George W. Bush adviser Kenneth Adelman predicted the War in Iraq would be a "cakewalk." As President Barack Obama announced today that all U.S. military troops would finally be leaving the "cakewalk" by year's end after 9 deadly years (and as Fox "News" was busy ignoring the historic announcement), ThinkProgress put together a few numbers from what they describe as "The World's Costliest Cakewalk"...

President Barack Obama gave the media some 25 minutes or so heads-up today before coming to the White House briefing room to offer his dramatic announcement that, "as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over."

"Over the next two months," he said, "our troops in Iraq --- tens of thousands of them --- will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home. The last American soldier[s] will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end."

"Here at home, the coming months will be another season of homecomings. Across America, our servicemen and women will be reunited with their families," he announced, before adding dramatically, "Today, I can say that our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays."

No matter how you may feel about the President, it was certainly an historic announcement.

Had you been watching pretend news outlet Fox "News," however, in the hours following today's surprise announcement, you might not have even noticed that after 9 years and the deaths of some 4,479 Americans and injuries to more than 32,000 of them during one of the longest and most controversial wars this nation has ever waged, all U.S. military troops would finally be leaving "victoriously" in time for Christmas, just over two months from now.

After initially covering the President's briefing room announcement live, just before noon Eastern Time, here's what I was able to report via Twitter, as both CNN and MSNBC continued their breaking coverage with "experts," analysts, and journalists, and as Fox went into its next two hours beginning with a loud and dramatic "FOX 'NEWS' ALERT" right at the top of the hour...

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares:

Isn't that quaint?

Josh Holland takes a look at what happened to that apparently antiquated notion from the document which used to carry some weight in the way this country was governed, as he notes that some 1,500 American citizens have now been arrested while peaceably assembling to petition the Government for a redress of grievances over the past month since Occupy Wall Street began.

Last night, while the GOP debated Casino Capitalism (in an actual casino!), Give Me Liberty author and reporter Naomi Wolfe became one of the latest to have had her Constitutional right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances taken away from her, as seen in the following video (in which that "Democrat Party-sponsored" "mob" was attempting to petition Democratic NY state Governor Andrew Cuomo for a redress of grievances)...

Wolf wrote about her arrest seen above, "for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown" at the UK's Guardian today, noting that she explained to the NYPD before she was cuffed that she was both a "NYC citizen and a reporter".

As her article's sub-header notes, "Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic."

"I became exhibit A in a process that I have been warning Americans about since 2007," Wolfe writes. "First they come for the 'other' – the 'terrorist', the brown person, the Muslim, the outsider; then they come for you – while you are standing on a sidewalk in evening dress, obeying the law."

This afternoon she told Huffington Posts' Jason Cherkis, "I didn’t choose to get myself arrested. I chose to obey the law and that didn’t protect me."

So, where are all the outraged "Tea Partiers" who used to decry supposed abuses of the U.S. Constitution under our authoritarian regime? Oh, right, they were just pretending to give a damn about any of it...like good little scammed Fox "News" soldiers.

P.S. Here's hoping Wolf makes out as well following her inappropriate arrest as Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman did after hers.

UPDATE 10/19/11: In her Guardian piece, Wolf explained that the NYPD had told her the permit for the event she was attending (an annual Huffington Post event which Gov. Cuomo was also scheduled to attend, thus the protesters) when she came across the #OWS folks, forbade protesters from using the public sidewalks outside the building. Suspecting the claim from the police was bullshit, she says she requested to see a copy of that permit prior to her arrest, but was not allowed to.

Since posting the article above, Wolf contacted me to note that she has finally tracked down a copy of the type of permit HuffPo had last night and --- surprise, surprise --- the claim by cops appears to, in fact, be bullshit...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

As is reflected at right in a 1912 photo taken in Cincinnati, OH, Electric Vehicle (EV) technology has been with us for a very long time.

Underscored in the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? (see video trailer below), the principle obstacles to the development of practical and affordable Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs, as opposed to PHEVs, or Plug-in Electric Vehicles) have been political and economic, as opposed to technological.

As today is National Plug-in Hybrid Day, a look at the current state of our nation's struggle to realize the massive benefits of truly green automotive technology seems in order --- particularly as the job-creating industry continues to face uphill battles from both fossil fuel-funded obstructionist Republicans in Congress and aggressive attempts by China and other nations to "win" the fight for renewable energy technology at any cost...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Occupy Wall Street movement pushes back against dirty fossil fuel corporations; World's newest oil spill, now in New Zealand!; Keystone XL pipeline bombshell --- pipeline company's buddies help Obama/Clinton State Dept. approve the pipeline, but no complaints from Republicans; Million-dollar Solyndra bankruptcy gets more coverage than Billion-dollar Iraq war contracting corruption; PLUS: Rightwing freakout over peaceful Occupier protests challenging corporate greed ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Every $1 of coal power costs U.S. $2 in damages; Too late for Central Appalachia to prepare for collapse of the coal industry?; China's PV Feed-In Law Results in Solar Boom, Unlike Weak US Subsidies; Illinois Team Wins Oil Spill Cleanup X Challenge; Study: 25% renewable energy by 2025 would create millions of new jobs; Algae biofuel industry wants equal fed treatment; Lessons for the Colorado River from drought-stricken Australia; EPA Whistle-Blower Warns EPA Must Not Buckle to Industry Pressure and Greenwash Fracking; Sandia Laboratory testing miniature glitter-sized solar cells; Pharmaceutical manufacturer fined for Violating Hazardous Waste Law; This is where your plants will come from after the Ecopocalypse; UN Ambitions in Check on Global Climate Deal; Conservation Funding Sparks Political Battle; Robo-Deer Used to Catch Poachers; CA Bans Possession, Sale of Shark Fins ...PLUS: Obama Rips GOP Defeatism: ‘I’m Not Going To Surrender To Other Countries’ ...

"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation." - President Jimmy Carter
(Inaugural Address, 1/20/1977)

Oh, well. It was a nice idea at the time.

Nonetheless, happy 87th birthday (yesterday), Mr. President!

[Hat-tip @WestWingReport.]

It started with a Tweet yesterday morning from Kirsten Powers, Democratic contributor to Fox "News", in response to President Barack Obama having killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki after targeting him for assassination with no due process whatsoever --- not even a court order, as would have been needed to wiretap someone.

It seems like that's something Rightwingers pretending to be concerned about abuse of U.S. citizens by "Big Government" would have some objections to. But they don't. It's also seems like something that those who had been critical of George W. Bush's outrageously illegal and unconstitutional excesses and war crimes would similarly decry. But too many don't.

Nonetheless, soon, our hero in this story --- @ShortGo, otherwise known as Jared Roberts, self-identified "OUTLAW Cowboy" --- rode in to the conversation between Kirsten and me, to save the nation...

[UPDATE 9/28/11: I interviewed Argonne National Lab's Roger Johnston on my Pacific Radio show on KPFK today. In the interview, Johnston concedes that it's not only touch-screen systems of the type described below which are vulnerable to this newly developed hack, but that paper-ballot based optical-scan systems can likely be manipulated by the same techniques. My interview with Johnson is now posted here. - BF]

The Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has managed to hack a Diebold Accuvote touch-screen voting machine in what I describe at my exclusive today at Salon as perhaps "one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date."

As noted by the computer scientists and security experts at Argonne's VAT, largely all that's needed to accomplish this hack is about $26 and an 8th grade science education.

"This is a national security issue," VAT team leader Dr. Roger Johnston told me, echoing what I've been reporting other computer scientists and security experts telling me for years. "It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security."

Johnston should know. While the VAT folks have been dabbling in the security (or lack thereof) of e-voting systems in their spare time of late, most of the work they do is related to issues like nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation.

What makes this hack so troubling --- and different from those which have come before it --- is that it doesn't require any actual changes to, or even knowledge of, the voting system software or its memory card programming. It's not a cyberattack. It's a "Man-in-the-middle" attack where a tiny, $10.50 piece of electronics is inserted into the system between the voter and the main circuit board of the voting system allowing for complete control over the touch-screen system and the entire voting process along with it.

Add an optional $15 radio frequency remote control device, and votes can be changed, without the knowledge of the voter, from up to half a mile away. Without the remote, the attack can be turned on and off at certain times, or by other triggers. The voter would have no idea that their votes have been changed after they've already approved them as "correct" on the various confirmation screens, and even on the so-called "paper-trail" (on e-voting machines which offer them --- though VAT has learned how to manipulate those as well, see photo at right.)

The inserted chip can later be removed after the election without there being any way to ever know that someone had completely manipulated the system. But since election officials rarely --- if ever --- examine the inside of their voting machines, it doesn't much matter, in truth.

"The level of sophistication it took to develop the circuit board" used in the attack "was that of basically an 8th grade science shop," says Argonne's John Warner. "Anybody with an electronics workbench could put this together."

The team, he says, had no knowledge of the voting machine's computer circuit diagram or owner's manual when they devised the attack. Moreover, VAT team leader Roger Johnston told me they believe they "can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine." Indeed, in 2009, with little fanfare, they were able to carry out a similar manipulation of a Seqouia AVC Advantage e-voting system (as used across most of the state of New Jersey, for example). You can see that video demo here.

The team at Argonne has shared their demo video of the new Diebold Accuvote hack exclusively with The BRAD BLOG, as posted below. But please go check out the full details over at Salon (where we've embedded the video as well). The full details are chilling --- particularly as about 20% to 30% of U.S. voters are still set to use Diebold touch-screen systems, and others very similar to it, across the nation in the 2012 election cycle, no matter how many years The BRAD BLOG has been desperately trying to illustrate that these systems are simply antithetical to American democracy.

Among the states where voters will use these systems on Election Day in 2012, according to VerifiedVoting.org: Georgia, Maryland, Utah, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, Texas and many more.

Almost five years ago to the day, I broke the story of Princeton's landmark Diebold Virus Hack in another exclusive for Salon. So while I'm delighted to break the news of this new type of hack over there today, it's somewhat frustrating that it's even necessary at this point, as we head into yet another Presidential election cycle having changed so little despite all that we've learned. Nonetheless, please go check out my story over there today.

Beyond that, the video demonstration itself from Argonne, of the remote hack of a Diebold Accuvote touch-screen system follows below...

Just a friendly reminder. As originally posted on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)'s flickr stream last May...

So who are the "big spenders" again?

[Hat-tip David Roberts.]

UPDATE The original graphic we used above had been posted by Pelosi's office on 5/3/11, even though they had updated the graphic on 5/19/11. We had linked to the updated one, but had posted the older one here (which illustrates the same idea, though George W. Bush's increase to the debt was seen as 115% versus 86% in the update, and Barack Obama was responsible for increasing the debt by 16% versus 35% in the updated version, which is now posted above.) Thanks to longtime BRAD BLOG commenter Soul Rebel for catching the mistake!

Lee Fang at Think Progress offers devastating coverage in response to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)'s recent claim to The Street's Mallory Factor (video here) that those who pollute streams with benzene should be thrown in jail.

"I don’t want to pollute the water. I don’t want to pollute streams," said Paul, "If you dump benzene in the stream, I want you to go to jail."

Really, Senator? Are you calling for the billionaire Koch brothers --- likely two of your biggest and wealthiest fans --- to be thrown in jail then?

As Fang details, Koch Industries was indicted by the DoJ in 2000 for knowingly dumping "at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene in its liquid waste streams" at its Corpus Christi refinery, and for conspiring to cover it up in an attempt to deceive regulators.

After George W. Bush took office in 2001, however, "his Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped 88 counts against Koch for the benzene spill and cover-up" in exchange for a guilty plea to falsifying documents and a $20 million fine (a settlement from $350 million in potential fines.)

The Kochs made out pretty well in exchange for their $32,200 contribution to the 2000 Bush campaign. The job killing Koch brothers are making out even better under Barack Obama. But more on that later. [UPDATE: Those thoughts now here.]

Suffice to say, neither the Kochs, nor anybody who works for them, went to jail for "dump[ing] benzene in the stream," as Paul is calling for, even as he calls for doing away with even more environmental regulations in his remarks to The Street.

As we've been highlighting of late, the Republicans have been on a tear against clean air and water regulation by the EPA recently, and have shown themselves willing to partner with their various front groups in the media, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and with folks like the Koch brothers to simply make stuff up about such regulations "killing jobs", in their 2012 "mother of all wars" to retake the White House.

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

A nearly two-hour hearing in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights earlier this month (full video available here), carefully examined the partisan, multi-state effort by the billionaire Koch brothers-funded, Paul Weyrich co-founded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-fueled GOP effort to enact new state voting laws across the country.

The coordinated, nationwide GOP voter suppression effort was aptly described by Judith Browne Dianis, a civil rights litigator at The Advancement Project, and a witness in the second three-member panel, as "the largest legislative effort to roll back voting rights since the post-Reconstruction era."

"Our country has not seen such widespread attempts to disenfranchise voters as we have seen this year in more than a century. Inclusive democracy is under attack," she testified, while Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) described the "brazen" GOP attempts to undermine the right to vote.

Subcommittee Chair and Senate Majority Whip, Dick Durbin (D-IL) broke the new state voting laws into three major categories, and the discussions of each are worth covering here over two different articles. In Part 1 here, we'll cover the first category: Polling place Photo ID laws restricting the ability of lawfully registered voters to cast their ballot on Election Day. The hearing produced several remarkable face-offs, including between Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and long-time GOP "voter fraud" front man Hans von Spakovsky (cue James Bond villain music), as detailed below.

In Part 2, we will cover the discussion of the other two categories at the hearing --- draconian new restrictions on voter registration, and laws which significantly reduce early voting periods --- plus a very troubling event that "reactionaries" have planned for the 2012 election, according to Dianis' testimony [UPDATE: Part 2 is now posted here]...

Short of the serious concerns about election integrity in her race that Ernie Canning highlighted over the weekend, if Massachusetts' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren continues to be as effective as she is in this video over the next year, she blows her opponent, Republican Sen. Scott Brown (the favored candidate of Wall Street, receiving more money from hedge funds and venture capital firms than any other Senator), out of the water next November...

Other Dems running in 2012 would be wise to watch, and learn, from what Warren --- a political novice and, so far, original --- is doing here.

As WaPo's Greg Sargent (who pointed us towards this video) notes:

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The President fights back; the EPA doesn't --- for now, anyway; Shell Oil one step closer to drilling in the Arctic; Massive anti-nuke protests in Japan; PLUS: Australia's prime minister faces the global warming fight head on ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Clinton blasts Republicans on climate change denial; Poll: More Americans now believe world is warming; 3rd hottest summer globally; The Solyndra Timeline; Solyndra is the next 'Climategate'; Siemens quits nuclear industry; 'Gasland' wins Emmy; Are cosmic rays causing global warming? [No.]; Safety violations at ExxonMobil refinery; More shale well cement problems; China invests billions in Canada oil sands; Rising seas to wash out California tourism; China's crackdown on rare earth metals; New study links Gulf War vets illnesses to area of service; Missing global heat may hide in deep oceans; China closes solar panel plant after anti-pollution protests; America and oil: declining together? ... PLUS: Best way to convince deniers: Butter them up ...

In a lengthy piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, former Executive Editor, now opinion piece writer, Bill Keller attempted to come to terms with both his own, and his paper's, major failures during the lead-up and follow-through in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

While Keller eventually comes around to admitting that both he and the paper got it wrong (albeit with lots of justifications for the failures along the way) he continued to hedge one very crucial bet in just the fifth paragraph, as he wrote [emphasis ours]:

We have been attempting to contact Keller since Sunday, asking via both email and Twitter:

Today Keller replied, admitting that that part of his Sunday story --- a story about the Times' costly failure of getting the Iraq War wrong --- was wrong as well...

But, of course, Keller hadn't written that a connection between Iraq and 9/11 was "unproven," as he avers in his response above. He asserted, in no uncertain terms, as late as this past Sunday, a full 10 years since 9/11, in an article meant to come to terms with his paper's --- "the paper of record's" --- unspeakably costly inaccuracies, that Iraq had "almost nothing to do with 9/11," suggesting that they had, in fact, had some very small role in it.

There is, of course, no legitimate evidence of such a role, and both Keller and the New York Times should offer an immediate and clear and unhedging correction on that still-very-important point. (Hopefully, it will be a correction unlike the partial corrections they begrudgingly ended up publishing concerning their repeated misreporting on the phony James O'Keefe ACORN "pimp" hoax videos, after we'd spent many months proving to them that they'd gotten it entirely wrong and forcing them to finally offer correction.)

While I may have something else to share with you on this later tonight, for now, just a few very thoughts on today's somber 10th anniversary of 9/11. While my thoughts this afternoon are, naturally, with the families of those who lost their lives on 9/11, they are as much today with those exponentially many more families who have lost loved ones, needlessly, in this nation's childish and/or cynical and/or opportunistic and/or cowardly responses to that horrific day.

I am also thinking of those countless many --- a great number of whom also lost family members on both 9/11 and during our response --- who carried on with exceptional courageousness nonetheless during the course of our lost decade since. To those who were not cowed by the events of 9/11 --- and by our far more damaging responses to it --- I thank you today, again, for your selfless persistence in exercising your freedoms and liberties to do what is right, as opposed to what, no doubt, would have been far easier and far less costly on so many levels.

Beyond that (and beyond the additional thoughts, as noted, I may have later tonight), I suspect you've seen plenty in relation to the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 by now. So allow me to offer just a few short links to a few short and sweet articles or clips, all very much worth reading or watching, from over the last several weeks, as they offer a great deal about what now seems to matter most --- even as much of the nation's media choose instead to travel the very same road today as they did back then, and ever since...

• STEVE CLEMONS: "9/11 and One Measure of bin Laden's Success"

• GLENN GREENWALD: "The Decade's Biggest Scam"

• MSNBC: In regard to both items above, this clip exploring 9/11 as "good business...huge business," as from MSNBC's new documentary Day of Destruction, Decade of War ...

• SIBEL EDMONDS: "Answers in Absolute for 'Why 9/11?'"

• MSNBC: And in additional support of Edmonds' thoughts above, another clip from Day of Destruction, Decade of War, this one on the cynical, systematic, and criminal (if still shamelessly uncharged) use of tactics once known, and prosecuted by our country, as "torture"...

Never forget.