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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Influence of climate change on our schizophrenic extreme winter weather; Scientists say geo-engineering is madness, but we should study it anyway (CUE THE CHEMTRAILS!); Shell Oil nixes plan for Canadian tar sands mine; PLUS: There's a sucker born every minute: man makes money off of bottled snow... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Siberia's melting permafrost: crater saga is scarier than anyone thought; Berkeley study directly IDs climate change culprit; Even earth scientists struggle to defeat global warming using interactive game; Should California resurrect a plan to pipe in water from Alaska?; TEPCO failed to disclose Fukushima radioactive water leak; Will solar eclipse cause blackouts in Germany? [No.]; Ocean acidification already hurting Pacific NW oyster industry... PLUS: Google wants to help you buy solar panels for your house... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Catastrophic floods in Pakistan & India; Historic flooding in Phoenix, AZ; Continuing denialism on Fox 'News'; Hillary Clinton says global warming is both a crisis and an opportunity; Rand Paul isn't interested; PLUS: A win for the Lobster Boat Blockade, and climate action ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): CO2 levels in atmosphere rising at dramatically faster rate; The end of fracking is closer than you think; US quietly forwards tar sands pipelines without environmental review; 'Black fingers of death' could help fight climate change; Landfill workers told toxic coal ash waste 'safe enough to eat'; Big Oil's many new 'grassroots' front groups in California' The Ugly Denier: a real and present danger ... PLUS: Watching the world slip away: how kids are responding to climate change ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Way too much water now falling on the Arizona desert; Another day, another toxic spill, this time in the Ohio River; New breakthrough recycles old car batteries into solar panels; Wind energy prices hit an all-time low in U.S.; PLUS: An innovative water wheel auto-magically cleaning up Baltimore Harbor ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Pregnant women should avoid tuna entirely; Transparent solar turns your windows into mini-solar cells; Solar boom causing global solar panel shortage; Solar thermal plant torches birds in mid-air; World's ice sheets melting at fastest rate ever recorded; Leonardo DiCaprio voices climate change film; Homeowners associations blocking residential solar installations; California has allocated 5x more water than it actually has ... PLUS: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama Administration approves sonic cannons for offshore oil exploration off the East Coast; Tornadoes in Boston? Bizarre extreme weather across the U.S.; Colorado judge strikes down local fracking ban; General Mills takes action on global warming; PLUS: Rocker Neil Young wants your help with a new technology to stop illegal logging in the rainforest ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Libya oil depot fire blazes out of control; NBC Shows How To Report On The Economic Costs Of Climate Change; BP Oil Spill is much worse than people think: scientists say; EPA is failing to stop pipeline methane leaks; More mysterious craters found in remote Siberia region; GOP candidate: most energy problems ‘are caused by environmentalists’; New communications platform to link electric cars, utilities... PLUS: Report find delaying climate action will carry heavy economic cost ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Despite having their own 100-foot buffer zone of protection at the Court, the U.S. Supreme Court Justices unanimously struck down Massachusetts' state-wide 35-foot buffer around reproductive healthcare clinics in this country with their McCullen v Coakley decision today.

They have just announced that it is 'Open Season' on reproductive healthcare clinics in this country.

According to SCOTUS blog, where the decision was being reported live, the issue is about restricting free speech in public spaces: "A state can go beyond narrow laws that block obstructions to clinics, and more broadly ban abortion protests, only if it builds a record showing that the narrower measures don't work." (More at scotusblog.com)

I am a long-time clinic defense escort volunteer in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. The idea that the people standing outside clinics screaming and yelling, chasing people into the streets, surrounding medical transport vehicles and threatening staff are there for First Amendment expression reasons would be laughable if the potential for violence wasn't so real. They show up to intimidate patients and companions and terrorize communities.

More than 300 acts of violence were committed against reproductive healthcare clinics just between 2010 and 2012. That includes eight murders and seventeen attempted murders since 1991. More than 80% of facilities have called the police and National Abortion Federation members overwhelmingly report that buffer zones prevent violence and make staff and patients feel safer.

Apparently intimidation and terrorizing those seeking legal medical procedures is now an important First Amendment expression of "free speech", according to the Supreme Court Justices. The Court has weighed the safety of healthcare providers and American citizens against potential violence and has decided they aren't worried...

On Tuesday, a Los Angeles County jury convicted California State Senator Roderick D. Wright (D) of false residency voter fraud, after finding that he lied about his address on voter registration and candidacy papers.

Wright's crime was an elite form of voter fraud, which, along with almost all of the most prevalent forms of voter fraud, would not have been prevented by polling place Photo ID restriction laws.

The jury was not persuaded by Wright's claim that he resided in the Inglewood residence of his common law stepmother. Prosecutors presented extensive evidence that established that Wright resided in an "upscale Baldwin Hills neighborhood" that was outside the district. They found that, in addition to lying about his address on his voter registration and candidacy papers, he fraudulently voted in five elections.

As we have repeatedly explained, most recently in covering a recent judicial determination that Pennsylvania's Photo ID law violated that state's constitution, cases involving in-person voter impersonation by ordinary citizens --- the only type of voter fraud that can possibly be prevented by polling place Photo ID restrictions --- are about a scarce as hen's teeth. False residency, by contrast, is a form of voter fraud that has reached epidemic proportions amongst our political elites in both parties, especially, as Brad Friedman has tirelessly documented, amongst the very high-level Republicans who hypocritically call for Photo ID restrictions for everybody else.

Where millions of innocent Americans are at risk of disenfranchisement as a result of the phantom menace of in-person voter fraud, prosecutions of elite politicians for false residency voter fraud have been rare. In one of those rare instances, former Indiana Republican Secretary of State Charlie White was convicted in 2012 of three counts of felony false residency voter fraud. His conviction was particularly ironic, given that he was the chief election official in the first state in the nation to implement polling place Photo ID restrictions. Despite his felony voter fraud charges (and four others) White has not had to serve so much as a single day in jail. Wright, a Democrat, faces up to eight years in prison.

[Update 1/31/2014: Following a meeting by the Democratic caucus, California State Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg (D) announced that Wright will retain his seat pending appeal. However, the Democratic caucus, which sports a super-majority in the state Senate, removed Wright from his position as the Chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.]

Here are just a few of the cases of false residency voter fraud we've documented over recent years, by some high-profile GOPers you will be very familiar with...

Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a former Harvard Law Professor, argued that Senators not only have the right, but a constitutional duty to change the Senate filibuster rules. She argued, in no small part to her fellow Democrats, that the rules were being abused by Republicans as part of a "naked attempt to nullify the results of the last Presidential election [in order] to force us to govern as if President Obama hadn't won the 2012 election."

Her remarks (see video and text transcript below) were made in the wake of the third occasion in which Senate Republicans blocked the nomination of an extraordinarily well-qualified female nominee to the important federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal.

"Republicans now hold the dubious distinction of having filibustered all three women that President Obama nominated to the DC Circuit," she said. "Between them, they have argued an amazing 45 cases before the Supreme Court and have participated in many more. All three have the support of a majority of Senators. So why have they been filibustered?"

"Well, the reason is simple," she explained, answering her own question. "They are caught in a fight over the future of our courts. A fight over whether the courts will be a neutral forum that decides every dispute fairly, or whether the courts will be stacked in favor of the wealthy and the powerful."

Yes. The minority party in the U.S. Senate is blocking these nominations, not because of the qualifications of these very well-qualified women, but because they are continuing a thirty-year Republican effort to "rig the courts", as Warren explains, by packing the U.S. federal bench, particularly the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals...

September 29, 2003, is a day that will live in radio infamy.

It was a day when two delinquents got away with a crime against conscience --- aided and abetted by a culture of government dysfunction and radio-industry corruption.

It was a day when two words sent a city back three decades.

It was also a day when, for a brief moment, I found myself forced to choose between being a realist and being a Republican. I chose poorly...

With these 300 fraudulent votes created by one Republican candidate alone, that's 300 more fraudulent votes than have ever been created by ACORN or anybody who has ever worked for them.

But, of course, you're unlikely to hear that, or even this story itself, from the tenacious Fox "News" "voter fraud special investigative unit" or the GOP clowns who help them disinform American voters.

From Nick Wing at Huffington Post...

According to the article, "Villamaino, a former East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen chairman who resigned last year amid the scandal, ultimately lost his Republican primary, and the GOP candidate subsequently lost to the Democrat in the race."

Three very quick points of note here...

5:50pm PT: Boston Police tweet: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody." Watertown residents stream into streets to cheer police as cars roll back out of town...

5:47pm PT: Local media: Second "suspect alive, in custody, and they're asking for a medic. It's over." Applause heard breaking out around scene. || Boston Police tweet: "Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area."

4:31pm PT: "Barrage of gunfire" heard in Watertown. "Body found on a boat," reports NBC's Pete Williams. Area locked down, officials respond, reports of suspect surrounded...unclear whether person is still alive...

12:51pm PT: Noteworthy developments since I last checked in here. The suspects are brothers from Chechnya and have been in the U.S. for two years or more. The one who was killed is 26-year old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The one still on the lam is 19-year old Dzhokhar. Here's another good timeline of the overnight events through 8:40am ET today as the city remains shut down during the on-going manhunt...

3:15am PT: All MBTA transit trains and buses have been shut down, as the man hunt continues. Since I suspect this is all going to be over, one way or another, by the time I wake up, and since it's the second near-all-nighter I've had here in a row, I'm going to try and hasten things by going to sleep. Though I'll likely still be following along and retweeting on The Twitters.

1:55am PT: It's been a wild night, where we've been trying to keep up with and/or make sense of developments via Twitter.

So far, one MIT officer has been shot dead. Another local law enforcement official is in critical condition after a gunfight with the alleged Boston Marathon bombing suspects. One of those suspects, the one seen in the black hat in photos released by the FBI earlier today, is now dead, according to officials.

The other suspect, in the white hat, is being pursued in the Watertown area at this time, where residents have been asked to stay inside, lock their doors, and do not open it unless it is for the police who are going yard-by-yard searching for the second suspect. He is believed to be armed and very dangerous.

Here, via CBS Boston, is what happened up until now, over the past 5 hours or so, according to a description offered by the Middlesex District Attorney...

[UPDATED MANY TIMES AT BOTTOM OF ARTICLE, NOW INCLUDING FINAL WRAP (FOR NOW) ON THE DAY AFTER.]

From AP, via National Memo...

More photos at ThinkProgress...

The blasts reportedly occurred near the Marathon headquarters in a nearby hotel. The headquarters has been locked down. Additionally, NBC News is reporting:

MANY UPDATES THROUGHOUT THE DAY, AND A WRAP UP ON THE DAY AFTER, ALL NOW FOLLOW BELOW...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama nominates REI CEO for DOI; Historic Nor'easter to hit Nor'east, historic low water levels in Great Lakes; Ben & Jerry's junks GMOs; Saving Indonesia's rainforest; PLUS: Find the nation's biggest polluters - in your backyard... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): "These big pools of oil will be burned if we choose to cook ourselves"; Air pollution linked to higher infant mortality; Flame retardants linked to ADHD: study; OH: Frackers illegally dump toxic fracking fluid into storm drain; Big Oil profiting from record high gas prices; BP objects to $34b spill bill from states; Faulty bolts halt offshore drilling; USDA reports climate change to slam farms, forests ... PLUS: AZ's anti-Agenda 21 bill wants to eat your brains ... and much, MUCH more! ...

"I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me." – Former FL Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, 9/6/2012

"Anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined." - Rep. Peter King (R-NY), 1/2/2013.

In the wake of the Jan. 1, 2013 decision by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to postpone a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief until after the 113th Congress was sworn in, NY Rep. Peter King's sense of betrayal, which he described as "a knife in the back" in a remarkable floor speech, is understandable, but his proposed remedy is woefully deficient.

The only way that Republicans in an entire region of the country --- the Northeast --- can achieve meaningful representation in the 113th Congress may be by way of a massive party switch. The increasingly rare breed of "moderate House Republicans" may soon only be left with the choice of emulating the late Sen. Arlen Specter's 2009 party switch, by either becoming Democrats or by becoming independents who will caucus with the Democrats.

Of course, that didn't work out terribly well for Specter either...

While both Brad Friedman and Sue Wilson have written in detail here at The BRAD BLOG about the recent closure of progressive talk radio stations in cities such as Portland and Seattle, along with the FCC's failure to enforce the public interest obligations of the conglomerates that own those stations, there's an interesting development on the other side of the dial, at least in Boston, where the demise of right-wing talk radio --- in a region where the format once dominated --- hints at a downward spiral for a key element of the conservative entertainment complex.

The latest sign of right-wing radio's malaise may be seen in the apparent demise of Boston's WTKK-FM.

The Greater Media Inc.-owned smooth-jazz-turned-right-wing-talk station is reportedly preparing to undergo yet another format change in early-January, returning to music.

As a conservative who listened to WTKK for years, I'm amused by this development, especially in light of the continued industry-wide fallout over Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on Sandra Fluke earlier in the year.

Friedman and Wilson have shown conclusively that good progressive radio is not being allowed to succeed --- that the national corporate interests of these large media conglomerates (just as predicted by some media observers decades ago, following the passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996) are being placed ahead of the local public interest obligations which broadcast licensees are required to meet in exchange for their use of our public airwaves.

With the challenges now being faced by good progressive talkers facing obstacles stacked against their success, is there anything wrong with enjoying the spectacle of seeing bad right-wing radio fail, as appears to be the case in Boston at year's end?...

45 Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House are calling on Congressional leadership in both chambers to cut $100 billion from a "bloated nuclear weapons budget" as part of the ongoing so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued a press release citing the letter sent to House Speaker John Boehner (R), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and Senators Harry Reid (D) and Mitch McConell (R) charging that "Our oversized nuclear weapons arsenal fails to reflect historic reality" and that "Our spending on radioactive relics of the past requires a reality check" after the successful conclusion of the Cold War.

The 45 House Dems list unnecessary current expenditures for "refurbishing a nuclear bomb that no one wants…a Uranium processing facility we do not need…a nuclear bomber when the ones we have will last for decades."

The letter, (posted in full below) implores leadership:

While the letter from the largely progressive Congressional members appears to be a rational step in the right direction, it raises additional questions. Among them: (1) Given that two nations, the U.S. and Russia, possess 95% of the world’s nuclear arsenals, and given that each nation’s individual arsenal is capable of destroying all life on the planet many times over, does it make sense to simply trim only $100 billion from an estimated $640 billion in nuclear weapons expenditures scheduled over the next ten years? (2) Why not couple the immediate request to trim $100 billion from the nuclear weapons budget with a call for a joint resolution of Congress calling upon the President to initiate negotiations under the auspices of the U.N. for a multilateral Treaty that would entail the eventual dismantling of all nuclear arsenals?...