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.

Just chanced across this note I wrote to myself on my iPhone in June of 2010...

Too bad this wasn't published previously...before California's ill-considered and incredibly dangerous and deceptively sold SB 360 was signed by CA's Gov. Jerry Brown over the weekend (despite our advocacy and warnings against it.)

In his syndicated "California Focus" column (appearing in 93 papers around the state), Thomas D. Elias opines today on the partisan-passed election reform bill we've been yelling about for months now here at The BRAD BLOG. He accurately describes SB 360 as "a prominent entry in the unofficial sweepstakes to determine this year's worst new state law".

From his column, "New law threatens vote-counting reliability", today...

Elias continues by pointing out the dishonest way in which the bill was represented to lawmakers and the public by its main sponsor, state Sen. Alex Padilla (D) who also happens to be a leading 2014 candidate for CA Secretary of State and, therefore, a potential main beneficiary of the unprecedented, sweeping new executive powers that the law will grant to the state's SoS.

As he writes...

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

The man who wrote Arizona's "Papers Please" law before running for Kansas Secretary of State in 2010 on the premise of stamping out "voter fraud" there ... before winning and subsequently not being able to find much, if any of it, at all, is nonetheless still at work attempting to keep legitimate voters from being able to cast their vote under the premise that thousands of non-citizens are somehow, secretly, illegally voting in the state of Kansas.

"In Kansas, the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive," Kris Kobach's personal website still reads today. He just can't seem to find any.

Despite that annoying little truth, he now has a new plan to try and keep those "alien voters" from voting, even if it involves keeping 17,500 or more perfectly legal U.S. citizen residents of Kansas from voting as well...

The radically activist Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia --- who, despite his increasing tendency to legislate from the bench, likes to pretend he's not an activist and not legislating from the bench --- was asked about his personal sources for news in a New York interview by Jennifer Senior published over the weekend.

His answer, while perhaps the least surprising news of the day, may explain a lot...

His "favorite" "talk guy", he says, is former Reagan official, Bill Bennett, who once declared "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." That's the type of person that Scalia looks to for his "news", apparently.

Ian Millhiser who, after quaintly describing the aging Justice as "Archie Bunker in a less comfy chair," citing the remarks from the interview above, as well as Scalia's statements that he believes the Devil is "a real person", and his being troubled by Hollywood "ladies" using "the f-word" in movies, notes a more disturbing revelation from the interview...

When running a series of stories like the one that seems to have ended (for now) in yesterday's quiet signing of SB 360 by CA's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, I'm reminded again of the importance of independent media outlets, and the difficulties inherent in being one, as we strive to be. But we can only continue to do so with your help. Seriously.

I'm also reminded of what legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersch was quoted as saying just last week in The Guardian [emphasis added]...

In short, when it comes to our work as independent journalists here, I take that as: "If you're not pissing someone off, you're doing it wrong."

Please help The BRAD BLOG continue to piss people off, because "trouble makers don't get promoted." Nor do they receive support from corporations or partisan foundations. We do, however, hopefully have folks like you to generously help us continue what we have done, tirelessly, for almost a decade now. And I thank you again for that help in advance...

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Over the weekend, Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed SB 360, a radical new election reform bill, that will, for the first time in decades, end all federal testing of new e-voting systems approved for use in the state of California.

The measure, sold dishonestly by its supporters to the public and lawmakers, is expected to have an impact across the rest of the nation as well. It's enactment paves the way for the final development of a new, unverifiable touch-screen voting system for use in Los Angeles County, where it is then slated to be sold for use in jurisdictions elsewhere in the state and country.

Before the adoption of SB 360, new voting systems in California required two independent levels of testing, both at the federal and state levels before they could be used in an election here. Even with those two independent testing regimes in place, the systems certified by the Sec. of State over the past decade or more have been riddled with errors and security flaws that were later discovered. For those reasons, and others, The BRAD BLOG had been calling, unsuccessfully, for Brown's veto of SB 360.

As we've documented on these pages, the new law also affords sweeping new executive powers to the Sec. of State to approve new e-voting systems for use in so-called "pilot programs" without any certification testing at all, even from state auditors. Those "pilot" e-voting and tabulation systems, according to the new law, may now be used in "a legally binding election" at the sole discretion of the Sec. of State.

The BRAD BLOG has reported in great detail on this dangerous new bill, which was eventually passed along partisan lines with almost no debate in either chamber of the state legislature. It was supported by all the Democrats in both the state Senate and Assembly, and opposed by all but one Republican.

The bill, granting unprecedented power to the California Sec. of State, was authored by state Senator Alex Padilla (D) --- himself a leading 2014 candidate for California Sec. of State. It was also supported by one of his two main rivals for that job, State Sen. Leland Yee (D), who has also gone on record calling for Internet Voting systems in California.

The only one among the top three Democratic contenders to replace CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen (who is termed out in 2014), who did not go on record in support of SB 360, is former Common Cause official Derek Cressman.

As we also reported, the bill was sold dishonestly by Padilla to both lawmakers and the public...

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) --- we're inclined to write "(R-Asshole)" --- makes a national disgrace of himself on the Republican Grandstanding Stage that has become the national WWII Memorial...

And speaking of assholes...

Here's the statement from Alabama's former Governor Don Siegelman (D), now a political prisoner being held in a federal correctional institution in Louisiana, that we obtained and published last week, as discussed in my conversation above on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture this week.

If you're looking for Tom DeLay and Karl Rove, they're still on the lam, fugitives from justice, as Siegelman serves out 6.5 years for something that was never considered a crime before in the history of this nation.

Oh, and I do love this graphic that Thom's folks used at the top of our segment...

Sign the petition asking President Obama for a pardon for Siegelman right here...

UPDATE 10/5/13: I was also on Hartmann's radio show the day before the TV show appearance seen above. We talk about largely the same things, though with a few additional details here and there, such as more info on Siegelman's 2002 "stolen" re-election. Thom's radio show is also video taped (and played live on Free Speech TV and elsewhere). The video segment of my radio appearance with him follows below...

Have we hit rock bottom yet? Sadly, I don't think so. Not yet.

The Republicans still have much more to burn down, it seems. Starting with themselves. But they're well on the way. And they have only themselves to blame.

The good news...Perhaps the only good news: It all made for a very lively BradCast today on L.A.'s KPFK/Pacifica Radio, as we stomped out the myths that Chuck Todd refuses to, and heard from tons of callers in the bargain.

Oh, and there was much more, but you'll have to listen to find out about it. Enjoy! I know I did!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

In late August, climate hawk and too-occasional BRAD BLOG contributor D.R. Tucker reported how MSNBC's August 16th Chris Hayes hosted documentary on climate change and the global warming denial industry, was nowhere to be found online. Unlike previous docs from the cable net, this one had not made available online after its initial airing.

Despite our best efforts at the time to receive an explanation from MSNBC or Chris Hayes or the producers of his nightly prime-time show, All In (which produced and presented the doc during their normal hour), as to why the special had not been posted online, several weeks went by and we received no response.

The unexplained online "black out" of Politics of Power led Tucker to wonder, by August 29th, if "certain entities" (such as ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel industry corporations, global warming deniers and other similarly big advertisers on MSNBC) "might not be happy with the prospect of the video being widely available and, who knows, maybe even going viral."

Well, we've still received no direct response to our queries from Hayes or anyone at MSNBC as to the whereabouts of the "missing" documentary, or the explanation for it. But while browsing some video clips recently at the MSNBC website, I just happened to come across this graphic amongst a list of video clips available on the site...

Oh, noes! I've been blocked on the Twitters by Eric Bolling, the pretend journalist, pundit, propagandist or whatever he calls himself, of The Five on Fox "News"!

Never mind that I've never followed him there, so I'll probably survive having been "blocked" by him, but it seems thin-skinned li'l Eric doesn't like it too much when folks point out the wildly inaccurate "facts" he presents to viewers on his afternoon Fox "News" show.

The Twitter exchange between the very handsome Bolling and me is posted below. In full. It's brief. I correct his long-ago debunked falsehood about Arctic ice, he calls me a name and links to a long-ago debunked article in a British tabloid to support his long-ago debunked nonsense, I call him a name and link him to actual facts, he calls me a "d-bag", announces he'll be blocking me, and then offers me and my "miserable life" a warm farewell. It's fun.

For the record, the exchange started after he misinformed his viewers on his The Five show Monday, in an effort to pretend climate change isn't happening, that "Arctic sea ice is approaching a record high level this year!" But it isn't. Not by a long shot. In fact, the Arctic sea ice minimum extent is at its 6th lowest level ever recorded this year, as those know-nothing, d-bag, loser "scientists" at NASA noted last week, based on satellite imagery.

We (and a whole bunch of actual scientists) completely debunked demolished Bolling's canard about this year's Arctic sea ice minimum a few weeks ago, after a British tabloid first put it forward, falsely declaring that the increase in sea ice this year over last year's all-time low, meant that the globe is now "COOLING!"

As NASA explains, that's not even close to true...

Looking for something to do while the government is shut down? Sign up for "ObamaCare"!

At the same moment Republican extremists closed down the U.S. Government tonight at midnight Eastern Time, for the first time in 17 years, HealthCare.gov finally opened for business!...