In what TPM's Eric Kleefeld describes as "a truly brutal moment, one that could undermine the credibility of Norm Coleman's whole case," the Republican fomer Senator's political director was called to testify about doctored evidence, as revealed by Al Franken's attorneys last week, which they'd submitted in their U.S. Senate election contest against the apparent-winner in Minnesota.

By the end of the day today, the first official day of the trial, the 3-judge panel threw out the tainted evidence --- photocopies of rejected absentee ballots where the Coleman camp had either removed written comments from election officials as to why they were rejected, or left in text added by the campaign itself --- and allowed Coleman's team to subpoena and then re-submit the actual ballot envelopes.

Pretty nice of them, considering they could have fined Coleman and/or struck the claim entirely, as Kleefeld notes in his coverage this afternoon.

Well, now, this could get interesting. Just in from Conyers' office...

Monday, January 26, 2009

Conyers Subpoenas Karl Rove: "It's Time to Talk"

(Washington, D.C.) --- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. issued a subpoena to Karl Rove requiring him to testify regarding his role in the Bush Administration's politicization of the Department of Justice, including the US Attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The subpoena was issued pursuant to authority granted in H.R. 5 (111th Congress), and calls for Mr. Rove to appear at deposition on Monday, February 2, 2009. Mr. Rove has previously refused to appear in response to a Judiciary Committee subpoena, claiming that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. That "absolute immunity" position was supported by then-President Bush, but it has been rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates and President Obama has previously dismissed the claim as "completely misguided."

"I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today's action is an important step along the way," said Mr. Conyers. Noting that the change in administration may impact the legal arguments available to Mr. Rove in this long-running dispute, Mr. Conyers added "Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk."

A copy of the subpoena is attached.

Here's the subpoena [PDF]...

UPDATE 1/27/09: Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, attempts to put the ball in Obama's court. As we noted originally, this is gonna get very interesting...

UPDATE 1/28/09: The 'liberal' New York Times hate Bush and Rove so much they found this item notable enough to...bury on page 23. Details...

UPDATE 1/29/09: Rove tells Bill O'Reilly he won't answer the subpoena. Video, details...

UPDATE 1/30/09: House Judiciary's Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) says Rove will either testify or go to jail. (Also, hearing date postponed to Feb. 23rd) Video, details...

Looks like it'll be back to Wingnut Welfare and Fox "News" (same thing) for the constantly-wrong "mainstream" propagandist Bill Kristol, whose column in the New York Times today, ends with a singular ed note: "This is William Kristol’s last column."

Well, what took ya so long NYTimes?! Kristol's laughable presence ends just over a year after it ignominiously began, and not a moment too soon.

As coincidence would have it, I had 90% of a column written on Kristol's penultimate column last week (when we didn't know it was his penultimate), which I eventually abandoned, for no particularly good reason, after getting distracted by some other story at the time.

So, for history's sake --- and a farewell gift --- my previously unpublished smack-down of the Times' now-formerly embarrassing nattering nabob follows...

Perhaps it's always been like this. Perhaps the misapprehension has been mine that op-ed writers offered opinion and editorial, as opposed to out-and-out propaganda. But just in case I'm right, and op-eds ought to represent independent, if often strongly opinionated position which may be more aligned with one party or political ideology than another, I'll just have to ask again: why the hell is disgraced Bush-administration mouthpiece, hack, apologist, Bill Kristol still allowed a weekly slot to sully the already-far-too-sullied pages of "the paper of record"?...

Advanced Voting Solutions sold Northampton Co Pennsylvania faulty voting machines. The county took the vendor to court and won a default decision. Later this month the court will decide how much the county will be awarded in the law suit. The problem is that owner Howard Van Pelt and AVS have disappeared. They very quietly went out of business and stuck the county, and others, with a warehouse full of garbage. How much longer are the other voting machines vendors going to be able to stay in business? New Jersey is now rethinking their move to install vvpat printers on the state’s DREs because of the economy. That has to be a blow to Sequoia especially when you consider that the company went into debt in order for the officers to keep the company from being purchased by Hart Intercivic....

From Scott Horton at Harper's...

In related news, top Congressional Democrats, including Senators Reid, Levin and Whitehouse, as well as Representatives Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers have all indicated recently, in various forms, interest in investigations and/or accountability for various Bush crimes, which, reports Jason Leopold at Public Record, amounts to a growing consensus among Dems to approve a probe into torture allegations, and perhaps more.

UPDATE 1/26/09: In an interview with CNN, Nowak said he believes there is already enough evidence to prosecute fomer SecDef Don Rumsfeld:

RAW STORY has the video of the CNN interview with Nowak...

Now that the recent general election is completed some counties are now in the process of determining how much that election cost the taxpayers. One Colorado county reports a cost of $36.57 per vote cast. That is an amazing amount especially when much of that cost can be directly attributed to the type of voting system a county is using and the amount of “assistance” the county buys from the vendors....

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!)

Tea leaves?...

From this evenings “Featured” article: “The recount of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race gives us an opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of precinct-count optical-scan voting. Though there have been contentious disputes over which absentee ballot envelopes to open, the core technology for scanning ballots has proved to be extremely accurate.”...

From TPM:

We are without words. Coleman's attorney "speculated that there may have been a photocopying problem." Sparse details in the rest of the TPM piece on this, but we'll see if we can learn anything further.

TPM's Eric Kleefeld also reports, in related articles, that former Sen. Norm Coleman's attorney was "openly heckled" by one of the judges on the three-judge panel --- this one, a Republican appointee.

And, in other news from Minnesota's U.S. Senate race election contest, apparent-winner Al Franken's bid to have the entire case dismissed was denied yesterday, while Coleman's hopes of receiving permission from the three-judge panel to inspect all ballots and voter rolls (in their search for votes, and hopes of delaying the formal beginning of the trial next Monday) was similarly denied.

Also, Coleman may be getting used to the fact that it looks like he's not going back to D.C.. He's accepted a "temporary" job as "a strategic adviser to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC)."

By the way, Franken seems constantly referred to as "comedian Al Franken" in mainstream news reports. Setting aside that he was most-frequently a radio talk show host for years, in addition to the author of several books, we can't recall any other candidate for office so consistently being referred to by their former occupation. Not that there's a bias in the corporate media in this matter or anything, just ask strategic adviser Norm Coleman.

UPDATE 1/26/09: The court tosses Coleman's "doctored evidence" on the first official day of the trial. Details now here...

Politico offers more filth than we can possibly shake our stick at...

Later in the article, Reid discusses what will be "pumped into the economy" and Pelosi notes "the package...could become even larger."

We'd say it's just us, and our own juvenile mind, but Colbert noticed a similar pattern himself in yesterday's news coverage of the private second swearing in of President Obama...

The photo above was taken on Jan 20th, 2009. President Obama has since signed an Executive Order calling for the closure of Gitmo within a year.

If I hear one more Bush Legacy con-artist --- or worse, supposed Progressives who brainlessly buy into the masterstroke of propaganda --- state that "Bush kept us safe" or "There have been no terror attacks on American soil since 9/11," I think I may shoot someone, or poison them with anthrax --- just to keep them safe.

To be clear, there were deadly terror attacks --- and on American soil! --- since 9/11.

5 people were killed and 17 other were injured in the 2001 anthrax attacks in what was the most deadly use of lethal bioterrorism on American soil in this nation's history. Many of those multiple terror attacks included notes intended to signal that they were attacks by supporters of Islamic jihadists.

Additionally, in October 2002, for three weeks, D.C. and environs were ground to a panicked stand-still as sniper attacks by a terrorist from the Nation of Islam went on for three weeks, killing 10 people and injuring 3 at 15 different sites throughout the Beltway.

Both the Anthrax Attacks and the Beltway Sniper Attacks were terrorist attacks on Americans, on American soil, following 9/11.

As to Bush having kept us safe beyond the 15 killed and 20 injured in the dozens of terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 as mentioned above, to date 4,230 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. Additionally, 172 American civilian contractors were also killed in the unnecessary, optional war on a country which had nothing to do with 9/11. Moreover, tens of thousands of U.S. troops were permanently injured in the conflict.

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, under Bush's optional deployment, far exceeds, by more than one thousand, the number of American citizens killed on 9/11.

Counting only the dead (and only the American dead, in this case, since estimates of violent Iraqi civilian fatalities during the war are currently estimated to be anywhere from a conservative 150,000 to more than 1,000,000) that totals 4,245 Americans killed by terrorists, or in optional conflicts with terrorists, since 9/11.

"Bush kept us safe"?

Since 9/11, we could have had 14 different massive domestic terrorist bombings, in 14 different major U.S. cities, kill 300 Americans in each attack, and still had fewer Americans killed by terrorists since 9/11 than we have under the bold and courageous leadership of George W. Bush.

None of the above refers to the likely millions of individuals across the world now far more interested in bringing us harm than they were prior to 9/11, but other than that, yeah, "Bush kept us safe".

Idiots.

This will be the last plea for help for awhile. We don’t like doing it and I’m sure you don’t like getting the requests. We know times are tough and probably not going to get much better for awhile. A small donation of even $15 will help. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here: ...

Though the clemency granted by George W. Bush to the criminal I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for his part in illegally covering up the investigation into the unprecedented White House outing of a covert CIA asset, was reprehensible, Bush showed admirable restraint in his issuing of Presidential pardons on his way out the door.

There! Never let it be said we couldn't come up with something positive to say about his reign! Took us eight years, but there ya go. Even a broken clock is right at least once every eight years.

By way of underscoring his nearly once-in-a-lifetime apparently (accidentally?) good judgment, it's worth noting that many of Bush's supporters (such that there still are any) are pissed off that he hadn't issued a full pardon for Libby before leaving:

Waytago, Decider! You finally did something right!