You'll be shocked --- shocked --- to learn (once again) that rightwing political propagandist and operative James O'Keefe, a federal criminal, is also a professional liar.

From O'Keefe's Project Veritas Investigates: Voter Fraud" racket on January 11, 2012...

That was the lie. Here's the truth. From TPM's report on the dropped criminal investigation of a Congressman's son today:

Of course, we've highlighted O'Keefe's lies about releasing full, unedited videos, from which he creates his doctored and deceptively edited video propaganda, many times.

For example, despite his fundraising pleas to the contrary, it took a deal for criminal immunity from the California Attorney General in 2010 before O'Keefe finally agreed to turn over the raw, unedited videos from his phony 2009 ACORN "Pimp" Hoax to law enforcement. (The AG's investigation determined that the only violations of criminal law seen on the tapes were O'Keefe's.)

The screenshot from his dishonest fundraising plea at the top of this article was published after he and his co-conspirators trumped up secretly video taped "voter fraud" incidents during last year's New Hampshire Primary.

As we reported in great detail at the time, even while attempting to raise money on his fake "voter fraud investigation" --- which led to the Republican Mayor of Manchester calling for O'Keefe and his gang to be "arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" --- O'Keefe lied about the release of what he claimed were the full, unedited tapes from that particular scam. They weren't. James O'Keefe had lied then, just as he did about the ACORN tapes, just as he has done, according to law enforcement, in the Virginia case.

James O'Keefe is a professional liar. That's how he makes a living. Alert the media.

Speaking to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this week, former Vice-President Al Gore said:

Gore also offered a few interesting words about capitalism in the 1/30/2013 clip from The Daily Show which is posted below. In a lengthier conversation on MSNBC's Morning Joe this week, posted below as well, Gore also discusses the deadly costs of the uncontrolled dumping of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and the ravaging effects its having on our planet, criticism of his sale of Current TV to the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, and he goes on to say that "both capitalism and democracy have been hacked"...

During testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1999, after the mass shooting at Columbine, the National Rifle Association's CEO Wayne LaPierre stated plainly:

The NRA even went as far as to take out an ad [PDF] that included LaPierre's full testimony from his U.S. House Judiciary Committee appearance that day.

But that was then.

Today, testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the wake of the mass shooting at Newtown, LaPierre has completely reversed his position on background checks, as highlighted during this exchange with the Committee Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)...

In short, despite tens of thousands of criminals prevented from buying guns at licensed dealers and pawn shops, thanks to instant background checks --- LaPierre pegged the number at 76,000 people who "have been denied under the present law" --- the NRA mouthpiece is now against closing the loophole that allows unlimited gun sales at trade shows with no background checks whatsoever, even though 40% of weapons in the country are purchased at such shows.

Once again, the con-man who heads up the NRA is completely out of touch with the vast majority of his own constituency as well as the vast majority of the nation as a whole...

Yesterday, a Virginia State Senate committee killed a GOP plan to completely revamp the state's "winner-take-all" electoral vote system despite a last minute change to the bill by its sponsor in hopes of making it more palatable. The original scheme would have awarded electoral votes by Congressional district instead of "winner-take-all". Had that plan been in place in 2012, Mitt Romney would have been awarded 9 electoral votes to Obama's 4, despite the President winning the popular vote in the state by some 150,000 votes and being awarded all 13 of the VA's electoral votes.

The bill's author, Republican Sen. Charles W. "Bill" Carrico, tweaked the bill at the last minute, so that electoral votes would be awarded proportionally, based on the popular vote, rather than by Congressional district. It didn't help. The scheme was defeated in committee by a bi-partisan vote of 11 to 4.

Before that scheme was killed in the VA Senate on Tuesday, I appeared on The David Pakman Show, via Skype, to discuss that and related issues, including the impending U.S. Supreme Court threat to the very important Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act...

Last year we spent quite a bit of time detailing what we described, with much justification, as The Year of GOP Election Fraud.

From the three felony voter fraud convictions of Indiana Sec. of State Charlie White (R), to the admitted ballot petition fraud of the campaign of Newt Gingrich (R) and of the staff of U.S. House Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R) to the attempted voter fraud by Rightwing propagandist James O'Keefe's co-conspirators, to the registration fraud allegedly committed by employees of the firm hired by the RNC to carry out voter registration in seven key swing states, to the actual apparent voter fraud of the GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and beyond, it was another year in which the Republican Party pretended there was a massive Democratic voter fraud epidemic in order to institute new polling place voter suppression laws, even while carrying out their own crime spree which largely went ignored by the very same media covering the GOP attempts to enact polling place Photo ID restrictions.

But it wasn't only the GOP superstars named above who attempted to game the system. Some of their gullible followers, who were distracted and conned into buying into the pretend "Democratic voter fraud" panic, decided to take matters into the their own hands by attempting to double-vote, claiming they were simply "testing the system".

Two different such cases in two different states led to voter fraud felony arrests last November. One of the cases, in Nevada, has now been settled with a guilty plea. The other appears to still be pending in New Mexico against a man who claims he thought his job as a Republican precinct challenger was to challenge the system itself...

From Bill Maher's "New Rules" on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday...

By the way, here's what those courageous numbers look like...

And, for those who've heard about the "devastating" $500 billion in spending cuts to our military budget that will soon come as a result of the 2011 "sequestration" deal if a new accommodation isn't worked out, here's what those numbers will look like...

Scary!

As it is said when it comes to voting technology: As California goes, so goes the nation. To that end, there is some disturbing news on the horizon from BlackBoxVoting.org as the Internet Voting virus threatens to spread to the Golden State.

If you're not familiar with the many insane dangers of this idea, and if the Academy Awards' recent nightmare wasn't enough, here's an article or two or three or four from the past year or two here which should do well to appropriately scare the hell out of you.

In the meantime, here's how BBV cuts to the chase --- and the core --- of the real concerns of Internet Voting, as the anti-democratic profiteering vultures descend into the state...

To put this into blunt terms: It's not whether Internet Voting is or isn't secure. (It's not, but that's actually beside the point.) It's whether you, or anybody else, can ever know that it's secure. And the hard, cold, scientific fact is that you cannot.

More on "Ting's Thing" from BBV here...

After Harry Reid decided to fail to reform the filibuster today, despite his pretend outrage last year at the undemocratic U.S. Senate process being "abused, abused, abused" by the Republican minority in the Senate, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein tweeted what seems a pretty silly question: "Interesting Q on all this is whether Reid's restraint now will lead to R restraint when they're in charge and D's are filibustering".

No clue why Klein would even imagine that Republicans would show similar restraint when it comes to anything these days. For evidence of that, one needs look no further than what the VA state State Senate did just across the river on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, as President Obama was being sworn in for his second term.

Normally balanced with 20 Democratic and 20 Republican state Senators, Republicans took advantage of one of those state Senators, Democratic civil rights icon Henry Marsh, taking the day off to be at the second Inauguration of the nation's first black President, to carry out a complete state redistricting coup.

Stephen Colbert covered the coup in his Alpha Dog of the Week segment last night, quoting Martin Luther King thusly: "I have been to the mountain top, and while I was there, they heavily redistricted the promise land."

The coup described above is separate, though related to, a parallel effort also moving forward in the VA legislature, to rig the next Presidential Election by dividing up electoral votes based on the winner of each Congressional district, rather than the current "winner take all" system. Had the Republican plan for this, currently moving through the state Senate, been in place during the 2012 election, Romney would have won 9 of the commonwealth's electoral votes to Obama's 4, despite the President having won the popular vote there by some 150,000 votes (4 percentage points).

For a less amusing, if similarly maddening, explanation of the Virginia Republicans' shameless redistricting coup on Monday (we hope to have more on their subsequent electoral vote gimmick in the near future) and where it is likely to go from here, see Rachel Maddow's explanation from Tuesday posted below...

The one thing the Senate Majority Leader never seems to fail at: Failing.

Harry Reid last May, on the Senator floor, apologizing to Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-NM) for blocking their 2010 attempt to weaken the filibuster: "These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules of the Senate, and we didn’t," Reid said then. "And they were right. The rest of us were wrong --- or most of us, anyway. What a shame… If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rule, because it’s been abused, abused and abused."

Harry Reid today, after striking a deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to ensure anything close to (small "d") democracy stays decidedly out of the U.S. Senate: "I’m not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold."

See Ezra Klein for more of Reid's reasons for striking a deal to make minor procedural changes to Senate rules which do absolutely nothing to change the use --- and abuse, abuse, abuse --- of the filibuster. See Sam Stein and Ryan Grim for more of an explanation of what the marginal procedural changes to be made actually are.

In short, as many Filibuster reformers are noting today: Harry Reid's filibuster reform doesn't actually reform the filibuster in any way.

But let's spread some blame around. According to Merkley --- who had been leading a coalition of Democratic Senators and activists calling for the requirement of a "talking filibuster" (already fairly weak tea when it comes to filibuster reform) --- during a conference call last week, he called on reformers to pressure these Democratic Senators who were still "wrestling with his proposal", as Politico characterized it: Max Baucus (MT), Patrick Leahy (VT), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Barbara Boxer (CA), Joe Manchin (WV) and Mark Pryor (AR).

Presuming the Reid/McConnell deal is adopted today, as it likely will be, another chance to reform --- or kill --- the filibuster all together will not occur until the first legislative day of the next U.S. Congress, in 2015. All of which goes some way towards supporting the suggestion offered by progressive activist David Swanson during my interview with him last November, that Dems, at least a minority with enough power to undermine their caucus, have little interest in reforming the filibuster, as it gives them an excuse to make sure things they want to act like they believe in, but actually don't, will never see the light of day in the U.S. Senate.

On today's BradCast on Pacifica Radio's KPFK here in Los Angeles, we focused on the climate remarks in President Obama's Second Inaugural address which, frankly, seem to have stunned even the most seasoned environmental reporters.

We were joined by Bill Clinton's former acting Assistant Secretary of Energy Joe Romm, who is now the editor of the indispensable ClimateProgress.org and author of Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.

We discussed, among other issues, Romm's encouraging speculation on whether or not Obama and the State Dept. (with John Kerry as its likely new head) will approve the Keystone XL pipeline or not, and what the horrifying consequences are likely to be if they do.

That, and much more (including a bit of other news, some great listener phone calls and the Green News Report's Desi Doyen), all follow.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

P.S. Remember, I don't post all of the BradCasts here. But you can subscribe to the RSS feed here, or listen to the archive anytime on your mobile device with either the Stitcher Radio app or the TuneIn app, both of which carry the show.

P.S.S. Also still interested in creating a logo for The BradCast. So if you got logo-makin' chops and wanna give it a crack, drop me a line!

Palm Beach Post's George Bennet wrote last week about how so-called "Tea Party" groups seem to be running away from the "Tea Party" name in places like Florida.

The South Florida Tea Party, for example --- the one that helped launch the national career of Sen. Marco Rubio and hosted Donald Trump while he was initially pretending to think about running for President --- is changing their name to the National Liberty Federation.

"As Tea Party groups go," observes Steven Benen at MaddowBlog, "the South Florida Tea Party was one of the bigger and better organized outfits."

But it's little wonder these folks are running from the name. Their popularity, and their name brand, is now plummeting along with the fortunes of the Congressional Republican Party. As Bennet notes, even Rightwing pollsters like Rasmussen are finding that support for the "Tea Party" movement is absolutely cratering...

Via Politico:

The Grio has the video here...

Powell went on to note that "What’s happened in the last few years, is the party has shifted dramatically to the right — that’s perfectly acceptable, but if you stay that far to the right, you’re losing where the country is."

Please note, though Powell endorsed Obama twice, he was George W. Bush's Secretary of State and still considers himself a Republican. He says he voted for seven straight Republicans for President before voting for Obama.

Everyone will, no doubt, have their favorite and/or least favorite moments from President Barack Obama's second Inaugural address this afternoon. [Full video here, full text transcript here.]

We couldn't help but notice this passage, concerning climate change, which received not only as much or more attention than any other single issue referenced in the entire speech, but as much or more attention than the issue received during the entirety of the seemingly endless 2012 Presidential campaign...

Receiving less time during the address today, but also noteworthy for this news site...

Finally, for now, one personal moment worth highlighting --- perhaps the most personal of the day --- was this unscripted few seconds, after the President had finished his speech, and just before he disappeared out of view at the exit of his Inaugural podium for the final time. He stopped and turned around to view the enormous crowd on the National Mall.

The audio is difficult to hear, but he appears to say "I want to take one more look. I'm not going to see this again"...

The headline at Think Progress, "5 People Shot At 3 Different Gun Shows On Gun Appreciation Day" was too perfect not to re-use in this case.

CNN describes yesterday's "Gun Appreciation Day" festivities this way today...

Here's video from the NC gun show revealing the freedom fighters there scrambling after a 12-guage shotgun "accidentally discharged", injuring three people...

In Ohio, one man is hospitalized in stable condition today "after being shot by his business partner at a gun show" in the northern part of the state yesterday. It seems the owner of the Taurus semi-automatic 9mm handgun "brought the firearm into the show fully loaded," despite a policy barring loaded weapons.

Why, since NRA stooges tell us that "guns make us safer", are they not allowed to carry loaded weapons at gun shows, of all places? Seems, I dunno, hypocritical.

"In Indianapolis," the CNN report continues describing the third incident yesterday, "a man walking out of the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show shot himself in the hand as he was loading his .45-caliber semi-automatic firearm, Indiana State Police said in a statement."

In a less amusing incident Saturday, also on "Gun Appreciation Day", tragedy struck in Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, when a 14-year old boy playing with his 15-year old brother and a friend spending the night, got access to his mother's unloaded gun, loaded the weapon, pointed it at the older brother and "accidentally" killed him.

As journalist Brooke Jarvis tweeted yesterday, appropriately enough, a 1998 study on guns in homes found that "For every use in self defense, there were 4 accidental shootings, 7 assaults/homicides, & 11 suicide attempts."

But, ya know, guns don't kill people. Gunshot wounds from guns in people's houses kill people.

UPDATE 1/21/12: "Gun Appreciation Day" had an even darker ending in New Mexico, with yet another 15-year old involved, as Albuquerque Journal reports...