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".

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Supreme Court lifts ban on planting GM alfalfa; Murdoch UK newspaper apologizes to climate scientist; What goes into (and comes out of) a barrel of tar sands oil; Four BP-style extreme energy nightmares to come; Coal industry costs W.Va. state budget millions more than it generates ...PLUS: America's magical thinking on energy ...

Yesterday, both Greta Van Susteren on Fox "News" and Ed Schultz on MSNBC asked the very same viewer poll question during their shows:

"Should President Obama fire Gen. McChrystal?"
Results from viewers as of last night...

YES: 3% - NO: 97% Total Votes (via website): 7,410

YES: 94% - NO: 6% Total Votes (via text msg): "Over 22,000"

Two Americas.

Yesterday, the White House denied a claim made by Arizona's Republican Sen. Jon Kyl that he was told personally by President Obama that he would not work to secure the Mexican border unless it was part of comprehensive immigration legislation.

"The president didn't say that and Senator Kyl knows it," White House Communication Director Dan Pfeiffer told POLITICO yesterday in their story which includes video of Kyl's claims being made to supporters in Phoenix.

Today, Media Matters has a long list detailing Kyl's well-documented history of blatantly false claims.

But we had our own run in with Kyl --- and his proclivity to just pull stuff out of his hind-quarters when speaking to the press --- during the 2008 Democratic Convention, both outside, and then inside the Pepsi Center.

Remember this BRAD BLOG exclusive from August 28, 2008? When we seemed to be the only member of the media willing to press Kyl on his bullshit?...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Breaking: Moratorium struck down by judge, White House to appeal; Now it's 100,000 barrels of oil per day; More whaling?; Wildfires, floods and mudslides, oh my;...PLUS: Praying the Spill away ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems has quietly announced its second acquisition of a major U.S. voting machine company in as many months and, right out of the gate, they've lied about it. Not an auspicious beginning for the company which may now, virtually overnight, have become the dominant private e-voting machine company in this country.

In our recent breaking coverage detailing the SEC's fraud lawsuits filed against Diebold and a number of their top executives --- including their former Chief Financial Officer who, as we reported exclusively back in 2007, was the top earner from an apparent insider sell-off at the company just days before its stock would plummet from its all-time high on the announcement of spinning off their troubled election division to a "new" company renamed Premier --- we noted that Diebold/Premier's assets had recently been purchased by a small Canadian firm by the name of Dominion Voting. But Dominion hasn't stopped there.

Their purchase of Diebold/Premier's assets was actually made from ES&S, the world's largest voting machine company, who was forced to divest of the assets they'd purchased from Diebold (previously, the second largest voting machine company in the country) for $5 million last year, as part of an anti-trust suit settlement with the DoJ.

In our coverage, we noted the comment of Dominion CEO John Poulos who, in the company's press release [PDF] announcing the Diebold/Premier asset acquisition, stated ominously: "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which...will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

Indeed, the DoJ-scuttled ES&S merger with Diebold/Premier had been legally challenged since, among other reasons, the merger of the largest e-voting company with the country's second largest would have given a single company control of at least 70% of all votes cast in the nation.

What we had replaced for length, however, with the ellipses in Poulos' quote above, was this [emphasis added]: "We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which will restore much-needed competition to the American voting systems market and will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States."

How much is Poulos actually interested in "restor[ing] much-needed competition" for "the American voting systems market"? Apparently not so much, as according to a company press release [PDF] quietly issued late in the afternoon on Friday, June 4th, Dominion has now also acquired what had previously been the third largest voting machine company in the U.S., Sequoia Voting Systems.

Not surprisingly, that late Friday announcement didn't say anything at all about "competition".

Worse, as The BRAD BLOG has confirmed, the new press release from Dominion simply lied about what the company has and hasn't purchased from Sequoia, a company which had lied themselves, for years, about the real ownership of its proprietary voting systems...

Tale of @TheBradBlog's tweets from this morning...

11:23am PT:

11:23am PT:

11:25am PT:

11:25am PT:

11:26am PT:

11:26am PT:

11:29am PT:

And now, some of the replies from the "conservatives" who quickly responded to the above --- kept below the fold since their responses are so very "conservative" and classy!...

More disturbing news for voters who are forced to rely on the historically dreadful ES&S electronic voting system, this time in Alabama, on the paper-ballot system in Autauga County which uses a computer to tally votes:

[Hat-tip Joyce McCloy of Voting News.]

On Thursday's Green News Report, I defended BP...sorta. It played on radio stations around the country, but nobody complained. I even gave an email address for hate mail! Didn't get a one.

What did I do wrong?

Here was my defense of the corporation...

Okay. Now let me have it!

Judge Vic Rawl just released a public statement on the heels of the SC Democratic Party Executive Board's insane rejection yesterday of his protest to the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen system's announced "victory" of Alvin Greene to be the state's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. Rawl's statement reads in part:

Rawl's comments follow on both his own impromptu remarks after yesterday's protest was rejected, and his Campaign Manager Walter Ludwig's barely-contained on-the-record comments following the hearing: "We're certainly disappointed, but the unique circumstances of this election gave us an opportunity to put the specter of voting machines in front of the national public in the strongest way since Bush v. Gore."

As we'll be guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show again for the first week of July, hopefully Rawl and/or Ludwig will be able to join us to explain what the hell happened, what they intend to do about it, and what the hell is wrong with SC's shameful, apparently democracy-hating, Democratic Party Executive Board. (See yesterday's report & live blog of the hearings for all the insane details.)

Previously related at The BRAD BLOG:

• 'Experts' Eye 100% Unverifiable E-Vote System in 'Win' of SC's Mystery U.S. Senate Nominee
• UPDATE: More Statisticians Focus on 'Tampering, Malfunction' of E-Vote System in SC Primary
• BREAKING: U.S. Senate Candidate Files Challenge to SC's 'Unreliable, Unverifiable' E-Vote Results
• SC Election Commission Hoodwinks Local Media
• Clyburn: SC's E-Vote Computers May Have Been 'Hacked'; Rawl: 'Systemic Problem in Software'
• 'Luddite' at Computer Mag 'Network World' Decries E-Voting in SC, Calls for Paper, Pencil Elections
• 'Arti-factual' Election Results in SC; And a Brief History of Recent ES&S E-Vote Failure in Advance of Thursday's Democratic Primary Protest Hearing
• BREAKING: SC DEM PARTY EXEC BOARD UPHOLDS NOMINATION OF ALVIN GREENE FOR U.S. SENATE

[Hat-tip Climate Progress, via @GreenNewsReport.]

The South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Board rejected Judge Vic Rawl's official protest to the results of last week's U.S. Senate primary, despite no evidence presented that the results were accurate, and despite Alvin Greene having not even shown up to the protest hearing. Rawl had originally filed his protest based, in large part, on the "well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina."

Greene's election as the Democratic party nominee for the U.S. Senate, to run against incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, stands. The vote of the Executive Board was 38.5 to 7.5 in favor of rejecting Rawl's protest and upholding the results. Not kidding.

The Rawl campaign presented an impressive five-hour case in Columbia today, including two computer scientists and security experts who both asserted that there was no reasonable explanation for election results other than some kind of voting system malfunction in either the hardware or software. Voters testified that they had trouble selecting Rawl on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems, and that their votes were flipped to Greene. Campaign workers testified that they received calls all throughout Election Day concerning problems with the machines and reports that pollworkers were swapping out sensitive memory cartridges.

Despite the historical record of failure of the ES&S voting system, and numerous state-sponsored studies (in state's other than SC) which all found that the systems are poorly coded and exceptionally vulnerable to malicious manipulation, Rawl's team of computer scientists were not allowed access to the voting system hardware and software in order to examine it for bugs or tampering.

Rawl's attorney instructed the Executive Board that they were required to vote on the protest on the basis of whether the evidence presented in the hearing demonstrated the results to be true and accurate or not. No evidence was presented that the results were accurate, only that they were not. Nonetheless, the SC Democratic Party's Executive Board voted resoundingly to reject Rawl's protest, which the candidate has said he will not appeal.

After the motion was rejected, and the meeting adjourned, Rawl quieted the crowd to say a few words (the following is now transcribed directly from the audio)...

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First, some very good news just in: The hearing for the protest to the results of last week's SC Democratic U.S. Senate primary will be streamed live on Thursday at 3pm ET via Live.VicRawl.com.

The protest will be heard by the Executive Board of the South Carolina Democratic Party to consider Judge Vic Rawl's protest to last week's bizarre election.

Second, I'm happy to say that I have finally been able to make contact with the campaign of former state legislator and Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl. I had a somewhat lengthy conversation earlier today with his campaign manager Walter Ludwig, and continue to be happy to report that it seems they have a very good grasp of the issues at stake --- in relation to the horrific ES&S e-voting system --- in their challenge to the 100% unverifiable election of Alvin Greene in SC's recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary race.

As I noted last night, in discussing Rawl's interview yesterday on Fox, given the sharp learning curve for those unfamiliar with the complex issues involved with e-voting and Election Integrity, they've done an excellent job of getting up to speed, at least inasmuch as possible in the short time they've been forced to become "experts" on the topic.

That, of course, is just another pitfall of using insanely complicated rocket science instead of common sense and eyeballs to add one plus one plus one in our current electoral system. Most candidates with questions about their election results simply can't afford the resources and computer scientists and time needed for the forensic investigation of these systems --- that's if they're even allowed access to the often proprietary trade-secret hardware and software --- following an election and prior to the date by which they must file and argue a legal challenge. That, as opposed to simply examining paper ballots and chain of custody procedures, as would be the case with sane, paper ballot elections.

Ludwig seems to understand just how bad the voting system is that voters were forced to use in SC's recent election, the same system used in dozens of other states despite The BRAD BLOG's best efforts over the past six years to warn of the dangers.

"These machines are incredibly frail and subject to manipulation. They don't work very well." In short, Ludwig told me, "They're crap."...