A federal judge has reversed course and will now not restrict James O’Keefe from traveling to attend a conservative conference in California he told me on the radio recently in a story that has garnered national attention.

“Rick I will give you the breaking news story”, he said.  “I will be joining you in California on June 10th for the Eagle Forum Conference.  I have a very good lawyer named Michael Maddigan.  The judge has granted my request for work purposes.  My mission is a good mission (referring to his non-profit called Project Veritas).  There’s a lot of people we’re training now, so even if they stop me, they’re not going to stop us.”

O’Keefe said his presence at the conference falls under the category of ‘charity work’ since he will be teaching attendees ‘How To Be An Effective Citizen Journalist’ on behalf of his non profit Project Veritas.  To this he said of the mainstream media,

“They don’t do journalism, they just write down what the politicians say… they just do stenography.”…”We are redefining the genre.  We’re changing the game.”

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From the Associated Press:

The Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision in the disputed U.S. Senate race, saying the state correctly counted write-in votes for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

It is now up to Republican Joe Miller to decide if the election is finally over.

The court said in its ruling that it found “no remaining issues raised by Miller that prevent this election from being certified.”

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In the wake of a Big Government exclusive report featuring audio of CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA-TV staffers seemingly plotting potentially damaging scenarios for Alaska Republican Joe Miller’s Senate campaign, the station has been forced to cancel two evening news broadcasts, allowing time for extended discussion on journalistic ethics.

Along with the cancelled broadcasts, the CBS affiliate had already quietly announced the dismissal of two producers in response to Big Government’s reporting.

Two newscasts from Anchorage’s CBS news affiliate, KTVA-TV Channel 11, were canceled Wednesday so staff could deal with fallout from a phone message left by a station employee on the voice mail of a staff member working on Senate candidate Joe Miller’s campaign Oct. 28, the station announced on its website.

Wednesday’s 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. broadcasts were canceled because of time constraints related to an internal discussion on journalistic ethics, according to a message the station’s general manager, Jerry Bever, posted at KTVA.com.

“Events over the last week and a half have been challenging for our station,” Bever wrote in the Wednesday statement. “As the result of a conversation within our newsroom that was accidentally recorded and released to the public, our newsroom credibility has been called into question, and the public’s trust in us has been tested.”

KTVA general manager Jerry Bever’s latest statements on the controversy stand in stark contrast to his earlier statements falsely claiming the CBS affiliate’s staff did nothing wrong.

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After first receiving a tip from a reader regarding a warning issued against the Alaska Public Employee Supervisers Union for their improperly campaigning against Senate candidate Joe Miller, a call to Robert Pearson of Alaska’s Department of Administration produced a copy of the offending email, see further below.

This first communique was sent in response to “several” complaints from Alaska State workers regarding the improper union communication.

From: Commissioners Office, DOA (DOA sponsored)

Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 3:06 PM

To: SOA All SU Union members
Cc: Ludwig, Bruce (DOA sponsored); Brooks, Kevin A (DOA); Beecher, Carol L (DOA)

Subject: Election Email Follow-up‬

Dear SU Member,

Several of you wrote expressing concern about an email that was sent by your union on Thursday, October 28, 2010 with the subject line “Vote Tuesday November 2nd!” Article 9.12 of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) stipulates that union emails regarding pending legislation or in-progress partisan election campaigns shall be non-positional. The State’s position is that the email violated this article of the CBA.

I asked Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brooks to meet with union representatives to explain the State’s position. He did and advised the Business Manager that further infractions could result in restriction of access to the State’s email system. It’s important that you know we follow the CBA in resolving these issues and I appreciate those who brought the matter to light.

Annette Kreitzer
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

While Alaska’s public employee collective bargaining agreement allows for the SU to use email for purposes of political communication, said emails are not to be positional in nature. Given the dynamics of the 2010 Alaska Senate race, it was the Department of Administration’s opinion that the following communication, sent out to approximately 2,000 state supervisers, violated the union’s collective bargaining agreement.

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The Senate campaign of Alaskan Republican, Joe Miller, claims the Alaska’s Division of Elections failed to meet its responsibilities today with regard to the transparent handling of what is sure to be a closely watched ballot counting process. They say they were surprised to find out that the Absentee Ballot validation process began today at 10 a.m.

The Miller Campaign was told of the news from a Republican Party member who was informed of the decision this morning. In response to this news, Joe Miller said, “Our goal is to uphold the integrity of the voting process. Every vote that is cast correctly should be counted. All Alaskans deserve a free, open and fair election. Unfortunately, the State Division of Elections has decided to call that process into question with the constant maneuvering of dates and procedures.”

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Based upon current laws and regulations, there is a reasonable path to victory for Republican Joe Miller in the contentious U.S. Senate race in Alaska; however, with a very pro-Murkowski Lt. Governor, Craig Campbell, operating much like a state Secretary of State, a liberal court system and Murkowski tapping members of Bush’s Florida 2000 legal team, it’s unlikely to be as straightforward as it should be.

According to recent numbers via the Washington Post, there are 83,201 write-in votes which, if all were legitimately cast for Murkowski, she would lead Miller, who stands at 69,762, by 13439 votes. Citing a late nineties race for Governor in which the Republican backed nominee ran as a write-in candidate, as much as 5% of all write-in ballots could be invalid. Were that percentage to apply here, as many as 4,000 potential Murkowski votes could be invalidated, bringing Murkowski’s presumed advantage down to under 10,000 votes.

Additionally, the Division of Elections has received 26,306 absentee ballots still needing to be counted and 10,645 questioned ballots. It’s also possible that some double voting occurred given that some votes believe to favor Murkowski may have been sent into the wrong precinct, while some number of those voters may have also had their votes counted in their home district. A careful final counting should address any issues there.

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It was a rough weekend for the corrupt bastards at KTVA Channel 11 in Alaska.

Now we have exclusive video from behind the scene in the coffee room at Channel 11. This was captured shortly after the story broke this weekend that their butt-call to Joe Miller was caught on tape:
(Warning on language)

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Jerry Bever, general manager for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, issued a statement today regarding the inadvertent voice mail left on the phone of a senior staff member of the Joe Miller campaign. He claimed that the discussion his staff members had regarding potential scandals for the Miller campaign was taken out of context:

The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.

The American public is supposed to believe that the staff of KTVA were sitting around imagining potentially scandalous stories that others might foist upon the Miller campaign and not ideas that they, themselves were conjuring.

Instead of just taking Mr. Bever’s word for it (like so many in the media and at Soros-Funded left-wing activist organizations have), lets actually hold the statements made on the recording up to the context Mr. Bever has provided.

Look at what was said and try as hard as you can to fit these sentences into that context:

MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.

[Laughter]

MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…

If they were discussing what others might do, why do they keep saying “You” and “I”? Why don’t they say “They have to find that one person…” or “They know that out of all the people…” (more…)

The following brief statement has been released from the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Joe Miller regarding audio posted on Big Government and Big Journalism last night:

Now the media has gone from trying to create stories to openly lying. The audio was pulled directly from the voicemail message. Nothing was altered. “Everything that was recorded on my phone is what we released without change,” said Randy Desoto.

Neither Big Government, nor Big Journalism altered the audio before publication, either.

Both Politico and the Washington Post appear content to embarrass themselves by pushing a response from CBS-KTVA which Ed Morrissey termed “absurd,” in addition to some propaganda and an attempt at obfuscation from the Soros-funded Media Matters in its weak attempts to attack the messenger, be that Breitbart, Inc., or former Governor Sarah Palin.

We stand fully behind the original posting and view KTVA’s response as unserious, amounting to little more than, who are you going to believe, us or your lying ears?

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“That’s sick. Those are corrupt bastards, Chris.”

Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday this morning that “we have the tape that proves it” of the “corrupt bastards” in the media conspiring against Joe Miller.

Sarah Palin weighs in on the corrupt bastards in the Alaska media:

“Just last night it was revealed that the rally that I had for Joe Miller on Thursday, it was revealed and we have the tape to prove it, that the CBS reporters, the affiliate in Alaska, conspired to make up stories about Joe Miller. We have the tape Chris, and I can’t wait until it busts out all over the nation, that shows what it is that we… kinda what I put up with for two years now from the media… but what Joe Miller is faced with in someone like Lisa Murkowsky who feels so entitled to that seat, that she and some of her people including some complicit in the media will do anything, they will stop at nothing, to allow Lisa Murkowsky to get back elected.”

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UPDATE:

From the Miller Campaign:

Now the media has gone from trying to create stories to openly lying. The audio was pulled directly from the voicemail message. Nothing was altered. “Everything that was recorded on my phone is what we released without change,” said Randy Desoto.

***

The following voice mail message was inadvertently left on the cell phone of Joe Miller campaign spokesperson Randy DeSoto.

The voices are believed to be those of the news director for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, along with assignment editor Nick McDermott, and other reporters, openly discussing creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller.

The following is a transcript of a call recorded after CBS Alaska affiliate KTVA called Joe Miller’s Senate campaign spokesperson. The call failed to disconnect properly. It was later authenticated by McDermott, who sent a text to Randy DeSoto stating, “Damn iPhone… I left you a long message. I thought I hung up. Sorry.”

Audio KTVA –

Clearly the reporters were conspiring to set up some type of smear of Joe Miller. With glee, they even cite a recent controversy over an incident involving the Rand Paul campaign, while discussing how they would spread the story via social media after whatever incident they had in mind came off. It also brings to mind another recent episode that ended with Jerry Brown’s California gubernatorial campaign being caught up in controversy when someone from Brown’s camp called Brown’s opponent, Republican Meg Whitman, a “whore.”

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Looking increasingly like the liberal Washington, DC politician critics so often accuse her of being, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski invoked the state’s largest minority group… and dyslexics to cast a number of new challengers for the Alaska Senate seat as insensitive.

Murkowski’s campaign has informed Salon they see the inclusion of any names, other than perhaps her own, on a list of write-in candidates, as “sad.” Having been denied her party’s nomination, Murkowski now seems to think that any Alaska citizen, other than herself, we assume, who may desire to run for the seat as a write-in candidate is somehow being unfair.

Murkowski campaign spokesman Steve Wackowski tells Salon that “Operation Alaska Chaos” could cause problems for people in Alaska — including native Americans — whose first language is not English.

“I think it shows the desperation of Miller’s supporters. Quite frankly, I think it’s pretty sad,” he said. “For someone who is dyslexic or needs assistance, it’s dissappointing … but we’re not shocked. ”

The Murkowski camp is distributing wristbands, cards, and buttons with the candidate’s name to assist write-in voters.

It’s unclear if any of the other write-in candidates have raised significant funds to furnish voters with wrist bands, cards and buttons, as she has done.  None of the new write-in candidates appear to have violated Alaska’s election laws in any way. (more…)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – The number of write-in candidates for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat has swelled to about 150 amid an effort by conservatives to target the write-in candidacy of GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

The number by Thursday’s write-in deadline had grown from just a handful earlier this week.

Murkowski mounted her bid after losing the primary to tea-party backed Joe Miller, and some conservatives have urged Alaskans to make their own write-in runs

Those conservatives include Dan Riehl, who issued a call on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website to “highlight the chaos brought about by Lisa Murkowski’s seemingly unending quest for power” with her campaign. (more…)

If you’re an Alaska resident and qualified to run for Senate, Big Government wants you to take action today to highlight the chaos brought about by Lisa Murkowski’s seemingly unending quest for power with her write-in campaign. But you must act today.

Early yesterday, Alaska Superior Court Judge, Frank Pfiffner followed the rule of law, maintaining that Alaska’s voting regulations can not suddenly be changed in an ad hoc manner at the last minute to benefit Murkowski’s write-in campaign.

Dealing a setback to the write-in Senate campaign of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska superior-court judge ruled today that election workers can’t provide lists of write-in candidates to voters on Election Day, calling it a “clear violation” of Alaska regulations.

In its 50 year history as a state, Alaskan election workers have never been allowed to provide lists of write-in candidates on election day. But late yesterday, the Alaska Supreme Court stayed his order, allowing for the unprecedented practice to proceed.

While it remains unclear how the court may ultimately rule, there is something qualified Alaskans can and should do today to let those in power know you are paying attention to how they use it.

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All the while, Lisa Murkowski’s campaign has been engaged in a smear campaign against Joe Miller. Now, out of the blue, Democrats come out and call her an outright liar?

It was troubling when Murkowski broke her word to voters and refused to abide by the results of the Republican primary as promised. If these accusations are legitimate, all in all, it does not speak well of Lisa Murkowski’s character. And character does matter. She has invoked the name of the late Ted Stevens on her behalf. He can’t speak for himself. However, it appears some individuals Murkowski has claimed endorse her candidacy can – and they are flatly denying it.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA-CBS 11 News) Alaska Democrats are calling Sen. Lisa Murkowski a liar, after a mailer went out to many Anchorage residents claiming notable Democrats would be voting for her.
In a statement Murkowski’s campaign manager Kevin Sweeney says the mistake was the campaign’s fault, saying they forgot to change the headline.

The mailer’s banner states: “Alaskan Democrats Who Are Voting for Lisa Murkowski — and not Scott McAdams.” Below the headline are several quotes from politicians including Democratic gubernatorial candidates Ethan Berkowitz and Bob Poe, who dropped out of the governor’s race.

Alaska Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins says some of the quotes used about the sitting senator are from the past, and many of the candidates have openly stated they will be voting for Scott McAdams.

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Scott Rasmussen now predicts that the Republicans will pick up fifty-five seats in the House. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia still has the pick-up at forty-seven but says that, if forced to tweak the numbers right now, he would increase his estimate of Republican gains by single digits – which is to say, he agrees with Rasmussen.

There are pollsters out there who are playing games, as a glance at the polls for the Senate race in West Virginia should make clear – and, of course, it is easy to play games. If one wants to encourage the Left and discourage potential Republican voters and donors, all that one has to do is to base one’s poll on the presumption that the percentage of self-described Democrats within the voting public in 2010 will be equal to the percentage in 2008.

Sabato and his associates and Rasmussen are not, however, among the gamesters. Both are aiming at accuracy. Sabato and company have a reputation to uphold (and, in the academic world, that is all-important), and Rasmussen is a nonpartisan pollster who attracts clients by way of demonstrated precision. Neither outfit can afford to make a fool of itself.

I nonetheless think that both are greatly underestimating the size of the Republican surge. Both have reason to be cautious. For understandable reasons, neither is going to climb out on a limb; and both are basing their estimates on recent electoral history. If something is in the offing that exceeds the range of political oscillation in recent decades (including, notably, 1994), if we in American live in something other than normal times, they will miss the size of the surge.

It is good to remember that not a single Sovietologist predicted the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet regime. History has a way of lulling us into sleep. What has been in recent times we tend to think will be in the foreseeable future. Then, every once in a while, suddenly, out of nowhere, a political earthquake arrives – and only in the aftermath do the experts notice that there were ample warning signs.

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Can we trust the current polls? I do not mean to level any accusations. I think that, with rare exceptions, the pollsters are doing their best to assess the trends. If nothing else, they know that accuracy pays off – that a pollster who gets things right will get a lot of business down the road.

What I have in mind is something else. I suspect that there is something afoot which the pollsters do not yet know how to measure. There is evidence that seems to me to be dispositive. No one predicted Joe Miller’s victory in the Alaska primary; no one predicted Christine O’Donnell’s defeat of Mike Castle – and let’s face it: in neither case was the margin of victory small. My bet is that in November the Republicans will take every single race – for the House, the Senate, or at the state level – in which the pollsters (including Rasmussen, the best of the lot) report that the race is even remotely close.

On 2 September, I posted a piece suggesting that the Republicans would pick up more than 70 seats in the House and would take the Senate. I now think that they will do even better than this – at least in the House. As Peter Wehner and Paul Mirengoff have noted, when Glenn Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies ran a survey recently for the American Action Network, he made a discovery of great interest:

The generic ballot shows Republicans leading 44%-39%. Besides all of the usual regional crosstabs, we also broke it out by the type of district. We looked at the sample in the 66 Democratic INCUMBENT districts that Charlie Cook lists as either toss-up or leaning Democratic at the time of the survey. In that key crosstab of Swing Democratic Incumbent Seats, the Republican lead grows to 49%-31% on the generic ballot. That is a very powerful crosstab that says the wave is coming.

Among the remaining Democratic districts (Likely/Safe Dem, and open seats), the generic ballot is an unsurprisingly 33% GOP/51% Dem — a sign that the historically safe Dem seat will remain so, while the swing seats will be a bloodbath. By the way, in all of  the GOP held seats, the generic is the reverse of the base Dem seats — 52% GOP/32% Dem. Very few, if any, Republican incumbents will be defeated.

Likewise, President Obama’s numbers with likely voters are similar to the national average — 46% approve/51% disapprove. However, in the Swing Democratic Incumbent Seats. he has a much worse 40% approve/57% disapprove. (Keep in mind, many of these Swing Seats are held by Democrats despite the fact that John McCain either won the district in 2008, or, even if losing, outperformed his national result.

On 2 November, there is going to be an electoral revolution. I doubt that it will exceed the shift which took place in 1894 – when, in the wake of the Panic of 1893, Grover Cleveland’s Democratic Party split between its goldbug Bourbon wing and the populists who would later unite behind William Jennings Bryan and, in the midterm elections held that year, the Democrats lost 125 seats and the Republicans had a pickup of 130. But it may exceed the largest shift in the 20^th century, when 101 seats changed hands in 1932.

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We are in the midst of a national debate over the size and scope of government and I am hopeful.  Conservative Republican Joe Miller’s remarkable victory in the Alaska Republican Senate Primary should have Americans feeling optimistic about the prospects of real change coming to Washington in 2011. Miller’s victory over incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski is just the latest jolt to an establishment that has paved the way for an unsustainable $13.3 trillion national debt and record budget deficits.

My PAC, Citizens United Political Victory Fund (www.cupvf.org) has a goal for the 2009-2010 election cycle to recapture the majorities in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives by helping to elect candidates who will fight for conservative principles and challenge the agenda of the Obama Administration.  To date, CUPVF has made more than $300,000 in direct contributions to 53 federal candidates who are campaigning to put an end to this fiscal insanity.

If Miller is elected to the Senate in November, along with fellow fiscal conservatives Pat Toomey (PA), Marco Rubio (FL), Sharron Angle (NV), Ken Buck (CO), and Rand Paul (KY), business as usual in Washington will be over.  And good riddance!  After all, one U.S. Senator has the power to bring the legislative and appropriations process to a halt.  Imagine what this group of potential newcomers, with a clear mandate to stop the spending, could do to get America’s fiscal house in order!   Establishment incumbents from both parties should beware that the taxpayer funded party is about to end.   Voters are giving the order:  enough is enough.

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Earlier this week, Big Government reported that the Alaska Libertarian Party, after initial opposition, was open to reversing itself and welcoming Lisa Murkowski has their candidate this November. Now, Alaska Dispatch reports:

A new poll has U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski beating Joe Miller by six percent if she runs on the Libertarian ticket. The bigger news? The Alaska Libertarian Party isn’t as opposed to the idea as it sounded a few days ago. The party’s candidate for senator, David Haase, said he would support Murkowski if she agreed to certain Libertarian principals.

“If Lisa Murkowski will take up the banner of the people’s bailout, then she’ll have my support,” said Haase, 68. “But with sincerity and for real,” he added, chuckling. “I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke here.”

For Murkowski to run on the Libertarian ticket, Haase would have to step down and the party’s executive board would have to approve Murkowski. According to the party’s chairman, they are willing to sit down and listen to Murkowski.

“We are open to a sit-down chat with Lisa, anytime,” said Scott Kohlhaas, the party’s chairman and a candidate for House District 20 in Anchorage. Kohlhaas didn’t rule out the possibility of Murkowski running on the Libertarian’s ticket, but he did offer two reservations.

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