I'm in this short video --- just out tonight from John Wellington Ennis, filmmaker of one of my favorite Election Integrity documentaries, Free For All: One Dude's Quest to Save Democracy and the forthcoming Pay to Play: Democracy’s High Stakes --- but don't let that keep you from watching it. It's very good and has a bunch of other folks in it who are really smart.

Ennis, who is also one of the founders of the very important Video the Vote project, has a way of making difficult ideas easy to understand and entertaining to watch. He does so again here...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below! Enjoy! I did! - BF]

We're back guest hosting the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show once again tonight as Mike and Kathy take another rare night off.

As usual, we're BradCasting LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from 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:

• KURT EICHENWALD, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and former reporter for The New York Times on his bombshell NYTimes report this week detailing months of classified briefings given by the CIA to the Bush Administration, warning about an attack by al-Qaeda long prior to 9/11 and on his new book, 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.
• STEPHANIE SINGER, former Election Integrity advocate with VotePA.us, now the Chair of the Philadelphia City Election Commission on yesterday's state Supreme Court hearing on the new GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restrictions which could stand to disenfranchise nearly a million otherwise-eligible voters in the "Birthplace of Liberty" this November.
• DANA SIEGELMAN, daughter of former AL Gov. Don Siegelman who has organized a Presidential pardon campaign for her father, who reported back to federal prison last Tuesday, after his political prosecution at the hands of Karl Rove for something that has never been a crime before in this country. We'll also discuss her bizarre meeting with Karl Rove at last week's RNC, which she guest blogged about earlier this week at The BRAD BLOG.
• PLUS! Breaking news out of WI, the Middle East and much much more in an incredibly busy news week! Along with your phone calls on all of the above 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 our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (tell it your from "Minnesota" when asked!) Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Holy cow! Was that a crazy, busy, insane, fast moving show! TONS of breaking news and some great guests. Check all the ad-free archives out below! And read the chat room archives along with it if ya like. Good luck! I need a nap...

Today, in a courtroom in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held a hearing to determine whether Republican Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson was correct in his verdict [PDF] last month when he stunned plaintiffs by upholding the state GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction and refusing the ACLU/Advancement Project's motion for a temporary injunction before this November's Presidential Election.

The voting rights groups are challenging the law on behalf of eight, mostly elderly, plaintiffs plus the League of Women Voters of PA and the NAACP and other civil rights groups, as a violation of the state Constitution's guaranteed right to vote. Last week, The BRAD BLOG's Ernie Canning detailed their powerful appellant's brief, arguing that Simpson erred in his ruling.

The plaintiffs had originally predicted a "slam dunk" victory in the lower court case, given the remarkably poor presentation offered by the Commonwealth, and the myriad of evidence presented in their favor, showing that some 1.6 million otherwise eligible voters could be disenfranchised this November, in addition to the state's own admission before the trial began that the Commonwealth was unaware of any "investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania" and that no "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law."

So today's hearing was key and, according to The Nation's Ari Berman, was played out before "a packed, standing room only courtroom."

While the state Supreme Court currently consists of three Democrats and three Republicans (the fourth Republican judge on the bench is currently suspended, pending a corruption investigation), a split verdict would mean the lower court's decision to allow the GOP's restriction on voting would stand.

But there were hints today that at least one Republican judge may be skeptical about the state's claims that nobody need be disenfranchised by the GOP-enacted law which would take effect, for the first time, in the November Presidential election, just 54 days from now...

There are so many terrible, voter-suppressing Secretaries of State at work this year, actively trying to undermine democracy in the U.S. on behalf of the Republican Party, it's been difficult to adequately cover them all. One who has largely managed to escape our wrath on these pages --- thanks to his horrible colleagues in places like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania keeping us so busy --- is Colorado's Sec. of State Scott Gessler.

Think Progress helps us to slightly make up for our failing today...

Of course, we don't know how many, if any, of those 141 people, out of Colorado's 3.5 million registered voters [PDF] are actually non-citizens, but it's good to know that Gessler is spending time and state resources looking out for them by risking the removal of thousands of voters from the rolls to protect against the long-shot possibility that 141 of them may (but likely won't) cast illegal votes.

The story in CO is very similar to the one earlier this year in FL, where Gov. Rick Scott and Sec. of State Ken Detzner attempted an identical and similarly failed plan to remove so-called "non-citizen voters" from the rolls.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the state of Texas are also unhappy, because the Rule of Law keeps keeping them from disenfranchising voters through discriminatory Congressional redistricting maps and discriminatory polling place Photo ID restriction laws.

So maybe the old "dead voters on the rolls" gambit will work to keep some of those pesky voters from being able to cast their legal votes this year in Texas! Ya know, the same gambit that failed so spectacularly in South Carolina earlier this year when hundreds of supposedly "dead voters" had the temerity to, ya know, be alive.

Still, thousands upon thousands of registered voters die each and every year, in almost all 50 states, and very very few of them have the courtesy to call the County Clerk afterwards to inform them that they have died and should be removed from the voting rolls. But, no worries! Texas Republicans are on the case in the Lone Star State!...

CNBC's Mad Money host, Jim Cramer, tweeted the following earlier today...

I have a problem. My dad, a vet, won't be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can't prove his citizenship.

— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) September 11, 2012

Cramer's father, however, is hardly alone. Some 1.6 million otherwise eligible voters in the state of Pennsylvania --- many of them elderly, minorities, students and the poor --- may be unable to vote this November under the state's GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction law, unless the absurd ruling of Commonwealth Judge Robert E. Simpson is overturned on appeal, or unless the U.S. Dept. of Justice finally decides to file a federal challenge that successfully blocks the state's completely unnecessary law as violation of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.

But Cramer's father can take heart. Scott Keyes at Think Progress reports: "A House Democratic Twitter account responded to Cramer with a promise that Rep. Jim [*Bob] Brady (D-PA), who represents part of Philadelphia, would "personally see to it that your dad gets the necessary ID and transportation to vote."

See? The new Republican law won't actually disenfranchise anybody! All you need to do is make sure you have a family member host a popular TV show, and your problem will be solved when a U.S. Congressman notices and promises to intervene. Democracy saved!

By the way, the ruling by the Commonwealth Court Judge who upheld the voter suppression law recently, may be even more absurd than originally believed or as detailed by The BRAD BLOG's legal analyst Ernie Canning upon appeal. As Nicole Flatow explains, the law that Judge Simpson relied on to support his ruling was an 1869 case, Patterson v. Barlow, in which the majority warned of "rogues", "strumpets" and "wandering Arabs" who, it was feared, might commit voter fraud in Philadelphia that year.

Even back then, as the dissenting opinion in the 143-year old case reveals, the minority Justices were concerned "that among the barriers so ingeniously contrived to prevent [voter fraud], the defeat of the duly qualified voters must inevitably occur."

The dissenters went on to offer advice that would be useful today to those concerned about actual voter fraud (versus the Republicans who instituted today's Photo ID restrictions, solely to keep largely Democratic-leaning voters from casting their legal vote at all):

* CORRECTION: It appears that ThinkProgress' Scott Keyes misstated the first name of the PA Congressman who has promised to help Cramer's father get a Photo ID to vote. PA Election Integrity advocate Marybeth Kuznik of VotePA.us writes in with this correction: "The Democratic Rep in PA-1 (part of Philly) is Bob Brady. I guess he goes by Robert Brady officially, but everyone in the state calls him Bob. He's a very powerful Democratic Rep in PA (head of the Philadelphia Caucus in the PA Democratic State Committee) and, as you may know, is Minority Chair of the U.S. House Admin Committee, so he is a gatekeeper on anything regarding voting. There is no Jim Brady in the PA Delegation." We've corrected the Congressman's first name in the article above.

There is much, much more in-between our cuts here, including a storyline involving a hacking scandal that mirrors Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp's, but at the core of the recent Season 1 finale of HBO's "must-see" Aaron Sorkin series The Newsroom, was the nationwide Republican voter suppression effort.

Specifically, the finale centers around the GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction laws that may serve to keep tens of thousands, including 96-year old Tennessee resident Dorothy Cooper (who The BRAD BLOG reported on last year) from being able to cast her vote this year, even after she's been legally voting there for 75 years without a problem --- even during the Jim Crow era in the South.

Is Sorkin reading The BRAD BLOG? Among other evidence throughout the season that suggests as much, one character, as you'll hear in the clip below, charges, as we often have, that this issue deserves much greater prominence in the corporate mainstream media. In regard Cooper and the spate of Republican voter suppression laws that may well determine the outcome of this year's elections, the character demands to know: "I wanna know why I don't see it on the news?!...Why isn't this the first story on the news every night?!"...

(For much more of the news monologue by Will Macavoy (Jeff Daniels) on Republicans and the Tea Party in this particular episode, see this version which has received almost 2 million views on YouTube, and includes his entire speech, though it lacks the key hospital scene seen above.)

When we first wrote about The Newsroom in July after its premiere, we suggested that the show was worth subscribing to HBO for, all on its own. While it continues to be flawed in some respects --- most notably in some of its soap opera-ish elements, and some of the casting --- it is still absolutely must-see TV in our opinion.

The show's focus on what it might look like if a mainstream corporate media outlet actually decided to focus on covering the actual news that the nation needs to become a more informed electorate --- exposing the many Breitbartian scams of Fox "News" and today's GOP and the Koch Brothers and their astroturf Tea Party along the way, using real breaking news events and footage along the way --- could well, as we wrote at the time, "change the way actual news is reported in this nation." There is even evidence, perhaps, that it may have even already done so, to an extent.

Though the first season is now over, the show has been renewed for Season 2. In the meantime, all of the episodes are available to HBO subscribers via On Demand and HBO GO, so it's still well worth jumping into from the start (the first episode is available to all here), before the next season begins.

"Do you really want to live in a country where one party is so desperate to win the White House that they go around trying to make it harder for people to vote if they’re people of color, poor people or first generation immigrants?," Bill Clinton asked rhetorically on Tuesday night during an event organized by the Arkansas Democratic Party.

In what The Nation's Ari Berman highlighted as a possible "preview" of the former President's remarks tonight in Charlotte, where he'll be headlining at the DNC, Clinton savaged the Republican efforts, particularly in Pennsylvania and Ohio, to suppress the Democratic vote:

Berman goes on to note that Clinton offered similar sentiments during a speech he made last year, when he decried the "Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today":

In last year's speech, a clip of which we'll post again below, Clinton said:

Will Clinton offer similar sentiments tonight during his speech in Charlotte?

UPDATE 9:10pm PT: In fact, Clinton did give a shout out against GOP voter suppression during his rousing convention speech tonight: "If you want ever American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority, and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama!"

The short clip from President Bill Clinton's 7/6/2011 speech to student voters, in which he slammed Republicans for their voter suppression efforts follows below.

The petitioners challenging the Republican polling place Photo ID restriction law as a violation of the state Constitution in Pennsylvania, have filed their appeal to the state's Supreme Court, after being caught off-guard by a surprising and stinging defeat at the hands of a Republican Commonwealth Judge last month.

In their 68-page Pennsylvania Supreme Court brief [PDF], the petitioners in Applewhite vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania set forth a compelling legal case to demonstrate the need for a preliminary injunction in advance of the November 2012 President Election in order to prevent what they describe as the potential disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of lawfully registered voters.

The brief does much more than simply urge that Commonwealth Judge Robert E. Simpson, erred in applying the federal "minimum scrutiny" standard instead of subjecting Photo ID to "strict scrutiny" under state law because, they argue, it threatens to deprive hundreds of thousands of Keystone State citizens of a fundamental right to vote. The brief lays bare many of the GOP myths about the purpose of polling place Photo ID restrictions, while demonstrating why the GOP-enacted Pennsylvania law would not qualify as constitutional even under the less demanding test laid down by six of the U.S. Supreme Court's nine Justices in Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections, their 2008 decision approving Indiana's version of a similar restriction on voting in that state...

Following on the U.S. Dept. of Justice finding last March that the Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction law in Texas was discriminatory, in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act (VRA), a three-judge U.S. District Court panel has again blocked the law from being implemented.

The decision by the federal panel, which included one judge appointed by George W. Bush, was unanimous.

Texas had appealed the DoJ decision earlier this year, seeking a declaratory judgment from the court, after the federal agency had found the state had not met its "burden of showing that a submitted change [to an election law] has neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect," under Section 5 of the VRA, which requires preclearance for new election laws in 16 different U.S. jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. The Lone Star State is one of those jurisdictions.

The DoJ had determined [PDF] that, based on the state's own statistics, the law would have disproportionately disenfranchised registered Hispanic voters in the state. The found that registered Hispanics are anywhere from 46% to 120% more likely than non-Hispanics to lack the type of state-issued Photo ID that would have now been required to vote under the new law.

The 56-page ruling by the U.S. District court panel in D.C. today [PDF] found that "the law will almost certainly have retrogressive effect" as "it imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas [who] are disproportionately likely to live in poverty."

"Crucially," the court added, "the Texas legislature defeated several amendments that could have made this a far closer case" when they ignored warnings that the law "as written, would disenfranchise minorities and the poor."

In Texas, as Democratic lawmakers had pointed out while the bill was being debated, some registered voters would have to travel as far as 250 miles round trip to receive their "free" ID from a state Dept. of Public Safety (DPS) driver's license facility, presuming they owned or were able to afford buy the underlying documentation required to obtain that "free" ID. The burden would be especially difficult for those without drivers licenses in the first place. Moreover, as the DoJ had previously found, "in 81 of the state’s 254 counties, there are no operational driver’s license offices," and many of them have limited hours of operation.

The court blasted both the Republican lawmakers and the attorneys who presented their case. "Everything Texas has submitted as affirmative evidence is unpersuasive, invalid, or both. Moreover, uncontested record evidence conclusively shows that the implicit costs of obtaining [Photo ID that would satisfy the new law] will fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty. We therefore conclude that SB 14 is likely to lead to 'retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.'"

This was the second stinging loss for Texas Republicans in one week. On Monday, their plan for Congressional Redistricting in the state, on the heels of four new seats gained after the 2010 Census, was also struck down by a three-judge federal panel for violations of the VRA...

Another day, another allegation of voter fraud by Republicans. This one, courtesy of WKOW's 27 News in Madison, Wisconsin...

Yes, it looks like, once again --- no matter what the professional GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters and clowns like John Fund, Hans von Spakovsky and Matthew Vadum claim --- if there is an epidemic of "voter fraud" in this country, it seems that its not Democrats, but Republicans, and often very very high-profle Republicans at that, who are carrying it out.

But wait! There is still more absurdity and/or irony and/or hypocrisy in this case...

Please get it straight: the concern is about "polling place Photo ID restrictions" not "Voter ID".

I've tried to warn progressives about this for years, to little avail, but discussing concerns about "Voter ID" is akin (pun intended?) to talking about "Legitimate Rape".

After all, everyone is against "legitimate rape"! But using that phrase, as most instinctively seem to understand, allows for the misleading subconscious notion idea that there is some other kind of rape that is less "legitimate".

In the same way, "Voter ID" is quite reasonable sounding --- after all, who could be against the reasonable sounding idea of identifying oneself before voting? --- but Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restrictions are a different matter all together. Republicans know that very well, even if Democrats still can't seem to get it.

Both phrases, "Legitimate Rape" and "Voter ID", each reasonable sounding enough, miss the point and are tremendously misleading. Republican vote suppressors know that, so they love it when Democrats and progressives and voting rights advocates use the phrase "Voter ID" instead of "polling place Photo ID restrictions."

The fact is, the majority of states already require some form of reasonable identification of voters before voting, at least at the polling place. For that matter, federal law --- the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 --- already requires "Voter ID" in all 50 states when voting for the first time at the polling place, if the voter did not register in person and present ID at that time...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Pennsylvania has refused to turn over documents that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) had sought in order to determine whether the state's new polling place Photo ID restriction law is in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and other federal laws.

As previously reported by The BRAD BLOG, on July 23, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez submitted a four-page letter [PDF] to Carol Aichele, the Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (coincidentally, the wife of Gov. Tom Corbett's Chief of Staff), requesting information in electronic format for 16 broad categories of documents that the DoJ felt were needed to evaluate whether the Keystone State's Photo ID law complied with federal laws barring discriminatory election laws.

In an Aug. 17 letter [PDF], the Commonwealth's General Counsel, James D. Schultz, responded to Perez, by telling him that PA would not comply with what Schultz described as an "unprecedented attempt to compel [PA], a state not within the purview Section 5 of the VRA, to present information concerning compliance with Section 2 of the VRA."

Section 5 of the VRA requires some 16 different jurisdictions in the U.S., with a history of racial discrimination, to get pre-clearance for new election-related laws. Pennsylvania is not one of those jurisdictions. However, all 50 states are barred from instituting discriminatory laws under Section 2 of the act.

Schultz accused the DoJ of targeting "a growing number of states…simply because they instituted legislation designed to insure the integrity of the voting process"...