Next time you hear that voting machines are reliable and safe "because they have been tested and certified," think of this important article, which reveals proven corruption, payoffs and bid-rigging connected to Ciber, Inc., a firm that signed off on our voting machines. Ciber's okay was the foundation for federal acceptance of voting machines all over the USA.

A few weeks ago, I decided to examine electoral fraud from the other end. What happens if we start with known public corruption cases and work backwards to the intersection with elections?

What I found were kickbacks and bid-rigging schemes in New Orleans and Pennsylvania which both connect back to Ciber, the firm that supposedly tested and then signed off on most of the U.S. voting machines currently in use in all fifty states, on behalf of the federal government.

I learned of a now-admittedly corrupt government technology official who had placed, as one of his first priorities, setting up an Internet voting system.

Veterans For Peace has once again teamed up with March Forward to bring the Our Lives Our Rights campaign to active duty Gis facing deployment to Afghanistan. Since Monday, Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans—including active-duty soldiers—have been engaged in a daring outreach campaign on and around Fort Hood, TX, the biggest U.S. military base in the world.

Every morning, as soldiers flood onto Fort Hood, Our Lives Our Rights organizers have been holding a massive 50-foot banner at the base gates reading “You don’t have to go to Afghanistan.” This trip was timed ahead of the deployment of Fort Hood’s III Corps in May.

This message—and information about why and how soldiers can resist deployment to Afghanistan—is also on thousands of leaflets and educational pamphlets.

This week, our organizers are actually on base at Fort Hood, distributing all of this literature to soldiers in uniform. Soldiers are also finding this literature in waiting rooms and lobbies at the USO, mental health clinic, post hospital, art and recreation center, and more. Soldiers will also open the Fort Hood post newspaper to find our literature stashed inside.

Are the bad ideas dead yet? You know, the ones that have been hollowing out the country’s soul for the last 30 years.

In Atlanta, they just indicted 35 teachers, principals and administrators, including a former superintendent, for routinely altering their students’ standardized test results — and in all likelihood this massive fraud is an aberration only because the cheaters got caught.

Everything is at stake in these tests, so perhaps it’s dawning on us that fraud — by adults — is inevitable, but there’s a bigger issue here that continues to escape public outrage: The tests are stupid. They measure virtually nothing that matters, but monopolize the classroom politically. Teachers, under enormous pressure, are forced to teach to the tests rather than, you know, teach critical thinking or creative expression; and education is reduced to something rote, linear and boring.

The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government today issued a preliminary set of endorsements for candidates to the Columbus City Council. The screening process was performed in conjunction with the Columbus Coalition of Concerned Black Citizens.

The endorsements are currently listed as "preliminary" because the three incumbent city council members have not yet engaged in the screening process. The Coalition has a four-tier rating:

1) Highly Recommended,
2) Recommended,
3) Not Recommended, and
4) Unfit for Public Office

In addition to the ratings, the Coalition has a Special Designation - Champion of Democracy - which is awarded to the candidate whose scaled scores rank highest on the principles of a representative democratic form of government.

The Coalition is pleased to award the "Highly Recommended" rating to candidates Nicholas Schneider and Brian Bainbridge, and the "Recommended" rating to candidates Greg Lawson and John Lively.

April 4 will mark the 45th year since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Dr. King, 39, at the time, has now been gone from us longer than he was with us. A monument celebrates his life on the mall in Washington. He is remembered as the man with a dream at the March on Washington.

In 1968, however, Dr. King was far from the favored celebrity he is today. He was under fierce criticism for opposing the war in Vietnam. Former colleagues were scorning his commitment to nonviolence. When he went to Memphis, headlines called him “Chicken a la King.” The St. Louis Globe-Democrat termed him “one of the most menacing men in America today.” The FBI was planning COINTELPRO operations to spread rumors about him and discredit him.

The civil rights movement had succeeded in ending legal segregation. The Voting Rights Act had been passed. But Dr. King knew that his greatest challenges were still ahead as he turned his focus to poverty and equal opportunity. The war on poverty was being lost in the jungles of Vietnam as war consumed the resources needed.