[Now UPDATED with audio archives below.]

Late breaking news out of Wisconsin, and the continuing fight over a federal government shutdown in DC means we're going to have an even busier night than usual as my week guest hosting on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show continues.

As usual, we're BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• DAVE WEIGEL Slate.com journalist/blogger and MSNBC contributor with the latest on the DC budget standoff.
• JOHN WASHBURN Award-winning Wisconsin election integrity citizen advocate (and self-professed 'Ron Paul Republican' and Justice David Prosser voter!) of Fair Elections of WI with the latest news out of WI today and on GOP-floated rumors about "fraud" in the Supreme Court election. .
• TYSON SLOCUM Director of Public Citizen's energy program on the latest out of Fukushima and the dangers and pitfalls of nuclear power and other fossil fuels. Award-winning Wisconsin election integrity citizen advocate (and self-professed 'Ron Paul Republican') with the latest news out of WI today and on GOP-floated rumors about "fraud" in the Supreme Court election. .
• PLUS: Isn't that enough? Yes, there will be more! Plus your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Wow. What a show. Especially on Wisconsin revelations tonight. The audio (and chat) archives all follow below...

[Updated 4/8/11, 12:22am PT at bottom of article.]

As word was floating around this afternoon about a possible "book keeping error" discovered during canvassing of Tuesday's incredibly close Wisconsin Supreme Court election, an error that might give thousands of votes to Justice David Prosser in a race which he trailed by just 204 votes based on unofficial Election Night numbers, we idly wondered if the county in question might turn out to be the very controversial Kathy Nickolaus' Waukesha County.

And, whaddaya know...

The above comes from the Rightwing National Review Online and is similarly reported at this hour at the similarly Rightwing Weekly Standard where Stephen F. Hayes adds that Nickolaus is also "a Republican activist":

As Schneider notes in the NRO piece, Waukesha's County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus had indeed come under scrutiny for her election procedures in the past. As The BRAD BLOG flagged back in August of 2010, it was discovered that Nickolaus keeps election results on her personal PC in her office, and only on her personal PC.

At a press conference moments ago, Nickolaus is said to have attributed the confusion in numbers to "save error" in Microsoft Access on her computer.

As we noted, quoting the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year in regard to questions about Nickolaus', um, unusual election procedures:

An audit of Nickolaus' election procedures was subsequently performed by the county and a number of recommendations to improve the security and accuracy of her system were made by the auditors. Among them, the recommendation that she stop using the same ID and password for three different employees in her office. Nickolaus claimed, in opposing that recommendation, that it would take too much time for one employee to log off before another one logged on with a different user ID.

When presented with the results of the audit at a County Board meeting in January after Nickolaus had refused to implement the recommendations, saying only that she would take them "into consideration," she was taken to task for what the Chairman of the Executive Committee described as her "smirks" during the discussion. Here is how the Journal Sentinel reported that meeting in January of this year...

[Hat-tip Andrew Sullivan...]

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below!...]

We'll be picking up on last night's cliff-hanger in Wisconsin tonight, as our week guest hosting for the "Spring Breaking" Malloys continues on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show.

As usual, we're BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight:

• ION SANCHO With the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin coming down to a few more than 200 votes at this hour, we're reminded of the importance of assuring that all voters can vote and all votes are counted accurately. Florida (again) is now trying to keep that from happening in advance of 2012, as we'll discuss with Leon County's legendary Supervisor of Elections who has called the new GOP's new proposed election law "a travesty".
• ERIC BOEHLERT, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, on today's news that Glenn Beck is losing his daily Fox "News" show.
• DESI DOYEN, co-host and Managing Editor of the Green News Report on today's insane floor fight in both the House and Senate where Republicans were attempting to keep the EPA from doing their mandated job to help curb greenhouse gasses. Oh, the crazy.
• PLUS: Lots on Wisconsin, Beck out at Fox, Budget showdown and much more, along with whatever else is on your mind via your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: The audio (and chat) archives of today's "Hump Day" show follow below. Enjoy!...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below.]

Expect another busy night tonight, as my week guest hosting for the "Spring Breaking" Malloys continues on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show tonight.

Once again, we'll be BradCasting LIVE tonight 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation, LIVE from Madison, WI on the nationalized, bellwether Supreme Court election being held there today, which is being regarded as a proxy battle between the GOP/Gov. Scott Walker and the unions, the people and everybody else.
• HOWIE KLEIN of Down With Tyranny, on what today's election may portend for the rest of the nation and for the 2012 elections, and on the continuing "budget showdown" in D.C.
• TIM DECHRISTOPHER, Utah climate activist and national hero, on his remarkable attempt to disrupt an auction of 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling during the Bush Administration, in hopes of keeping them out of corporate hands. And on his subsequent felony convictions for that act of civil disobedience, which he now intends to appeal.
• PLUS: Everything else, and there's plenty of that, along with whatever's on your mind via your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Tonight's show ended on a cliff-hanger! As the results of WI's Supreme Court election were just about 50/50 by the end of the show (and still seem to be exactly that late tonight!) Please enjoy the audio and chat archives from tonight's exciting show, both of which now follow below...

As several folks have requested, below is a stand-alone version of our brief, but rather powerful tribute to MLK from last night's Mike Malloy Show.

The audio montage was created by producer Desi Doyen and engineer Tony Sorrentino in remembrance yesterday, April 4th, of the 43rd anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination as he was in Memphis to speak in support of the right of workers to organize and unionize.

The news clips and, in particular, the haunting message of Robert F. Kennedy (who would be similarly assassinated just a few months later), were especially poignant last night, as I suspect they will still be for many today and for many years to come as the nation continues to battle, even now, to see King's legacy eventually fulfilled. And so it will be.

Hey, Andy, you're famous! Just like you always wanted to be!

Apparently, these are popping up all over town out here in L.A.

NOTE: I have nothing to do with it, even as it would be impossible for me (or anybody with any knowledge of reality) to disagree with the message.

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

With last Friday's special April Fools edition out of the way, we're eager to get back to business and kick off a full week of guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show as Mike and Kathy enjoy a well-deserved Spring Break!

We're BradCasting LIVE each night this week from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• REP. HANK JOHNSON (D, GA-4), on his efforts to bring accountability for the government-contracted data security/intelligence firms discovered to have been conspiring on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's law firm to create a plot to use tools developed for the "War on Terror" to discredit the Chamber's perceived political enemies through fraud, forgery, cyber-hacking, the creation of fake personnas and much more. The plot, before it was revealed by hacktivist collective Anonymous, was to target private citizens (such as Brad Friedman and his family) and progressive organizations such as VelvetRevolution.us (co-founded by The BRAD BLOG). The insidious $12 million scheme originally came to light while we were on air during our guest host stint last February).
• STEPHAN LEWANDOWSKY, Australian Professorial Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia on his remarkable recent story of sock-puppetry.
• PLUS: A whole lotta stuff on my radar today (such as tomorrow's WI election, new election laws in FL, Fukushima, GOP Medicare cuts, Transocean's 'apology', WikiLeaks & the New York Times and more), along with whatever's on your radar via your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Good to be back! Especially when the three hours go by really quickly. Audio archives now follow below (along with chat room archives) Enjoy!...

While prepping for tonight's Mike Malloy Show (which I will be busy guest hosting all week), here are just a few of the items which caught my eye so far today...in no particular order...

• Record amounts of cash being spent by labor unions and the (supposedly grass-roots) "Tea Party" on tomorrow's Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, as the race between the unabashedly pro-Walker Justice David Prosser and Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has turned into a proxy battle between the two clashing ideologies right now in WI. A defeat of Prosser would tilt the court's 4-3 majority from Right-leaning to not Right-leaning. The race is also seen as a bellwether for upcoming recall elections of GOP state Senators likely to occur there in the near future, as Ernie Canning reported on earlier today at The BRAD BLOG.

• Nuclear triage. Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan are dumping 11.5 tons of "low-level" radioactive water into the ocean to make room in filled storage containers for the more radioactive water leaking from reactor Unit 2. They say they have "no choice," but to dump that water (with radiation levels 100 times over the legal limit) as they must continue injecting new water to cool the plant's four crippled reactors, even as the radiated water floods out. Over the weekend, workers were unsuccessful in their attempt to use polymer, sawdust and newspaper (BP "JunkShot" anyone?!) to plug an 8 inch crack in a flooded tunnel at Unit 2 said to be gushing highly radioactive water, at 100,000 times legal levels, into the ocean.

• Transocean, the owner of the BP oil rig which blew up last year in the Gulf killing 11 workers (9 of them from Transocean) has apologized for referring to 2010's safety record as the company's "best year ever". They have not, however, apologized for issuing enormous bonuses to their executives in the bargain.

• A sweeping new election law in Florida is working its way through the GOP-controlled state legislature along predictably partisan lines, just in time for the 2012 Presidential election there. Some of the proposed changes will make it much more difficult for non-partisan voter registration groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to do their work, and will likely lead to a huge increase in "provisional" (and, therefore, frequently uncounted) ballots. Leon County's highly-respected Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho has called the bill "a travesty".

• Former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley --- recently forced to step down for referring to the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning as "stupid" --- compares WikiLeaks to the New York Times. The paper's Editor-in-Chief, who has been bashing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks themselves of late, even though the "paper of record" has written hundreds of stories based on WikiLeaks documents, will not be happy. Good. (Coverage at RAW STORY courtesy of BRAD BLOG alum David Edwards.)

• After relentlessly bashing Democrats for cuts to Medicare vis a vis the 2010 health insurance reform bill, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan plans to largely do away with the program entirely as part of the GOP's proposed budget plans to be revealed shortly.

• Even Republican state Senators in Maine are beginning to become uncomfortable with the radical statements and extremist behavior of the state's new GOP Governor Paul LePage and are asking him to "tone it down". Beginning to see the writing on the wall, boys?

So what's on your radar?

In addition to some of the above possibly coming up for discussion tonight, we will definitely be discussing the U.S. Chamber Plot (which was to have targeted, among others, myself and my family) with my guest U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) who is trying to see some accountability in that horrific affair after House Republicans refused his request for investigative hearings into the matter.

Please tune in at 6p PT (9p ET) tonight --- and all week! We'll have live listening links and a lively chat room right here at The BRAD BLOG during those hours as usual!

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below! Enjoy!]

It's a well-deserved "Spring Break" for the Malloys, so once again, we're thrilled to be back and "keepin' it lit" for the next six weeknights as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE again each night from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as ever, during the show. So please come on by and say hey while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• REP. JACK KIMBLE (R) Yes, a GOP U.S. Congressman has agreed to come on the Mike Malloy Show (Don't tell Mike!) tonight to talk about his support for rolling back some child labor laws(!) and whether he'll be joining every other R in the world considering a run for President in 2012. The Congressman represents California's 54th district, and we promised to let folks know you can, and should follow him on Twitter at: @RepJackKimble.
• IAN MURPHY, Editor of Buffalo Beast and the guy who punk'd WI Gov. Scott Walker when he called him pretending to be "David Koch"! Murphy is now running for the U.S. Congress in NY's 26th, and this time, we think, he's not kidding!
• JOE LINEHAN Chicago's brilliant and extremely subversive political satirist, and man of many characters, joins us for our special First Day of April edition of the Mike Malloy Show!
• PLUS: Has there been anything else in the news since we were last guest hosting the Malloy Show in early Feb? Any popular uprisings, new wars, natural disasters or nuclear catastrophes? Sigh... All of that, and your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: What a fun show! I'll not give anything away, in case you've yet to listen, as the audio archives are now posted below (along with archives for the chat room, if you're interested)...

This is just too funny (were it not so sad) to not post in full. From Jess Zimmerman at Grist...

If you’re a climate hawk, or even a climate hobbyist, this graph should look familiar --- it’s the warming trend over the last 100-odd years. Except the guy who busted this out at the House climate science hearing yesterday was brought in by the Republicans to debunk global warming. (The black line is his data.) Haha, whoops!

This graph is the result of physicist Richard Muller’s project to get maximally accurate temperature data. Climate change deniers assumed that his skepticism about existing temperature data meant he was on their side (well, that and he’s also been spreading misinformation about the “Climategate” emails). The Kochs were so convinced of this that they donated $150,000 to his lab --- which makes it all the more delightful that Muller is now all “thanks, suckers, here’s the same data everyone else already had.” (Okay, he put it like this: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups. … I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.” But you know what he meant.)

Muller was one of the only scientists the Republicans brought in --- among their five experts were an economist, a lawyer, and a professor of marketing. But hey, when there are so few scientists who are actually on your side, you have to go with what you’ve got. And evidently, even that doesn’t always work.

Tony Pierce, filling in for Andrew Malcolm (columnist and Laura Bush's former press secretary) at Los Angeles Times' "Top of the Ticket" blog picks up (with attribution, gracias) on our scoop earlier this week about the 100% unverifiable, yet highly hackable Diebold touch-screen e-voting machines out of Van Wert County, Ohio, now for sale, on the cheap, at eBay...

Pierce offers more information in his piece on that landmark Princeton hack from September 2006 and the hackability of these systems in general.

Long time readers of The BRAD BLOG likely recall the Princeton hack came about when VelvetRevolution.us (as co-founded by The BRAD BLOG) gave the Diebold touch-screen system to computer scientists there for the --- at the time --- highly secretive, first-of-its-kind examination, after we'd received the machine from a source of ours. We originally broke the story of that hack exclusively both here at The BRAD BLOG and in a slightly shorter version at Salon.

The alarming hack --- which demonstrated how a virus could be inserted into one of these systems and invisibly flip the results of an entire election --- received a great deal of attention from the mainstream media at the time, and was even covered in a live video demonstration on Fox "News". (See that video at right.)

Though the Princeton hack was on a Diebold AccuVote TS (with no so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" printer) versus the TSX model (with VVPAT) being sold now on eBay, the many ways available to game them in order to flip election results with very little possibility of detection are essentially the same...

Today on my Wednesday show on KPFK (L.A.'s Pacifica Radio affiliate) we covered - guess what?! --- the latest news on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Desi Doyen, my partner on the Green News Report, joins me for the latest.

Also, a very few minutes (never enough time on a 30 minute show --- have to figure out how to do these!) on Diebold's touch-screen machines now being sold for pennies on the dollar at eBay, just in time for 2012, and a bit on the latest Republican voter fraud criminal, potential 2012 Presidential contender Jon Huntsman, Jr. of Utah.

MP3 Download or listen online below [appx 28 mins]...

P.S. I should probably come up with a name for this show. Anybody have any good ideas?

P.P.S. It's no April Fools Joke! I'll be guest-hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show again for a week starting this Friday, weeknights through next Friday (4/1 - 4/8). We'll be running our live chat rooms right here each night while the show is live from 6pm - 9pm PT (9pm - Mid ET), so please stop on by and say hey!. We'll also have links to live listening streams right here if you're not lucky enough to get Mike's show on the public airwaves where you live! Don't miss one thrilling episode!

As we noted in today's Green News Report for radio, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan told Parliament on Tuesday that the country remains on "maximum alert" in regard to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis as Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) workers and members of the country's Self-Defense Force continue to struggle heroically to prevent complete meltdowns at four of the plant's six reactors. They were each knocked out of commission by the March 11th magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Kan was, for the first time, publicly critical of TEPCO's inadequate safety measures for the plant where, as AP detailed in an investigative report on Sunday, the company had "dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history," when planning safe-guards against tsunamis there.

"It's undeniable their assumptions about tsunamis were greatly mistaken," Kan explained on Tuesday. Engineers had designed the plant to withstand waves of up to 18 feet, while the wave that swamped the nuclear plant knocking out power and flooding back-up diesel generators in the basement was believed to be more than 40 feet high...

Because practice makes perfect...

With 2012 just around the corner and these babies still in use at polling places all over the country, why not get one or more of them now for your very own?! With one of these future door stops, you too can learn all the ins and outs of "voting" before the pressure of Election Day, when that "vote" will really "count"!

Great for social clubs, like political parties, or even terrorist groups! Why wait? They're sure to disappear fast! Just like the 100% unverifiable "votes" cast on them!

Because they were made by Diebold, you know it comes from a company you "trust," whether you'd like to or not. And with bids starting as low as, well, anything you like, this tens-of-thousands-of-a-kind e-voting machine is sure to be a "steal"!

More from the Ebay ad (cached here for history's sake):

UPDATE: The seller tells The BRAD BLOG the systems, more than 100 of them, come from Van Wert County, Ohio! And from a state like Ohio, you know the machines work just as they are supposed to! Get yours now and become the life of the party!

UPDATE 3/31/11: Thanks to Tony Pierce, filling in for Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times "Top of the Ticket" blog for picking up on this story, adding some helpful details to it (and for giving appropriate attribution in the bargain.)