Wow...Pretty brilliant. Kudos to both Bruce and the immensely talented Jimmy Fallon here...

When you become a national joke, that's not a good sign for a Presidential run. When you're made a joke by your own idol (Christie is a huge Springsteen fanboy), that's even less gooder.

[Hat-tip Alyssa Rosenberg...]

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tap water ban lifted in West Virginia after chemical spill, but serious questions remain; Dim bulbs in U.S. Congress; Solar beats natural gas in Minnesota; Google is moving into your house; PLUS: New Jersey's last wilderness saved from fossil fuels (and maybe even from Chris Christie!) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Vinod Khosla's Open Letter to 60 Minutes and CBS; Breakthrough: Cheap Liquid Battery; Black tide of coal overwhelms climate goals; Industry proposal to block GMO labels; BP's oil spill settlement court battles may backfire; Canada's War on Science ... PLUS: The 'seven deadly sinners' driving global warming ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Borrowing a long-time favorite phrase of politicians who wish to take responsibility without actually taking responsibility --- one used infamously and repeatedly by Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal --- NJ Gov. Chris Christie (R) admitted that "mistakes were clearly made" in his State of the State addressed delivered Tuesday in Trenton.

The beleaguered Governor, however, did not identify who exactly made those "mistakes" in his ongoing "BridgeGate" scandal...

The rest of Christie's address, according to the text released by his office just prior to the speech, did not address the still expanding, still unexplained, political retribution scandal carried out by a number of the Governor's top aides and appointees last year when several access lanes to the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee were shut down for five days in early September. The order for "traffic problems in Fort Lee" that led to the closures, was issued by Christie's Deputy Chief of Staff in mid-August.

Subpoenas to a number of those staffers and appointees, as well as state, federal and even criminal investigations, are still in process at this time. Christie's personal role in both the lane closures and the documented attempts by his Administration to hide the actions from the public, is also still unclear.

Last week, we highlighted the alternate "BridgeGate" scandal theory offered by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. She reported, with circumstantial but seemingly plausible evidence, that the four-day closure of several Fort Lee, NJ access lanes to the George Washington Bridge last September might have had to do with something other than political payback for a lack of endorsement for Christie's re-election bid by the Democratic Mayor of Fort Lee.

Maddow posited that the timing of the now-infamous "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email of August 13, 7:34am, as sent by Christie Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Ann Kelly, may have been a direct response to something other than Fort Lee Mayor Mike Sokolich's refusal to endorse Christie. Instead, Maddow said, the still-unexplained closures might have been meant as retaliation to the state Senate's Democratic Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who has been a particular thorn in the Republican Governor's side for many years. (By way of just one example, see her attempt to pass a bill to limit travel of the NJ Governor following our exclusive release of audio tapes revealing Christie's super-secret appearance at a secret Koch Brothers gathering in Colorado in 2011.)

In support of the theory, Maddow highlighted a late afternoon press conference given by a very angry Christie on August 12th, the night before Kelly's early morning email, concerning a NJ Supreme Court nominee being stalled by Senate Democrats led by Weinberg, who happens to represent part of Fort Lee.

For what it's worth, the Democratic NJ Senate President Assembly leader, as well as several others, have found reason to doubt Maddow's theory.

But, on Sunday, in another smart example of good investigative broadcast journalism on MSNBC's UP with Steve Kornacki, the host, a former New Jersey political reporter and, incidentally, former employee of David Wildstein (the Christie appointee at the NY/NJ Port Authority who ordered the actual shutdown at the agency, according to subpoenaed email and text messages) offered yet another plausible alternate explanation for the shutdown.

This one also sounds like yet another plot straight out of HBO's The Soprano's, as it relates to, in Kornacki's words, "something of enormous economic and political significance"...

Ever wish you had the chance to give your younger self a nice, hard slap across the face?

There are times when I wonder just what the hell I was thinking when I became a Republican --- or whether I was even thinking at all. Next month will mark one of those times, as it will be the twentieth anniversary of a happy event that I turned into a miserable one --- by making a shortsighted decision with severe personal and political consequences...

[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Some very good investigative broadcast journalism from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday night.

On Thursday morning, New Jersey Governor and, until now, Republican Presidential favorite, Chris Christie gave a two-hour press conference (full transcript here) in which he expressed being "stunned" and "blindsided" Wednesday morning by the blockbuster revelations published that day by Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record.

The paper's report included email and text messages [PDF] between Christie's Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly and a number of other top appointees conspiring to shut down lanes of the George Washington Bridge leading out of Fort Lee, NJ on the first day of school last September. The messages reveal the staffers appearing to enjoying the pain the shut down was causing the town, joking about the inconvenience to the local children of voters of Christie's gubernatorial opponent in last November's election, and otherwise agreeing not to respond to queries from town officials about the closures.

During the presser, Christie announced he had fired Kelly before it began. He said he had done so because she had previously assured him she knew nothing about the traffic closure that went on for four days in Fort Lee, turning the town into a parking lot and delaying emergency first-responders, among other problems it caused. "I've terminated her employment because she lied to me," he explained on Thursday.

What struck me as odd about his answer to questions about his staff's response to the firing was that he said he hadn't spoken with Kelly since the revelations came out in the paper on Wednesday morning, before she was then fired on Thursday.

"I'm wondering what your staff said to you about why they lied to you. Why would they do that? What was their explanation?," the reporter asked.

"I have --- I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out," he answered. "And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I'm, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment."

Not interested in the explanation?...

And...we were back live this week on the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast for our first show of the new year.

And it wasn't a moment too soon for today's breaking Chris Christie BridgeGate blockbuster and our coverage of the Fox 'News'-ification of CBS News following yet another failure on Sunday by 60 Minutes.

Also, the latest breaking news on marriage equality in Utah, my personal Obamacare "nightmare", Desi Doyen with a chilling Green News Report and loads of great callers!

It's good to be back. Hope you'll agree...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

Prepping for today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, and may touch on this story a bit more then, or later as it continues to explode.

Either way, it's one that, despite being largely ignored by the D.C. media originally, seemed to have legs when it quietly emerged a couple of months back.

Today's blockbuster by Shawn Boburg in The Record, including tons of documents (emails and texts between the conspirators), almost ensures those legs. The question is now, as it has been from the jump, how NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a 2016 Presidential Republican fave, handles it. Oh, and if criminal charges --- even federal criminal charges, since this ultimately affected interstate commerce --- will emerge.

To date --- seemingly forgetting the old "it's not the crime, it's the coverup" mantra --- Christie's handled it very poorly. He's spent weeks denying any foreknowledge of the several-days closure of several lanes of the George Washington Bridge (the world's busiest) last September as part of an apparent (now pretty much confirmed) political payback scheme against Democratic Fort Lee, NJ Mayor Mike Sokolich. His response, to date, has largely been to belittle questions and reporters and officials who've asked about it. He may have one more chance to save himself if he acts quickly now and fires a whole bunch of people, and comes clean on everything he knows. But if he knows more than he's letting on so far (as is likely the case), he may be watching 2016 --- where he coulda been a contender --- go down the drain.

Here's the lede of Boburg's story. And no, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" --- "Got it", are not lines from The Sopranos. They are actually lines from this actual, now-documented, scandal...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 4 states confirm water pollution from natural gas drilling; Driest year ever in California sparks drought, fire fears; Colorado River drought means painful choices ahead; Toyota introduces hydrogen fuel-cell car; West Coast sardine crash radiates through ecosystem; Exxon faces criminal charges over illegally dumping fracking wastewater; 20 questions on GMOs; US sailors sue TEPCO over Fukushima; Fact vs. fiction on spread of Fukushima radiation ... PLUS: China admits millions of acres too polluted for farming ... and much, MUCH more! ...

The President of CBS News is David Rhodes. He was hired in February 2011. He was formerly the Vice President of News at Fox "News".

Again, the current President of CBS News was formerly the VP of News at Fox "News".

According to his bio posted at CBS: "Rhodes began his career as a Production Assistant at the newly-launched Fox News Channel in 1996, where he later became Vice President of News. At the network he managed coverage of three presidential elections, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricanes including Katrina, and was the channel's Assignment Manager on the news desk the morning of September 11, 2001."

That means, as The Nation's Greg Mitchell pointed out at the height of the recent CBS News/60 Minutes Benghazi report controversy (before CBS was finally forced to retract the entire fake story), that Rhodes "was the guy who worked hand-in-glove on the biased, often propagandistic, Fox 'coverage' of the run-up to the Iraq war, the 2000/2004/2008 elections, the Plame affair, the worst years in Iraq, and all other things Bush and Cheney, and so on."

Again, the guy who cut his teeth in the news business, beginning as a Production Assistant and working his way up to become VP at Fox "News", is now the President of CBS News.

That bears both highlighting and repeating as many have been asking, once again, over the past 24 hours, "What's the Matter with 60 Minutes?" after yet another report last night that is being described as a "hit job" by some and, more charitably, as "puzzling" by others --- including by some who were interviewed both on-air and off for the once-great news magazine's bizarre segment titled "The Cleantech Crash"...

Still on the road (back full time as of next week), but thought this video from yesterday's The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN was well worth popping here quickly, if you've yet to see it.

It's a fantastic and very lively debate about Edward Snowden and, perhaps most-interestingly, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, between journalist Glenn Greenwald and Washington Post op-ed columnist Ruth Marcus. Greenwald describes Marcus here --- much to her apparent consternation --- as an Obama Administration "loyalist" for, among other things, what he sees as a double-standard for her calls for the prosecution of whistleblower Snowden, versus the seeming free pass she's willing to give to Administration officials such as Clapper who has admitted to misleading Congress with false testimony (aka Lying to Them). That would be a felony crime...if anybody bothered to prosecute it.

Greenwald is tenacious (as usual) in forcing Marcus to answer his question about whether Clapper should be prosecuted. For her part, she does a decent job of acquitting herself, sort of, even as the entire conversation --- and the two staked-out positions here --- really do help to illustrate, as Greenwald describes it, how "the D.C. media" and "people in Washington continuously make excuses for those in power when they break the law."

"That's what people in Washington do," he charges. "They would never call on someone like James Clapper, who got caught lying to Congress, which is a felony, to be prosecuted. They only pick on people who embarrass the government and the administration to which they are loyal, like Edward Snowden. It's not about the rule of law."

"People in Washington who are well-connected to the government like she is, do not believe that the law applies to them. They only believe that the law should be used to punish people and imprison people who don't have power in Washington or who expose the wrongdoing of American political officials," Greenwald argues. I'll let you watch to see how Marcus responds.

This one is very much worth watching in full. If you prefer, the complete text transcript is posted here...

Don't care for the secretly-negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal? You're not gonna like the Trans-Atlantic 'Free Trade' Agreement (TAFTA) much better.

Earlier this year, in "Please Don't Notice the Global Corporate Coup", we explained how, via the TPP, giant multinational corporations --- through a secret negotiation process that they, not we, the people, have access to --- were working with the U.S. State Department and it's trade partners to supplant the sovereignty of participating nation-states with a privately-controlled, all encompassing, corporate, global "investor state". That "investor-state" is embodied in the deal through the creation of arbitration tribunals, which are granted the power to negate the effectiveness of laws passed by individual nation-states that are parties to the treaty.

The Obama Administration has taken extraordinary measures to hide the content of the TPP negotiation texts from the public as negotiations have proceeded in secret, but for the access granted to hundreds of corporate lobbyists. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), one of the few members of Congress to acquire access to the secret draft texts described the deal to date as "NAFTA on steroids." Last month, however, WikiLeaks published TPP's 94-page, Intellectual Property (IP) chapter, a chapter that would, according to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, permit corporate IP rights to "trample over individual rights and free expression."

The content of that chapter, according to Public Citizen's Lori Wallach will, among other things, not only extend the length of pharmaceutical patents (thus delaying the availability of more reasonably priced generic versions of the same medicine), but also attempt to expand patents to surgical procedures, both of which will serve to expand corporate profits at the expense of individual patients.

TPP represents only one-half of this ongoing, attempted, global corporate coup d'état. The second half finds its embodiment in the equally secretive TAFTA, which may prove a greater threat to our nation's sovereignty than the TPP in light of the fact that, as Public Citizen notes, "European-based corporations own more than 24,000 subsidiaries in the United States."

Like the TPP, they explain, TAFTA is also being secretly negotiated by some 600 U.S. corporate trade advisers and contains many of the very same threats to nation-state sovereignty…

Over the years, whenever I chat with one of my neighbors (who happens to be gay) about various issues of marriage equality in the news, the state of Utah inevitably seems to come up as the conversational worst-case-scenario stand-in for the dying status quo.

"It'll be interesting to see what effect the new Supreme Court ruling in the Windsor case will have across the country," I might say. "Will a gay couple who were married in California, for example, suddenly stop receiving their federal recognition and marriage benefits if their job requires that they must move to, say, Utah, for their work? Will the courts stand for a couple receiving full federal recognition in one state, but allow that recognition to be removed simply because they moved to another? That doesn't seem either legally or Constitutionally sustainable...Even in a state like Utah."

Welp, guess we now have our answer to that speculation at least, and much more specifically than any of us might have thought over the past year or three, now that a federal judge yesterday found Utah's state constitutional ban against gay marriage to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Some 30 other states currently have similar laws or state constitutional bans on equality for all.

"The court holds that Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law," Judge Robert J. Shelby (an Obama appointee) wrote in his 53-page ruling at the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division. "These rights would be meaningless if the Constitution did not also prevent the government from interfering with the intensely personal choices an individual makes when that person decides to make a solemn commitment to another human being."

I guess I'll have to find another "Utah" for purposes of neighborly speculative conversation about equal marriage rights legal issues. The Deep South states like Mississippi or Alabama might have seemed like good candidates. But between the fairly clear, conservative --- and surprisingly early --- holiday message sent by Judge Shelby in the Utah case yesterday (which is, of course, being appealed by the state, but that will fail soon too), and the awesome message from this Daily Show video from last month, I suspect we'll be running completely out of status quo states all together pretty soon. Or, at least, we'll have 50 status quo states...

"True the Vote" (TTV), the Orwellian-named Republican "voter fraud" front group with a long and sordid history of deception and fraud won't take 'no' for an answer. Release the hounds.

The group has filed a formal notice of appeal [PDF] of U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos' recent refusal to permit TTV to intervene as a party defendant in the U.S. Justice Department's (DoJ) federal legal challenge to SB-14, the Texas polling place Photo ID statute.

Judge Ramos found that the interests of the organization --- which masquerades as an "election integrity" group in order to actually advocate for voter suppression --- were already adequately represented in the lawsuit by the state of Texas itself.

As they were filing their notice of appeal, the disgraced GOP "voter fraud" front man, Hans von Spakovsky --- who also just happens to serve on the "advisory board" for TTV --- challenged the court's rejection of the groups Motion to Intervene in an article published at the right-wing National Review. His work there, as usual, represents a masterful example of deception, dishonesty and well-remunerated cherry-picking. That is, apparently, what Hans von Spakovsky does for a living.

He is amongst good friends in the Republican Fraud community this time out...

A federal judge has found the bulk collection of metadata of U.S. phone calls to be "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" and, therefore, in violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. His opinion was hailed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who has been asserting that point as the central basis for his having leaked thousands of classified documents in regard to programs run by the federal agency.

Politico's Josh Gerstein, who appears to have been the first to break the news today, reports it this way...

Now, Klayman is, in fact, a Rightwing loon who is separately in the process of, literally, attempting to overthrow the U.S. government. But, as journalist Glenn Greenwald --- the man who has been most intensely reporting on Snowden's leaks --- notes today: "the ACLU has a virtually identical lawsuit against the NSA as the one where the judge today ruled against NSA".

Judge Leon went on to write in his scathing opinion...