Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin marked the Independence Day holiday by firing back at "false and defamatory allegations" made over the past twenty-four hours; noting limits on the "right of free speech"; declaring herself a victim; and issuing threats of potential litigation against a number of journalists and media outlets.

Through her private attorney, Thomas Van Flein, Palin issued a statement on Saturday in response to stories concerning suggestions of a federal investigation into the contracting and building of her house on Lake Lucille in Wasilla and the Wasilla Sports Complex, both constructed during her tenure as Mayor of the small town.

The four page response [posted in full at the end of this article] rebuts allegations as discussed on this blog and other news sites on Friday following the former Republican Vice Presidential nominee's surprise announcement that she would be resigning from office with a year and a half still remaining in her first term as Governor.

The defiant statement includes a warning "to provide notice" to journalists and media outlets that she "will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation."

The statement opens by charging that following her stunning, and often beguiling, hastily called press conference at the beginning of the holiday weekend, "several unscrupulous people have asserted false and defamatory allegations that the 'real' reasons for Governor Palin's resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex."

Also, late tonight, the Los Angeles Times has filed a short article featuring a response from an FBI spokesperson in Alaska who denies that the agency is investigating the Palins on those matters...

Just a quick note to formally announce my honor in being named a Fellow at the Commonweal Institute. CI is a terrific, fearless, forward-thinking Progressive organization/think-tank, and I couldn't be prouder to have been invited to join their ranks and hopefully augment their already outstanding efforts.

The rightwing has had their Wingnut Welfare Program in place for some time, so it's nice to see organizations like CI --- even if they're not funded on anywhere near the scale of the rightwing "think-tanks" --- expanding and maturing to take on so much of the disinformative nonsense coming from the extremist Right. Perhaps reality-based discourse and forward-thinking Progressivism can return someday to find it's voice welcomed again in the public square. See their recent announcement on their new Fellows Op-Ed program.

Where I can help, I'm happy and honored to do so under the auspices of CI, in good company with a number of my fine fellow Fellows. Be sure to check out Commonweal's website. Lots of good stuff to be found there, with more coming soon! And again, I'm delighted to be onboard!

[Ed Note: CI Executive Director Barry Kendall will be joining me as a guest tonight on the final night of my week-long stint guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show. Update: Interview now here, choose HOUR 3, interview with Kendall begins just after the 11 min. mark.]

[Now updated with audio archives...]

I'm Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE again tonight and all week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Tonight's scheduled guests so far include:

• COLEEN ROWLEY, the 9/11 FBI whistleblower and TIME's 2002 "Person of the Year" on her attempts to warn the media (even 60 Minutes) against the rush to war in Iraq. (See her BRAD BLOG article on that today right here...)
• ANDREW KREIG, journalist and attorney on his investigation into the Siegelman prosecution, and tomorrow's D.C. press conference/forum calling for a DoJ investigation into prosecutorial misconduct.
• MARK KARLIN, creator and publisher of BuzzFlash.com on the state of the independent alternative media in the Age of Obama.
• BOB KINCAID, West Virginia host of Head-On with Bob Kincaid, on recent arrests during non-violent protests against mountaintop removal by big coal companies.

PLUS: Today's breaking news, my rants, your calls (877-520-1150) and a LIVE 'Green News Report' w/ DESI DOYEN!

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your cordial hostess throughout the proceedings. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: Lots of good stuff in tonight's show. Dig in. All three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) follow below for your archival listening pleasure...

[Now updated with audio archives...]

I'm Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show LIVE again tonight and all week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Please tune in and call in!

Tonight's scheduled guests so far include:

• SIBEL EDMONDS, the FBI translator/whistleblower, described by the ACLU as the "most gagged" woman in the history of this country following the Bush Administration's use of the "State Secrets Privilege" in keeping her from exposing corruption learned while a translator at the FBI after 9/11. On that, her new blog, her new project "Project Expose MSM", and anything else you want to ask her about!
• DAVID SWANSON, peace activist on Thursday's "Torture Accountability Day"

PLUS: Today's breaking news (Welcome home Gov. Sanford!), my rants & your calls (877-520-1150) (Later this week: Coleen Rowley, Marcy Wheeler and more!)

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Consider this an Open Show Thread, where, as always, "Agent 99" will be your friendly hostess throughout. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: I hope you'll enjoy the audio archives of tonight's show, as much as I enjoyed making them for you. All three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) provide some good listening, and follow below...

I hate to ask, so I usually don't. But I must, so I will...If you're able to donate to The BRAD BLOG, it's tremendously appreciated, and very much needed.

We receive no corporate or foundational support, and (with the exception of a monthly pittance brought in by ads), we rely on you to help us continue our fearless and fiercely independent, often ground-breaking, award-winning reporting, trouble-making, and muckraking from folks like myself, Sibel Edmonds, Ernest Canning, Desi Doyen (Green News Report!), and others.

If you have ever found value in what we do here at The BRAD BLOG --- which, I believe, is the type of issue coverage found almost nowhere else, as we continue to avoid purely profit-driven coverage and other gimmicks to increase traffic --- please consider support to help us keep it going. Quickly, here are a few easy options for that:

• One-Time Online Donation: Click here to make a secure, one time online donation with credit card or PayPal.
• ** Monthly Sustaining Donation **: Use the blue box in the right-hand column (midway down the page) to offer a sustaining monthly donation, of any amount you choose, also billed to either credit card or PayPal.
• DVD Premium Donation: Use one of the options at this link if you'd like receive a signed, award-winning DVD documentary in exchange for a donation of $50 or more.
• Snail-Mail Donation: Send a check via snail mail, to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028 (If you'd like a DVD in return, see the link in the option above, and please specify that when sending in your check!)

Use of any of the above options is greatly appreciated! And, now back to your regularly scheduled BRAD BLOG. Pardon for the intrusion, even though I may have to post another reminder or three soon! Thanks in advance for all of your support over so many years... --- Brad

Today, we remember, the 2,979 killed in both the terror attacks of 9/11 and in the oft-overlooked anthrax bio-terror attacks on American soil which occurred in the following weeks, along with all of those who have given their lives in defense of this nation and its Constitution, including the 5,679 U.S. troops who have been sacrificed so far in George W. Bush's (and now Barack Obama's) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan --- a number which does not include the countless U.S. contractors who have also perished in those conflicts.

As a veteran of Vietnam, my friend and colleague John Gideon, whom we tragically lost late last month, was a champion not just of voters' rights, but of all the causes of his fellow veterans and active-duty brothers and sisters.

Today, The BRAD BLOG's first Memorial Day without his valued presence, we dedicate this day to his memory, his undying fight, and his soaring spirit.

I thought it would be appropriate today, then, to offer the recent Part 2 of Talk Nation Radio's moving audio tribute to the legacy of our friend John. As in Part 1 of Dori Smith's radio special, I appear once again, along with VotersUnite.org's Ellen Theisen and John himself, in both voice and memory. Also, good friend and longtime election integrity advocate Pokey Anderson, of Houston Pacifica's KPFT, speaks about John and his legacy in this part as well. All four of us are seen in the photo below, taken by Desi Doyen, last summer during a few hours of wonderful retreat up in Washington state. It would be the last time all five of us would be together in person.

Download MP3 or listen online [appx. 30 mins]...

Post-Script: I just noticed that this article's permalink happens to be BRAD BLOG item number '7176' --- an oddly appropriate 'anagramatical' coincidence for you numerologists out there. Make of that as you will...

Via RAW STORY...

So far, it's been almost a full month since Fox "News"/ABC Radio propagandist Sean Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded for charity, claiming it was not torture. Despite MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offering $1000 for the troops, for every second Hannity lasts, the cowardly wingnut torture apologists has failed to revisit the topic since his original act of phony bravado.

See "Mancow" being waterboarded, and then commenting on it, in the two very short videos below. And remember, unlike the detainees that we tortured, he was not being waterboarded by hostile folks, and was able to call it off at any time, on his own...

On a related topic... I was on San Francisco's usually very rightwing radio station KGO last night, with the progressive Christine Craft sitting in as late-night host. Lots of similarly cowardly wingnuts called in to inform us that waterboarding isn't torture at all. Here's the audio. Enjoy.

MP3 Download, or listen online (appx 35 mins)...

Update: My VelvetRevolution.us colleague Kevin Zeese writes in to note that his coverage of the same news item at Voters For Peace, also includes a video of Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens being waterboard in February of 2008, to similar result as "Mancow's." He also lasts about 5 seconds under waterboarding by friendly torturers.

UPDATE 5/23/09: And this just in via ThinkProgress...

UPDATE 5/29/09: Olbermann interviews Mancow after his waterboarding. Video follows below. Here's a bit of the transcript...

Update 4/27, 11:54pm PT...

It was a very lonely time for advocates of democracy in the U.S. when John Gideon posted his first guest blog here in the dark days of October 2005, and when we began to carry his vital "Daily Voting News" on Election Day, one month later, in November of that same year.

While the fight for democracy in this country has become somewhat less lonely as the Election Integrity movement has grown since then, thanks in no small part to the tireless, daily contributions of John, it feels very lonely again today. My good friend passed away this evening in a Seattle hospital, having succumbed to a surprise and sudden bout with bacterial meningitis.

John held on as long as he could, but tonight he'll rest with his beloved wife who passed some years ago.

He was 62, and a Vietnam veteran who never stopped fighting for his fellow veterans and in service of our country. He is survived by his son Rick and grandson, and a life-long legacy of fighting in defense of his nation, and for all that it stands for. He has left that legacy behind as a gift --- and challenge --- for us all.

John's always-understated "Daily Voting News" --- which he filed, often seven days a week, for well over five years --- provided simple links to news of election reform, failure and success from around the nation, as culled from papers, blogs, press releases and official and academic reports around the country, and even the world. In so doing, he connected the seemingly disparate dots of local stories, and apparently anecdotal woes, into a cohesive tale of a nation struggling to regain footing on the pedestal on which it had once, and still hoped to stand.

The compelling narrative the DVN slyly wove together daily --- almost, as if in slow-motion, with each passing day --- was clear: We were, and are, a country whose promise of public, transparent democracy threatens to slip away forever beneath a cynical and foolish crush of ill-considered corporatism and greed, self-imposed expediency and often well-meaning, yet destructive naivete. In short: Unless we take care --- every single day --- what's left of our democracy will further wither to the whims of cold, disinterested privatization no longer resembling the self-governance our founders envisioned, and that we have convinced ourselves still remains.

If there is anything we can give back to the man, in thanks for his selfless service, over so many decades, on so many fronts, it is to continue to carry the torch of the man who fought for democracy until he had nothing more he could give...

I was scheduled to be on CNN's new online "Live" format last Thursday, before they knew what the "topic of the day would be". Turned out to be the FDA's approval to allow Plan B, a.k.a "the morning-after pill", to be sold to 17 year-olds after they were ordered by a U.S. District Court to do so. The judge also ordered the FDA to re-evaluate whether all age restrictions should be removed, following a determination that the Bush Administration's FDA had used politics, for years, instead of science, in determining whether Plan B was safe and effective enough to be sold over the counter.

Here's the video from my appearance along with a coupla other bloggers, Rachel Campos Duffy of AOL's parentdish and Gina Cooper from GinaCooper.com (she blogged about her appearance here). No comment on the use of the cutesy "Blogger Bunch" name for the segment, or for the allegation that Brad "leans to the Left" during the intro, even though Rachel, who doesn't "lean", but rather seems to live "on the Right" isn't described as such. But, as I say, no comment on any of that. I look forward to being invited back again soon...

Spent a lot of long-overdue, late late-night hours over the past week or so, stretching my PHP, CSS and HTML skills well beyond their limits in service of some fairly substantial code optimization --- with more still to come --- in hopes of trying to make things run a bit faster here. Did I succeed?

(Note: You may need to hit SHIFT-REFRESH once or twice to get all the updated files into your cache. Other than that, if you come across any unexpected glitches or odd behavior, please let me know!)

Over the last few months, it looks like the wingnuts have undertaken a specific and systematic effort to try and downrate items that don't reflect well on them at places like REDDIT and DIGG.

Of course, lots of recommendations on those two sites result in thousands --- if not hundreds of thousands --- of more eyeballs to the various stories we run here at The BRAD BLOG --- stories which are often not seen anywhere else in the media, even in the Progressive Blogosphere for that matter!

So your REDDITs and DIGGs actually do matter quite a bit, particular now since the wingnuts seem to have begun their downrating campaign. Click here to see the amazing number of DOWN votes at REDDIT, for example, for last night's "Franken Isn't 'Leading'; He Won and Coleman Lost" story. Without all that downrating, the story would easily have made it to the front page of REDDIT for a long while, and therefore been propagated across dozens of other key sites on the net as well.

It takes about 30 seconds to sign up for REDDIT and/or DIGG the first time, and then you can remain logged on forever. It then takes less than 2 seconds to vote for and/or uprate our stories here at The BRAD BLOG without even leaving this page by hitting the REDDIT and DIGG vote icons for stories that you believe are important to get out there.

Your 2 seconds of a mouse clicking matters. Really. And, as ever, your help is much appreciated! (And thanks to those regular DIGGers and REDDITers who already help out!)

For you whipper-snappers out there, The BRAD BLOG is now Twittering via this link, if you'd like to keep up with the latest on your mobile phone, or however, you enjoy being tweeted.

We are also now available via Amazon's cool new wireless Kindle reader. A Kindle subscription to The BRAD BLOG is $1.99, and allows you to keep up with things here from anywhere (presuming you can afford the Kindle 2's still-high $359 initial price tag, in any case, which we can't.) You can watch a quick 2-minute Kindle demo video here, if you're curious.

See ya from...out there...Oh, and P.S.: Big thanks to the great Ray Beckerman for setting us up at Twitter!

UPDATE 3/31/09: Josh Marshall has some interesting thoughts on the Kindle and on the future of carbon-based books in general...

On several deadlines and fighting some server probs. So...please talk amongst yourselves (if you can, one of the probs is in the comments routines!), and I'll otherwise be back shortly. Thanks for your patience, as ever...

Today (Saturday 1/24/09) is The BRAD BLOG's 5th anniversary! Five years?! Until last Tuesday, I might have said, "feels more like 50!" But with a certain lead-like weight beginning to lift, for some strange reason, as the past week wore on, I'll just say: "Wow! Has it been five years already?!"

My thanks to so many of you who have supported this site and the work we've done, in so many different ways, over these many years. I'd say it's been "my pleasure," but that may be overstating just how grueling these last many years have been.

So I'll leave it to you old timers (and new timers, alike) to let us know in comments either a) what brought you here originally, b) why you kept coming back for more, c) what your favorite/least favorite story/article was/is (feel free to share links if you like) or d) all of the above as you see fit.

Seeing as how the appropriate fifth anniversary gift is supposed to be wood, and how cash money is made from paper, which is made from wood, we would be more than delighted if you felt like leaving an anniversary gift after a particularly difficult year here. If you're really in the mood to be generous, we still have signed DVD copies of the award-winning documentaries Murder, Spies & Voting Lies and Uncounted (both featuring yours truly), which will be happy to send ya in return for donations of $50 or above (details here).

But don't let the lack of a wooden gift in these troubled times keep you from commenting and sharing your thoughts, as that is always (well, mostly) gift enough. Thank you all for everything. Here's to 5 more! (If I can make it!)

Just a quick update...I've been on the road for the last month or two, and now finally nearing home. Not there yet, but hope to be soon. If any from our fine list of Guest Bloggers are available to jump in here, hopefully they will while I still have more hours of on-the-road, off-the-grid time ahead in the next several days. Otherwise, I should be back "full time" pretty soon. Frankly, the sooner the better, as there are a number of reports I've been working on, but haven't had time to complete for ya. They'll be coming soon. Even if not as soon as I'd like, while still on the roll.

Obviously, we could use more guest reporter/contributors around here, but they are very hard to come by, particularly given the type of blogging we tend to do here (more reporting than opinion) and particularly at the "price" I'm able to pay (approximately nothing, unfortunately). However, if you, or someone you know, might be interested in doing some BRAD BLOGGING, and think you have the investigative and writing and editing skills and/or the sense-of-humor (as appropriate) for this joint, please feel free to drop me a private note, along with a few links to a few short sample items that you feel may be appropriate BRAD BLOG-type stories which may give me an idea of your work. Use subject line: "GUEST BLOGGING!"

Would love to hear from you! And thanks, otherwise, for your continuing patience for our otherwise road-weary and still wrist-hobbled, nearly-one-man blogging band. We'll try to make it back to our home, before Obama gets to his...