Interview: Brad Friedman On The Epic Fail Of 2008

Tuesday, 28 October 2008, 2:57 pm
Opinion: Scoop Link

By The BEAST, America's Best Fiend
November 2008 Issue

For full story see…The BEAST: America's Best Fiend

Brad Friedman is perhaps the most diligent and unassailable election integrity advocate in America. His work at Bradblog.com is required reading for anyone who gives a damn about maintaining democracy in America, and he’s also the guy we call whenever we start freaking out about the insanity of allowing hackable, untested voting machines to tabulate an election between two morally bankrupt parties, or the bitter injustice of trumped up voter fraud charges taking precedence in the media over real, actual voter fraud.

BEAST: To start, this whole ACORN thing, it seems like such a—

Brad Friedman: Scam?

BEAST: Well, yeah, like another low point for the media.

BF: It really is. It really is a complete and utter scam, I mean just take a look at the last two or three items that I’ve posted at Bradblog just in the last twelve hours, you’ll see what’s really going on, versus the bullshit.

BEAST: Right, the thing about West Virginia, I saw that and I’m completely baffled.

BF: And that’s a small one, frankly. I mean we’ve seen that one going on all over the country, but we’re also seeing tens of thousands of voters being illegally purged in dozens of states, as reported by the New York Times, the Brennan Center for Justice, within just the last week or so, and the media is doing absolutely nothing to report on that. It’s astounding—although I shouldn’t be astounded by now, I should know better.

BEAST: It’s pretty amazing that Republicans still get away with calling it the liberal media and talking about liberal bias, when it seems the only stories they cover are these, you know, fraudulent talking points brought by the GOP.

BF: Yeah, they really are.

BEAST: And the thing that’s driving me crazy is, wasn’t it just a year or so ago that the Justice Department was in all this hot water for firing prosecutors for not prosecuting these bogus voter registration fraud cases?

BF: That’s right. And they’re still doing the same exact thing. You saw the leak from two unnamed FBI officials who said that ACORN was under investigation. That leak is completely in violation of Department of Justice rules, written rules about talking about investigations, about bringing investigations this close to an election, they are simply doing exactly what they did back in 2004 and 2006 with these purges, with those U.S. attorney purges, and they’re doing it again because there was essentially no accountability brought for that.

BEAST: Right.

BF: You know? The Democrats huffed and puffed and wrote sternly worded letters, but they allowed themselves to be steamrolled by these bad guys. And they never sent the message that they couldn’t get away with it, so they’re doing it all over again. It’s unbelievable.

BEAST: What I can’t believe is what a shoddy job of journalism is being done about this. I mean, for instance, just the fact that they keep calling it voter fraud, the ACORN thing, and they don’t draw—it seems like the first thing you would do is draw a distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud. Because these faked names, they can’t actually go vote. It’s not voter fraud.

BF: Yeah, exactly. I wrote an article at Bradblog, and I published another version of it over at the Guardian UK, saying exactly that—saying, “Where is the ACORN voter fraud, can someone cite me a single example anytime, anywhere?” And that was earlier this week, and what do you know, not one single person has been able to show me any. Previous articles, they were like, “Well, what about this in Nevada?” And “What about that in Indiana and Ohio?” And you know, “They’re under investigation everywhere,” And I said “Yeah, John McCain is under investigation in 50 states, for stealing the election, by me. That doesn’t mean he did it.” Anybody can be under investigation when you’ve got all these Republican officials bringing these phony charges.

And remember, aside from the point you make about the difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud, most of these cases were brought to the attention of election officials, months and months ago, by ACORN themselves! And so for, all of a sudden, these Republican officials to come out yelling, “Oh my God, we’re being buried by voter fraud from ACORN, and fraudulent registrations,” it’s a complete lie. They know it. And in every single one of those cases, if you go through it, it was months ago when they were told about whatever problems there were, and [ACORN] turned in those registration forms as they’re required to by law, and did so while flagging them as problematic, the ones that were problematic.

So the thing’s a complete scam. We expect Fox News to lie about it; it’s somewhat a surprise they’ve made it such a cottage industry, but not that much of a surprise. So we expect them to lie about it, but the same thing is going on at CNN and MSNBC on this story.

For full story see…The BEAST: America's Best Fiend

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