On this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacific Radio...

• Latest developments in the case of Alabama's wife-beating, lifetime-appointed, Republican U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller (pictured above on left): Calls for accountability gain traction, CREDO posts petition for impeachment, horrifying 911 audio and disturbing 2012 documents concerning domestic abuse of previous wife (and children!)

• Bizarre twist in the 2012 GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal: Yet another arrest, and Nathan Sproul (pictured above on right), the highly-place, now-discredited GOP operative who headed up the firm at the center of the scandal, threatens The BRAD BLOG with legal action after our 2012 reporting was confirmed by a two-year Florida law enforcement investigation!

• Also, a hint as to why we were excused from jury duty last week; why we don't cover "O, Mighty ISIS"; breaking news in a longtime Scott Walker (R-WI) recall investigation; and his supporters now threatening Democratic voters; and, as usual, Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report on Climate Week 2014...

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Well, this is an interesting turn of events. It includes a bizarre twist that even we would not have foreseen, involving a Republican operative who is now threatening legal action against us for reporting (accurately) on his companies' relationship to voter registration fraud and deceptive voter registration practices during the 2012 election and in previous cycles.

Remember that massive, multi-state GOP voter registration fraud scandal just before the 2012 election? The one that started in Palm Beach, Florida, spread to several different counties, then several different states? The scandal resulted in the Republican National Committee firing the Arizona firm they had secretly hired for millions of dollars to carry out voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in a bunch of key swing-states, including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado in advance of the Presidential Election.

The firm at the center of the RNC scandal was named Strategic Allied Consulting. It was created and run by Nathan Sproul, a notorious Arizona-based Republican operative with a checkered past, who ran Republican voter registration drives and other on-the-ground GOP activist campaigns. Sproul's name was not used in the legal filings which created Strategic Allied Consulting in advance of the 2012 election, due to his various companies facing voter registration fraud allegations and criminal investigations in a number of states going back as far as the 2004 Presidential election. Because of that unfairly tarnished background, Sproul claimed when the 2012 scandal first surfaced, the RNC didn't want his fingerprints on the operation. The RNC was dodgy about the issue, but fired Sproul and his firm in several states once the scandal came to light, despite having paid millions of dollars for the effort.

The BRAD BLOG broke a number of stories related to the RNC scandal at the time, including details on the very first reports of "hundreds" of fraudulent registration forms turned in to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections after they were collected by Sproul's workers and turned in by the local Republican Party.

In the same series of articles, we also exposed the deceptive (and perhaps illegal) registration scheme employed by Sproul's firms in states where they operated. The scheme involved registration workers trained to pretend to be pollsters asking voters who they planned to support in the Presidential election. If they answered the question correctly (Romney) Sproul's workers would help them register to vote. If the unsuspecting citizen answered the "survey" question incorrectly (Obama), the workers would wish them a nice day, and then move on to the next target.

As we documented with video, email and other records at the time, including admissions by Sproul himself, his firm used this same deceptive tactic in state after state and in a number of recent election cycles.

Now, a two-year Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) investigation has finally wrapped up into the 2012 allegations in that state. It has led to yet another arrest of one of Sproul's workers, found no evidence of conspiracy by the company in that state, confirmed The BRAD BLOG's reporting on their deceptive registration technique, and sent Sproul scurrying to threaten us via email (posted below) with a lawsuit...for something...

Speaking of folks who think they are running for President, 2012 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan is now on a book tour in Florida getting to know the voters there and how much they enjoy the repeated budgets he's written and passed in the U.S. House that would slash trillions from social safety net programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Here's Ryan's thoughtful response, as seen in video captured today by the progressive advocacy group Americans United for Change, to one voter in Pensacola, who wanted to ask the GOP Congressman and 2016 hopeful about those cuts...

Helluva guy.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 20m gallon water main break, amid worst drought in CA history, exposes threat of decrepit U.S. water infrastructure; Record wildfires depleting firefighting budgets; Republicans fiddle while the West burns; New report finds (again) climate change is really, really expensive; PLUS: Warming oceans bring flesh-eating bacteria to Florida... 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): Huge waves observed for first time in melting Arctic; Federal coal lease sale gets only 1 bidder; EPA kicks of power plant emissions hearings; Religious leaders call carbon pollution 'an affront to God'; AL utility regulators say curbing coal violates God's will; 'Holy Grail' lithium battery breakthrough; Flywheel energy storage breakthrough; Ris in 'nuisance flooding'; Toxic, bee-killing pesticides found in US waterways... PLUS: Trees save lives and billions of dollars ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Funny thing. For some reason, professional, weapons-grade Rightwing troll Ann Coulter doesn't think her fellow Republicans should waste their time looking into issues of vote fraud. We wonder why.

Coulter, writing an op-ed in Jackson, Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger yesterday, is hoping to urge Republican "Tea Party" Senate candidate Chris McDaniel to not challenge the results of his very close, June 24th primary runoff election against six-term incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, warning that doing so is a "primrose path to political oblivion."

The irony here --- and the hypocrisy --- and even the criminality, as those familiar with The BRAD BLOG's years of exclusive reporting on Coulter's own personal problems with voter fraud --- is extraordinary...

[Hat-tip D.R. Tucker...]

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Yep, looks like we broke Antarctica; President Obama wants to take action on climate change --- while Not-President Rubio definitely doesn't (lucky Florida!); Severe weather whiplash smacks the country; Spate of coal deaths around the world; PLUS: Solar panels finally back on the White House roof... 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): Germany sets new solar energy record, generates 75%; Ranchers forced to give up land for fracking; Republicans block bipartisan energy efficiency bill in Senate; Stopping climate change almost impossible if China doesn't quit coal; War over Water in the South; Can game theory help international climate negotiations? ... PLUS: “Climate Change War” Is Not a Metaphor, says retired admiral ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Over the weekend, fading Republican superstar, weapons-grade professional troll and GOP voter fraud queen Ann Coulter decided to join other Rightwingers in mocking the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag --- currently being used on Twitter to help raise awareness to the plight of hundreds of young school girls recently kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria --- for her own obnoxious, partisan purposes.

Because, ya know, making fun of concern about kidnapped children who may be sold into slavery is always high-larious and a great way to exploit a partisan advantage before the U.S. mid-term elections!

Coulter's scheme, however, may have "backfired", as Caitlin Macneal explains at TPM, once Twitter got a hold of Coulter's tweeted photo and decided to use it against her.

Here was her original photo Tweet:

My hashtag contribution to world affairs ... pic.twitter.com/Wkb8ozYZFC

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 12, 2014

Well, we thought we'd join the "fun" as well. So this morning we Tweeted our own modified version of Coulter's photo, and that new photo immediately began receiving dozens of Re-Tweets. So, perhaps it's also worth noting here for history...especially since it happens to be true...

While today was Primary Election Day in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio, we're just now learning about electronic vote tabulators which failed in last month's special election for the U.S. House in Florida, according to Fox4, WFTX-TV in Fort Myers/Naples, Florida...

On Monday night's All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, New Jersey State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg joined Hayes to discuss "smart gun" legislation she helped pass in her state. But it was the curious assertion by a supporter of the technology, claiming that electronic voting machines are now "fool-proof", which kinda just blew my mind.

Mark Glaze, spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, a group which, according to its website "brings together survivors of gun violence to share their stories and advocate for laws that will prevent future tragedies," said twice during the conversation, that e-voting systems are now "fool-proof."

While there were once concerns about e-voting systems, he said (see his full remarks below), those worries have now been assuaged thanks to "public and private partnerships at both the federal and state level that guaranteed that these machines were fool-proof".

Huh, what?! When did that "partnership" take place? And how did they "guarantee" such "fool-proof" results? Was that before or after, for example, the 2012 election in Palm Beach County, FL, when a paper-ballot optical-scan computer tabulation system (made by Sequoia Voting Systems) was discovered, through pretty much a stroke of luck, to have inaccurately declared the "winners" of three different elections, such that the contests were overturned and a hand-count by human beings found that the computers had declared the wrong "winners" in two of them? After that incident came to light, the Vice-President of Dominion Voting, the e-voting vendor which now owns Sequoia, admitted that the bug which caused the wrong "winners" to be named by the computer tabulator exists in all versions of it's Sequoia systems --- both paper-ballot op-scan systems as well as touch-screen systems --- in use across the country.

"And guess what?," Glaze continued telling Hayes on Monday night's show, "Today, there are very few questions about electronic voting machines." Really? Someone must have forgotten to tell that to the voters in St. Lucie County, FL, where hundreds of votes were mistabulated thanks to faulty memory cards in the county's computerized paper-ballot tabulation system (made by Diebold) in the contested U.S. House race between Rep. Allen West (R) and Patrick Murphy (D), also in 2012?

I could go on --- and on, and on --- with similar recent examples along those lines, but I'll spare you. For now. You're welcome. Hopefully you get the picture.

Glaze then went on to assert that, whatever the initial concerns may have been about electronic voting and tabulation systems, "we figured out how to get around it and today electronic voting makes things more fool-proof and easier and reduces the risk of fraud."

Yes. That's actually what he said. And on television, where everyone could hear it!

We've sought comment from Glaze, asking for details in support of his remarks --- and on his great, if unconfirmed news about electronic voting systems! --- and will update this item when and if we receive a response.

Here's the segment from the 5/5/2014 segment of All In. Mark Glaze's gob-smacking comments on e-voting begin just after the 4:20 mark, and I've transcribed them in full below...

Hey! Great news! Just in time to practice up your hacking skills before the 2014 mid-term elections, you can now buy your very own ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting system from eBay!...

Yes, the very same voting systems that are so incredibly sensitive and vulnerable to tampering (and which have failed so often in so many states and in so many elections) that both election officials and Elections Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) have long attempted to keep them out of the hands of the public, can now be yours for just $499.99 or "Best Offer" via eBay! And that includes Free Shipping!

And, oh, look! One of them is already sold!...

On the heels of Florida's Republican Sec. of State Ken Detzner blocking the usage of the student union at the University of Florida in Gainesville as an early voting site for the upcoming March special election, local Republican election officials elsewhere in the state are also working to reduce access to the voting booth this year (for certain voters).

From Josh Israel at Think Progress...

Manatee's Supervisor of Elections Bennett, as Israel points out, is no stranger to voter suppression. In fact, he seems to rather love it. While serving as a State Senator in 2011, he endorsed a Republican bill to limit early voting during the 2012 Presidential election by explaining: "I wouldn't have any problem making it harder. I would want them to vote as badly as I want to vote. I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who's willing to walk 200 miles...This should not be easy."

Hmmm..."That person in Africa". Just a common turn of phrase, apparently.

That 2011 bill was eventually passed, signed by Florida's Republican Gov. Rick Scott and successfully created hours-long lines for (certain) voters in the Sunshine State in 2012.

As we noted in our coverage last week of SoS Detzner's recent refusal to allow thousands of UF students to vote early at their own student union --- forcing the many car-less students to try and vote at a polling location five miles away instead --- both Scott and his hand-picked Sec. of State "had once pretended to be embarrassed about the long lines they caused (and refused to correct) at the polls during the 2012 election".

Those days of pretending to give a damn about voting rights must be over for some Florida Republicans, however, particularly with Scott up for re-election this year and his polling numbers looking fairly bleak against his likely challenger, former Republican Governor turned Democratic candidate Charlie Crist.

Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system --- now in our ELEVENTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

Ian Millhiser notes today that Florida Gov. Rick Scott's hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner is still working hard to keep certain voters there from voting in the upcoming special election in March.

While both Scott and Detzner had once pretended to be embarrassed about the long lines they caused (and refused to correct) at the polls during the 2012 election, it turns out, even with Scott facing re-election this year, the pair are still working hard to suppress the vote in the Sunshine State...

The Tampa Bay Times reports that the Reitz student union is "used as a regular voting precinct in county, state and national elections. About 50,000 students attend UF, and the city said the request to use the Reitz Union for early voting came from a group of students."

Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters, called the decision "jaw dropping".

The Times quotes Senate Ethics & Elections Chairman Jack Latvala (R), described as the sponsor of SB 600, "the 2013 law that expanded early voting sites", claiming that "we really did not specifically allow for [early voting sites] to be on campus."

However, HB 7013 (the companion bill in the FL House to SB 600, the one that was actually passed and signed into law) says nothing about disallowing early voting cites that are on campus. It reads specifically (see page 25 [PDF])...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The climate action legacy of Nelson Mandela; Historic water compact in the volatile Middle East; Air pollution linked to autism; Water pollution linked to miscarriages; PLUS: Canada is claiming the North Pole because... drill baby drill ... 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): Arctic warming drives more extreme summer heat waves, droughts & deluges, study finds; Ask Ft. Worth why so many towns are banning fracking; Falling stars: mystery disease killing starfish; Mounting evidence against BPA; EPA chief visits China amid record air pollution; TransCanada oil begins flowing through southern Keystone XL; Wind farms allowed to kill eagles for 30 years; New greenhouse gas discovered, 7k times more potent than CO2; CA releases plan for massive water tunnel ... PLUS: Heart of gold: Neil Young helps bankroll First Nation’s tar sands battle ... and much, MUCH more! ...

After many months of chatting back and forth via email, we were both finally able to work out our schedules so that I could talk with Dr. Michael E. Mann live on air today on the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast!

Mann, for those who don't know, is the creator of the famous (or infamous, depending on whether you're sponsored and/or duped by the fossil fuel industry or not), "Hockey Stick Graph", which is likely the most controversial graph in history and certainly among the most consequential, as he agreed during our conversation today.

The "Hockey Stick Graph", showing stable and even declining temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past thousand years, until they suddenly spike upwards over the last hundred (similar in shape to a hockey stick), thrust the physicist and climatologist Mann into a world of global warming and climate change controversy that he told me he could never have imagined. Following its publication over the past decade, while the recipient of many awards and honors, he has also received death threats, had his professional emails stolen (in the pretend "ClimateGate" scandal), and has been the focus of an unprecedented smear campaign by science denialists, including attacks by sitting U.S. Congressmen and (unsuccessful) subpoenas of his private documents and email by woeful Rightwing denialists and tools like (the happily outgoing) Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, who describes Mann as "a hero", has correctly noted that "very few people have sounded more important alarms about our climate future, and very few people have paid a higher price for doing so."

Mann's latest book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, now in paperback with a new foreword by Bill Nye "The Science Guy", tells the whole story and much more. (Tell Big Fossil Fuel to go to hell by buying a copy!)

My conversation with Mann today ranged from all of that, to the parallel denier tactics employed by both Big Tobacco and Big Fossil Fuel, to whether or not scientists should enter the political realm, to why it is that so many TV weathermen seem to be denialists (though the vast majority actually aren't.)

In the back end of the show, I covered the new uprising by Florida election officials against FL Sec. of State Ken Detzner, new Pope news(!) and much more. Enjoy the show!...

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