The eagle-eyed Jeff Poor, who describes himself as a "Christian, media reporter" for Tucker Carlson's pretend (and long-ago and repeatedly discredited) Rightwing "news" site, The Daily Caller, notices that our twitter feed is doing its part to help promote the Fox "News" Special Report with Bret Baier...

Of course, describing us as a "chronic Fox basher" isn't completely fair. After all, we're always more than happy to appear in person on Fox, and even on Special Report, for that matter. It's just that they don't call very frequently, for some reason.

Either way, thanks, Jeff! And you're welcome, Fox "News"! Hope it helps!

In 2004, in one of our earliest posts on this site (our 15th, in fact) we declared "gay marriage" to be a "done deal".

Six years later, in late 2010, after a number of good court decisions in the week or two prior, largely in regard the military's now-defunct discriminatory "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, we wrote:

Well, as of this week, it looks like "the bad guys" finally have noticed and are in the process of coming to terms with it...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: L.A. to be 100% coal-free; TN conservatives slam mountaintop removal coal mining - by China; NV coal company faked air pollution reports; Green jobs are the fastest growing job sector in the nation; PLUS: Leave it to beavers - 'hero' beaver dam halts oil spill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): State Dept. hid ties to Keystone XL pipeline company; Toyota Unveils New I-Road; NOAA: ‘Robust’ independent evidence confirms thermometer measurements; Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee; Pope Francis calls for defending environment; Report: Security risks of climate change; Enviro groups criticize Obama's DOE nominee energy industry ties; Polar bear habitat shrinks even more... PLUS: How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Appearing on MSNBC's The Ed Show on Friday night, Eugene Iredale, the attorney for former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera, made short work of the chiseling claim made by federal criminal and professional liar James O'Keefe, that he had agreed to pay Vera $100,000 simply to bring to a close a "ridiculous lawsuit."

"If he wants to get out of the settlement and wants to fight us in court," Iredale told host Ed Schultz in response to O'Keefe's fundraising bluster, "we're ready any time. We can go right now!"

O'Keefe agreed last week to settle the lawsuit filed by Vera in July of 2010 against him and his partner Hannah Giles. Vera had been fired by ACORN after deceptively edited video tapes of him, secretly recorded by O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles, were published by Andrew Breitbart in 2009. While the edited tapes made it appear as though Vera, whose English is poor, was interested in cooperating in a scheme to smuggle underage prostitutes across the Mexican border, in reality, Vera had played along with the pair in order to gain information, including taking their photos, and then immediately notified law enforcement about the ridiculous scheme O'Keefe and Giles were proposing.

After word of the settlement with Vera leaked to Wonkette's Matthew Phelan and Liz Farkas last week, O'Keefe took to Twitter to play the victim, describing his payout to Vera as the necessary result of a "nuisance lawsuit".

"Sadly, this is the cost of exposing the truth," he explained to his gullible fundraising base in a statement posted to his ironically named Project Veritas website late last week. "That's why so few people do it. There are liability issues inherent in undercover journalism."

Many of those paying attention to this long shameful saga would be right in responding in turn: "Um, what 'journalism'"?!

O'Keefe continued his post-settlement Twitter tantrum to describe media coverage of his settlement agreement as "lies and lies and more lies from journafascists," taunting them to "have the guts" to allow him to respond on TV.

The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman responded to O'Keefe in turn with an invitation to appear live with him on his KPFK/Pacfica Radio show this coming Wednesday, at which time he could, among other things, explain how deceptively edited videotapes deserve to be labeled "journalism" or why he describes Vera's complaint as "meritless accusations". O'Keefe has yet to respond to the invitation...

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...

Wow. You likely won't see this covered on the actual Fox "News" Channel --- at least not in these words --- but somehow it made it onto their website yesterday [emphasis added]...

"Hey, they say carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the first paragraph!," snarks the sharp-eyed and occasional BRAD BLOG contributor, D.R. Tucker. "Who let that one go through?!"

Who indeed?! After years of deriding the fact that carbon dioxide is a pollutant --- "Hey, look! I just breathed out! I'm a polluter!" --- Fox just admitted to what actual scientists and people who know stuff have been saying for years, even though the Bush Administration, way back when, spent years purposely not opening an email from their own EPA because they knew it contained the finding that, as FoxNews.com just admitted, carbon dioxide is a pollutant!

As Peter Sinclair has mocked the denialists, while debunking their silly notion that CO2, even too much of it, is merely "plant food": "Plants use CO2. Therefore, more CO2 is good. It’s one of the hardy perennials of climate denialism."

The rest of the Fox article goes on to describe the developing technology for "clean coal-powered cars." We can't speak to the feasibility of the technology, but, if it's accurately described by Fox (how could it not be?!) it sounds quite interesting. Reportedly, it combines pulverized coal with iron-oxide pellets to create an "oxidation" process that produces heat "in a small chamber from which pollutants cannot escape."

"The only waste product would be water and solid coal ash --- no greenhouse gases," the article by Gene J. Koprowski claims, adding that the same technology could possibly be used "as a replacement for old-fashioned coal power plants, which spew greenhouse gases."

Oh, my! They just did it again!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change already hitting Rocky Mtn ski resorts; House Dems slam Republicans for obstruction of climate action; Shell Oil calls it quits in the Arctic --- for now; Fox 'News' makes a stunning admission; Drought in the West, Flooding in Europe PLUS: Finally, some good news for kids in Detroit ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Sequestration would be bad news for clean energy and a clean environment; You may be eating toxic chemicals, even if you eat organic, avoid plastic; High court throws out $1B fraud verdict in Exxon leak case; US nuclear dump is leaking toxic waste; USDA warns farmers of accelerating climate change; Loss of wild bees serious threat to crop yields; Weather extremes provoked by trapping of giant waves in atmosphere ... PLUS: The New Abolitionists: Global Warming Is The Great Moral Crisis Of Our Time ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: All hands on deck (if not the corporate media!) for the largest climate rally in U.S. history... but is President Obama all talk and no action?; Secret memo reveals tar sands are poisoning Alberta, Canada; PLUS: Mayor Bloomberg's big plans to greenify NYC ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks; BP challenges ‘excessive’ spill claims; GAO: Climate change poses big financial risk to US government; NASA: ‘Alarming’ water loss in Middle East; Study: Global warming will bring more blizzards, less overall snow; Air pollution causes heart attacks; Canadian enviro-activists 'threat to national security'; Tesla v. NYT, round 3; OH accused of dumping fracking wastewater; Did PA lie about fracking water contamination? ... PLUS: GMOs: Nearly half of all US farms now have superweeds ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Special Coverage: Climate change takes center stage at the State of the Union address (though not in the corporate media) while activists and Senate Democrats turn up the heat ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fukushima: 3 youth diagnosed with thyroid cancer; GAO warns weather is changing; Superstorm Sandy 2nd costliest; $188b cost for weather disasters in two years; NY to ban Styrofoam cups?; NJ officials charged with poisoning drinking water; Tesla v. NYTimes; Solar 'glass' breakthrough; Fox News 'stands in way of energy security progress'; Refinery fire: Chevron refinery pipes 80% corroded; Industry ousts scientist from EPA panel ... PLUS: Global climate treaties work: Antarctic ozone hole smallest in 10 yrs ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast we covered the State of the Union Address last night, with extended focus on the President's call for election form and his new "Presidential Commission on Election Administration" [PDF], to be questionably co-chaired by Swift Boat GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg. As we noted yesterday, color us dubious about all of that.

My guest in the first half-hour was Marcia Johnson-Blanco, Co-Director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and we also discussed their recent report on "Our Broken Voting Systems And How to Repair It", as well as the upcoming February 27th U.S. Supreme Court hearing in Shelby County v. Holder, challenging the Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act's Section 5 protection of jurisdictions with a history of discrimination at the voting booth.

Suffice to say, she was more optimistic about all of the above than I was.

In most of the second half of the show, we focused on the many environmental issues raised in Obama's State of the Union with the Green News Report's Desi Doyen. I'm not sure who was more (or less) optimistic in that half of the show.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Too pooped to pope': Pope Benedict's green legacy; Did global warming find Nemo?; State of the Union - Obama's next act on climate change; Wind power now cheaper than coal in some countries; PLUS: Fox 'News' surrenders to Germany (in the clean energy race) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Koch-backed 'Tea Party' started in 2002 with Big Tobacco; Meet your newest national park; Shell's damaged Arctic drilling rigs go to Asia; Map of cities to avoid as sea levels rise; Keystone XL pipeline: Just Say No; National Journal covers rising costs of inaction on climate change; Bloomberg's clean energy investor factbook; Flame retardants linked to ADHD; Why the US drilling boom lowered gas prices ... PLUS: Energy Subsidies and the 'Free Market' Lie ... and much, MUCH more! ...

This is a map of annual sunlight in the U.S. and in Germany (on lower right), according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory...

Yet, this is how Fox Business Network "reporter" Shibani Joshi explained, on Fox "News" today, why it is that Germany leads the world in solar energy production, while "the hopes for solar in the U.S. have dimmed":

Sigh. See Media Matters for the full Fox video and actual facts and stuff, including the actual reason why solar energy is so successful in Germany, where, last year it powered about a third of the country's energies need on a single Friday in May, and a full 50% of its energy needs the next day on Saturday. (On average last year, solar accounted for some 4% of the country's energy needs, with other renewables there accounting for about 20% total. That, as the country, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, moves away from nuclear entirely and attempts to replace all of that power with clear renewables. See our "UPDATE & CORRECTION" below for more details.)

And, while taking in all of the misinformation from Fox above, keep in mind that yesterday PPP released the results of its 4th Annual TV News Trust Poll which finds, among other things, 70% of Republicans still actually trust Fox "News". Even more incredibly, some 67% of Republicans trust Fox more than any other source.

Can't imagine why Republicans are so obscenely misinformed these days.

[Hat-tip @alutz3 on the Twitters.]

UPDATE & CORRECTION 2/9/2013: Fox' Joshi has now filed a correction, of sorts, buried on the Fox "News" website (as opposed to front and center on one of their highest watched programs, Fox and Friends, where she originally misinformed millions of Fox viewers. See below for that update and a correction of our own...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Energy Sec. Steven Chu steps down; Record high gas prices = Big Oil profits; US carbon emissions fall; Obama to blame for Superbowl power outage?; PLUS: The Superbowl ad you didn't get to see ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): SF, NY plan 'managed retreat' from rising seas; 'Climate sensitivity' not the same as projected future warming; Windfarms break Spain energy record; GMOs: Food industry to push federal label law?; MT's wild bison vendetta; Fox News invents statistics on climate science; Coloradans fight fracking; Ozone hole contributes to climate change; Virtual hike of the Grand Canyon ... PLUS: Do sea urchins hold key to reducing carbon emissions? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Will WA state ship dirty coal to China?; Wacky winter weather strikes the Southeast; Which kills more birds - wind farms or house cats?; ALEC pushes anti-science curriculum; PLUS: A green tech oasis rises in the desert of Qatar ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Scientist: 69 ft of sea-level rise in motion; Opportunity costs to not using renewable energy; Breakthrough promises solar power cheaper than coal; Study: energy industry water use set to double by 2035; Alaskans try to flee climate change impacts; Fracking, now for uranium!... PLUS: How can Germany be both a green leader and remain an industrial powerhouse? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

A few items of late that have caught our eye, but we haven't had time to cover in detail. So, you get the Readers Digest versions for now. You're welcome!

• Susan Rice and the Democrats once again succumb to the demands of terrorists.

• Whodathunkit? But questions arise about the legitimacy of the claims made by Fox' latest wannabe James O'Keefe, about that video purporting to show an "unprovoked attack" by "union thugs" outside the capital building in Lansing, MI this week. The most amazing part? Someone at The New York Times --- yes, that New York Times --- is one of those actually noticing the big honkin' edit in the middle of the video, rather than just reporting it all as unquestioned fact.

• Eric Holder spoke about the need to protect voting rights at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. We have more than a few bones to pick about it, but we'll just point you to the actual speech for the moment.

• What's the difference between this and just stealing? House Republicans secretly --- secretly --- authorized $500,000 in tax payer dollars to defend the unconstitutional "Defense of Marriage Act". More of that small government "conservatism", apparently.

• Finally, for now, the critically acclaimed Zero Dark Thirty, the new theatrical film about the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, reportedly glorifies the torture that led to his capture and killing, even though no torture whatsoever actually led to his capture and killing.

Discuss.