During our most recent Green News Report, we sang the praises of California for a number of recent, noteworthy environmental accomplishments and initiatives.

You'll pardon us if we do so just a bit more here, but only because it affords us an opportunity to bash Texas at the same time.

An editorial by the San Antonio News-Express late last week criticized how lawsuit-happy the state of Texas has become over the past decade. Specifically, under their former Republican AG, now Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, the state filed 31 lawsuits against the federal government from 2004 to 2013, claiming the state had little choice, as they'd become a victim, as some sort of "target" of the feds due to their "success." Or something. (Didn't those guys used to be pretend to be against frivolous abuse of the judicial system?)

Anyway, the paper's editorial board noted how the state has filed lawsuits against the federal government of late on everything from Obamacare to immigration to voting laws, etc. And then they noted this [emphasis added]...

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

I'm prepping to guest host the Ed Schultz Radio Show tomorrow morning (9a-Noon PT, Noon-3p ET), so, for now, I'm gonna leave you with just the request that you go read some of the transcripts and/or videos available at USA Today.

Over the weekend, they published a conversation with three NSA whistleblowers (and one from DoJ) from during the Bush era. They all laud the latest NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden for coming forward with his leaks, and say that "he succeeded where we failed" in getting the attention of the public as to what, they say, is going on, and the concerns about secret data gathering operations that the public need to be aware of.

"They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden ... proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing," as USA Today describes the conversation. "They say those revelations only hint at the programs' reach."

Please go to the page and read some of the transcripts and/or watch the video conversation, which I don't have time to highlight at the moment: "3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so".

Here is just the very beginning of the conversation...

Also related and of note, from Thomas Drake, one of the whistleblowers included in the USA Today conversation above --- his column from last week: "Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitution."

There's a reason I argued we are now living on Planet Partisan the other day. In what is now, apparently, our continuing series on partisans attempting to justify their all-new positions on the massive, secret, US national security surveillance state by completely ignoring and/or reversing their very strong previously held positions, we first had...

• On Monday: Obama (2007) v. Obama (2013)
• On Wednesday: Hannity (Bush Era) v. Hannity (Obama Era)

And now we have this...

So, I was minding my own business on Memorial Day afternoon, just starting to light up some coals for a backyard BBQ with a few neighbors, when --- THWACK! --- a dead rat fell from the sky and landed hard on the patio pavement no more than five feet from where I was standing.

It was gray rat, with some blackish spots, had a body about 8 inches long and a tail another 8 or 10 inches, and what appeared to be two bloody wounds of some type on the side of its body.

Since I am a wuss, it was Desi --- rescuer of enormous spiders and disposer of dead rodents --- who wasn't so grossed out that she couldn't pick it up with a rake and throw it away.

I am kicking myself now that all of us --- myself and the four other witnesses (after-the-fact witnesses to the dead rat, not the fall, since I was the only one lucky enough to be there for the THWACK!) --- were too freaked out and creeped out to think of taking a photo to prove this actually happened! But it did.

My preferred theory is that this real life B-Horror Movie moment was actually the result of a hawk with great eyesight and a lousy grip. In any case, if dead bloody rats raining from the sky isn't a sign of the coming apocalypse, I really don't know what is...

No significance here. Just a Memorial Day Weekend palette cleanser. And a really cool one, at that. No camera or editing trickery. Just one guy --- Marquese Scott --- and some awesome cool "dubstep"...

[More on his YouTube channel...]

These guys recently called me "a gatekeeper". That's not fair. I run these messages because they are important, not because The Empire tells me to. That part is just incidental.

On paper, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., who was appointed by President Barack Obama to replace now Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan as the U.S. Solicitor General, appears to be an experienced litigator with a distinguished background.

It is a background that includes having served as a law clerk for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr. and having participated in over 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Verrilli's participation in Supreme Court oral arguments --- earlier with respect to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or "ObamaCare") and, recently, in the challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as U.S. v. Windsor, with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and in Hollingsworth v. Perry pertaining to California's Proposition 8 --- raises some disturbing questions.

Either Verrilli lacks the professional competence to assume primary responsibility for supervising and conducting litigation on behalf of the U.S. Government before the Supreme Court, or Verrilli, and the Obama administration, are so politically fearful of staking out principled positions that they have opted for a muddled middle ground. Perhaps it's a little of both.

Regardless, if the Windsor and Hollingsworth cases should establish a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, as urged by attorneys Ted Olson (R) and David Boies (D) in their Prop 8 Supreme Court brief [PDF], it will be despite the half-baked arguments presented by the Solicitor General, not because of them...

The Oct. 23, 2012 Third Party Presidential Debate between four candidates vying, along with President Obama and Mitt Romney, for the office of the U.S. Presidency, provided a rare, yet valuable glimpse at what a genuine, representative American democracy might look like. The worthy discussion, at the very least, should be read via text transcript, exclusively available here at The BRAD BLOG, for those who lack the time to watch the ninety minute video, embedded below.

Unlike Democracy Now's three expanded debates, which presented third party candidate responses to the questions posed at the three "official" Presidential debates and one Vice-Presidential debate sponsored by the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates, the Oct. 23 debate provided a forum that was not tethered to what co-moderator Christina Tobin of the Free and Equal Foundation, the organizers, described as "the private interests who control our beliefs, our opinions and our lives." Here, questions were neither posed directly by, nor filtered through corporate media-controlled moderators. Rather, they were presented, word-for-word, as submitted by citizens through social media.

With the single exception of the failure of Libertarian Candidate and former New Mexico Republican Governor Gary Johnson to say where he stood on "top-two" primaries (aka "Cajun primaries"), it was a debate in which all candidates left no room for doubt as to where they stood. It was a debate that included in-depth discussion on a wide variety of issues of vital importance, many of which were understandably evaded not only by the two major party Presidential candidates, but by the corporate media in the official debates, because those issues conflict with corporate wealth and power, including the wealth of the corporate-owned media.

It was a debate that began with Tobin's promise of future debates between "more candidates at every level of government" and ended with her surprise announcement of a final, foreign policy debate, next Tuesday, Oct. 30, commencing at 9:00 p.m. ET, broadcast via RT America, between two of the four candidates to be selected via an [ugh] online, instant run-off vote...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

"I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world," former British MP Tony Benn said when interviewed by Michael Moore in Sicko! --- "more revolutionary than socialist ideas…because...you have the power to use it to meet the needs of your community."

"If the poor in the U.S. and Britain turned out to vote for people who represent their interests," Ben continued, "it would be a real democratic revolution."

There is a fundamental difference between guarding against being co-opted by the corporate interests which presently control the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic Parties and refusing to vote altogether as an infantile form of protest...

Via Google News last night...

Wow. What an amazing game.

Though, as an old (St. Louis) Cardinals boy, I would have preferred a different outcome. Oh, well. Will have to take solace in the fact that Obama's team beat McCain's. Again.

(Via Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons, hat-tip BRAD BLOG emailer "BS")

Brad's anchoring along with Peter B. Collins from 3p-6p PT (6p-9p ET), and then with Mike Malloy from 6p-9p PT (9p-Midnight ET), and then he will finish it out, bradcasting live from Los Angeles for the rest of the night from 9p-Midnight PT (Midnight-3am ET).

In other words, all night long, covering reported results and concerns about election issues around the country. If your local affiliate is not carrying it, listen live online right here.

The show thread started here earlier today, but everyone's page will load and reload faster if we split this up.

***DON'T FORGET TO CHECK BELOW FROM TIME TO TIME BECAUSE THERE ARE GOING TO BE ELECTION NEWS UPDATES COMING ALL NIGHT.***

love, 99

[Like, I don't think I'm dreaming, I could swear I just heard them telling me that Tom Feeney is FINALLY losing in Florida.... Yes!]