If you haven't noticed, of late, Desi Doyen --- the Managing Editor of The BRAD BLOG's Green News Report and my co-host on that nationally syndicated radio feature --- has been guest hosting The Young Turks' nightly online video show quite a bit of late. (She did so several times already this week, and will be back again tonight. You can watch tonight's airing right here from 9p-11p ET / 6p - 8p PT.)

One of the segments from last night's episode, while disturbing, is worth flagging at least briefly here, as its an issue we've touched on throughout the years, going back to the earliest years of the Iraq War. It's also one that has been under-covered and under-investigated by the mainstream corporate media.

The use of depleted uranium, a byproduct of the nuclear power industry, in U.S. weaponry is believed by many to be tied to an alarming increase in birth-defects in Iraqi children, as well as cancer rates in members of the U.S. military. While some studies report no significant health risks due to the use of such weaponry, a lack of long-term studies leaves the issue, for now, an open question --- at the very least. Truthout's Mike Ludwig reported this week that "The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 metric tons of depleted uranium was fired during the 2003 war in Iraq," and that clean-up costs for some 300 to 365 sites where "depleted uranium contamination was identified by Iraqi authorities" is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.

While the U.S. and British governments "disputed allegations that their weapons have poisoned soldiers and civilians and caused increased rates of cancer and birth defects," as discussed in the segment below from last night's TYT show, the reported rate of birth defects in Fallujah, for example, is now said to be 14 times higher than it was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs there.

The use of depleted uranium in U.S. weapons is believed by some to be one of the reasons for that alarming statistic, as Desi discussed along with TYT regulars Ana Kasparian and Steve Oh last night. [WARNING: Some of the photos shown in the segment are graphic and disturbing]...

A couple of the other (less graphic) segments from TYT in which the lovely Desi helps with righteous rants and the raking of various muck include...

• Amazing backlog of Veteran Benefits begs question as to who actually "supports the troops"? (A particularly sharp, and personal, Desi rant in this one!) Watch it here...

• "Catfight" breaks out between current and former GOP chairs Reince Priebus and Michael Steele. Watch it here...

Yesterday we published Tomas Young's "Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran", in which the 33-year old U.S. Army veteran, paralyzed from the chest down during an ambush on a rescue mission in Iraq in 2004, announces his plan to soon allow himself to die, as his physical condition has intolerably deteriorated.

We included a link to our own interview with Tomas in 2005 when he first came down from Kansas City to "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX, on his honeymoon, in support of Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey was killed on the same day, in the same city --- 4/4/04 in Sadr City --- where Tomas was shot twice and gravely injured in the unarmored truck his platoon had been sent out in.

Tomas has been a tremendously heroic and outspoken anti-war voice over the years, as we were reminded once again today during this morning's heart-wrenching episode of Democracy Now! devoted to his story. Phil Donahue, co-director of the 2007 documentary film about Tomas, Body of War, (in which our '05 interview with Tomas is briefly seen) is on hand as well for the discussion. The hour included a live satellite interview with Tomas, who now struggles to speak. His thoughts seem very coherent, but what is left of his body and its functions are clearly breaking down. He is joined by his wife Claudia.

It is all worth watching, if you can spare the time. The clips from Body of War, especially the one in which Tomas speaks with the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-VA) as they read off the names together of the "Immortal 23" who voted against the Iraq War in the U.S. Senate, are particularly moving.

This is the story of the Iraq War ten years later --- and how it broke this nation just as surely as it broke Tomas Young's body and eventually his spirit and will to live...

After the lengthy segment above, Donahue is asked about his plight at MSNBC where he was fired just before the war began, as we would later find out from an internal executive memo, because his show included too many anti-war voices.

He says the episode reveals "how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage."

"They were terrified of the anti-war voice. And that is not an overstatement," Donahue says. "If you're General Electric, you certainly don't want an anti-war voice on a cable channel that you own. Donald Rumsfeld's your biggest customer!"

He explains again how he was required to have two pro-war voices for every anti-war voice he had on his show. "I could have [Bush Admin Iraq war hawk and architect] Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn't have Dennis Kucinich," he explains. "I was considered 'two liberals'." That segment can be watched here.

Finally, in the last moments of the show, Tomas reads his "Last Letter" to Bush and Cheney aloud and answers Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman's question as to whether there is anything that might lead him to change his mind about his decision to soon stop using his feeding tube in order to allow his life to end.

That video segment, including Tomas' answer to Goodman's question, follows below...

Early last month, The BRAD BLOG offered an exclusive special report on how a single Registrar of Voters in Fresno County, CA effectively stopped a citizen-organized attempt to confirm the results of last November's Prop 37 initiative dead in its tracks. She was able to stop an attempted post-election hand count of the paper ballots in her county by charging the proponents of the count an outrageous and seemingly arbitrary high price to carry out the count.

Now, a very similar story is being reported in regard to an attempt to confirm the results of a mayoral race in another California county where the "losing" candidate is said to have lost by just 53 votes. In that case, rather than an outrageous $4,000 per day to count the paper ballots again, as was the case for Prop 37 in Fresno, the candidate has been charged $2,000 per hour for her attempt to verify that the results of her contest were accurately reported by the computer system.

The much-watched Prop 37 initiative last November, had it passed, would have required Genetically Modified foods to be labeled as such. The measure was opposed by corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont and Hershey with a $44 million propaganda blitz against the landmark initiative in progressive California.

The proposition's loss surprised supporters of the measure, some of whom joined in a post-election effort to hand-count the paper ballots from the contest in a number of counties to ensure the secretly-tallied computer results were accurate. After hand-counting ballots in Orange and Sierra Counties, where no unusual irregularities were discovered, the effort was stymied in Fresno County by outrageously high and seemingly illegal pricing set for the "recount" by the county's recently-appointed Registrar Brandi Orth.

As we detailed, while the County Clerk in Orange had charged the proponents a reasonable $600/day for hand-counting ballots, and the Registrar in Sierra had charged just $500/day, Fresno's Orth had attempted to charge some $4,000/day. And that was in addition to a "start up" fee of $14,000 that proponents and Election Integrity advocates were also told they'd need to cough up in cash before a single ballot could be hand-counted there.

The seemingly arbitrary pricing for confirming the results in Fresno ended up putting the kibosh on the attempted statewide count. As we described in the report, the case echoed a similar attempt by Election Integrity advocates to hand-count paper ballots in a contested Special Election for the U.S. House in San Diego County in 2006. There, the county Registrar had attempted to charge approximately $1.00 per ballot (with some 150,000 cast) to confirm the results. That was in contrast to the .14 per ballot charged by neighboring Orange County for a separate hand-count not long before.

The extraordinary $2,000/hour costs being charged in Stanislaus County, however, put all of that to shame. And it underscores, once again, how the lack of standards for "recount" pricing make laughable the notion that computer-tallied paper ballots are just fine because "they can always be counted later if there are any questions about results later on."

As we learn once again in California, where the "recount" laws are actually amongst the most liberal in the country, the ability for citizens to confirm the results of secretly-tallied computer-results after they are certified is no easy feat. It's often impossible. Making the matter more outrageous, a single county clerk can effectively block the entire process...

These remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday, in which Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) ridiculed the President because he "wants to keep pushing this green energy", helps place the 3-term Representative into the running, perhaps even the lead, for the absolute dumbest sitting GOP Congressman --- though we realize that's a very crowded field...

See RightWingWatch for the actual video of Scalise's unbelievably stupid and misinformed remarks. To echo him, "you can't make this stuff up."

[Hat-tip D.R. Tucker]

Before things turn too ugly this week, let's take a moment to flag four great progressive things --- arguably, four great conservative progressive things --- which all happened on Friday.

The first two items got a fair amount of notice, the second two, not so much. But since they all happened on the same day, and that day was Friday, when such stories tend to disappear all together, they are all worth briefly flagging here to make sure you're aware of them...

• Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), a co-sponsor of the unconstitutional "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) in 1996, became the first sitting Republican Senator to come out in favor of marriage equality for all. It took him learning that he had a gay son two years ago before he was finally able to do the right thing, but we'll take what we can get. It's another in a string of victories and very encouraging signs for conservative progressivism, specifically the right of equal protection under the law for all.

• The Maryland legislature voted to ban the inhumane, abhorrent, expensive, ineffective and unequally applied Death Penalty. They become the 6th state in as many years to do so, and the 18th state overall. As Governor Martin O'Malley (D) notes in an op-ed today: "Across our ever-more-closely connected world, the majority of public executions now take place in just seven countries: Iran. Iraq. The People’s Republic of China. North Korea. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. And the United States of America." This is another clear victory for those who believe in the Constitutional value of equal justice for all under the law and who hate Big Government --- the biggest --- allowing itself to kill its own citizens.

• A federal court ruled that the use of so-called "National Security Letters" --- essentially, a warrantless statement from the FBI handed over to banks, libraries, phone companies, etc., demanding unlimited private information about a specific person for supposed "national security purposes" --- is unconstitutional. Specifically, the gag order on those banks, libraries, phone companies, etc., disallowing them from notifying the target about the intrusion on their privacy, is what the judge found in violation of the First Amendment. The case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF). The use of these letters have been one of the most insidious and abused elements of the PATRIOT Act for a very long time, ever since its passage following 9/11. The court ruling is likely to be appealed by the DoJ, but the finding is, for now, a positive step in the right direction --- at least for those of us conservative progressives who give a damn about unwarranted search and seizure, freedom of speech, etc. AP notes that "the FBI made 16,511 national-security-letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011" alone.

• A federal appeals court has re-instated a case filed by the ACLU arguing that the CIA must, at the very least, respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests concerning the use of the drone strikes. The FOIA requests in question had sought information on "the legal basis for carrying out targeted drone killings; any restrictions on those who may be targeted; any civilian casualties; any geographic limits on the program; the number of targeted killings that the agency has carried out; and the training, supervision, oversight, or discipline of drone operators." Even if the ACLU is ultimately victorious in this case, the CIA would not necessarily have to provide the information sought in those requests, but they would at least have to respond to them and state which responsive documents they may have and why they are not responding. The ACLU notes that the drone program "has already been responsible for the deaths of more than 4,000 people in an unknown number of countries."

After the two court rulings above on Friday, former Constitutional attorney and civil liberties champion Glenn Greenwald tweeted wryly: "Wow ... it's like we have a 3rd branch or something."

Much of this nation's government, all three branches, are largely stuck and broken in the muck and mire of partisan, corporate-sponsored quagmire or worse. So the fact that we had four important, not-horrible, arguably excellent things happen within that quagmire all on the same day on Friday are worth, at least, noting here for the record.

A session today at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) titled "Trump the Race Card: Are you Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You're Not One?", as sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots, didn't work out as well as organizers had planned. Or maybe it did.

Things fell apart at the year's most prestigious Republican event in DC, during questioning at the session by one white southern attendee who felt that his "people and culture" were being "systematically disenfranchised" by the federal government. It's a problem, he made clear, that "all the Tea Parties" were concerned about.

God bless the event's African-American presenter, K. Carl Smith, who tried to put out the fire (somehow) by explaining that Frederick Douglass had written a letter to his former slave master expressing his forgiveness.

"For what?," the attendee Scott Terry of North Carolina asked. "For feeding him and housing him?"

Clearly, Terry, who was sitting next to a friend in a Confederate flag t-shirt, was sick and tired of being called a racist when he --- like so many others in the oppressed minority that is the Republican Party --- knew he was not one.

Today on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show --- after breaking the news about the newly elected Pope --- I interviewed Eugene Iredale, attorney of the former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera who received a $100,000 settlement from Rightwing con-artist James O'Keefe last week. (Vera also received $50,000 from O'Keefe's former partner Hannah Giles in a separate settlement last summer.)

Vera's California Invasion of Privacy Act lawsuit, filed in 2010, stemmed from O'Keefe and Giles' surreptitious wiretapping of a "confidential" conversation with Vera. The conversation (during which Vera played along to learn about the duo's pretend plot to smuggle underage prostitutes into the country, so he could turn them in to law enforcement) was then deceptively edited for misleading use in the infamous ACORN "pimp" hoax tapes published by Andrew Breitbart and blatantly misreported by New York Times, et al.

Iredale discussed O'Keefe's illegalities at the center of the suit; why other ACORN workers hadn't similarly sued the three con-artists; why Breitbart was not included in Vera's suit; why he didn't also sue for defamation; whether these settlements can be seen as a "victory"; and much more.

In the second part of today's BradCast, I offered my opinion ranted a bit on Justice Antonin Scalia's obnoxious, not-conservative, not-constitutionalist, activist attempt to legislate from the bench on the landmark Voting Rights Act during a recent Supreme Court hearing on the Act's important and ground-breaking Section 5 provision...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

P.S. I invited O'Keefe to join today's show to offer his side of the story (live and not deceptively edited), but last night he seems to have decided he didn't "have the guts" to show up.

I'm prepping for my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today, when I'll be joined by Eugene Iredale, the attorney for former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera who won a $100,000 settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O'Keefe last week in an invasion of privacy lawsuit (and a $50,000 settlement from O'Keefe's former partner Hannah Giles last summer). You can listen live at 6pm ET / 3pm PT right here. [Update: Here's the interview...].

We will not be joined as well by O'Keefe himself, unfortunately, despite my invitations to him after his 'I'm the victim here!' tweets last week when news of the settlement broke. He had described media coverage of the settlement agreement as "lies and lies and more lies from journafascists" and attempted to taunt the media to "have the guts" to allow him to tell his side of the story. We took him up on that offer and invited him to appear on The BradCast today, live! Which is impossible to deceptively edit! (You're welcome, Jimmy!) But until late last night he didn't "have the guts" to even respond to my generous invitation.

After a second invite last night, however, I finally heard back from him...

On Rachel Maddow's show last night, she opened with an interesting and lengthy segment on the difficulty of moving gun safety regulations through Congress over the years, even in the aftermath of JFK's assassination.

This chart, however, and the quick thoughts on it that followed, caught my eye. It's based on details from a new Washington Post poll released Tuesday, asking "Would you support or oppose a law requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows?"...

[This article cross-posted by Salon...]

Pretend journalist and Republican activist Hannah Giles agreed to pay $50,000 to former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera as a part of a legal settlement struck last summer in response to an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against her and her former partner James O'Keefe, Vera's attorney Eugene Iredale has confirmed to The BRAD BLOG.

Last week, in a scoop by the website Wonkette, it was disclosed that O'Keefe, a federal criminal and professional liar, agreed to pay $100,000 in his own legal settlement with the same former ACORN employee, after heading up the scheme to secretly videotape him in violation of California's Invasion of Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 632).

O'Keefe and Giles' illicit taping of Vera was carried out as part of the deceptively edited series of hit videos released by the pair in 2009. The tapes were published, and paid for, by the late con-man Andrew Breitbart. Vera had been portrayed in the misleading video as having been willing to help the pair smuggle underage prostitutes into the United States across the Mexican border. In fact, Vera had played along with the duo's ridiculous proposed scheme only long enough to collect information from O'Keefe and Giles (and take their photographs), before contacting law enforcement immediately after the secretly video-taped meeting.

Giles played the role of a prostitute in the ACORN "pimp" hoax videos. O'Keefe played her boyfriend. O'Keefe did not play the part of a "pimp", as he had knowingly misrepresented in both the videos and to the public, and as repeatedly misreported by the bulk of the mainstream media at the time, and even still today.

During the course of Vera's lawsuit, it was revealed that Breitbart, who died in March of 2012, had agreed to pay the pair some $120,000 for their hoax tapes in $5,000 monthly installments to each. O'Keefe ended up collecting $65,000 before he was terminated around the time of his CNN "Sex Boat" scandal in September of 2010. Giles' payments, on the other hand, were reduced from $5,000 month to $3,000 at some point, before being terminated for what she described, according to Vera's attorney, as "a conflict of visions".

Accordingly, Giles only ended up collecting $32,000 from Breitbart, but thanks to the settlement last Summer, she was forced to hand all of that, plus $18,000 more, over to Vera.

Despite the real facts of the Vera case being known since at least April of 2010 --- when a criminal investigation by the California Attorney General found "no criminality" by Vera or any of the other ACORN employees seen in the videos --- the original stories on the hoax videos remain published on the Breitbart website without correction, as we noted in our detailed report on O'Keefe's settlement with Vera last week.

As we reported once again at the time, every official law enforcement investigation on the matter --- including those by the former MA Attorney General [PDF], by the Kings County, NY District Attorney, and by the CA Attorney General --- determined that there were no violations of law performed by any ACORN worker as seen in any of the several surreptitiously taped videos. Each official investigation found that the tapes were "highly" and "deceptively" edited to present a false case against ACORN.

O'Keefe had attempted to fight for dismissal of Vera's July 2010 lawsuit but lost in court on every attempt to do so. While it took O'Keefe until this past week to see the writing on the wall and finally agree to settle with Vera, Giles was smart enough to settle her own part of the lawsuit with Vera last Summer. Giles' settlement agreement had been reported by Dave Maass of the San Diego City Beat at the time, but the conditions of that settlement and Giles' agreement to pay out $50,000 to the former ACORN worker had not been known.

Asked during his sworn deposition why he didn't attempt to confirm the false story given to him by Vera before publishing his videos tapes, O'Keefe, who still pretends to be a "journalist", explained: "I did want to follow up. I just didn't end up following up"...

This exchange --- by Congressional committee proxy --- got a bit more buried than it deserved to be amidst a week of important (Rand Paul's drone filibuster) and not so important (Presidential/Congressional dinner dates!) news items last week.

You may have already seen both of these clips. But just in case you haven't, the remarks made during two different Congressional hearings last week illustrate the very heart of the most broken part of our broken government, so I wanted to be sure to at least flag these two short videos here.

The first was Attorney General Eric Holder's remarkable admission last week, when asked about why one the world's largest banks, such as HSBC --- which admitted to some $881 million dollars in drug cartel money laundering and working with regimes in a number of countries around the world in blatant violation of human rights sanctions against them --- have not been brought to trial by the Obama Dept. of Justice...

"The concern that you have raised is one that I, frankly, share," Holder responded to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-NE). "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large."

"It has an inhibiting influence --- impact --- on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate," he continued. "So, the concern that you raise is actually one that I share."

With all due respect to AG Holder --- and he is due very, very little --- what he just said is, to the best of my knowledge, complete bullshit. While I'm not an expert in financial law, I am familiar with no clause in any of those laws which offers a "get out of jail free card" to institutions who have become so large that prosecuting them would have "a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

I know of no provisions in the criminal code which says that if your corporation has become large enough that facing criminal prosecution might make the world markets jittery, you don't have to face prosecution for those crimes. In fact, we still have anti-trust laws on the books to deal with exactly those situations --- cases in which corporations have become so powerful, have such a monopolistic effect on the market, that they may be broken up by the Dept. of Justice, or even taken over and then sold off piece meal to bring the company back into manageable size again.

The next day, in another U.S. Senate hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), expressed a similar sentiment, in a must-see video clip, absolutely slamming U.S. Treasury regulators for their lack of willingness to take action against some of the most criminal corporations, such as HSBC.

"What does it take to get you to consider shutting down a bank for money laundering?!," she asked the regulators who couldn't respond as to the last time a bank had been prosecuted for this sort of thing. "How many billions of dollars before somebody says we're shutting you down?"...

The folks at Current TV's Viewpoint tell me host (and pal) John Fugelsang featured one of my Rand Paul-related tweets on the air Thursday night.

But more importantly, the point of that tweet seems to have made it into the heart of Fugelsang's rather brilliant --- and rhyming! --- Rand rant that same night. He stands with Rand...but not all of his plan...man...

Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O'Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN "pimp" hoax series.

The story of the settlement to Vera's July 2010 civil lawsuit was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.

Several different official investigations, including those by the former MA Attorney General [PDF], by the Kings County, NY District Attorney, and by the CA Attorney General all determined that there were no violations of law performed by any ACORN worker seen in the several surreptitiously taped videos. The officials found the tapes were "highly" and "deceptively" edited.

The ACORN "pimp" hoax videos were published originally by the late Republican con-man Andrew Breitbart who, before he died of heart failure just over one year ago, was likely to have been pulled in to the civil case as well, after O'Keefe disclosed in his deposition that Breitbart had advance knowledge of the scheme to secretly video tape workers in violation of CA's Invasion of Privacy Act.

After Breitbart's publication, the edited tapes were widely covered, without fact-checking, in both the Rightwing media such as Fox "News" and non-Rightwing media such as the New York Times. The Times was eventually forced to issue partial-corrections for their inaccurate reporting after a six month effort by The BRAD BLOG to point out how they'd been duped by O'Keefe, who had lied about appearing as a 70s era blaxploitation "pimp" in the offices of ACORN.

A 2010 investigation by the CA Attorney General determined there was "no criminality" by ACORN workers seen in any of the raw video tapes. O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles agreed to turn over the unedited tapes in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution in the state. "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," California's then AG Jerry Brown said in a statement accompanying the release of his office's investigation which "involved attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights, and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence."

"Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor," he added.

While the deal left the AG's office unable to prosecute the duo, the criminal investigation found that O'Keefe and Giles likely violated the civil provisions of CA's Privacy Act and could be sued under those provisions "for recording a confidential conversation without consent." Vera, who, after his odd meeting with O'Keefe and Giles had the wherewithal to contact the police, sued both of them in July of 2010 for violations of the act...

What kind of a pathetic, backwards, third-world country would allow this sort of thing to happen?

Just in from BBC [emphasis added]...

Ah, yes. An imperfect version of "Democracy's Gold Standard" (publicly hand-counted paper ballots at the precinct --- so, perhaps we'll call what they'll now be using in Kenya the "Silver Standard") to save the day again.

How long before folks realize that's the way that every self-respecting, self-governing democracy ought to be counting ballots in their elections in the first place?

[Hat-tip Bob Patterson.]