Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

HR-811 update: Contact was finally made with someone on the staff of the House Admin. Committee who knows the status of HR-811. The question asked concerned a deletion of language that was put into the bill during committee deliberation but was removed after the bill was voted out of committee. The specific language was the “Capuano Amendment” and concerned emergency paper ballots. The staff member reports that the language was removed from the bill due to some discussion by members of the committee. The language, or some facsimile, that “captures the intent of Mr. Holt and Mr. Capuano” will be reinserted into the bill by a manager’s amendment prior to the bill going to the floor. So, the bill voted on by members of the House of Representatives and passed out of committee is not the existing bill and no one knows what the real bill looks like at this time and no one knows what HR-811 will look like when it is finally sent to the floor for a vote. And Congress wonders why their popularity is less than that of the President; or do they care?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

The BRAD BLOG has learned this evening that source code and a check were sent to the state of California by ES&S. Readers may recall that as of last Thursday ES&S had not complied with Sec. of State Debra Bowen's demand for a copy of the source code used exclusively in Los Angeles County.

According to a Secretary of State spokesperson, they received a copy of the source code and a check to cover the expense for the state's "top-to-bottom" review. ES&S finally relented, and sent the code only after Bowen had demanded it be released from escrow as per state law.

Questions still remain and your intrepid correspondent will be following-up with the state.

Why did the code come from ES&S and not from Iron Mountain, Inc., the escrow agent? Is there something in the escrowed code that ES&S does not wish the state to see? How does the state know that the code they got from ES&S is the same code used to build the software running on the machines used in LA County?

Today Wired News' Kim Zetter reported on their "Threat Level" blog that Maryland Election Director, and long-time Diebold apologist, Linda Lamone has allowed her statements and picture to be used in new advertising brochures Diebold has produced to promote their Express Poll 5000 electronic poll books.

Zetter quotes Lamone:

Note Lamone's mention of being pleased during the general election.

As Zetter points out in her article, the machines that Lamone is speaking for failed spectacularly in Maryland during last September's Maryland primary election. The machines also failed in Georgia last July. It appears that Diebold was doing what seems to have become a common practice among the voting machine vendors, "Beta Testing" in a real election. While Diebold claimed that they fixed all of the problems found during the primaries, at least one official told Zetter that machines in at least one precinct crashed when a last name beginning with "Cur" was typed in.

And what about the conflict of interest of Lamone shilling for a company that the state is doing business with? Zetter goes on to report...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Brad wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. Then Greg Palast offered up a heartfelt apology on BRAD BLOG writing, "Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry." And now you can watch part of the infamous speech that will surely leave many readers teary eyed themselves. The part available at left is where Griffin denies knowing anything about vote caging, and references Palast --- though he refuses to mention him by name.

Of course, Griffin seems to have known what caging was, and had no similar problem naming names in the spreadsheet documents he sent to other Bush/Cheney and RNC operatives in an email with the subject line "Re: caging". The spreadsheet attachments contained lists of voters --- mostly minority voters, some serving over seas --- which they had planned to challenge at the polls in Florida during the 2004 election.

Thanks to TPMtv/Muckraker for the video. As well, they have done their own analysis of the Griffin caging lists in order to verify Palast's findings

Yes, "illegal". As we've been reporting for quite some time now. Also, in violation of several consent decrees, signed by the RNC during the 80's, that they would no longer target minority voters in these type of campaigns.

Guest Blogged by Joseph Cannon

As Des points out below, top Republicans are now plotting ways to remove Dick Cheney from office. The thinking is that a vacancy in the Veep's office could well provide a berth for one of the 2008 Republican contenders --- McCain or Thompson.

The strategy could work two ways, of course. Anyone who replaces Cheney will get Bush administration "cooties." It won't be easy to wash off the smell by November of 2008.

How to bell the cat? After Downing Street has some excellent suggestions. I have one of my own.

Call on your senators and congressional representatives and ask to have documents subpoenaed from Cheney's office. Which documents? It almost doesn't matter. Documents pertinent to the energy task force. Documents pertinent to the use of torture. Documents pertinent to the Niger forgeries. Anything will more or less do.

All of Cheney's staffers can be subpoenaed as well, on any number of issues. A Congressional investigation of Plame-gate. Haliburton contracts. The refusal to comply with the National Archives. Anything. Everything. All at once.

If Cheney or any of his underlings refuse to comply with a single subpoena --- and that's a very good bet --- he becomes instantly impeachable, on the same grounds that brought down Nixon. Cheney no longer has many friends in Congress. Nobody has his back.

If every person reading these words made the call to his or her House and Senate members, Cheney could well be history. First subpoena, then impeach. That's the plan, and it WILL work.

Click here to contact your Congress member...

UPDATE 6/27/07 11:15am PT: Breaking: AP reports subpeonas are served on Cheney and the White House...

Guest Blogged by DES from Atlanta, GA...

Sally Quinn at WaPo writes:

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The video includes highlights from John and Elizabeth Edwards's Tonight Show appearance last night. Elizabeth, who looked great and said she feels great, gave an impassioned response to a Leno question about the mixed reaction the Edwardses received from the media after deciding to continue on with the presidential campaign after her diagnosis with incurable breast cancer, stating at one point, "And honestly, people who have been in the same situation all do what we do. Just grab hold of life as hard as they can and do everything they can to make whatever days they've got left mean something."

On the lighter side, Leno questioned Elizabeth about whether she hangs out with "some of the other spouses like Michelle Obama or Bill Clinton" at campaign functions. John Edwards also garnered laughs by poking fun at his highly publicized $400 haircut.

Guest Blogged by Joseph Cannon

Larisa Alexandrovna draws our attention to a piece by noted reactionary Michelle Malkin. In her blog, Malkin publishes some photos of Iranian police brutalizing four men, and adds these comments:

As we'll see in a moment, Malkin hasn't quite told the truth about those photos. But even if we were to take her assertions at face value, Malkin has ignored what we may call the "Matthew 7:4 factor."...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today finds what amounts to three days worth of opinions, columns and editorials. Some voters in Georgia are using their state mandated voter ID cards for more than just voting. It seems that it has become a free piece of identification for cashing checks and some voters have more than one of the cards. Over half of the counties in Utah have passed resolutions against HR-811. They incorrectly state that the bill will cost the counties millions. In response to this at least one local activist incorrectly states that passage of HR-811 will save the county money by it’s use of a paper-based voting system. Nothing in the bill will force the county to use anything but voting machines with a different voter verified paper record printer. ...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

While BRAD BLOG has extensively covered the "Vote Caging" issue over the past two years, including Brad's post from the road today, the file would not be complete without this video clip of John Conyers (D-MI) questioning Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing last week. For more details on McNulty's testimony as well as an interesting exchange between Conyers and Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) at the end of the clip, see Margie Burns's June 21 BRAD BLOG post.

Blogged quickly by Brad Friedman from Alabama (with a laptop on my knee)...

McClatchy's excellent Greg Gordon reports that the DoJ had written a letter in support of vote caging by Republicans in Ohio in 2004...

As BRAD BLOG readers know, we've been reporting --- often far too exclusively --- on the Florida 2004 vote caging scheme by former GOP oppo-researcher turned Karl Rove assistant turned Arkansas US Attorney turned disgraced former US Attorney, Tim Griffin. As we're on the roll, we'll have to refer you to our "Vote Caging" category for our previous detailed coverage. Scroll through the articles on that page for much more background.

But here's a bit more from McClatchy's piece today...

Guest blogged by Arlen Parsa of The Daily Background

On January 10th, George W. Bush stood before the nation in a prime-time address and outlined his plan for a so-called "surge" of American troops into Iraq. The explicitly stated purpose of the "surge" was to lower sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, so that political progress could occur.

"The violence in Iraq --- particularly in Baghdad," Bush admitted, "overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made." The escalation's goal was to cut the level of violence, Bush said, later promising that "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home."

On May 2nd, Bush reiterated that the goal of his "surge" was to bring down the overall amount of sectarian violence in Iraq, saying "The definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down."

Most Americans now agree that the surge is not achieving its intended goal of lowering violence. A CBS/NYT poll in May found that 76% believed the "surge" was either making the situation in Iraq worse, or having no effect whatsoever. Despite the fact that all the "surged" troops are now in place in Baghdad, the second in command in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno recently conceded that 60% of Baghdad is still out of control.

In the face of a worsening situation in Iraq, military officials have now backed away from the original purpose of the surge-- decreasing the level of violence.

Guest blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

Beneficiary of yet another political outing, the Washington Post ran an article on Thursday June 21, 2007, titled “Political Hiring in Justice Division Probed,” strongly alleging further personnel atrocities committed in the DOJ by former Civil Rights Division administrator Bradley Schlozman.

Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater --- this is not a defense of Schlozman --- but regrettably all the allegations were made by unnamed sources. So who are the unnamed administration sources, and why are they engaging in this maneuver?

Here, along the lines of the "numbers" speech by Erin Brockovich as played by Julia Roberts, is the rundown:

Number of grafs, total, in the two-page article: 29. Number of named sources: 2. (See below.) Number of items attributed to unnamed sources: at least 17. Number of unnamed sources, total: uncertain, but ranging from at least 6 to perhaps at most 16.
0
Graf 2: “ . . . according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.”

Graf 3: “In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, . . .”

Graf 4: “That account was challenged by six officials in the division who said in interviews that they either overheard him . . .”

Graf 14: “Appellate lawyers said that before Schlozman arrived, the small staff enjoyed a collegial work environment . . .”

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

UPDATE: Because of a technical glitch we are in the process of correcting, the videos in this post cannot be viewed in Firefox. In the meantime, suitable alternatives include Internet Explorer, Safari, Ominweb and Opera.

UPDATE: Problem fixed. Video should now work fine in Firefox et al.

Roger Simon takes Mitt Romney to task on Meet The Press this morning for waffling on the issue of pardons. Romney, who never issued a pardon while serving as Governor of Massachusetts out of respect for jury verdicts, now thinks that Scooter Libby is deserving of a pardon from the current White House occupant. As Simon wrote in his syndicated column this week:

Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon

From Wikipedia, which cites the Chicago Sun-Times:

The family also insists that Mary isn't gay, she's ghee.

This morning, everyone's talking about this Washington Post profile, which contains the priceless tale of a quietly chuckling Dick Cheney telling Dan Quayle that 43's veep ain't gonna do the traditional funerals-and-fundraisers thang. That was for lesser Vice Presidents.

The Post article plays it cute, in that it begins by denying that Dick is the power behind the throne, and then goes on to prove that very point. Here's one for the 9/11 researchers:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Bush done more in the way of funerals-and-fundraisers than has Tricky Dick II?