Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald have more. Glenn, always the lawyer, has this little item:

As for those wondering what the possible crime would be, the allegation is that Harman agreed to use her influence as a member of Congress to intervene in a pending criminal proceeding directed at AIPAC officials in exchange for receiving something of value (namely, AIPAC’s lobbying for her to be appointed Chair of the House Intelligence Committee). It’s exactly what Pete Domenci was accused of: trying to influence DOJ prosecutions for political ends, though in the case of the allegations against Harman, it’s even worse, since the suggestion is that she agreed to interfere in the criminal proceedings in exchange for AIPAC’s support of her quest to become Intelligence Committee Chair.

Finally, the CQ story says that Harman’s conversation was recorded as part of “a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.” If those facts are accurate, then it is hard to claim that there was anything improper about the eavesdropping; targeting agents of foreign governments is exactly what FISA permits.

Mommy, is it influence-peddling yet?

Jane Harman has no place in the Democratic Party, or in American politics for that matter. She has no respect for the Fourth Amendment, she’s engaged in what looks like incredibly corrupt behavior, and she’s sticking up for spies who steal our country’s secrets. and this woman wanted to be the Chair of the intelligence Committee? Maybe for the Knesset, but not here in the US.

Harman needs to go. Yesterday.

SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that’s the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.

STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) … some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin’ awesome job in his state. He’s really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff … the easy stuff….

Curtis Sliwa: When you used the hip-hop vernacular, man, Barack Obama has bling bling in this stimulus package, you got people’s attention.
Michael Steele: Absolutely. There’s a lot of bling bling — the bling bling’s got bling bling in this package. That’s how bad it is.

Michael Steele, the new hiphop face of the RNC.

Andy Samberg, with flow that puts Steele to shame.

Michael Steele has no skills. He sounds like some old fart trying to “keep it hip and real” with “the kids” with their “bling” and their “rap” and “break dancing.” I have more hip-hop cred than Michael Steele, and my favorite music is freakin’ bluegrass. Shit, I haven’t listened to hip-hop since the early 1990s.

Speaking of the early 1990s, here’s a sample fo the hip hop I was listening to back in the day. I think this video from Ice Cube could be easily addressed to whoever’s buying what RNC MC Mike Steele’s selling: Turn off that bullshit! Turn off that motherfuckin’ radio! (NSFW AT ALL)

The mob I’m talking about is the McPalin Lynch Mob:

With McCain passing up the opportunity to level any tough personal shots in his first two debates and the very real prospect of an Obama presidency setting in, the sort of hard-core partisan activists who turn out for campaign events are venting in unusually personal terms.

“Terrorist!” one man screamed Monday at a New Mexico rally after McCain voiced the campaign’s new rhetorical staple aimed at raising doubts about the Illinois senator: “Who is the real Barack Obama?”

“He’s a damn liar!” yelled a woman Wednesday in Pennsylvania. “Get him. He’s bad for our country.”

At both stops, there were cries of, “Nobama,” picking up on a phrase that has appeared on yard signs, T-shirts and bumper stickers.

And Thursday, at a campaign town hall in Wisconsin, one Republican brought the crowd to its feet when he used his turn at the microphone to offer a soliloquy so impassioned it made the network news and earned extended play on Rush Limbaugh’s program.

“I’m mad; I’m really mad!” the voter bellowed. “And what’s going to surprise ya, is it’s not the economy — it’s the socialists taking over our country.”

After the crowd settled down he was back at it. “When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there gonna run this country, we gotta have our head examined!”

How bad is it? Even Republicans advising McCain are getting nervous:

John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”

Ray LaHood (who’s of Lebanese/ Middle eastern ancestry) is getting worried too:

A seven-term Republican Congressman from Illinois is taking issue with fellow Republican Sarah Palin, saying some of the vice presidential candidate’s rallies “don’t befit the office she’s running for.”

Republican Congressman Ray LaHood represents the 18th District: central and western Illinois, including Peoria. He’s retiring in January.

LaHood supports the McCain ticket, but doesn’t like what he sees at some of the McCain-Palin rallies: When Barack Obama’s name has been mentioned by Sarah Palin, there are shouts of “terrorist,” and LaHood says Palin should put a stop to it.

“Look it. This doesn’t befit the office that she’s running for. And frankly, people don’t like it.”

Good luck with that, guys: your party and its surrogates have been working this narrative for more than 20 years. These are YOUR people. You own this monster.

Ya know, I see right-wing dingalings worried about whether black people will riot if Obama loses. I think they’re projecting: it’s crazy white people like McKKKain-Palin supporters America has to worry about.

h/t Claiborne!

Our polling place is the school located at 51st and Greenway Avenue in the Kingsessing neighborhood. As we entered the school, a little old woman at a table provided us with directions to the room where the machines were located. As we turned to leave, she called out to us, “We sure could use a vote for Lynn Swann!”

“I’m sure you could,” I replied.

“Yeah, I’m gonna vote for him… for Football Hall of Fame!”

We walked down the hall laughing. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” I remarked to Tim.

“Oh yeah it is,” he said, laughing. “Ya like that line about the Hall of Fame?”

This isn’t as egregious as last year. I had signed in to vote, and a heavy set woman led me to the voting machine. It was one of the new ones, where you push buttons to select your candidate. Because they were new, she was guiding me through the way they worked.

“This is the column for Democrats, this one is for Republicans, and this is for all the other parties. Ballot initiatives are here. Here’s how you vote straight ticket.” She pointed to a series of names at the bottom of the ballot. “These are local candidates for smaller offices,” she continued. “And see this name?” It was the Republican candidate for election judge. “That’s me, and I sure hope I’ll get your vote.” She said this IN THE BOOTH.

Luckily, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, and the notion of me ever voting for a Republican in the first place is laughable, so I ignored her. However, that’s just blatant electioneering, and it’s illegal. And while I’m a damn loyal Democrat, if a Democratic candidate had pulled that shit on me, he or she would have lost my vote immediately.

At the behest of my girlfriend, I just reported this to the Election Protection people, at 1-866-OUR VOTE.

Much is made, and rightly so, of the corrupt nature of the Democratic machine in Philadelphia. I watched that machine fuck over my friend Anne Dicker when she ran for office. And they went after my friend Albert Yee as well. And don’t get me started on that corrupt tub of guts Carol Campbell, installed by fiat on City Council. It’s disgraceful.

But don’t ever tell me the Republicans aren’t just as corrupt in our city, because they are as scummy and filthy as any Philadelphia Democrat. Given the opportunity to sieze the levers of power, the Republicans in this City (I’m looking at YOU Perzel, this ain’t your personal fucking fiefdom anymore than it’s Vince Fumo’s) would jump into the hogwaller of pay-to-play quicker than you could say “hey where’d my wallet go?”

Dirtbags all.

If you have time, volunteer to pollwatch: learn more at Do More Than Vote: http://domorethanvote.org/philadelphia.htm. They have links and contacts for all sorts of great groups working to win this election for progressives, and to finally ensure some long-needed oversight of the disaster in DC.

If anyone tries to deny you your rights, or you see shenanigans at the polls, call 866-OUR-VOTE.

Susie Madrak has some thoughts on election theft: http://susiemadrak.com/2006/11/03/10/25/neidermeyer-dead/.

The list of reasons to vote is as long as it is Repugnant: lend me your ear that I may turn your stomach.

The suspension of habeas corpus.
Torture as a legitimate interrogation tactic.
The gay bashing.
Terri Schiavo.
The war in Iraq.
And today, attempts to restrict the travel of ordinary Americans, attempts to put us all on a no-fly list: http://sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3023

Shall I go on? I think I shall.
2000.
2004.
The lying.
The corruption.
The K Street Project.
The failure to provide adequate body armor.
The failure to provide enough troops.
“Cakewalk”.
“We’ll be greeted as liberators”.
“Last throes”.
Hurricane Katrina.
The Superdome.
The drowning of New Orleans.
“Osama bin Laden Determined to strike in the US.”
The deliberate attempt by the neocons to wash their hands of Iraq (shades of Bart Simpson as the “I Didn’t Do It Kid): http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612 (print and read on the toilet, into which you’ll probably need to regurgitate).
The thuggish behavior of throwing people into windows for asking uncomfortable questions, in the Virginia campaign.
The thuggish behavior of having people detained for decorating their car with the wrong bumpersticker, in Denver.
The thuggish behavior of having people arrested for telling a certain foul-mouthed politician he was wrong about Iraq, again in Colorado.

And when you pull that lever or touch that screen or whatever the machines in your district do, remember the words of Babs Johnson: “You stand convicted of assholeism! Your proper punishment will now take place.”

NO MORE ASSHOLEISM. VOTE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 7.

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.

The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach when I read this. My immediate thought was, “Investigation into Sequoia, but not Diebold? Chavez’s leftist credentials? Great. The GOP is going to claim the Democrats stole the election in 2006.”

And then this article shows up at Bradblog: Here We Go Again

Just push the yellow button and you can vote as many times as you want,” Tom Courbat, an Election Integrity advocate from Riverside County, California informed The BRAD BLOG tonight. Not that we’re in any mood to report more such stories, but this seems to be a big one. A very big one.

It seems there’s a little yellow button on the back every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into “Manual Mode” allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.

Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio interview last Tuesday, McPherson — who has been crowing about having the country’s most stringent security process for voting systems — denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems.

[snip]

The complete sequence to override the system and enter manual voting mode, along with the Sequoia booklet received via Watt’s public records request is now posted here at BlackBoxVoting.org.

[snip]

Sequoia’s voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and Riverside, which is known as the “Home of E-Voting” as it was the first county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere.

Thanks to the dilligence of Watt and Courbat, it is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to virtually anybody who wishes to cast as many votes as they please.

“I can do it in 18 seconds,” says Watt. “I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it’s all on the screen prompts. You’re asked ‘Do you want to enter manual mode?’ and you push ‘Yes’…And then you’re on your way.”

“You can then vote as many times as you want. You won’t ever have to stop until someone physically restrains you from voting,” he explained.

“But wouldn’t someone hear the chime?” we asked…

“No, it’s barely audible. Quieter than the beep on your computer when it boots up. The systems are usually kept up against the wall to be near a power outlet and away from the poll workers for privacy. Plus, if you really wanted to pull it off, just come in with a friend and have them talk to the poll workers to distract them. Nobody would ever know.”

Citizens — not scientists or certifiers or testing lab authorities — identified the problem and have now notified the California secretary of state, and emergency measures are reportedly being taken in California, but not yet in Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, or any other state using Sequoia Voting Systems, the third-largest voting system vendor in the U.S.

Mark my words: the Republicnas will try to have the results of California’s elections invalidated in a desperate effort to cling to power. Let’s not allow them to do that.