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This is just too hilarious!

Over the weekend religious activists met somewhere in Texas to try and agree upon a "conservative" non-Romney to coalesce behind in hopes of stopping the former Massachusetts Governor's "inevitable" GOP nomination. After three ballots, reportedly, the group of some 150 religious activists finally agreed to throw their support behind Rick Santorum.

Or did they?

According to a supposedly "legitimate" rightwing news outlet today, the evangelical protestant backers of Newt Gingrich are now accusing the Catholic supporters of Santorum of election fraud and actual voter fraud!

If they did, it would hardly be the first instance of actual election fraud in the GOP camp to rear its ugly head during the Republican primary process to date...

How out of touch are some in Congress? This out of touch...

In the fight against the federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) working it's way through Congress --- a bill with bi-partisan support, but opposed by many in the Internet community who charge that it will result in government censorship and the dampening of free speech --- the hacktivist collective Anonymous has launched "Operation Hiroshima" against governmental and corporate supporters of the bill.

The group has now posted some personal information of Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes and Viacom/CBS' Sumner Redstone online, and several lawmakers and their aides have also become targets of the worldwide citizens brigade of "outlaw" hackers.

So, here comes the "out of touch" part. As David Ferguson at RAW STORY highlights [emphasis ours]:

Sigh...

[UPDATED mid-story with screenshots from True's original Facebook postings of his recorded results on caucus night, and UPDATED AGAIN at bottom with the affidavit True has filed, and a few additional details from GOP officials and elsewhere on the current status of results. UPDATED YET AGAIN at bottom after we spoke at length with True late this afternoon and after GOP county chair confirms True's numbers.]

Thanks to the transparent, open counting process at Tuesday's night's Iowa GOP Caucuses, and a Ron Paul supporter who was paying close attention to the results, we may now be learning that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, actually won the "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa Caucuses this week.

According to a report tonight from television station KCCI NewsChannel 8 in Des Moines, Edward True, a supporter of Paul's says he participated in the counting at the Washington Wells caucus in Appanoose County and wrote down the results he witnessed there on a piece of paper which he posted to Facebook that night. Later, in comparing his totals to the precinct results made available on the Iowa GOP website [CSV version here], he noticed that Romney is shown as receiving 22 votes at that precinct, rather than the 2 that True recorded him as receiving that night at the caucus.

If True is correct, and if no other anomalies are discovered in the coming days, it would mean that Santorum will have won the Iowa Caucuses by 12 votes, rather than lost it to Romney by 8, as reported by the GOP in the early morning hours on Wednesday...

I've been busy doing a lot of media and a lot of digging today. So until I can get free to follow up here on some Iowa Caucus issues, here's my latest appearance on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, from last night...

Last week, the Rachel Maddow Show picked up on a story we'd first reported here, concerning the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich's massive "voter fraud" in the state of Virginia, as compared to what the GOP and Fox "News" and even Gingrich himself had been decrying as massive "voter fraud" when it was carried out by ACORN. When Gingrich did the same thing --- but far worse --- he called it "just a mistake."

Last night, as her top story, Maddow picked up on our coverage of the indescribable hypocrisy of the Iowa GOP, which sets it's very own rules for the Iowa Caucuses tonight and, in doing so, chose to not require Photo ID restrictions on voters for either voting or registering to vote at the caucus on the same night.

As we originally noted last week, while the GOP has long claimed disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions are necessary to stop rampant "voter fraud" during elections in which Democrats will be participating, apparently they have no such concerns about their own elections. Even when they are allowed to set all of the rules for them. Or, more accurately, they don't wish to disenfranchise their very own voters, while they do hope to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters in normal elections. It's also worth highlighting that they have fought against allowing same day registration and voting in regular elections as well, while having no problem with it here in the Iowa GOP caucuses.

Maddow was as amused by it all as we were. Here's her coverage from last night. Also, read on for details on one point of information that her guest, Doug Heye, former RNC Communications Director and current Sr. Advisor to the Iowa GOP, seems to have gotten blatantly wrong during his interview with Maddow...at least according to our confirmed reporting...

Heye claims in the video above that while no Photo ID is required for voting at the IA caucuses, it will be required for folks who wish to first register and then vote at the caucus sites tonight. His assertions is a direct contradiction of both information posted by the Iowa GOP itself on its own caucus website, as well as info on the website of Iowa's Republican Sec. of State Matt Schultz. Moreover, it also contradicts the information that his office confirmed to me when I called them last week before reporting my original story...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 12 simple steps for going green in '12; Iran could disrupt but not halt oil traffic in strait; Oil giant Chesapeake behind fracking 'land grab'; "People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food"; Whistleblower: Keystone XL a potential “disaster”; US shale gas reserves wildly overestimated; 'Pay-As-You-Go Solar' for India ... PLUS: Yes, you can have 24-hour solar energy, even after the sun goes down ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Votes in next Tuesday's Republican caucuses in Iowa will be cast on paper ballots and hand counted publicly at each and every caucus site, according to a report late this week from Politico's Jonathan Martin. In other words, Republicans will be relying on "Democracy's Gold Standard" when it comes to casting and counting ballots in their own election, in which they set all of the rules, even if they will not allow the same standards to be applied to elections in which Democrats will take part.

Martin's story should come as great news for Election Integrity advocates and, in particular, Ron Paul supporters who have very good reason to be concerned about the process after witnessing --- first-hand and on video-tape --- blatant voter fraud carried out by Mitt Romney supporters in years past. The news is also welcome in light of a recent report suggesting the GOP would be counting votes in secret to avoid a purported "threat" by the hacktivist group Anonymous to disrupt next week's caucuses.

Though the article, if accurate, is wonderful news, it underscores, yet again, the Republican Party's almost indescribable hypocrisy when it comes to elections. Over the years, as we have detailed on hundreds (if not thousands) of pages at The BRAD BLOG, Republicans have eschewed both paper ballots and their public hand-counting at the polling place, insisting that computer cast and counted "ballots" are far more reliable than anything human beings, with their own hands and eyeballs, are able to do themselves with everyone in the public watching. (That is, except in cases where they are challenging the computer-tabulated results of an election, in which case they insist, appropriately, on publicly hand-counted paper ballots.)

Moreover, as we reported on Wednesday, even though the GOP has worked overtime, since coming to absolute power in many states around the nation during the 2010 elections, to institute polling place Photo ID restriction laws for elections in which Democrats will take part (and be disproportionately disenfranchised by they), when Republicans are able to create all of their very own rules for their very own elections --- as is the case with the Iowa Caucuses --- they require absolutely no Photo ID for any voter, even those registering as Republican for the first time and voting on the very same day (something they also have long fought against allowing everywhere else!)...

The blatant good-for-me-but-not-for-thee hypocrisy, even for this jaded independent journalist, after this many years of covering such issues, is remarkable..

The BRAD BLOG was the first to report that the former disgraced Speaker of the House turned Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had admitted to committing massive "voter fraud" --- thousands of cases --- in his failed attempt to qualify for the Republican Presidential Primary ballot in his home state of Virginia.

Our report on Wednesday came just minutes after Gingrich's caught-on-video admission to a voter in Iowa that his campaign had "hired somebody who turned in false signatures."

"Oh, it was just a mistake," the one-time front-runner for the GOP nomination claimed. "We turned in 11,100 — we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who frankly committed fraud."

To our knowledge, however, Gingrich has yet to divulge the identify of the "one guy" who "frankly committed fraud" to law enforcement officials.

We noted that by the same (completely disingenuous) standards that the GOP and its cable TV arm, Fox "News", has long applied, for years, to the now-defunct community organization ACORN (which never committed any actual "voter fraud" or even "voter registration fraud", though a few of its workers committed the later, as discovered by ACORN themselves who promptly turned them into authorities), Gingrich was, himself, the purveyor of "massive voter fraud".

Last night, while guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show (listen to top of Hour 1), we even encouraged folks to contact the special email address that Fox "News" long ago set up for reporting such instances of "voter fraud" at VoterFraud@FoxNews.com to let them know about this massive destruction of "the fabric of democracy" as then GOP Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain hypocritically described it in 2008.

And now it looks like Chris Hayes, filling in on MSNBC for Rachel Maddow last night, picked up --- "from the Department of Shameless Schadenfreude" --- on the same theme, pointing out that Gingrich himself had previously slammed ACORN in a 2009 op-ed, in which he falsely declared that "ACORN has a long history of engaging in voter fraud," due to the exact same thing Gingrich now refers to as little more than "just a mistake". (Ironically enough, in that piece, Gingrich used the fraudulent ACORN "Pimp" Hoax video tapes created by James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart as the basis for his entire op-ed lie.)

Here's the short video from MSNBC last night, and a few more words to follow detailing how what Gingrich Campaign did was far worse than anything ACORN was ever found to have done...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives from tonight posted below!]

We're back again tonight (and tomorrow night) guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show as the end of the hellish year draws near and the next hellish year will soon begin. LOTS to discuss tonight, so hope you'll tune in!

We're BradCasting again LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• THE GOP LOVES VOTER FRAUD! And tonight, I'll prove it! With lots of "fraud" news to cover from the caucuses of Iowa to the primary ballots of Virginia and beyond!
• OCCUPYING FOR ACCOUNTABILITY I'll be joined in studio by several OccupyLA'ers who will share their stories of horrific treatment at the hands of the LAPD, as we try to bring some accountability. Also will speak with the great independent citizen journalist/web-streamer Spencer "OakFoSho" Mills on his quest for accountability for LAPD Officer Escamilla.
• PLUS! More than I have time to mention here, and everything else that's on your minds as the 2012 circus is about to begin to begin, via your calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or at WhiteRose Society or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: A whole lotta show in three short hours! Now you can listen to the whole thing in about an hour and half in the commercial-free audio archives posted below. I believe that you'll find it well worth the time! Money back if not! (And see ya tomorrow night!)...

My appearance last night on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann was a round-up of a bunch of the latest voting news, from the DoJ's rejection of South Carolina's Photo ID restriction, to Newt's failure to get enough signatures to make it onto the VA Primary ballot, to the 93-year old woman who cleaned the TN state capitol for decades being told she may not be able to vote with her expired state ID, to the U.S. EAC finding, finally, that hackable ES&S paper ballot op-scan computers fail to count some votes without notice to anybody...

If the same standards are applied to Newt Gingrich as have, for years, been applied to the now-defunct ACORN organization by both Republicans and their media arm, Fox "News", then it seems Newt Gingrich's campaign has committed thousands of acts of voter fraud.

As CNN and TPM are reporting right now:

Of course, there is no evidence that any vote has ever been fraudulently cast in any election in any state at any time via an improper registration by an ACORN worker. Moreover, virtually every fraudulent registration that came in via an ACORN worker was discovered and reported by ACORN themselves to authorities, since the group had imposed stringent practices to keep workers from defrauding them, which was the case in the few instances where it happened.

Nonetheless, that never stopped the liars and opportunists in the Republican/Fox "News" Party from using such instances to falsely assert that ACORN was committing massive voter fraud.

By those standards then --- and here, the Gingrich campaign didn't even bother to authenticate the signatures, apparently, as ACORN did --- the Gingrich campaign is the first out of the block to commit massive voter fraud in the 2012 election.

We'll hope that the GOP, Fox and their stooges and chumps at places like Andy Brietbart's "Big" websites will call for the Dept. of Justice to investigate, prosecute and defund the Newt Gingrinch campaign immediately in light of this disturbing news that Gingrich himself is heading up a massive voter fraud organization.

UPDATE 12/30/11: The Rachel Maddow Show picks up on the Newt/ACORN hypocrisy as well, describing the news as an item "from the Department of Shameless Schadenfreude". Details/video now here...