From extreme drought to deadly flash flooding in Spain; Worldwide toll on health from climate change is rising; PLUS: Environmental proponents hold breath for U.S. election...
Climate and U.S. economy on the ballot; World on pace for dangerous warming; PLUS: Biden cracks down on lead paint and its serious threat to America's children...
THIS WEEK: Halloween Horrors ... Billionaire Endorsements ... 'The Best People' ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's most important toons...
Record heat, drought, wildfires in Northeast; Climate future depends on Senate majority; PLUS: Biden Admin racing election clock with climate, infrastructure funding...
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...
Citing a related-ish piece of mine last week over at Salon, Paul H. Rosenberg attempted to slay yet another Zombie Myth that just won't die over the weekend: The myth that JFK "stole" the 1960 election from Richard Nixon, and that Nixon was just too much of a gracious statesman to challenge the results.
It is, of course, all bullshit, as Rosenberg is forced to detail once again. Nonetheless, the enduring myth remains part and parcel --- and, often, False Exhibit #1 --- of the very same scam that Republicans still use to this very day in attempting to deligitimize their Democratic opponents through phony claims of "voter fraud".
Yes, I've been working hard this summer to encourage you to support our work here at The BRAD BLOG, so we can focus as much as possible on stuff that actually matters this fall (and hopefully beyond).
I have long been losing money each month and tapping into whatever meager savings I have, in order to keep producing, for as long as possible, the truly independent journalism, blogging, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking --- wholly free from corporate or partisan strings --- that I believe is so important...and that I hope that you do as well.
But we really need your help, before I'm entirely tapped out.
To that end, I'm willing to pull out (most of) whatever stops I have at my disposal. (Hey, at least I'm not as horrible as the DCCC!) So, with that in mind, my birthday is this weekend!
Care to make it an extra special swell birthday, by dropping a birthday gift --- large or small --- into the tip jar? Monthly sustaining contributions are especially appreciated, but any gift is tremendously needed and very much appreciated!
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California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown has permitted SB 1272, an advisory measure entitled the Overturn Citizens United Act, to appear on the state's November 2014 ballot.
The measure not only calls upon Congress to "propose an amendment...to the United States Constitution" to overturn the infamous Citizens United decision and its progeny, but "to make clear that the rights protected by the United States Constitution are the rights of natural persons only."
According to state Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), the author of SB 1272, the measure is intended to send "a message to Congress" that we "should not equate money with free speech and corporations are not people."
A constitutional amendment that eliminated "corporate personhood" would not only invalidate Citizens United but would overturn the newly minted right to "corporate religious liberty" established in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc. (2014).
Unfortunately, the language Lieu included in the measure stops short of "money is not speech." Instead, the measure simply provides for "full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may express their views to one another."
While the ballot proposition is not binding, and has produced critics who describe the measure as little more than a political stunt, if adopted by an overwhelming majority of California voters this fall, it could very well help to ignite a nationwide groundswell of opposition to a series of decisions by an oligarchic Supreme Court that have threatened the very survival of our constitutional representative democracy...
CLEGG: Regardless of what side you are on in this ancient, bloody conflict, no one can feel indifferent to the spectacle of this overcrowded, desperate sliver of land, Gaza, where so many thousands of people are suffering.
I will always defend --- I've done it on this program before - Israel's right to respond and to defend itself in the face of violence that is designed to terrorize Israeli citizens. I have spoken out repeatedly about Israel's very legitimate demands that Hamas and others recognize Israel's right to exist, and to exist peacefully within its own borders and provide security to its own citizens.
I have to say, though, I really do think now the Israeli response is --- appears to be deliberately disproportionate. It is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment. It is leading to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza which is just unacceptable. And I really would now call on the Israeli government to stop.
Interviewer: [crosstalk] Hamas would continue, though, Deputy Prime Minister...
CLEGG: Well, no, Israel of course retains the right to react, but I'm just saying you cannot see the humanitarian suffering in Gaza now, without concluding that --- and the very many numbers of deaths in Gaza --- without concluding that there is not much more going to be served in Israel's own interests.
And this is a point I keep wanting to make, because every time of course any politician speaks out, I guarantee I'll get lots of people kind of getting --- I quite understand to be quite passionate about this --- all I would say is, as someone who is a long-standing defender of Israel's right to defend itself, of Israel's right to defend its values and its own citizens, it is not in the long run in Israel's own interests to see this festering humanitarian crisis get ever worse in Gaza. Because all it does, of course, in the long run, is act as a kind of, almost as an incubation, if you will --- it incubates the next generation of violent extremists who want to do harm to Israel, so...
Interviewer: They might argue, though, that Hamas will just carry on shelling, Deputy Prime Minister.
CLEGG: Well, if Hamas does that then of course Israel reserves the right to respond. All I'm saying is today, we have the glimmer of hope that a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire has been entered into by both sides. And my plea today, to both sides, is please build on that. Because further deaths, more violence begetting more violence, is not in anybody's interests. And it's not going to help deliver the only way, the only way, in which Israelis will be able to live in security and peace in the long run. Which is a negotiated two-state peace settlement. It is the only way. And there's just no --- I know it's very easy as an outsider to pronounce on these things, but I really do think that the level of humanitarian suffering in Gaza now, the number of deaths, and the disproportionate --- the apparently, almost deliberate use of disproportionate response --- now needs to come to an end.
Audio:
According to the UK's Evening Standard, before Israeli ground troops moved into Gaza on Friday: "More than 220 Palestinians have died in nine days of fighting and Hamas rockets have killed one Israeli."
For his part, UK Prime Minister Cameron reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that he "strongly condemned the appalling attacks being carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians," and he "reiterated the UK's staunch support for Israel in the face of such attacks, and underlined Israel's right to defend itself from them."
However, Cameron also is said to have signed on to an EU statement [PDF] on Wednesday, which "condemns the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians," but adds that the European Council "deeply deplores the loss of innocent lives and the high number of wounded civilians in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli military operations".
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Australia's Rightwing government repeals successful landmark carbon tax; Obama moves forward on bracing for global warming impacts; Record wildfire season burning from California to Alaska; PLUS: California gets tough on water wasters ... 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): English Channel all fished out; Jellyfish invasion off Maine coast; Feds ban bee-killing pesticides in wildlife refuges; North Dakota wrestles with radioactive oilfield waste; Natural gas boom hasn't made US energy secure, warns IEA chief ... PLUS: Hottest March-June On Record Globally ... and much, MUCH more! ...
The Washington Post recently reported that more "than 100 current and former [Kansas] Republican officials [have] endorsed Democratic state Rep. Paul Davis [in his] bid to unseat Gov. Sam Brownback (R)."
The website of the group that refers to itself as the "Republicans for Kansas Values," reveals that the source of their revolt can be found in what the LA Times' Michael Hiltzik described as Brownback's draconian "Tea Party tax cuts," enacted in the name of economic "freedom" that have, he says, benefited only the wealthy and have turned the Sunflower State "into a smoking ruin."
As we once described in "'Tea Party' Future: Fascism, Feudalism, Economic Collapse", that "smoking ruin" was not unexpected. But neither was the revulsion of traditionally conservative Kansas Republicans to Brownback's application of the Koch brothers' radical brand of libertarianism...
We covered too much on the KPFK/Pacifica RadioBradCast this week to go into great detail here, but the common thread seemed to be: Stamping out Zombie Myths.
In other words, there was a lot packed in to this week's 58 minutes, including a lot of bullshit to dispel, a bunch of great callers, and even one who totally disagreed with me on e-cigs and children. That was fun.
P.S. During the show, a caller questioned the facts of a quote I read on air from a press release issued today by the Freedom to Marry organization, citing the first Mississippi mayor to call for marriage equality in the state. The quote in question was from the group's President Evan Wolfson, who said in the statement: "More same-sex couples are raising children in Mississippi than in any other state."
The caller, appropriately, challenged the veracity of the statement, and I promised I'd look into the details, since I had just received the release prior to air time and didn't have the details handy. Now I do. Here's where that claim comes from...
Just in, via HuffPo, a federal judge in California has ruled that the state's death penalty system violates the U.S. Constitution's restriction against "cruel and unusual punishments"...
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down an order Wednesday, finding that the system is arbitrary and in violation of the Constitution's 8th Amendment.
"California's death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against only a trivial few of those sentenced to death," Carney writes. "For all practical purposes then, a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death --- a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose."
Carney continues: "Inordinate and unpredictable delay... has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in a system that serves no penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional."
The story goes on to note that the judge also vacated petitioner Ernest Dwayne Jones' death sentence --- he had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in 1995, and that "an analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that the state spent $308 million on each execution." That analysis underscores what critics of the death penalty have long pointed out, that the cost of killing prisoners far outpaces the cost to the state of keeping them imprisoned for life.
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Huge Christian organization divests from fossil fuels; Germany pledges $1 billion to international climate fund; Australia slides backward to repeal carbon tax; Step aside, Formula One racing: all-electric Formula E is on your tail; PLUS: Climate denier Rupert Murdoch's Big 'But' ... 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): How long will world's oil reserves last? 53 years, says BP; Clear differences between organic and non-organic food; Chevron admits oil shale will use huge amounts of West's water; US oil consumption still rising; Nuclear waste plan unsafe, panel told; Midwestern farmers fight 'superweeds' of their own making; 7 earthquakes in OK in 1 day; Early fire season destroys homes in PacNW ... PLUS: Neverglades: Sorry, Time Magazine, South Florida IS Drowning ... and much, MUCH more! ...
Here's a perfect example of why people watch cable news --- and, also, why they don't.
As TPM's Josh Marshall describes it: "Rick Santelli, famously in 2009, by one measure launched the 'Tea Party' with an epic rant about how big government was crushing capitalism while it was actually in the midst of saving it. Since then he's been wrong about every economic question worth being asked. One of the CNBCers got tired of his nonsense today and this happened."
Or, as Vox.com's Ezra Klein tweeted it (with a pretty perfect allusion for old school Real World fans): "What happens when CNBC hosts stop being polite and start getting real"...
Matthew Yglesias describes Santelli, in citing the video above, as a "big time inflation fearmonger" and adds that fellow CNBCer "Steve Liesman absolutely took him to school pointing out that anyone who'd listened to his inflationista advice over the years would have lost a ton of money."
I'm not nearly expert enough in monetary policy to appreciate who's actually right and who's actually wrong in this made-for-cable pissing match. While I'd happily bet against the yutz Santelli on just about anything, the rest of his network has also been notoriously wrong in just about every bit of corporate log-rolling and back-slapping they've engaged in over the last decade or more. In any event, if you want a bit more of an explainer on what the hell these people are actually yelling about, Time's Pat Regnier offers this one.
Missouri's Democratic Governor Jay Nixon had an opportunity to encourage people to quit smoking. He didn't take it. In fact, he actually made the choice to help encourage people to continue smoking, despite the fact the deadly habit kills nearly half a million people in the U.S. alone each year.
On Monday, the Governor vetoed Senate Bill 841. While the legislation would have restricted the sale of nicotine vaping products such as e-cigarettes to minors, and required sellers to receive a license from the state, it also exempted the non-lethal devices and products --- which are quickly becoming very popular as a method to quit smoking --- from existing laws and taxes levied against harmful tobacco products.
"This bill appears to be nothing more than a thinly disguised and cynical attempt to exempt e-cigarettes from taxes and regulations protecting public health," Nixon said in his veto message.
This sort of dangerous short-sightedness, unfortunately, is not unusual for Democrats, of late. It also flies in the face of both science and common sense...
Funny thing. For some reason, professional, weapons-grade Rightwing troll Ann Coulter doesn't think her fellow Republicans should waste their time looking into issues of vote fraud. We wonder why.
Coulter, writing an op-ed in Jackson, Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger yesterday, is hoping to urge Republican "Tea Party" Senate candidate Chris McDaniel to not challenge the results of his very close, June 24th primary runoff election against six-term incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, warning that doing so is a "primrose path to political oblivion."
The irony here --- and the hypocrisy --- and even the criminality, as those familiar with The BRAD BLOG's years of exclusive reporting on Coulter's own personal problems with voter fraud --- is extraordinary...
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Debunking Neil Cavuto of Fox 'News' and the 1970's 'global cooling' myth; Anti-science nuttery alive and well in Kentucky...and Mars; BP oil still contaminating fish in the Gulf; Canada's tar sands linked to cancer spike in First Nations tribes; PLUS: Popular pesticide may be killing off the birds and the bees ... 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): Federal government still spending billions to subsidize fossil fuels; Global warming at root of ‘utterly unprecedented’ summer flood; Helsinki's ambitious plan will make cars obsolete; Most Americans say they'll vote against climate change deniers; Carbon pollution standards reduce electricity rates; Greenpeace tells Lego 'everything is not awesome'; Fossil fuels are the new subprime investments; Australia climate politics stranger than fiction ... PLUS: Even if coal were free, it couldn’t compete with solar ... and much, MUCH more! ...
Ari is in NC covering this week's hearings in federal court challenging what we've described as "the nation's most restrictive voter suppression law", as enacted by state Republicans just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last summer.
This case --- and NC's law --- are really amazing. Most importantly, the results of this challenge, and the way the VRA must now be used to fight to protect voters from discriminatory laws, will be very important to similar challenges now pending across the country. In other words, this fight is important to NC, but it's arguably even more important to the entire nation.
As a listener noted on Facebook tonight: "What a heavy duty broadcast today's was!", before adding: "It. Was. Awesome. And scary." Well, thanks! And you're welcome!
Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...
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With the story about the 2012 hit job against NJ's Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez back in the news, it seems a good time to remind folks about the clown, Matthew Boyle, who originally wrote the now-discredited article breaking the fake "news" at Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller.
We had a run-in with Boyle in 2011, posted below, that may give you an idea of just how this pretend journalist sources his stories --- or doesn't.
For those who may not recall, Boyle wrote a story for The DC, just before the 2012 election, claiming that Menendez had been enjoying the services of Dominican hookers while on a number of vacations down there. The supposed hookers were featured in a video including with Boyle's original reporting, claiming that they hadn't been paid properly by Menendez and were seeking revenge...or something.
The whole story turned out to be phony and was eventually pulled off line by Carlson's "news" site. The women on the video admitted they had been paid by someone to make their claims, and not long thereafter Boyle left The Daily Caller. He is now a featured "investigative journalist" at the even less credible Rightwing "news" site (if there can be such a thing), Breitbart.com.
The Menendez story has resurfaced once again, as the Washington Post ran an exclusive this week, claiming that an unnamed government source had evidence that the entire matter was a hit job planted by Cuban intelligence agents, intended to hurt Menendez just before the election, as the Senator is reportedly an ardent opponent of Cuban and was set to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. WaPo claims that someone identifying themselves as "Pete Williams" had been shopping the story around to a bunch of media outlets, unsuccessfully, until Boyle was happy to fall for it at The Daily Caller. So-called "Pete Williams," WaPo reports, was actually a front for a Cuban agent.
Boyle now claims that he worked "with a wide array of sources in reporting on the story" originally, and that "there were no indications that they were connected to or working for the Cuban government." He also claims that the "Pete Williams" character "was not a source for the original story and never provided non-public information to this reporter."
But Boyle claims a lot of things. And the problem is, he appears to simply make shit up out of whole cloth as needed to defend his crappy "reporting". That point became pretty clear during a conversation I had with Boyle on Twitter back in 2011, in response to another terribly sourced story that he had run that day at The DC...
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About Brad Friedman...
Brad is an independent investigative
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