Let the history books show that the Democrats, and the tiny number of Republicans, who voted NO on giving authority to George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq (and virtually everywhere else) anytime he wished, in October of 2002, were right on every score.

Those who spoke out, and were publicly tarred and feathered, labeled as unpatriotic, left-wing fringe, out of step with the country, and generally loons for having done so --- folks like Feingold, Kennedy, Durbin, Waters, Lee, Kaptur, Kucinich, Wellstone, Woolsey, Waters, Conyers, Hinchey, and perhaps, most prophetically, according to Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's the new documentary film, Body of War, Robert Byrd of West Virginia --- are all owed a great debt of thanks by every American, particularly those who had maligned them for having the temerity to be right back then.

Last night I went to see Body of War, which opens this weekend in Los Angeles, and was struck by the simple message that an entire swath of courageous Congressional members, who had stood up, to little notice, to say the right thing, were almost entirely - to a man and a woman - branded as moonbats and traitors back in the dark days of 2002. To this day, they have never received the appropriate recognition for having resisted the systematically orchestrated lies and fear tactics of the pro-Bush crowd (which includes both Ds and Rs), nor have they received the appropriate thanks and apologies from those who were absolutely, undebatably, undeniably, 100% wrong in their horrific assessment of what will go down as perhaps the greatest policy mistake in American history.

To that same end, I would suggest that history will eventually regard the much-maligned Gold Star mother, Cindy Sheehan, as belonging side-by-side with courageous Americans before her like civil rights hero Rosa Parks. I predict that Sheehan will, one day, receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. I only hope she'll be alive to receive that honor, from that body, in person, when that day comes. And it will.

Donahue was on hand last night for a Q&A following the film, which I attended along with PDA's national chair, actress Mimi Kennedy. As I, personally, played a small part (and am seen briefly in the film) in originally helping to tell the story of disabled Iraqi vet Tomas Young, whose remarkable story is told in stark parallel to the fateful --- and often shameful --- words heard during the "so-called" Congressional debate on the resolution to allow the use of force in Iraq back in 2002, just three weeks prior to that year's election, I was delighted to be able to thank Donahue personally, for placing the entire story, finally, in correct, often maddening, often gut-wrenching, historical context.

(See bottom of this article for my audio interview with Young in August of 2005, his first for a national audience, from on the ground at "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX.)

Body of War should be seen by every American, left, right, center, and other. It should be mandatory viewing for every current and future Congressional representative. It should be shown over and over again, in an endless, Clockwork Orange-like loop, in the jail cells of those who will likely never be convicted for the unspeakable crimes they have knowingly and callously committed, at the expense of thousands of courageous dead American troops, and more than 100 thousand dead world citizens, who have all fallen victim to the cowardly and shameful actions of those entrusted to know better...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

This guy --- and I'm sorry I don't know his name --- is my new hero. Can't really set up the following must-watch killer video any better than "Rat" of RatTube, from whence it was found, did:

Yes. Very good. Can we please get the good father his own TV show? Perhaps at 8pm ET on Fox "News" where they currently show nothing but Anti-American trash?...

And that's what America really looks like. Which is why you normally don't get to see it on TV. Not sure where the video actually aired, if anywhere. Though the questioner was O'Reilly's reporter/hitman, not surprisingly, I've yet to see any clips of that interview on his show (though, admittedly, I don't get to take out the trash every day.)

(Hat-tip to "CD")

UPDATE 8:34pm PT: Turns out the man in the video above is a Catholic priest by the name of Rev. Michael Pfleger, and apparently Bill O'Reilly did use a part of the interview above on his show. Approximately 5 seconds of it. On April 2. And yet, despite how well Pfleger deflects the nonsense tossed at him by O'Reilly's ambush reporter (as seen in the above, not on his show) O'Reilly has been flogging the same "racist, hate-monger" nonsense for weeks.

As if that's not bad enough, after the 5 seconds shown from the above interview, O'Reilly went on to do a full 6 minute segment discussing whether or not...wait for it...Pfleger should be sanctioned by the Catholic Church!

I wish I was kidding. Watch for yourselves...

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog makes some cogent, spot-on, and often rather amusing points. The condensed set-up...

Here are the first of his 9 suggested questions...

Read 'em all. Good stuff. It's going to be another very ugly season. As ever, proudly sponsored by your contemptibly wretched and horribly failed Corporate American Mainstream Media.

The following video comes fresh from our buddy Jake Soboroff of Why Tuesday? He was at last night's Democratic debate and tried to get some answers from some of the local Democratic public officials on hand --- including Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and PA Governor Ed Rendell --- to see if they had any concerns about the e-voting machines to be used in next week's crucial PA Primary.

Kudos to Jake for asking, just one of the so-many questions (if, arguably, one of the most important) that the Corporate Media, such as ABC News, couldn't even be bothered to dream of, apparently.

Despite the fact that, next week, wholly unverifiable, 100% faith-based e-voting systems will be in use across much of the Keystone State --- including, perhaps most notably, Sequoia's AVC Advantage touch-screens in Montgomery and Northhampton counties, even though very same systems failed so spectacularly in neighboring NJ on Super Tuesday (see this recent BRAD BLOG story for the quick skinny on what happened, and continues to be going on with the NJ/Sequoia failed touch-screen imbroglio) --- the election officials interviewed by Soboroff, in the following quick video recorded just last night, remain utterly and completely clueless.

It's simply amazing...

And folks wonder why the job of restoring Election Integrity in this country is so frickin' hard?!

The above video --- including Nutter's comments that there have been "no problems" with the machines, since, after all, they got him elected, and Rendell's admission that he "knows nothing about them", but that they are "all HAVA approved machines" --- underscores how unbelievably difficult this fight is, and how clueless the very folks needed to help make a change actually are, in this entire fine mess.

Suggestion to Soboroff for next vid: Ask any elected official or election official in PA, or anywhere else, if they can prove that even a single vote --- as cast on any touch-screen machine during any actual election --- has ever been recorded and counted accurately as the voter intended. Just evidence of a single such vote will do. They will not be able to do so. None of them.

UPDATE 4/19/08: The good election integrity champions of VotePA touched base with us concerning our above suggestion to Soboroff to point out that there is one way possible to prove that a touch-screen/DRE counted a vote accurately, as per voter intent, during an actual election. An unusual write-in candidate could be cast, and then checked after the election to see if it was recorded accurately. Therefore, we'll slightly modify our currently suggested challenge above, to any election official, asking for proof of any non-write-in vote having been recorded accurately as per voter intent, as ever cast on a DRE/touch-screen voting machine during an actual election. We've made that challenge for quite a while (minus the "non-write-in" part), and we've yet to receive an iota of proof from any election official, even from those who will tell you that their DRE/touch-screens record votes "accurately".

Truth is, they have nothing to prove their case. Not even a single (non-write-in) vote ever cast. Yet they still claim them to be "accurate" without any such scientific evidence of same. Go figure.

Wow...We're blown away by this article in today's Beacon News. [Article now hidden behind paid archives, here's a local repost.] It begins this way:

We're greatly appreciative of Campana's coverage. Not only because he's very kind to us, but because --- as a total of four of his stories filed over the last two days reveal --- he has actually done what so few corporate journalists seem able to do today: Actual journalism.

Before we saw the piece mentioned above today, we had kind words about his coverage yesterday of the wholly under-reported Hart InterCivic federal fraud suit. But beyond that detailed piece, his follow-up story today and "related coverage" offered on both days has been top-notch. Here are links to each of his stories today and yesterday...

Sunday:
• Did your vote count?:
  Unsealed federal lawsuit reignites eSlate debate
• Election reform proposal stalled

Monday:
• Silent fight over voting machines:
  Technician says lawsuit followed years of trying to get word out
• The little blog that did:
  For four years, Bradblog.com has reported on voting machine problems
  [Above article now behind paid archives. Local copy here.]

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what journalism is supposed to look like. And yes, if we had a few more hundred (we'd settle for a few more dozen) like Campana, we'd be more than thrilled to go back to what we were doing prior to falling into this remarkable American Nightmare. We look forward to the day we can take down our shingle entirely and leave all of the heavy lifting to folks like him who actually get paid to do this stuff.

(But until then, whatever support you can afford to help keep us going is appreciated...You are all we've actually got. So, please see below, and please keep spreading the word.)

In Aurora, Illinois, today, Beacon News' Dan Campana files a very good report on the federal fraud suit filed against Austin, Texas, based voting machine company Hart InterCivic. The suit, alleging dozens of false claims and fraudulent activities by Hart in order to receive federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money, was filed originally by former employee turned whistleblower William Singer back in 2006, but did not become unsealed until March 27th, when The BRAD BLOG covered it, along with posting the full stunning complaint [PDF].

Beacon News is based in Kane County, IL, which uses the faulty Hart voting systems in question.

Campana's report today --- which quotes yours truly in a number of places --- is the only corporate media coverage of the lawsuit in the nearly three weeks since the case was finally unsealed. Until now, there's been the fairly extensive coverage found on this blog, an item on the same day the case was unsealed filed by Kim Zetter at WIRED's "Threat Level" blog (which we replied to here), and a very short squib from AP on the same day, which, according to a quick Google News search, was carried by only a single news outlet, CBS 4 in Denver.

(For the record, our extensively detailed and sourced report on Hart's attempted takeover of Sequoia late last week has been picked up by nobody, other than ComputerWorld where we, ourselves, filed a short summary report. That, despite officials from both Hart and Sequoia having confirmed the accuracy of our report, and the fact that Hart, which controls some 8% of the voting market in this country, is about to swallow up Sequoia Voting Systems, which controls 20% of it, to become the nation's second largest e-voting machine vendor. We'll know by Tuesday at the latest, most likely, if Sequoia was able to save itself from Hart's hostile takeover.)

So with a dearth of coverage anywhere but here, we can heartily recommend Campana's report on Singer's suit. His article includes comments from us (as mentioned), one of Singer's attorneys, Hart spokesperson Peter Lichtenheld (who shamelessly plays the tired old "conspiracy theory" card), some Election Integrity advocates from the non-partisan Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, and some state and local Kane County election officials who have deluded themselves into believing their Hart machines are safe for use in American democracy.

When Campana interviewed us for his story, we suggested he ask any of the election officials he planned to interview for a single piece of evidence to prove that any single vote, ever cast during an election on a Hart DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machine in the county, has ever been recorded accurately, as intended by a voter.

Though Campana references our challenge in his report ("Friedman contends no government officials can prove the votes cast on electronic machines can be accurately linked to tallies",) he doesn't quote any of the officials as being able to offer such evidence. Little surprise, because they can't produce such evidence. It's strictly impossible. Yet they continue to use these machines anyway.

But he does manage to get a few amusing and wholly unsupportable statements from some of those deluded officials. We're delighted to spend our Sunday dismantling them --- both the statements, and the officials...

Still paging Dan Abrams...

The following email comes from Mark Crispin Miller, NYU media professor, and author of the landmark election integrity book, FOOLED AGAIN.

It includes an email exchange from yesterday with the finally-free-on-bond former Democratic Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman, concerning his allegations that his 2002 election was electronically flipped. (A rarely seen video interview, featuring Siegelman in 2004 discussing details of what he believes happened, is at posted at end of this article.)

Just for the record, it's absolutely insane that Air America has suspended Randi Rhodes for calling Hillary Clinton "a fucking whore" when she wasn't even on the air. Clearly, the folks who run that continuously sinking ship these days have no clue how either radio, or the U.S. Constitution, work. And while the network has always been mismanaged from Day One by the veritable raft of geniuses who have run it --- and more have come and gone now than we can keep track of --- this latest crew may take the cake.

Our friend Mike Malloy, formerly of AAR and now of NovaM, says the current crop of owners are "right wing thugs." And how were those "right wing thugs able to get inside AAR with their bags of money?" Malloy asked rhetorically last night...because the wealthy, millionaire, "Leftwing liberal sons-of-bitches refused to put any up."

Smells about right to us. Malloy offers the full ugly history, via Sam Seder (of Air America)'s page, including his take on Randi, with which we agree. Whole-heartedly.

Randi: The folks at NovaM are great, as you already know. We suspect you'll eventually be much happier there anyway. Just saying. Especially when AAR goes down for good. Which would be a terrible shame, if hardly a surprise, but could happen any day now in our opinion. Thanks for nothin', Lefties.

(Hat-tip for Malloy's audio to Jill at "Brilliant at Breakfast")

As mentioned last Friday, over the weekend, I spoke at CA Common Cause's "Media Reform Conference" out in Pasadena. The panel discussion, "Have the media undermined our democracy?" included myself, along with Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA), Alex Nogales of National Hispanic Media Coalition, Jonathan Taplin of USC Annenberg School of Comm. and Kevin Uhrich of the Pasadena Weekly. It was moderated by Tracy Westen of the Center for Governmental Studies.

The short video of my opening remarks, naming names and doing what I do, along with my comments on the panel --- naming still more names and still doing what I do --- during the Q&A section, follows below. Text transcript (courtesy of VelvetRevolution's Emily Levy), follows below that...

Text transcript of the remarks follows below...

We admit to being perplexed enough by Matthew Mosk's Sunday article in WaPo, claiming that GOP "voter fraud" zealot Hans von Spakovsky, formerly of the DoJ Civil Rights voting unit, was "cleared" by a U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) inspector general's report, to poke around for a few minutes trying to figure out who this Mosk was, and how the hell he figured the report "cleared" von Spakovsy of anything.

vS was one of the notorious villians at the DoJ who politicized the hell out of the Civil Rights division by turning it into a blunt instrument to keep minority voters from being able to cast their lawful vote in any way he could figure out how to do.

He is also the failed nominee for the FEC who still has yet to show enough grace to remove his name from consideration, as he has singlehandedly succeeded in ensuring that the commission is entirely crippled, unable to vote on anything without a quorum, during an election year.

As the IG's report on whether the EAC was inappropriately influenced, by von Spakovsky and others, to withhold and the re-write a bi-partisan study on voter fraud, the then-chair of the EAC, Paul DiGregorio --- a Republican himself --- said that “too many of [von Spakovsky’s] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking”...vS “certainly tried to influence...There’s no question about that," and that, the EAC chair felt that "von Spakovsky thought he should use his position (on the EAC commission) to advance the Republican Party position.”

Mosk used his WaPo article then, to quote vS alleging that the "conclusions (of the EAC IG report) represented a personal vindication" for him. Huh?

We got distracted by other business, and were unable to finish our poking around to figure out what Mosk might have been after, and why this article, on a report published three weeks ago suddenly became "news" to the Washington Post, with "clearance" of von Spakovsky as the central meme.

J. Gerald Hebert, over at the Campaign Legal Center Blog seems to have come away with the same perplexed reaction, opening his article yesterday with...

In the wake of my participation over the weekend, on a panel speaking to the question: "Have the media undermined our democracy?" at a Common Cause-sponsored conference on Media Reform in Pasadena (video from my remarks there now posted here), it seems that now would be as good a time as any to pop this killer video here. Enjoy...

(Hat-tip "Chris in Paris" at AMERICABlog)

It should be an interesting afternoon. I'll be speaking on a panel titled "Have the media undermined our democracy?" tomorrow (Saturday) at CA Common Cause's "L.A. Media Reform Summit" in Pasadena.

If you can't make it, here's my written testimony in response to the panel's topic: YES!!!!!

If you're in the SoCal 'hood and can make it, please come on by and say hello! The panel I'm on (with Democratic Congresswoman Hilda Solis, National Hispanic Media Coalition organizer Alex Nogales, USC journalism professor Jonathan Taplin, and Pasadena Weekly Editor Kevin Uhrich) begins at 1:45pm, but the opening salvo comes at 1pm from FCC commish Jonathan Adelstein. There some other interesting folks speaking throughout the day as well, including our good friend and great patriot, Bree Walker.

Joe Piasaki at Pasadena Weekly has good advanced coverage with the latest guest list.

More info, sign-up details, and a slightly outdated Guest List can be read here. The event is at: California Institute Of Technology, Beckman Institute, 400 S. Wilson, Pasadena, CA.

Post-Conference Update: I think the conference went very well, in many regards. Will try to get some video up shortly so you can decide for yourself...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from the road...

After a week of being told how the situation has "improved" in Iraq --- with a compliant corporate media, as usual, all too willing to continue their five year service as Bush Administration propagandists at large --- "all hell broke loose" on Sunday as the 6th year of our War on Iraq commenced; at least 60 died in attacks on the Green Zone and elsewhere around the country and the 4,000th U.S. troop was killed for reasons that remain unknown.

At least 97% of those deaths occurred after George W. Bush's spectacular televised landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, where he proclaimed face-to-face with our troops, and on TV to the world --- while standing in front of an enormous banner reading "Mission Accomplished" --- that "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

He was then, as he always has been, wrong. About absolutely everything.

As the 6th year of his disgraceful, criminal lie continues, we associate ourselves at this somber landmark, with blogger and Middle East expert, Juan Cole, who asks today why it has happened at all...

In the Summer of 2005, Cindy Sheehan, who gave the life of her son for reasons still unknown, was shamefully excoriated by supporters of George W. Bush for having the temerity to demand an explanation of the "noble cause" he claimed that her son Casey had died for. She never received that explanation. Nor have the American people --- not even the ones who attacked Cindy Sheehan so brutally, violently, and mercilessly on Bush's behalf.

Those willing to give their lives, and the lives of their sons and daughters, for our country deserve far better than they have received. Those willing to spend those lives, with a smirk and a "so?" --- without even the courtesy of an honest explanation as to why --- must be held accountable for these most unforgivable of crimes.

We fear such accountability will never come.

The BRAD BLOG stands by those who have fallen and with the millions who have, for so long, had the courage to ask "why?"

Blogged by Brad Friedman from San Francisco...

If you had any doubt, this seals it.

A more shameful display of "journalism" we don't believe we've ever seen. As our friend Susie Madrack of Suburban Guerrilla just wrote in an email, about the new low for corporate mainstream media, appallingly displayed at the link above...

What she said. And then some.

Meanwhile, today marks the 5th Anniversary of the War on Iraq. How many lie dead? And for what?

Heckuva job, Mr. Ross. You, and "the ABC NEWS INVESTIGATIVE UNIT" --- as our friend the Freeway Blogger might say --- are all wearing the blue dress now.

UPDATE 3/20/08: Glenn Greenwald, as usual, has more cogent thoughts on this, as AP joins Ross and "the ABC Investigative Unit" in covering this "story". Greenwald writes aptly: "It just isn't possible for this country to have a more depraved and wretched press corps."

He goes on to write of previous Ross failures as a "reporter", as does our own Alan Breslauer in this video. And as long as we're piling on, I'll point out that while ABC was more than happy to find the journalistic value in this "story", the same unit took a pass on an exclusive interview with Sibel Edmonds for reasons that we'll let them justify. Elsewhere, the ABC News division had previously spiked a number of important stories on Election Integrity.

Wonder why this country is in the mess that we're in? Look no further than our Corporate Mainstream Media. The links and stories above tell you all you need to know. It all begins and ends with them. Period. They have abused both the public trust and their First Amendment obligations to this country.