Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning, with Brad Friedman

In his March 31st article at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert contrasted the difference in corporate media coverage between Florida's 2000 Presidential election contest and Minnesota's 2008 U.S. Senate election contest. "Norm Coleman's a sore loser," Boehlert argued, and asked "Why won't the press say so?"

He details the striking difference in the corporate media coverage of the two races, where Florida 2000 was both much closer and, as it would determine the Presidency of the United States, arguably more 'important' to get right, and yet the constant media framing continuously painted Al Gore as a "sore loser" for not bowing out 'gracefully' or 'admitting defeat' in the days following the razor-thin election (which, as we would learn later, Gore had actually won, having received more votes across the state of Florida [PDF] than George W. Bush, had the U.S. Supreme Court not kept the ballots from actually being counted).

But to go one further than Boehlert, we'd ask not why the media fail to describe Coleman as a "sore loser," but rather, why it is that --- particularly since Tuesday's final count of any remaining, lawfully cast, previously uncounted absentee ballots --- the media fail to describe Coleman as the loser at all, much less a sore one.

From the New York Times to AP to MSNBC, and even Democracy Now! et al, despite all countable ballots having now been counted, and clear rulings having been issued by both the MN Supreme Court and the bipartisan three-judge panel overseeing the contest, the media seem to have developed an aversion to using the "L" word --- loser --- in their coverage of the MN contest. Perhaps it's because they're listening to only one side of the argument (Coleman's), but the facts of the case, and the many clear court decisions, leave no question that Franken is the winner, and Coleman is the loser. So why won't they say so?...

Welcome aboard to our new partner/affiliate: Huffington Post GREEN!

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: The electrical grid under cyber-attack; No salmon for California fishermen (again) this year; Banning black cars?; PLUS: George Will smacked down, by his own paper! .... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters for George Will? 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' (links below): Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), climate expert?; Looking to Australia for clues on the effects of climate change; Another salmonella nut recall --- for pistachios; Recession causes drop in gasoline use; PLUS: A breakthrough for algae biodiesel?....See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

The list of out-and-out lies in this new anti-marriage ad, on the heels of recent constitutionally conservative victories in Iowa and in Vermont, is astounding...Even by the standards of the cowardly, fear-mongering hate groups that spend millions in their fight against equality and Constitutional equal protection under the law...

The ad, from the ironically-named NationForMarriage.org (NOM) hustlers, who appear to have just set up their new, thinly-disguised hate site as of yesterday, looks to have cost quite a bit of somebody's money.

Courage Campaign, who aptly describes the ad as "deplorable" and notes that it's now "airing across the country and 8 times a day in California" has launched a campaign to fight back against what it describes as the anti-American NOM scaredy-cats' use of "actors to push lies claiming that marriage equality threatens personal freedoms". Aren't there any restrictions in place that keep broadcast outlets from airing out and out lies like the many in the above propaganda video? Anyway, please help the Courage Campaign folks out, if you're inclined (or if you happen to place American Values above opportunistic, dishonest Religious Bigotry).

With hand-counts taking place in Pheonix (a criminal investigation into allegations that a 2006 Tucson election may have been defrauded electronically), and completing in Minnesota (the 3-judge panels just completed count of remaining, lawfully cast, previously-rejected absentee ballots) this week, we've neglected to keep you up to date on the remarkably close results of the NY-20 U.S. House Special Election from last week in which the Democrat Scott Murphy had edged out the Republican Jim Tedisco by just 65 votes on Election Night, after polling place lever machines were initially, and unofficially, tallied.

The special election is meant to fill the vacated seat left open by now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand after she was tapped by the Governor to replace now-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate.

The numbers in the NYT-20 race have gone back and forth and back and forth over the last week as counties canvassed their numbers, checking and double-checking for accuracy, in advance of the counting of some 7,000 absentee paper ballots which is set to get underway today.

Thankfully, TPM's Eric Kleefeld has been following every peak and valley in the roller coaster ride over the last week and, as thankfully, David Kurtz over there has rounded up the highlights of Kleefeld's ongoing coverage to give us a quick summary of where things stand today as the hand-counting is set to begin...

Republican Army and Marine vet caller to Rush: "You're one reason to blame for the Republicans losing...You're a brain-washed, Nazi...Anybody who could believe in torture, has got to have something wrong with them...What's the matter with you?! You never even served in the Army!"

Rush replies: "You're stupid and ignorant...you don't know diddly-squat..."

Seriously, give it a listen above right. Media Matters has the transcript, Scholars and Rogues has more details. It's getting ugly out there in Limbaugh Land.

Must-Listen Musical Addendum: And as long as we're on the topic...We'll opportunistically take this opportunity to share Rush 'admitting' he's 'a Nazi'. If you haven't heard this brilliantly hilarious satirical tune, featuring Rush in his own words (as created by Atlanta's WNNX-FM), well, get your goose-stepping boots on, turn it up loud, and hit play below...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: The Secretary of State is working the poles --- the North and South ones, that is; rocket fuel baby formula; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; PLUS: What to do if you break a CFL bulb.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, hate mail, questions for our "Ask Desi" segment? 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' (links below): Today's Green News Climate Denialist DEBUNKER (hint: the oceans are not "cooling"); visit Glacier National Park while you still can; are creditors holding up progress on saving GM?; PLUS see what's on the table for climate and energy legislation that's about to launch a battle royale in Congress --- Get the popcorn, the drama is about to hit the fan...See below for more!

Info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Author and former radio talk show host Al Franken, the Democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, will be the state's next U.S. Senator, according to a final tally by the bi-partisan three-judge panel overseeing challenger Norm Coleman's election contest against him.

This morning in St. Paul, officials from the Minnesota Secretary of State's office, under the in-court direction of the three-judge Election Contest panel in the former Senator's contest against Franken, tallied all remaining lawfully cast absentee-ballots that were not previously opened and counted. This was done on camera, in open court. The attorneys from both sides, along with the media, were all present.

The final tally of the remaining ballots was 198 votes for Franken, 111 votes for Coleman and 42 votes for "other." When this is combined with the initial 225 vote lead, certified by the bi-partisan State Canvassing Board in December, it adds up to a 312 vote Franken victory, arrived at by both a transparent, post-election hand-count late last year, and the additional tallies added under the painstaking care exercised by the three-judge panel in Coleman's three-month long contest trial.

Al Franken has now won the U.S. Senate seat, but do Coleman's promised appeal(s) stand a chance of winning? And will the Democrats in the U.S. Senate now assume their Constitutional right to dutifully seat the Senator from Minnesota?...

More great news for lovers of American Values such as the equal protection (supposedly) guaranteed to all under our U.S. Constitution!

On the heels of a ban on discrimination against same-sex marriage by the Iowa Supreme Court's conservative reading of their state's constitution last week, the Vermont legislature today has overridden their Governor's veto to officially recognize the right of same-sex partners to be officially married under the protection of state law.

Vermont becomes the fourth state (following MA, CT and IA) to currently recognize marriage equality, after they'd formerly adopted "first-in-the-nation civil unions law" nine years ago. We're delighted to see two-thirds of each Statehouse chamber override the Governor's veto of a law which will correct the injustice of segregation via "civil unions".

Vermont's Legislature is the first in the Union to affirm the right to marriage equality. Previous rulings, in four states, have been made by state Supreme Courts, each with a Republican-appointed Justice penning the majority opinion.

4 states down, 46 to go, in the quest for Constitutional Conservatism and the equal protection for all. (At least in this matter.)

LATE UPDATE: Congratulations are due to Rachel Maddow (or someone on her staff) for her headline tonight: "I Now Pronounce You Ben & Jerry"

We wrote late last week, in some detail, about Arizona AG Terry Goddard's long overdue hand-count of paper ballots from the dubious 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond special election in Pima County (Tucson). The count of all 120,821 paper ballots from the election begins today in Phoenix as part of a criminal investigation, following years of allegations and court cases, in which a trans-partisan group of Election Integrity advocates in Tucson have sought transparency and public oversight following indications that Diebold tabulator databases may have been manipulated by election insiders.

Goddard's restrictions on political party observers --- just one per party, selected by the AG, not by the parties themselves --- was the cause of criticism by all of the involved parties (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, etc.). But a letter [PDF] late last week from the AG's office indicated, at least, that a live, eight-camera video feed would be available on the Internet.

"Eight cameras will stream live video of the examination proceedings to the internet courtesy of the Maricopa County Elections Department," the AG promised. And, as the count began this morning, that feed is now up and running here.

Unfortunately, unlike Minnesota's recent, very transparent hand-count of 2.9 million ballots from the state's still-contested U.S. Senate race, the video from the Maricopa County Ballot Tabulation Center (BTC) is all but worthless, as critics had previously worried, in determining if counts are being carried out accurately.

Here are screen shots from this morning, as counting began, from all eight camera-views --- only two of which show any actual counting at all, while six of them are focused on different areas in the Phoenix counting facility (click a photo to see the live streaming shot)...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

In my previous piece, "Prosecute or Perish", here at The BRAD BLOG --- in which I argued that criminal investigations and, where appropriate, prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal for war crimes was not merely mandated by our treaty obligations but vital to preserving our constitutional democracy and the rule of law --- I referenced an allegation by Seymour Hersh that the Bush regime had created a highly secretive "executive assassination ring" which reported only to Dick Cheney's office and which had "been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people and executing them and leaving."

How can a nation that calls itself just convict the Japanese officers who waterboarded my father, yet refuse to so much as investigate high officials from our own government who authorized the same war crime and, as newly alleged, even much worse...

And speaking of Phoenix, there's this from Carlos Miller:

Read the rest of the story for details. It's pretty amazing. Journalist/Blogger Pataky is our most recent new hero. And Journalist/Blogger Miller, who covers the story, is no slouch either given what he's had to go through in a similar vein to Pataky.

- Special Report by Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The 400 previously rejected absentee ballots in the Coleman/Franken U.S. Senate race in Minnesota won't be the only ballots being carefully counted next week. Neither will the more than 5,000 being counted in the NY-20 U.S. House special election where (fewer than) 25 votes, out of 150,000 cast, currently separate the winner from the loser.

A hand count of thousands of paper ballots that could trump all of the above, at least in regards to national importance, will quietly occur next week in a highly-secured Maricopa County, AZ, facility, as part of a years-long criminal investigation. Ironically, coming as late as it does, three years after the election, the results of the count, no matter what they may be, will not affect the actual outcome of that election --- even if it is found that the results were originally rigged by elections officials.

After almost three years; hundreds of legal documents; scores of hours in courtrooms; precedent-setting legal findings forcing the public release of Diebold computer databases supposedly recording how citizens voted in their own elections; allegations of potential hacking and fraud believed to have been possibly carried out by election official insiders; indications of tampering described as the result of "human error" by a report commissioned by the state AG, as part of a criminal investigation subsequently described by critics as a "whitewash"; arrests of local election integrity advocates; and lord knows how many articles documenting it at all here at The BRAD BLOG over those years, the paper ballots from the curious 2006 Regional Transit Authority (RTA) election in Pima County (Tucson), AZ, will finally be counted, beginning next Monday, as part of a criminal investigation being carried out by the state's Attorney General.

The hand-count of all 120,821 ballots from that special election will be carried out not in Pima, but under the supervision of "certified professionals who work for the Maricopa County (Phoenix) Elections Department," according to a 2-page letter [PDF] sent by the AG's office to the chairman of the Democratic Party of Pima County. The "strictly-monitored" count will either settle, once and for all, the matter of whether that election was conducted fraudulently by election insiders manipulating the vulnerable electronic Diebold tabulation system --- or it won't...

In yet another Constitutionally conservative ruling, from yet another state Supreme Court, the very American values of equal protection under the law and protection of the minority against the tyranny of the majority (and against the tyranny of Big Government intrusion into private lives) have been upheld in Iowa today!

In addition to real Constitutional conservatives who should be rejoicing today, true Fiscal conservatives should also appreciate today's ruling, which is bound to be a boon to the state's economy since "There are no residency rules for marriage in Iowa, so the rule would apply to any couple who wanted to travel to Iowa."

Welcome into the light of civilized society and equality for all, Iowa! That's three states down (MA, CT and IA), with just 47 more to go!

UPDATE: As the emailed headline linking to the following article was so darn good, we just had to offer them a link for their good work: "Court Decision Deals Gay Opponents a Hard Blow"

FURTHER UPDATE: Steve Benen at Washington Monthly points out: "In recent years, four state Supreme Courts have ruled in support of same sex-marriage...And what do all four have in common? Each was appointed to their respective state Supreme Court by a Republican governor." Those darn 'judicial activists' strike again!

While out on the stump for VA's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, former Gov. Mike Huckabee made an hysterical joke to the laughing assembled crowd of Republicans, instructing them to "Do the lord's work" by not letting voters to the polls if they don't plan to vote for McDonnell.

Of course, it was just a joke. Who in the Republican Party would ever do such a thing in this country?!

Well, other than the guy in the video on the right, Paul Weyrich, one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican vote suppression movement, who, until he recently died, was a regular, legendary consultant to the nation's top Republicans, and also another hysterically funny Republican Baptist just like Huckabee.

McDonnell's Democratic opponent in the VA race, former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, wasn't laughing. He sent a letter to supporters describing Huckabee's comment as "no joking matter," noting: "People died for the right to vote in this country, and we have to protect it." Rachel Weiner has the full letter tonight at HuffPo.

Beyond that, we'll spare you the photographs of the who-knows-how-many African-Americans who not only were kept from voting in this nation by others just "doing the right thing" and "the lord's work," but who were strung up in trees by their necks in order to keep them from voting and to send the hilarious message to others that they'd best not be let out of their "driveways" come Election Day. We'd go on, but it's all just so funny, we can't even keep typing.