It's slightly inside baseball, but the laugh should be worth the quick trip here. So, in short, if you're not familiar with the backstory: Conservative Libertarian-ish journalist/blogger Dave Weigel was recently forced to resign from his new job at the Washington Post covering the "conservative" movement, after rightwingers released stolen, off-the-record emails from a private listserv called "JournoList", set up many years ago by Washington Post journalist/blogger Ezra Klein for random discussion and kibutzing between center to center-left progressive and liberal journalists. The selectively quoted Weigel emails included some snarky (if pretty funny) comments about some of the wingnuts he is forced to cover on his beat.

In the ensuing brouhaha, and shameful response by WaPo, Klein decided to shut down JournoList entirely and delete its archives so they couldn't be further used to selectively "ACORN" other members of the list. (For the record, no, we've never been a member of that email list.)

Thereafter, Rightwing sleaze-monger, Republican operative, opportunist and conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 to anyone who anonymously gave him the entire JournoList archives.

So far, there have been no takers, but it looks like Breitbart may now owe our friend Skippy the Bush Kangaroo at least part of that $100k! Check out Skippy at what may perhaps be his absolute --- and most high-larious --- best...

While Skippy does a fine job of making Breitbart look like a jackass in the highly recommended link above, in truth Breitbart doesn't need much help. If you missed it the first time, don't miss this exclusive video interview with Breitbart that we ran a few months ago, during the height of exposing his ACORN "Pimp" Hoax scam. The video is reposted below for your convenience...

Taking a break this year from our annual re-publication of the Declaration of Independence, to offer instead some of our favorite Independence Day/Weekend tweets so far this year. For the record, you can follow The BRAD BLOG on Twitter right here: @TheBradBlog. Hope you all have a safe and happy 4th! --- Brad

From @WestWingReport:

From @JamisonFoser:

From @OTOOLEFAN:

From @OTOOLEFAN:

From @RepJackKimble:

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

Just days after resigning as Chairman of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, former talk show host at Sacramento's KFBK radio, began encouraging people to file claims for the BP fund which is being set up to provide financial assistance to those damaged by the Gulf oil spill. He's not just encouraging residents of the Gulf or those who do business with Gulf Coast fisheries to file claims; he is encouraging everyone in the country to file a claim against BP, and brags about having done so himself.

Williams asserts on his blog, MarkTalk.com, that in so filing, people are not stealing. He writes, "You are only recouping some of your own money that the Obama regime is stealing from you to redistribute," and he cites fund administrator Ken Feinberg as telling people "we should '...all file a claim…' because specific criteria for valid claims has not yet been set."

He further writes, "Let's show the Marxists who occupy our government and their flying monkey supporters what life under socialism is really like when the productive stop producing and join the gravy train."

The BP fund, according to a conversation I had with Feinberg's office this week, "is paid entirely by BP." Even the administration of the fund is paid by the private corporation which caused the spill. "There are no merits to claim that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill."

Nonetheless, Williams describes the fund as run by "Marxists", constituting "life under socialism", and as nothing short of a "gravy train". Yet, oddly enough, it's the "conservative" Mark Williams, whose agenda could lead to the waste of untold numbers of tax-payer dollars...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"Fact, the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history," warns Maude Barlowe, head of the Council of Canadians and a founder of the Blue Planet Project.

"Fact, global climate change is rapidly advancing, claiming at least 300,000 lives and $125 billion in damages every year," she says. "Called the silent crisis, climate change is melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban centers. Almost every victim lives in the Global South in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and not represented here at the summit."

Speaking out as a counterpoint to last week's billion dollar, G-20 Summit, whose leaders she referred to as a "global royalty, who have more in common with one another than they do with their own citizens," and as leaders who came to Toronto with an agenda which offers "more of the bad medicine that made the world sick in the first place—environmental deregulation, unbridled financial speculation, unlimited growth, unregulated free trade, relentless resource exploitation, tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to Social Security and a war on working people," Barlowe delivered a must-see, fact-filled condemnation of a bleak economic and ecological future that is at the heart of what she described as "savage capitalism."

The video and text transcript of excerpts from Barlowe's powerful "Savage Capitalism" speech, courtesy of the July 2nd, 2010 Democracy Now!, follow below...

Fox "News" Channel has been using this grossly distorted, incorrectly named and deceptively skewed chart on a number of its "news" shows of late...

But the chart is entirely, utterly, and reprehensibly misleading, as well as, yes, flat out wrong. In truth, here is an actual chart of U.S. job losses (and gains) since December of 2007:

But that's not all that's wrong with the chart at the top that the liars at Fox are using to deceive the chumps who watch (and believe in) the garbage they're being given under the knowingly false name of "News". Not by a long shot.

See Media Matters' for more eye-popping, visual, demonstrable, independently verifiable facts about this latest of utter lies from the shameless America-haters at Fox "News".

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: BP Disaster now Worst Ever in the Gulf --- and worse than any of us can imagine; BP was ready for walruses, but not hurricanes; John Kerry, ready as ever to compromise... PLUS: Baby it's hot outside, around the world --- and on Capitol Hill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Solar-powered plane set for pioneering night flight; U.S. fines BP for underpayment of gas royalties to Indian tribes; Dengue fever re-emerges in U.S.; Fossil fuel subsidies dwarf global clean energy; Fisker to build electric cars in old GM plant; Asia gripped by water crisis; Fannie & Freddie derail home energy retrofit incentives; New Zealand implement Emissions Trading; Arctic hyper-sensitive to global warming ...PLUS: Green Up your Red, White & Blue! Tips to have your greenest July 4th evah! ...

"...[W]ithout full transparency of results, this fraud would not have been uncovered." - Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos founder, 6/29/10

There's an interesting bit of news today --- ironically enough, from Daily Kos --- which underscores the importance of citizen access to, and transparency of, election data, at least if anyone ever hopes to be able to root out and/or discover fraud, be it in elections or virtually anything else.

I say "ironically enough," because Daily Kos --- including both its founder Markos Moulitsas and a number of its front-page writers --- have, for years at their site, poo-pooed concerns about election fraud and e-voting by disinforming their readers about the very serious concerns presented by the disastrous election system used in most of the U.S. By marginalizing such concerns as little more than "conspiracy theory," they have continued to ill-serve both their readers' and their own self-interest (that of electing Democrats to office) in the bargain.

More, in a moment, on today's news from Kos himself, accidentally underscoring the long disservice his site has offered to readers on the e-voting front. But first, a personal incident involving hamburgers yesterday also serves to underscore, yet again, a related issue, and why hand-marked paper ballots --- and actually bothering to count them --- is an absolute imperative for Election Integrity...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane season in the Gulf begins with a BP bang; Saving the BP baby turtles ... PLUS: Impeaching the BP judge? ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): "Climategate" Continues To Sputter Out; G20 protests focus on Canada's mining and tar sands; Uranium mining health effects linger, even 30 years later; Antarctic crustaceans in peril? Jet Hypermiling across the Atlantic saves fuel; Potentially Harmful Chemicals Used in Pa. Drilling; New mine safety legislation unveiled ...PLUS: The other oil spill: Millions of gallons oil spilled on CO lands...

Near the end of an article today on an investigation now underway by South Carolina officials into how the unknown, unemployed Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alvin Greene was able to afford the state's $10,440 filing fee to get on the ballot in the first place, the Associated Press quickly summarizes the "multiple theories" forwarded to speculate on how it was that Greene could have garnered a 59 to 41% "victory" over former state legislator and Circuit Judge Vic Rawl in the recent Democratic U.S. primary:

I guess there were just no other possible "theories" for Greene's still inexplicable "victory". Nothing that AP could come up with --- nothing at all to inform readers about --- despite the recent, official, formal five-hour hearing, filled with evidence and actual experts, at that "protest lodged by Rawl."

So, it must have been the "e" at the end of Greene's name that made more than 100,000 South Carolinians vote for a man who never campaigned and who they never heard of. Yeah, that must have been it.

In related news, I've officially changed my name to Brad Friedmane and am hereby announcing my candidacy for President of the United States in 2012. I hope this notice serves to get me elected, as it's the only campaigning I will be doing between now and then. Should be more than enough though. Measuring the Oval Office for drapes even as we speak.

Last week, in a unanimous verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the use of "honest services fraud" by federal prosecutors in cases that do not include bribery or kickback as part of that charge. The specific case considered by the court was focused on the convictions of Enron's Jeffrey Skilling, who is likely to see part of his conviction overturned by the decision.

How will that SCOTUS ruling affect the appeals in the cases of Alabama's former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman and Mississippi's once-powerful Democratic attorney Paul Minor, both of whom were targeted with apparent political prosecution by Karl Rove and the Bush Administration's politicized US Attorneys?

Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane at RAW STORY take a look at the still-uncertain future in both of their cases...

UPDATE 6/29/10 SCOTUS vacates Siegelman conviction, remands case back to appellate court! Great news, if not yet a full victory. Details at RAW STORY...

UPDATE 7/5/10 Brad's exclusive interview discussing all of the above with Siegelman on the Mike Malloy Show...

The BRAD BLOG's previous, years-long coverage of the disturbing Siegelman and Minor cases can be perused here...

On Thursday The BRAD BLOG posted an article in which I offered the legal underpinnings supporting the case for the impeachment of U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman in light of his failure to recuse himself due to conflicts-of-interest in Hornbeck Offshore Services vs. Salazar [PDF].

The case for unseating the federal judge has grown still stronger at week's end, with new disclosures of his investments in the off shore oil drilling industry and what appears to be a very conscious decision to remain on the case despite them.

New evidence now suggests that the actions of Judge Feldman, at the very outset of the moratorium case, are particularly damning. Those new revelations support not only a case for impeachment against the Reagan-appointee who, as has also come to light, is reportedly a very close friend of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but they also reveal a lifetime appointee to the federal bench who is simply unfit to remain in office...

On Tuesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an OpEd by Cynthia Richards and Phillip Michaels of the non-partisan election integrity organization Missourians For Honest Elections.

We don't normally do this, but since the entirety of the piece was so tremendously good; and, since it's so rare to see such an on-target OpEd on this topic in any major corporate news outlet; and, since St. Louis is our old hometown; and, since we've met with the MoHonest folks on a number of very pleasant occasions; and, since St. Louis County, the largest in MO, still shamefully uses 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by the oft-failed ES&S outfit in no small part because of this blog and this blogger's father; and, since the City of St. Louis still shamefully uses 100% unverifiable DRE systems made by Diebold; and, since much of the rest of the important "swing state" still shamefully uses similarly 100% unverifiable voting systems; and, since both fake "voting rights advocate" (really, top GOP vote suppression scam artist) Thor Hearne, and Bush's horrific U.S. Election Assistance Commission chair (now, Internet Voting huckster) Paul DeGregorio both live there and don't give a damn that voters in the state use such oft-failed, easily-manipulated, fully-unverfiable voting systems; and, since more people are likely to read the full article here than at the the Post; rather than just linking to the editorial, or quoting a few grafs, we're gonna run it in full below.

Please read it, and consider writing similar for your major newspaper in your hometown (and then watch them not publish it)...

Me, wisecracking at the very end of our Thursday morning Green News Report: "...Follow us on 'the Twitters'."

Obama, not wisecracking during his Thursday afternoon joint presser with Medvedev: "...He visited the headquarter of Twitters".

Spooky! Am I amazingly prescient or what?! (Or is Obama just a misled listener of the Green News Report?)

For the record, our user name on Twitter (singular!): @TheBradBlog and/or @GreenNewsReport.

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman, a 1983 Reagan appointee to the federal bench, issued what, on its face, would have to be regarded as an astounding decision [PDF] in which he blocked a six month moratorium on deep water off shore drilling, ruling that the Department of the Interior had erroneously assumed that because one rig failed, there was an imminent danger of others failing as well.

A perplexed Justice Department promptly announced that it intends to seek an immediate stay of Judge Feldman's preliminary injunction pending an appeal.

Setting aside what appears to be an inappropriate judicial intrusion by a Federalist Society-connected jurist into the prerogatives of the Executive branch in protecting public health, safety and the environment, setting aside the misguided notion that the burden rests with the government rather than the oil companies when it comes to demonstrating whether deep water drilling procedures are safe, Judge Feldman's decision --- and his failure to recuse himself despite conflict-of-interest concerns --- raises a significant question as to whether he should be impeached...

Good for him. Now, at some point, he needs to hold his own "news" channel accountable for all the damage they've done as well...

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters has some related thoughts on whether the BP disaster will turn out to be Fox's "tipping point".