Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The state of Florida and it's Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) are knowingly violating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in their attempted purge of "potential non-citizens" from the Sunshine State voting rolls, according to a new federal lawsuit [PDF] filed by the ACLU and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The complaint follows on the heels of a May 31, 2012 two-page letter submitted to FL election officials by T. Christian Herren, the chief lawyer of the U.S. Justice Department's Voting Rights Division. In his letter, Herren opined that the state's voter roll purge is in violation of Section 5 --- at least in the 6 Florida counties "covered" by that section --- because the state has not sought preclearance from either the DOJ or a federal court, as required by that section of the 40-year old federal law.

Additionally, the DOJ notes in its letter, the purge, coming as it does within the 90 days before Florida's federal primary election, is also in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) which covers the entire state.

In response, FL State Department spokesman Chris Cates initially said they would continue the purge nonetheless, as they were "firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot." In his official response to the DOJ a few days later, Detzner all but challenged the feds to bring a suit in order to stop the state from continuing their efforts.

Of the original 180,000 names identified by the state as potential non-citizens, out of some 11.3 million registered voters in the state of Florida, 2,700 were sent to county election officials with instructions to notify those voters that they had just 30 days to prove their citizenship or be removed from the rolls. As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, "Before heeding DOJ’s order to stop the purge" county election officials had identified just four noncitizens who "may have voted in past elections, making them potentially guilty of voter fraud," while clearing hundreds of voters who had, in fact, been legally registered voters. Hundreds of others may have been removed from the rolls, despite being legally registered citizen voters.

As The BRAD BLOG previously reported, Herren had demanded that FL officials "advise whether the State intends to cease the practice," but stopped short of issuing an actual "order" that FL immediately cease and desist. Such an order would have to come by way of an injunction issued by a U.S. District Court. The ACLU lawsuit now seeks that injunction even though, according to the Miami Herald, county elections supervisors across the state, led by Leon County's Ion Sancho, are now refusing to carry out a purge which Sancho describes as "illegal."

The ACLU lawsuit alleges facts that suggest the FL GOP is relying upon a FL Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DMV) database that it knows cannot provide an accurate basis for establishing non-citizenship until 2017.

Unfortunately, this year's purge in Florida continues a tradition that has been affecting legal voters in Florida --- and, along with them, the rest of the nation --- cycle after cycle since at least the 2000 election...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Iran war talk jacks up US gas prices... while Republicans cheer; VA Supreme Court smacks down climate change denier witch hunt; Meet the 'new normal' for tornado season; PLUS: 2 years after disaster: BP settles with Gulf coast plaintiffs...and gets off pretty easy, so far... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Conservative economist slams deniers: Conservative economist Nordhaus slams skeptics: 'Cost of delay is $4 trillion'; MIT: making solar power competitive with coal; This Week gets it wrong on gas prices; Limbaugh attacks help put Chevy Volt workers out of a job; CO uranium mine poisons creek; A big fracking bubble: the scam behind the gas boom; Arctic ice melt changing climate system; Japan leaders feared "devil's chain reaction" ... PLUS: Science: Ocean acidifying so fast it threatens humanity’s food supply ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[UPDATE: Thanks, guys! We've now sold out the few copies we had in this premium, but we hope to have another one soon! The support, as always, is greatly appreciated! - Brad]

Our friend Greg Palast, investigative journalist, BBC documentary reporter and author of the best-selling books Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse has a new book out in November, and he's been kind enough to give us a limited number of advanced, signed hardcover copies as premiums in support of The BRAD BLOG.

We don't have a lot of copies, so it's first come first serve!

His new book is VULTURES' PICNIC: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators. It's described as "A tale of oil, sex, shoes, radiation and investigative reporting".

If you'd like a signed copy, please hit THIS LINK and make a contribution of $50 or more to The BRAD BLOG and we'll get it out to ya, ASAP!...

You can also contribute via snail mail to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028 --- though I can't guarantee we'll have enough books by the time your contribution gets here. If it doesn't, we've got another premium book offer we'll be making available to readers later this month, and you'll be the first in line to have one of those instead! (You'll just have to wait to find out what it is, but hopefully you'll not be disappointed because, ya know, you're supporting the work we do here either way! And, believe me, it's very much needed!)

We hate fund raising, are not very good at it, and don't do it nearly often enough. So if you can help, please do! We've had a very busy summer and, so far, autumn, and really need all of the help you can offer as we continue to independently cover --- with neither corporate nor institutional help --- those things which we believe actually matter to all of us. This is especially true as we barrel toward another Presidential Election year!

Your support is largely the only thing that allows us to continue doing this work. So thank you very much in advance for whatever help you can offer! And you'll even get a helluva book out if it in the bargain if you act fast! --- Brad

P.S. If you happen to be in the L.A. area, I'll be emceeing Palast's appearance at a KPFK/Pacifica fund raiser on Nov. 16th. If you can make it buy, please do and be sure to say hey! More details here...

[Now UPDATED with awesome audio archives at the bottom! Enjoy!]

It's our last night for a while occupying the public airwaves as guest-host of the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show.

Once again we'll be BradCasting 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 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:

• GREG PALAST, BBC investigative reporter and NYTimes best-selling author on his upcoming new book Vultures' Picnic: a Tale of Oil, Sex, Radiation and Investigative Reporting and the "Über-Vulture" billionaires who hope to pick our next President.
• ERNEST A. CANNING, attorney and legal analyst for The BRAD BLOG on his thoughts on "Occupy Wall Street" and how it ain't no "Tea Party"...
• PLUS! More calls from "Occupation Nation" (Hour 3 is once again wide open for calls from "Occupiers"!) and anything else that we didn't get to this week, or that you'd like to talk about at 877-520-1150 and with 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: Thanks all for a great week of occupation and a great closing night show! It was a huge show, with an unexpected guest (the Republican Director of Venango County, PA's Board of Elections, see below for more) and a tremendous closing hour of Occupation Nation Calls! See below for the must-listen commercial-free audio archives (and the chat room archives as well.) Thanks again to Mike and Kathy for letting us occupy their airwaves! Until next time...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Neither the recent claim made by anonymous hacker, Abhaxas, that he/she had hacked into Florida's e-voting database nor the efforts by FL election officials to minimize the breach of its system comes as a surprise to The BRAD BLOG.

In fact, minimization of the vulnerability following the reported hack calls to mind what Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D of the Argonne National Laboratory describes as the Arrogance Maxim:

One would think that Abhaxas had Johnson's Arrogance Maxim in mind. As reported by Doug Chapin of the University of MN, the anonymous hacktivist responded to the official denials by hacking into the FL voting system a second time; posting "a directory listing of the Florida database with the (sarcastic) observation 'Glad you cleaned up, pretty secure now guys'."

As an encore, Abhaxas then hacked into Montana's government website, where he/she exposed 16 databases.

While Chapin acknowledges the vulnerability exposed by the hack, once again, as is his habit over the years, Chapin draws the entirely wrong lessons in pointing to the need for better training and security procedures...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"I don’t want everybody to vote," Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, said while addressing a right-wing Christian audience in 1980. "[O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down," he added after he denigrated those who seek "good government" through maximum, informed voter participation as people who suffer from the "goo goo syndrome."

Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While most Americans may think of the poll tax and literacy tests as forms of voter suppression associated the Jim Crow South, the confirmation hearings of the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist included sworn testimony from former U.S. Attorney James Brosnahan and others reflecting that, as an early 60's GOP activist, Renquist intimidated African-American and Hispanic voters in AZ by challenging their ability to read.

1965's Voting Rights Act outlawed both the poll tax and literacy tests. In more recent times, pursuant to a 1987 federal court consent decree, and a subsequent provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993, another GOP suppression tactic, "caging lists," was banned, though as documented by the BBC's Greg Palast, the Bush administration-led Plutocrats didn't let a little matter like illegality get in the way of their use.

21st Century voter suppression operates under cover. Or it had, until the new wave of legislation being passed by GOP legislatures across the country began hitting its stride. Until FL's then-governor Charlie Crist overturned it, for example, the state banned convicted felons from voting even years after they'd been released from prison. In Armed Madhouse, Palast asserts that prior to the 2000 Presidential election, FL's then Sec. of State Katherine Harris, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of candidate George W. Bush, purged 94,000 "felons" from the state's computerized voter rolls, though the only "crime" at least 91,000 were guilty of was "being Black, Democrat or both."

Over much of the past decade, voter suppression efforts have been bolstered by bogus "voter fraud" claims leveled at groups like ACORN, who aided in the registration of those who might be likely to vote against the GOP (minorities and the working class); "non-partisan" GOP astroturf groups like the phony American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) created after the 2004 election solely to create and spread false propaganda about a Democratic "voter fraud" epidemic; laws meant to increase the legal risk to real non-partisan organizations for assisting in registration; draconian polling place "photo ID" restriction laws, and in a reduction of opportunities for early voting.

With the tide of GOP victories at the ballot box last November, those efforts have now been ramped up and are now front and center in some 30 state legislatures across the country...

I'm now doing a weekly thirty-minute show on Wednesday's at 3:30pm PT on KPFK, Los Angeles' Pacifica Radio affiliate. (Right! Public radio! No commercials! On our public airwaves! Come and get me, O'Keefe!) My first show yesterday was, by necessity, largely coverage of the breaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis, but also included a brief interview with Greg Palast, the BBC journalist, my fellow muckraking pal and author of the New York Times best-sellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast.

Earlier this week, Palast wrote about the Obama-endorsed $4 billion plan to build two new nuclear reactors on the Gulf Coast of Texas by... wait for it ... TEPCO! That's right, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. responsible for the failing systems now at Fukushima Daiichi, as well as a number of local partners.

Palast offers insight from his pre-journalist days "as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations" during the 1980's, and explains how the same "bankrupt, corrupt and criminal companies" who were busted during his work investigating the Shoreham nuclear plant in New York are still in business, and ready to get to work again on nukes in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S.

MP3 Download, or listen online below. [Appx. 27 mins]...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

California, a state which, at $1.8 trillion, has the world's eighth largest economy, now finds itself at the edge of an economic abyss.

Despite Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Draconian cuts to health care and education of more than $15 billion, purportedly to close a $26.3 billion gap in the state's finances, despite a pending 32% increase in student tuition at all University of California campuses and three "furlough" days per month in which state employees are forced to stay home without pay, California now faces a 2010 budget deficit estimated to range from $21 billion to $25 billion.

As shocking as it may seem, this looming fiscal catastrophe did not arrive by accident. It is, according to a number of progressive policy experts, the intended product of a Republican-led privatization scheme...

We just spoke with Greg Palast, whose Armed Madhouse paperback (or "mysterious 'yellow book,'" as lazy Washington Post blogger, Emil Steiner "reported" it), was being waved and alluded to by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer just prior to his being Tasered by UF cops earlier this week.

Palast says he is offering the journalism student a job as a paid intern. Meyer had described Palast, in his question to Sen. John Kerry, asking why he conceded the 2004 Presidential Election so early, as "the top investigate journalist in America."

"Did you notice he never let the book touch the ground?" an impressed Palast wryly noted.

Meyers was Tasered by the authorities as the majority of the students in the crowd sat passively during their fellow student's pleas for help and shrieks of pain. He was then arrested and charged with a felony for "inciting a riot and disrupting a school function." (Police report here [PDF])

"His attorneys seem to be keeping him on ice," Palast told us, when we asked if he'd been able to officially offer the gig to Meyer.

Indeed, our note to Meyer sent Tuesday, inviting him to Guest Blog his experience here at The BRAD BLOG, has so far similarly gone unanswered.

Fortunately, it happened at a John Kerry event. So we'll likely hear a whole lot about this incident. Had it happened at a Republican event, Fox "News" and the rest of the news channels that receive their assignments from them would have made this a one-day story at best.

The blurry-ish video version of the incident seen at right shows the entire statement and questions asked by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer. He was waving the recently released paperback version of investigative journalist Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse and recommended the book to Kerry before asking him about his early concession to the 2004 Presidential Election.

"He says you won the 2004 Election, isn't that amazing?" proclaimed Meyer, referring to Palast's claims in the book. The 21-year-old student continued on to speak about "multiple reports of disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida and Ohio on the day of the election" and "electronic voting machines in Volusia County, Florida, that counted backwards."

"So amidst all of these reports of phony, bogus stuff going on, how could you concede the election on the day?" he asked as security guards surrounded him. "How could you concede the 2004 election on the day? In this book, it says there were five million votes that were suppressed. Didn't you want to be President?!"

Kerry is heard earlier in Meyer's statement acknowledging that he has the book and that he's "already read it." Though we've seen the incident now on all of the cable news channels, several times, we've not seen any of them show the actual statement and questions being asked by Meyer.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Last night --- nearly three years after it was first reported by the BBC --- PBS's NOW finally exposed the Republican Party conspiracy to steal the 2004 Presidential Election. Whaddayaknow?

The 15 minute segment concentrates on "Voter Caging" and features appearances by Greg Palast and former US attorney David Iglesias. Readers will recall that Palast, who originally broke this story in 2004, has written BRAD BLOG exclusives on voter caging and on Tim Griffin, who was one of the leaders of the illegal scheme.

For even more on the NOW story, voter caging, and the Republican conspiracy to steal the 2004 election, listen to the replay of Brad guest hosting on the Peter B. Collins Show yesterday. Brad speaks to Palast in the first hour and interviews Bryan Myers, who produced the NOW segment, in the second hour.

Blogged by Brad from St. Louis...

Slowly but surely, the issue of felonious Republican "Vote Caging" during the 2004 Presidential Election is making its way into the consciousness of media, federal, state, and local elected officials and --- whether they like it or not --- the Bush/Cheney campaign officials who were involved in the practice despite repeated consent decrees signed by the RNC that they would no longer use the tactic to target minority voters for removal from voting rolls.

Today, the Florida Times-Union is reporting that, "Internal city memos show the issue of Republican 'vote caging' efforts in Jacksonville's African-American neighborhoods was discussed in the weeks before the 2004 election, contradicting recent claims by former Duval County Republican leader Mike Hightower - the Bush-Cheney campaign's local chairman at the time."

The report goes on to say that Hightower had previously denied any knowledge of the practice of vote caging, which includes sending registered letters, marked "Do Not Forward," to targeted voters along with a request to return a postcard. When the postcards are not returned, officials might then take measures to challenge the voters at the polls, or remove them entirely from the voting rolls.

Last month, Hightower reportedly told that paper that the issue of caging never came up in county meetings prior to the elections, and that he had never heard "of that expression or that practice."

The Internal memos show otherwise, according to the paper. In fact, the issue came up quite regularly at meetings. Nonetheless, Hightower --- pulling a Bob Dole and referring to himself in the third person --- is sticking by his denial...

Blogged by Brad from Atlanta...

BRAD BLOG readers will recall Greg Palast's exclusive here which followed on Monica Goodling's admissions in Congressional testimony concerning Tim Griffin's vote caging. As well, you may also recall an attack on Palast's reporting by DailyKos diarist "drational," in which he described Palast's reporting as "dangerous." Subsequently, Palast responded to those challenges here.

Well, the pseudonymous "drational" has now followed up with an excellent analysis of the caging lists which shores up the bulk of Palast's claims and reporting (even if he can't help but take a few more inappropriate and unhelpful shots at the guy who broke the story in the first place, and kept banging on it for two and a half years until Mr. "Drat" finally found the time to investigate the charges).

"Drational" posted a follow-up today on the RNC's "Widespread Caging in 2004" (in FL, OH, NV, WA, and OR, all crucial battlegrounds) and names names of high-level Bush/Cheney officials and others who seem to have been involved in some way.

Yesterday's "drational" posting was based, in no small part, on a detailed analysis researched and published by the good folks at ePluribus Media.

Also yesterday, Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker posted a similar independent analysis of the Tim Griffin caging lists. His findings, as well, "strengthened allegations that Griffin, working for the Republican National Committee, was involved in an effort to target African-American voters."

All four posts mentioned are worth reading in full, with a reminder that we quoted a bit more from TPM Muck in Alan Breslauer's posting here yesterday of Tim Griffin's recent denial video in which he strains credulity by claiming he didn't even know what caging was, and had to look it up in a dictionary.

Nice try, Tim. In the meantime, any broadcast news outlets ready to run the story yet? Or will they wait until after it happens again, say, in 2008 or so?

Oh, and Mr. "Drat"? You owe a straight up --- unqualified --- apology to Palast for your original, over-the-top, un-researched, knee-jerk attacks on his reporting. Advancing and/or independently verifying someone's reporting is appropriate and appreciated, as you did in your latest. As well, holding folks responsible when elements are incorrect is also helpful. Going off half-cocked, as you did, with claims that Palast's reporting on this was "dangerous" and trying to justify those claims later based on several errors you claim to have found, none of which change the thrust of his original reports, as you did in your very good follow-ups, is less than impressive, in our opinion.

UPDATE: We failed to link, originally, to the ePluribus Media report upon which much of "drational's" article was based. We've now corrected that failure in the above article and have changed both the text and the headline to incorporate and link to their excellent work. The BRAD BLOG regrets the original oversight.

UPDATE 6/29/07 10:53pm PT: "drational" has done the right thing and posted "My Real Apology to Greg Palast..." at DailyKos. Some additional thoughts of mine posted in comments here.

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 from D.C. by Margie Burns

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty returned to testify before Congress one more time today, but without shedding much new light on the much-criticized firings and hirings, alleged to be politically motivated, in the Department of Justice.

The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the House Judiciary Committee, in another attempt to extract some truth about the DOJ personnel matter, held a hearing with McNulty as the sole witness. Under polite, soft-spoken but excruciatingly poignant questioning by Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI), McNulty did clarify one thing: indeed it does seem that his part of the DOJ has done very little about “caging.”

Caging, as Rep. Cannon (R-UT) helpfully pointed out, “is a term of art in mailhouses” – it refers to the place where letters go when they have no address, all batched up in a separate room.

As Conyers gently reminded the audience, “caging” in the context of elections “is not an issue of the mail at all.” Voter caging, in the context of elections, means blocking voters out – choosing whole lists of voters whose vote will be challenged, chosen by whom and the criteria for challenge enunciated by whom, under this administration, still not fully explained.

Actually, not explained at all. Though it wasn't for Conyers' lack of trying to get information from McNulty about it...