But, of course, "both sides do it!"...sigh...[via Stephen Webster at RAW STORY]...

The video above was from June 10, 2010.

"You need to go back to June --- June of this year, 2010," said would-be mass murderer Byron Williams, referring to Glenn Beck in a jailhouse interview. Williams had been stopped by police in a San Francisco shoot out on his way to assassinate members of the ACLU and the progressive Tides Foundation in July of 2010. "Look at all his programs from June, and you'll see he's been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption," Williams, who viewed Beck as a "schoolteacher on TV," later said.

In case you are wondering about Beck's comments in the video above, thinking it must be out of context or something, it's not. The transcript (as taken from the Fox "News" website) revealing the context, follows below...

[Update 4:26pm PT: Related to the story below, one of the victims of the Tucson shooting has just been arrested for issuing a threat against Rightwingers at a taping for an ABC News special. It seems incitements by some are taken more seriously than incitements by others. Story here... -BF]

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"I find it chilling to hear so many U.S. government officials calling for the leader of this organization, Julian Assange, to be labeled an 'enemy combatant' and jailed --- or worse."-Letter from Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to Tom Hayden

Recently, a number of prominent politicians and pundits have called for the violent targeting of other individuals who have been neither accused nor charged with any crimes whatsoever, calling into the question the legality of such incitements to violence.

This article will transcend the issue of "moral responsibility" on the part of those politicians and pundits for the horrific consequences that may, and often do, ensue as the result of their deliberate appeals to fear, prejudice and hate so as to examine when such rhetoric actually amounts to an actual crime under the laws of our land.

There can be little doubt that, as observed by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the combination of 24/7 "vitriolic rhetoric" on TV and radio (See video below for poignant examples of such rhetoric), the absence of gun control, with leading U.S. politicians calling for "Second Amendment remedies," and the placement of "crosshairs" over a political opponent's district while calling on citizens to "reload," can produce lethal consequences --- consequences that are not limited to the actions of the deranged.

Such rhetoric is both the product and cause of dehumanization --- a process defined by Professor Phillip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect as a means "by which certain other people or collectives of them are depicted as less than human..."

Zimbardo writes:

Where we covered the scientific work of Zimbardo and others in "Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization," and in a follow-up, demonstrating how the process applies both when directed to foreign "threats" and domestic "foes," here the focus is the thin legal line, unique to the U.S. courtesy of the First Amendment, between advocacy and incitement, and whether some U.S. politicians and pundits may have, at least in the case of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as they have now charged, crossed that line so as to possibly warrant criminal prosecutions...

As you may have noticed (or expected), I've been doing a lot of radio lately, discussing the AZ Shooting and related issues, such as the RW media and Democratic Party culpability and what needs to be done about it.

A discussion I had earlier this week with the non-partisan Allen Handelman on North Carolina's powerful 100k watt "Super Station," FM Talk 101.1 WZTK was particularly enlightening, I think. Most interesting was that the bulk of the callers --- even though I had been hoping for folks to call in disagreeing with my take --- seemed to generally agree with me. That, even on this station in supposedly "red" NC which features both non-RW talkers as well as far RW misinformants and miscreants such as Michael Savage and Neal Boortz who use our publicly owned airwaves to skew the nation with damnable lies and propaganda.

Happily, NC's FM Talk 101.1 is the exception to the national rule, as it uses its licensed airwaves to serve the public interest, as they are supposed to by law, by offering a variety of political viewpoints. In the bargain, they are the area's #1 talk station (yes, even beating the stations which carry Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc.). That, of course, would go against a lot of the "conventional wisdom" (propagated, naturally, by RWingers) which says that NC is "red," that RWingers only want to listen to RW talk, and that folks like Limbaugh and Hannity are so "good" and so many people agree with their "point of view" that they can't be beat. Of course, having the biggest 100k watt blowtorch in town never hurts either, as is the case in most places where the most powerful signal also seems to receive the most listeners for some odd reason.

So where RW stations are placed on 50,000 watt clear channel transmitters, they tend to handily beat the 1k and 5k and 10k stations where one may be able to hear progressive talk --- if you are in a town lucky enough to have such a station and live close enough to its transmitter to actually hear it.

If you'd like to listen to my two "hours" (with commercials already removed, they're really about 40 mins each) with Allen, they can be downloaded or listened to online below. My thanks to Allen for both having me and for sharing the audio files. He also informs me that he'll be re-playing these two hours on his nationally syndicated show as well this weekend...

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

A moment in the culture.

A moment like Columbine, like Fort Hood, like Oklahoma City, yet different; different because the madman's rampage that targeted Tucson, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was predictable.

It's hot in Tucson --- temperatures soar to 117 degrees in the summertime. But that's nothing compared to the political heat generated recently in this community just an hour north of the Mexican border. Nowhere in the country were the 'Tea Parties' angrier than in Arizona; rage over healthcare and immigration reform boiled over in Tucson.

It had been bad already, even before Obama had been elected to office in 2008. Take a look at this remarkable list of eliminationist rhetoric coming from the Right, as compiled as long ago as March 2007. But, as if that wasn't horrible enough, things have gotten even far worse since then.

Who wouldn't be incensed? Reports of increased crime, beheadings on the borders, government takeover of health care, death panels. Given all that, who would not stand and fight to protect their grandmothers?

If all that were actually true. But of course, it is not true. Those reports and other fabrications like them are a creation of Right Wing Talk Radio. It isn't just the vitriol spewing from Savage and Hannity and Boortz and others, it is what is behind the vitriol: a genuine fear born of propaganda. And as a culture, we the people are buying into it.

So, regardless of whether the alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner actually listened to any of the six "Conservative" stations on the dial in Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was correct when he blamed the attack on a cultural environment built of Talk Radio...

And, still more very good news...

More, just out from AP...

Late this evening, via an announcement linked from Twitter, the whistleblower media organization WikiLeaks released a statement related to the Saturday attack in Tucson on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others.

The press release condemns "violent rhetoric by US prominent media personalities, including Sarah Palin" and urges that incitement of violence, including against their organization and its founder Julian Assange, be agressively prosecuted by U.S. officials.

Serving as spokesman for the organization, Assange --- who has personally been the target of a great deal of inflammatory rhetoric and violent threats by a number of prominent politicians including not only Palin, but even Vice President Joe Biden who referred to him recently as "a high-tech terrorist" --- is quoted in the press release as saying: "No organisation anywhere in the world is a more devoted advocate of free speech than Wikileaks but when senior politicians and attention seeking media commentators call for specific individuals or groups of people to be killed they should be charged with incitement --- to murder."

"Those who call for an act of murder deserve as significant share of the guilt as those raising a gun to pull the trigger," he said.

After offering condolences and sympathies for those injured and killed in the shooting spree, the press release, posted in full below, details several violent suggestions, or "incitements to kill," as directed at Assange and WikiLeaks by a number of prominent media personalities and politicians...

This flier was circulated in Dallas in the days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated...

Any of that look or sound familiar?

If not, and if you didn't see the Tucson Shooting coming months and months ago, then you are living in a world of complete and utter delusion.

[Update 1/11/11: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., responding to the Giffords shooting at Huffington Post, draws a similar allusion to the atmosphere in Dallas in the days prior to the murder of his uncle.]

If you, like pretend media critic Howard Kurtz, are finding rationalizations and excuses to justify what happened yesterday, dismissing it all as little more than the work of a "lone nutjob," you are similarly deluded and among the most dangerous of apologists.

You are also anything but "conservative," since the core of that ideology used to include personal responsibility. Taking none, unfortunately, seems to be the new hallmark of the no longer any more than name-only movement.

Remember what happened after this video-taped moment in September of 2009, when Nancy Pelosi called for "taking responsibility for our words" before tearing up while recalling the assassination of Harvey Milk in her own district in the 70's, and while decrying the scores of death threats and broken windows at offices of Democratic members of Congress after they'd voted in favor of Health Care Reform?...

[DEVELOPING COVERAGE. LATEST UPDATES ADDED AT BOTTOM OF ITEM.]

Three-term Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot "point blank" in the head at a town hall event in Tucson, along with 11 17 18 19 others according to news report. The "Congress on Your Corner" event was at a Safeway grocery store.

After initial reports that Giffords had been killed, a hospital spokesman confirmed that she is alive, and that he was "optimistic" that Giffords would recover following surgery. He said she was shot "through and through...from one side of the head through the other, through the brain." [See below for updated reports as they are occurring.]

Late reports now have six dead, including federal judge John M. Roll and a 9-year old girl. 12 13 14 others were injured, many faced emergency surgery and are were in both critical and serious condition.

The alleged shooter is now been reported as 22-year old Jared Lee Loughner. He was wrestled to the ground by two people during the incident and is now in police custody. More on him, including his bizarre Youtube page, below.

Giffords' husband is NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, set to command the Shuttle Endeavor scheduled for launch on April 1. His twin brother, Scott, also an astronaut, is currently on the International Space Station.

Giffords had reportedly been threatened after the health care vote last year, and had seen shots fired at her office. She also appeared as one of a number of Congressmembers "targeted" for replacement on Sarah Palin's map, where districts were highlighted with a gun sight.

On March 25, 2010, after Gifford --- a former Republican, now a Blue Dog Democrat --- was placed on Palin's target list, she had this to say about the increasing rise in violent political rhetoric:

Many more details, updated throughout the day, follow below. LATEST REPORTS AT BOTTOM...

On Election eve, amidst the usual, absurd and evidence-free caterwauling about imaginary "VOTER FRAUD!!!!" (and, man, am I happy to see that there are now tons of other folks in the media finally out there covering that particular scam so I don't have to) a reminder of what real Election Integrity looks like...

- Special investigative report by Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The mystery surrounding a long-questioned and allegedly "fixed" non-partisan 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond election in Pima County, AZ continues to deepen as troubling new details have now emerged. The resolution in this matter --- should it ever come --- could spell trouble for supporters of paper-based optical-scan electronic voting systems, since indications are that if the election was rigged, it was done with insiders via the electronic central tabulating computers.

Late last week another new twist was discovered in the years-long election fraud investigation by Democratic and Libertarian Election Integrity advocates in Tucson. The revelations come to light in what was thought by many to have been a settled election, at last, following a long-sought hand-count of paper ballots carried out last year by the office of AZ's Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. The AG had announced in April of last year that his criminal investigation hand-count had "affirmed" the original results of the election were correct.

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG, which has been covering this bizarre matter for years, plays a small role in this latest development, as a promise that Goddard's office made to us last year concerning the "poll tapes" --- remarks which he was asked about during a press conference at the end of the hand count [see the remarks on video below] --- may have now boomeranged on him.

Given that Goddard is now the likely Democratic nominee to face Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in this fall's Gubernatorial race, this revelation couldn't have come at a much worse time for him.

After many years of litigation, Election Integrity advocates have now finally been allowed to review the long sought-after poll tapes in question. What they've discovered is disturbing and, so far, without legitimate explanation.

Out of 368 precincts, 112 poll tapes are completely missing. Moreover, 102 of the "yellow sheets" --- certified precinct reports, signed by poll workers, detailing corresponding summary information, such as numbers of ballots received, cast and spoiled, as helpful for important auditing functions at the precinct level --- are missing as well.

Furthermore, of the poll tape records that are not missing, 50 of them do not match the results as recorded in the final canvas of the election, according to the Election Integrity advocates who have compared them to the original electronic database numbers...

[Now UPDATED with full --- highly recommended --- audio archives.]

It's Day 4 of our latest week-long stint filling in for Mike on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. And again we'll be BradCasting LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). I hope you'll join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room, as ever, will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by 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.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• HOWIE KLEIN, political blogger extraordinary from Huffington Post and Down With Tyranny on all the politics that's fit to speculate about! Specifically this November's Congressional elections, the outlook for Democrats, Republicans and those damned Blue Dogs!
• BREAKING NEWS, You'll have to tune in tonight to hear about some rathering disturbing new news in a long-running election fraud case in a specific county, in a specific state. It's one we've been following for some time, and tonight there's breaking news in the case. We'll talk about it with one of the key players in the long running investigation!
• PLUS: Catching up with the week's news and your calls on whatever you'd like to discuss at 877-520-1150, or via tweets to @TheBradBlog and whatever else comes up along the way...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Well that was one very lively, very fast-paced show, chocked full of breaking news and exclusives. Check this one out! The audio archives are all posted below (and the chat room archives are posted below that, if your interested.) Enjoy! I know I did!...

[Updated at end of article with video of Goddard's Tuesday press conference, and a radio appearance shortly thereafter.]

No evidence of manipulation was found in the results of a 2006 special election in Pima County, AZ, according to the state Attorney General's announcement given at a press conference this afternoon in Tucson.

Today, AG Terry Goddard announced the results of his findings from a paper-ballot hand count, held earlier this month in Phoenix as part of a criminal investigation into whether the results of the '06 election were manipulated by election officials. A multi-partisan coalition of election integrity advocates have long charged that the results of the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election may have been electronically tampered with via the county's Diebold optical-scan central tabulator system.

The criminal investigation was re-opened in July of 2008, following the filing of a sworn affidavit from a former county employee who claimed he was told by a Pima County Election Division computer operator that the election was "'fixed'...on the instructions of his bosses."

The BRAD BLOG was listening in on the press conference, via a weak cell phone connection, so it was difficult to get direct quotes from Goddard, but we did speak to a number of people who attended the presser to get details from them, and were able to listen to Goddard's appearance on local radio shortly afterwords...

The AP has finally noticed the long-sought criminal investigation ballot count of the 2006 Pima County (Tucson), AZ, special election. State Attorney General Terry Goddard's hand-count of the disputed Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election was concluded, at least for now, in Phoenix on Wednesday. That's when AP filed its report on the matter that we've been covering here at The BRAD BLOG in a number of special reports and exclusives, in great detail, this week, last week, and for several years prior.

AP's coverage was fairly cursory (recent inside joke: AP didn't report who the AG's office had found to be the "leading vote-getter"), but it hit a few points worth noting, including one of the key take-aways from the entire, epic morality tale still playing out on behalf of the entire U.S., in Arizona:

There you have it. That's why this story matters, and why it's far more than simply a "local story."

It also matters on a still-broader level because, even if the 2006 Tucson RTA election wasn't rigged --- and it's three years on, and nobody yet actually seems to know for certain --- due to the god-awful, privatized, untested, hackable, oft-failed, secret vote-counting machines we now use in our public elections, it's become virtually impossible to know if any elections counted on such machines were accurately tabulated.

AP notes that Goddard seems to finally be understanding that larger point, at least:

The Arizona Republic's Dennis Wagner pulled some details from AP's cursory coverage and augmented it substantially for more lengthy, detailed coverage filed on Wednesday as well, which we're happy to see and recommend.

In a related note: Tucson election integrity advocate John Brakey saw charges against him dismissed by a judge today, following his arrest ordered by Pima County election officials last year during a state-mandated, post-election hand-count --- a statutory mandate that likely would not have existed were it not for Brakey's advocacy for such post-election "audits."

The county's case against him was so bad Brakey wasn't even required to put on his own defense before the judge dismissed the case entirely after hearing the county's testimony. The recent criminal investigation hand count carried out by Goddard, and all of the issues discussed above, would also likely never have come to light in Arizona, had it not been for the tenacity, courage, and tireless determination of Brakey. Exclusive details on today's dismissed charges against him posted earlier here...

[Updated at bottom of article with video of trial testimony and the judge's dismissal of the case.]

Along with everything else that's been going on over the past week or two in the criminal investigation hand count of the 2006 Pima County (Tucson), AZ, special election (see our detailed special coverage here and here, with a bit of followup coming tonight, by the way. [UPDATE: Here's that late report.]), local election integrity watchdog John Brakey has had a trial of his own to contend with this week, following his arrest last September, while serving as an official observer during a post-election hand-count "audit" of the state's primary election on behalf of both the Democratic and Libertarian Parties.

As The BRAD BLOG reported at the time, Brakey had noticed that a number of ballot bags, selected for the hand-count, had missing or broken security seals on them. When he asked about them, he was promptly arrested on the orders of Pima's "Election Director Gone Wild" Brad Nelson, a Republican and long-time foe of Brakey's.

The case against Brakey, heard in court this afternoon, was dismissed by Judge Luis Castillo after the county presented its evidence on the charges of "trespassing," as we were informed today by Brakey and his attorney Bill Risner, who wouldn't even need to plead their own case to the judge today...

-- Brad Friedman, A BRAD BLOG Special Report

In a letter written to the Arizona Attorney General's office on Monday, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG, the attorney for the Pima County (Tucson) Democratic Party has expressed a concern that thousands of ballots from a disputed 2006 special election, which should be in the AG's possession, may instead be "missing".

"Many thousands of ballots that should be in the ballot boxes in your possession don't exist," attorney Bill Risner writes in the 3-page letter [PDF] to Donald E. Conrad, Chief Counsel of the Criminal Division at the office of state Attorney General Terry Goddard. The alarming allegations come as the second week of an extraordinary hand-count of paper ballots, part of a criminal investigation into the '06 election, continued in Phoenix on Monday.

A spokesperson from the Attorney General's office says she believes the count will be concluded on Wednesday, though that could change. It was originally scheduled to conclude last week.

The AG is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that that election may have been electronically manipulated by election official insiders. The special election created Tucson's Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in May of 2006, and funded it with a joint bond measure to the tune of $2 billion over ten years. The Pima Democratic Party had endorsed the two RTA ballots questions in the election, but they now question the legitimate success of the measures. They've been bringing court cases to access ballot materials, and have been demanding a hand-count of the ballots for a number of years. Similar RTA initiatives had failed in four previous elections before they were finally passed in 2006.

"If we are correct," Risner wrote in his Monday letter to the Attorney General's office, concerning the absence of as many as 19,000 paper ballots, as estimated by observers of the counting in Phoenix, "the question arises as to what happened to those ballots." The latest mystery adds still more fuel to the already high-stakes, long-sought hand-count, and raises new questions in the nearly three-years long investigation into the 2006 election results.

If the ballots are indeed missing, did they ever actually exist? Was the Diebold electronic ballot box stuffed? Have ballots been surreptitiously removed by someone for some reason? Or have observers miscalculated the number of ballots being examined? The AG's Press Secretary Anne Titus Hilby tells The BRAD BLOG she's aware of the allegations of missing ballots but could not speak to that point in any more detail "until the examination is concluded"...