Bush delivered another Iraq War PR speech which was sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Charlotte at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After the speech, Bush accepted questions from the audience. Harry Taylor shamed The President with his question. Taylor mentioned NSA domestic spying, detaining Americans with being charged, policies that hurt the enviroment. Taylor told Bush that he was ashamed of the U.S. Government. Taylor finished his question by saying, "I would hope you have, from time to time, the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself... inside yourself."

In this video, Soledad O'Brien interviews Harry Taylor about his televised of berating President Bush.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The New York Sun reports that a court filing by Patrick Fitzgerald reveals that President Bush authorized blanket leaks of classified information to reporters. According to the court filing of Libby's testimony to the grand jury, the Vice President Cheney told Libby that President Bush had authorized him to leak classified information from the National Intelligence Estimate.

David Shuster who has been following the "Plame case" closely reports on the breaking news for MSNBC. The Raw Story has more information.

(As posted DU, by "elehhhhna." Hat tip Pokey A.)

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Brian Doyle is the second DHS employee to be recently charged with sexual offenses involving a minor.

Fox News' John Gibson focuses the massive resources of his new organization like a laser. Fox pierces the headlines, bringing their lucky viewers the big picture and the hard unfiltered facts.

Please excuse the sarcasm but this clip is pretty bad. First, Fox under-reports the arrest of a DHS official for sexual offenses. Then, they show their true desire to report on this subject with a nearly laughable interview.

Jane Skinner talks to Michael Blank, an "internet minuteman", with a four day old plan to clean up the net. Skinner highlights Blank's single-page website called JailBaitJustice.com.

Maybe there should be a law preventing the words "fox" and "news" from appearing together.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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A newly released report from Amnesty International provides additional evidence of secret CIA "black site" prisons located in Africa, Asia and Europe. The report also details the CIA's practice of "rendering" prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured or detained.

In this video, BBC gives an overview of the new report. Anne Fitzgerald, senior Advisor for Amnesty, explains details of the CIA's rendition flights. The final clip contains an interview with Muhammad al-Assar who was detained in a CIA "black site" prison for 2 years. He was then "rendered" to Yemen where, under orders from the U.S., he was imprisoned for another year.

I'll be sitting in as Guest Host for the good Peter B. on KRXA 540am up in Monterey, CA (and syndicated on several other affiliates) this Thursday from 3p-6p PT (6p-9p ET).

If you're not nearby, you can listen in online right here. Let's see if we can overload their servers --- And give us a shout to say hey at 888-KRXA-540. Let's see if we can break their phone lines.

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Kick-ass guests now lined up for Thursday's show!...

+ This Modern World cartoonist and blogger, TOM TOMORROW!
+ Emery County, UT County Clerk/Hero BRUCE FUNK (Diebold's latest scapegoat!)
+ PLUS: The legendary ED ASNER! Yup, Lou Grant his own bad self!

And Much Much More! Spread the word! Tune in!

UPDATE 4/8/06: Audio archives from the show now here...

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"She punched a cop! She punched...a cop!" said Sean Hannity on last night's Hannity & Colmes without any actual evidence for the charge and before any trial --- something he accuses many others of doing. But only when the alleged perp is a Republican, of course.

That was just after he accused "people who weren't even there" of turning this into a racial incident.

The guest, a former LAPD Detective who refused to play along with Hannity, pointed out that she's a 6 term Congresswoman and acknowledged that it's the Capitol Hill Police's job to recognize her. To which Hannity lied, "Yeah, but she was gone for like 5 years in there."

Needless to say, Hannity, as always, was wrong. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) was swiftboated and defeated by a Republican effort during her 2002 Democratic primary after she dared to ask out loud: "What did this Administration know and when did it know it?" concerning the events of 9/11. (A clip which Hannity played again during the segment last night for no apparent reason other than to keep the swiftboating alive --- he followed the clip by saying, without a hint of irony, "It seems that there's a proclivity here to jump to false conclusions, amongst Cynthia McKinney in particular.")

Anyway, McKinney was not in Congress from 2002 through 2004 when she was re-elected. Hardly the "5 years," as quoted by Hannity to try and back up the Capitol Hill Police (who recently admitted they "screwed up" while dealing with another such "security incident" involving a well known person who shouldn't have been hassled in the first place.) McKinney has been back in Congress now for a full year and half since being re-elected.

Ya know, we'll see how it all plays out as things move forward, but it occurs to us that Cynthia McKinney has a security disagreement with a cop who, all agree, didn't get hurt. A warrant is sought for her arrest and Fox "News" (and the rest of the media) can't get enough of it.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, has a security disagreement with an entire sovereign nation and starts a full blown war because of it. More than 2,500 American citizens are now dead, scores of thousands wounded and many more Iraqis than that have been killed because it. Nobody issues a warrant for the arrest of George W. Bush and Fox "News" and rest of the media couldn't give a damn about any of it.

That's what we call Fair and Balanced.

One thing we know --- McKinney's black and a woman and a Democrat and none of those things could possibly have had anything do with any of this.

(Thanks David Edwards for the video.)

IRONY ALERT UPDATE: "DeLay Says He'll File Ethics Complaint Against McKinney"... (Thanks Kat!)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Summit County has recently had problems with failed memory cards as related by The BRAD BLOG on March 9 and March 10. As reported at the time, as many as 30% of the cards completely failed initial testing in the county. A few days later, corresponding tests in North Carolina found more than 1000 of the cards failed. The memory cards, amongst other things, store the vote tabulations from elections.

New tests now in Summit County have also revealed additional failures on both memory cards, and the voting machines "firmware" as well.

Today the Akron Beacon Journal has revealed that Summit County has discovered 28 more bad cards in a batch of what was supposed to be good cards as sent to them by ES&S specifically to replace the previous bad ones.

The Beacon-Journal reports:

The Beacon-Journal is also now reporting that ES&S has found a problem with the firmware --- the software which is embedded into the system's hardware --- on their touch-screen machines that are used in counties across Ohio and across the country. ES&S is currently in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties.

Other states and counties who use ES&S should be made aware of the problems, since ES&S does not seem to be doing so.

On the firmware issue, the Beacon-Journal reports...

According to a late report from AP tonight, Ohio's Sec. of State (and Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney '04 Re-Election Committee) J. Kenneth Blackwell, "accidentally invested" in Diebold last year...

The "discovery" (that he owns shares in Diebold, not that Diebold is the only company to meet HAVA standards --- which they don't) occurred during some ethics filings as the Governor's race, in which Blackwell is a candidate, heats up in the Buckeye State...

According to a Rasumussen poll released on Friday, Blackwell currently trails the likely Democratic nominee for Governor, Rep. Ted Strickland by a 10 point margin of 50% to 40%.

Strickland beats Petro as well in a face-to-face match-up by even more: 47% to 34%.

Strickland appears to be widening the gap against both of them. But count no chickens yet. This is, after all, Ohio.

More subpoenas seem to be on the way for voting machine company officials, this time in Illinois where it looks like the city aldermen in Chicago, according to the Sun-Times are none-too-happy to be forced to continue payments to Sequoia Voting Systems who ran such a disastrous primary on new electronic machines across the state just a few weeks ago.

A similar battle has been underway in Texas where officials have been trying to avoid payment to ES&S for the primary disaster down there on March 7th, just two weeks before the Illinois debacle.

In the meantime, the hypocrisy of the Right Wing continues vis a vis Electronic Voting Machines and their newly discovered concerns, as we reported late last week, about a Venezuelan company, possibly tied to Hugo Chavez, controlling the Sequoia company, and thus having an unknown and troubling amount of concern over American elections.

As in the wingnut piece we pointed to last week, Richard Brand in the Miami Herald (via right-leaning RealClearPolitics.com) is horrified that a company tied to Chavez may be having undue influence over American elections.

Not a word in Brand's piece about the influence over American elections by partisan companies, run by partisan executives, such as Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivic and others who are given carte blanche to use secret, uninspected software to count almost every citizen's vote in the country by now.

So, again, while we're happy to see concern --- no matter where it comes from --- about the little-noticed watershed change in our electoral system which now allows private companies to control the most sacred element of our democracy, with virtually zero checks, balances or public oversight, it's incredibly hypocritical (even by wingnut standards), to turn a blind eye to the Rightwing influence over all the other companies who have even more control over more of American votes.

We'd hope that the concerns about Chavez would suddenly help these guys realize what the hell has been going on here. We're concerned about any private corporation having such influence over our elections. But, in typical Rightwing blinders-on fashion, it's only votes that are perceived to be questionable because they might have undue influence from the Left that seems to concern these folks.

What a pity. But hardly a surprise.

To underscore that irony/hypocrisy, take a look at this concern of Brand's about a recent Venezualan elections run on machines made by Smartmatic, the company which now owns Sequoia (and be sure you're sitting down when you read it)...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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At a press conference today in Atalanta, Black lawmakers, clergy and activist gathered to declare their continued support for Representative Cynthia McKinney.

McKinney has been accused of "assaulting" a Capitol Police officer. The officer, not recognizing the congresswoman, grabbed McKinney "in an innapproiate way" as she was entering the Capitol Builing. Upon being touched, McKinney apparently touched the officer in return with a mobile phone.

Republican lawmakers and other GOP operatives are now using the issue to "swiftboat" Represenatitive McKinney. As always, the corporate media gladly forsakes important news to participate in the right-wing echo chamber.

As of today, the D.C. Capitol Police confirm that the incident has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's office but would not say if a warrant has been issued for McKinney's arrest.

UPDATE: AP reports that D.C. Capitol Police have requested permission from Federal Prosecutors to issue an arrest warrant for Cynthia McKinney.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Senator Russ Feingold steps over the right-wing talking points in Sunday's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox.

As Wallace sets up each Bush Administraion strawman, Feingold knocks it down with the simple truth. The President should not be allowed to break the law.