After what he describes as the Republican Party's victory of "pettiness and bigotry" over "pragmatism and principle", Bexar, Texas County Criminal Court Judge Carlo Key has decided to leave the GOP to run next year as a Democrat instead.

In a video posted to his website, Key, who was first elected in 2010, echoed and reversed Ronald Reagan's explanation for leaving the Democratic Party to become a Republican in 1962. "Make no mistake," Key says, "I have not left the Republican Party. It left me."

"I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status," Key explains in detailing some of his reasons for the party switch. "I will not be a member of a Party in which hate speech elevates candidates for higher office rather than disqualifying them. I cannot place my name on the ballot for a political party that is proud to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the vain attempt to repeal a law that would provide health care to millions of people throughout our country"...

Key's brief video, along with a text transcript of his remarks, follow below...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: China choking on toxic air; Air pollution causing lung cancer everywhere; Anti-fracking protests spread across Europe...and turn violent in Canada, while France holds the line; PLUS: Some good news: US carbon emissions falling for the 5th year in a row ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Koch Brothers Could Make $100 Billion if Keystone XL Pipeline Approved; Another oil train explodes in Canada; Fukushima: toxic water overflows after storm; State Dept. officials warns 'rigid' climate deal won't fly; Paper giant funds secret science to deflect asbestos lawsuits; 'Divest now from ‘sub-prime’ coal, oil before carbon bubble bursts'; Gulf ecosystem still in crisis 3 years after BP spill; Koch-owned BP refinery waste piles up in Chicago; $26b to build UK's first new nuclear plant; 300 elephants poisoned ... PLUS: "The ocean is broken" ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[This article now cross-published by The Progressive...]

I finally found a moment recently to watch The Central Park Five, a documentary film by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon which aired on PBS earlier this year about the travesty of justice following the infamous 1989 Central Park Jogger case.

The word "travesty" here isn't really strong enough to properly describe what happened in this case if the film and the available evidence are accurate.

The film details the story of the five young African-American and Hispanic boys from Harlem, aged 14 to 16, who had absolutely nothing to do with the brutal beating and horrific rape of a white, affluent, 28-year old female jogger, but who ended up serving some seven years each (more in the case of the one 16-year old) after false confessions were apparently coerced out of them by New York City police detectives in the days immediately following the crime.

According to the documentary, one of the kids who was falsely convicted wasn't even considered a suspect when a NYC detective in Harlem, seeking to bring the boy's friend into the station for questioning, suggested the boy come along for the quick ride downtown and back. He promised him he'd be home in an hour or so. It would be years before either of them were allowed to go back home for good.

The film, frankly, is extraordinary disturbing, heart-breaking and infuriating on several different levels, not the least of which was that I lived in NYC when the horrible rape and violent assault --- attempted murder, actually --- took place. I remember the supposed "wilding" incident well, along with the fear and furor that subsequently gripped the city. Yet, I had no idea, until this film, that the boys tried and convicted for the crime were, years later, found to have been completely innocent. They had absolutely nothing to do with the crime they were each convicted of...

Not sure, but this may be my favorite video of the year to date. This would be Jim Bob Duggar, former Arkansas state Rep. and genius patriarch of TLC's 19 Kids & Counting fame, attempting to serve as a spokesperson for the Ken Cuccinelli (R) gubernatorial campaign in Virginia against Terry McAuliffe (D)...

With spokespersons like that, who needs McAuliffe?

By the way, Duggar is not only fabulously "tongue twied", he's also not too terribly bright. Citing the same video above, "Scarce" at Crooks and Liars asks: "What can you really expect from people who compare the United States to Nazi Germany?" For the record, People for the American Way's Rightwingwatch says Duggar stands by the holocaust comparison he made at last week's Values Voters Summit in D.C..

With the 81 - 18 vote in the U.S. Senate and 285 - 144 tally in the U.S. House, Congress averted a worldwide economic disaster this week by finally voting to end the 16-day, 'Tea-Party' manufactured shutdown and debt ceiling crises.

As CNN noted, shortly after President Barack Obama signed the measure into law, Congress has furnished only a "temporary bandage," which leaves the draconian "sequester" cuts in place, authorizes government spending at current levels through Jan. 15, 2014 and postpones the same threat of a default on the nation's financial obligations until Feb. 7, 2014.

Meanwhile, radical 'Tea Party' Republicans, like Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, insisted "this was worth having the fight," even as they were conceding absolute defeat.

Worth it? Well, not to actual fiscal conservatives, according to the numbers...

You know how The BRAD BLOG is always going on about how Vote-by-Mail is a very bad idea for democracy (other than in cases where a voter really must vote absentee or is otherwise forced to vote on a 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems at the precinct on Election Day)?...

Yes, those dangling envelopes are absentee ballots being sent to voters. Maybe they'll actually reach them. Who knows?

The photos were taken by San Francisco surgeon and Election Integrity advocate Dr. John Maa last week and highlight just one of the many reasons why Vote-by-Mail is such a bad idea unless it's absolutely necessary. They were sent to us after being taken in the mail room of a San Francisco apartment building in advance of the upcoming November 5 municipal elections there.

"It was 10pm at night when I took those photos, so there were probably a lot more of them out there earlier in the day," Maa told us...

Brilliant.

[Hat-tip to @litbrit.]

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The long national shutdown is over --- for now --- and environmental services and protections are returning; PLUS: Australia erupts in 'freakishly early' bushfire season; AND: The 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Air pollution definitively linked to cancer; Lloyd's of London warns on warming, mocks deniers; Minimata Mercury Convention signed by world governments; Why Supreme Court taking on greenhouse gases isn't as bad as it looks; US shale boom shows signs of permanent decline; Uneven enforcement at US nuclear plants; Wisconsin opens wolf hunting season; ND farmers sue over natural gas flares; BP Oil Spill Trial update; World's first climate refugee seeks asylum in NZ; Kauai moves to restrict GMOs; PLUS much, MUCH more!...

[This article now cross-published by The Progressive...]

This story just keeps getting more insane.

We recently told you --- at The BRAD BLOG and at Salon --- about Judge Richard Posner's remarkable disavowal of his own majority opinion in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals case that became the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 approval of the Republican implementation of polling place Photo ID restriction laws.

Though it's the only court case of note that Republicans are able to cite in claiming the "constitutionality" of such laws, last week, during an interview with HuffPo Live, Posner recanted the opinion he wrote in the case. He claimed that he "did not have enough information...about the abuse of voter identification laws," to make a better decision in 2007's Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. If he had, he said, the Indiana case "would have been decided differently."

Of course, at the same time, he noted that the dissenting judge in the case seems to have had no trouble ruling correctly at all. Judge Terence T. Evans blasted at the beginning of his dissent in the case [PDF]: "Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic."

Evans "was right", Posner now admits, and his own decision was wrong. Apparently, Evans somehow did have the information needed to decide the same case correctly, even if Posner now claims that he, personally, did not for some reason.

Today, the New York Times finally decided to cover Posner's admission, and they add at least one more head-spinning element to all of this...

As everything falls apart on The Hill tonight, again, Sen. Ted Cruz' speech writer and senior communications adviser Amanda Carpenter just had the temerity to tweet this...

It's almost November and I have no idea what my health plan will be or what it will cost in January. This. Is. Awful.

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) October 15, 2013

She must be joking, right? Apparently, she isn't. Just completely and entirely tone deaf. Or just plain stupid. Congressional staffers are being forced to buy their health care on the Affordable Care Act exchanges because Republicans in the Senate added that requirement in an amendment during the fight over the ACA's passage in 2010, hoping that it would be a poison pill to kill the bill. The Democrats called their bluff and said, 'Okay, fine.' And now Carpenter is whining about the uncertainty it appears to be causing her.

That, while she and her boss are bringing down the U.S. government and potentially the global economy, in an attempt to keep some 50 million Americans from getting health care at all. Amazing.

UPDATE: With Fitch issuing a warning tonight that they may soon be forced to downgrade the U.S. government's AAA credit rating, thanks to the GOP's Cruz-inspired threats to default on the debt limit, maybe Carpenter will soon have the chutzpah to whine about the drop in value of her 401k plan.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Breaking: U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to EPA greenhouse gas emission regulations; India dodges a bullet with Super Cyclone Phailin, while Fukushima prepares for another; 800,000+ gallon oil spill in ND; Government shutdown shuts down US Antarctic research program; PLUS: Glimpse the future with the latest winners in solar cars and solar houses ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Treaty curbing mercury emissions now international law; USA Today "balances" hundreds of scientists with fossil fuel-backed group; A way to full solar energy deployment; A warning for the US Southwest - it's gonna get a lot hotter; Light at the end of the tunnel for fusion energy research?; Study: climate may be even more sensitive than we thought; BP pleads guilty to negligence in TX refinery pollution, but absolved by jury; Which is better: plastic or compostable plastic?; US court hands win to Keystone XL pipeline supporters; Arizona solar plant generates electricity at night ... PLUS: Denial As a Way of Life: Climate denial is closely related to debt-ceiling denial ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Just cuz I think we all may need something to smile about today. HuffPo confirms the following online conversation with NetFlix customer was real...

As the idiotic Republican shutdown continues and debt ceiling collapse looms, GOP approval ratings plummet yet again in latest poll. The new survey from ABC/WaPo finds a stunning 74% of Americans disapprove of the way the GOP is handling budget negotiations, that's up 11 points from before the shutdown started.

But more important to remember, as all of this idiocy drags on --- and as Dems consider some form of "concessions" to allow the GOP the face-saving measures they need to get out of this mess --- are numbers like the following, underscoring just how idiotic and hypocritical all this nonsense actually is...

Please RT : 3 Presidents and only 1 has slowed the GROWTH in Federal Spending. cc: @ToConservatives @edshow pic.twitter.com/NCV6XRrLvh

— ClassicalProgressive (@ProgressEconomy) October 14, 2013

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

This is nothing less than remarkable. The 7th circuit court judge who wrote the majority opinion in the landmark Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case, has now admitted he got it wrong!

"I think we did not have enough information," Judge Richard Posner said in remarks at HuffPo Live today. "If the lawyers had provided us with a lot of information about the abuse of voter identification laws, this case would have been decided differently."

Crawford is the Indiana polling place Photo ID restriction case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was upheld in 2008. It is the case cited, usually inaccurately, by Republican advocates of such restrictions, who argue that such disenfranchising laws are not in violation of the U.S. Constitution. For example, it is the case cited (inaccurately) by TX Attorney General Greg Abbott, in his argument against the U.S. Dept. of Justice's current lawsuit attempting to block the Lone Star State's most recent attempt to institute that voting restriction at their polling places. "The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws do not suppress legal votes," Abbott said misleadingly in response to the DoJ's suit, as explained in detail last month by BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernest Canning.

But, setting aside the misuse of SCOTUS' very limited ruling on Crawford, the remarkable news today comes via UC Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen, who transcribes remarks made today by Judge Richard Posner, author of the original 7th circuit majority opinion in Crawford, now completely recanting his original opinion on the case!

Read this from Hasen. It's amazing...

Last night, climate scientist and MacArthur Fellow ("Genius Grant" recipient, but what do they know?), Peter Gleick tweeted: "Moon landing deniers, evolution deniers, tobacco causes cancer deniers, #climate deniers, now 'debt-limit' deniers."

But, it doesn't have to be that way, at least the "climate denier" part, according to this video released by The League of Conservation voters yesterday...

It's cute. And the "slow jam" may stay with you for hours. Sorry about that.

While discussing that video with a number of climate folks yesterday, our own not-frequent-enough guest blogger D.R. Tucker had this thought:

Well, there's that.