According to explosive new assertions from a credible former CIA agent, President Barack Obama's administration is said to have attempted to use the CIA to target, spyon, and smear an American conservative blogger and university professor on Middle-Eastern affairs, simply because he opposed the President's policies in Libya.

The alleged attempt to use the powerful U.S. intelligence agency for domestic spying and/or discrediting of a private American citizen would be in gross violation of the law disallowing domestic use of the agency. Uncomfortably, it's also precisely what so many on the Right have long warned of in regard to this President's proclivity for turning Big Government apparatchiks against the freedoms and liberties of private, law-abiding citizens simply because they dared to use their constitutionally protected rights of free speech to criticize his policies. It would also be, as folks on the Right have also long charged, a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution, which the President is sworn to defend, rather than abuse.

Republicans in Congress have vowed to investigate the matter, while Democrats, hypocritically and shamefully, have remained completely silent.

Given this startling and exceedingly troubling news --- particularly in light of Democrats ignoring the revelations, after so many years of charging George W. Bush with similar behavior --- we have to admit that perhaps we were too quick to ridicule the many Tea Party patriots for their warnings about the dangers of Obama's Stalinist and Maoist tendencies!

If the details of this story turn out to be true --- and so far, they certainly seem credible, as the blogger/professor says he was no longer invited to CIA conferences following the incident --- as much as we'd hate to admit it, we'd suggest impeachment or even legal proceedings against the President of the United States would be entirely appropriate here.

CORRECTION: It's a little embarrassing, but it appears we got at least one key detail in the above story completely wrong...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Summer of Floods, Summer of Fires: today's unlucky town is Minot, ND; Bad news for US nukes; Sea level rise accelerating; PLUS: Al Gore slams Obama on climate change, Fox "News" gets all confused ... 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): Can nuclear waste storage co-exist with nearby oil & gas drilling?; Drilling co. sells kids on fracking with new coloring book; Google hits $780M in total clean energy investing; Seafood processors accused of violations; Conservative group sues NASA for climate scientist's records; How livable streets make us happier humans; Answers from the E. coli outbreak in Germany; Are architects the change agents for the new Green Economy?; GOP House votes to weaken Clean Air permits for oil-drillers; Transocean blames BP for Gulf Oil Spill Disaster; Canada opposes labeling Asbestos as hazardous; DoD plans large-scale integration of electric vehicles; Civil Disobedience in DC this summer to stop the Keystone XL tar sands p pipeline; Congress: Let's just rename it the "Dirty Water Act" ... PLUS: Which cities can best adapt to climate change? (Congrats, Cleveland!) ...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

On Tuesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) submitted a complaint to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics [PDF] alleging that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) violated a federal bribery statute when he submitted a May 23, 2011 letter to Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatening to block legislation that would provide Salazar "a nearly $20,000 salary increase" until the Interior Secretary began to issue permits for deepwater exploratory wells in the Gulf at the same pace that permits were being issued before Salazar's moratorium issued in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster last year.

The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201 (b) "Bribery of Public Officials and Witnesses" makes it a crime to offer or promise "anything of value to any public official" in order "to influence any official act" and CREW alleges that "Vitter's conduct is exactly the type of quid pro quo the bribery statute was intended to prevent."

While a scant reference to the bribery allegation can be found in the Wall Street Journal, and more extended coverage was provided by The Hill and by Politico, the same corporate-owned media outfits which hounded Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) from office for sexually inappropriate Twitter messages that did not amount to a crime, have remained largely mum about Vitter, the Senate's serial hooker chaser's alleged criminal activities, and his role in a taxpayer-funded "Con-Air."

Want to know why?...

[Now UPDATED with tonight's audio archives below...]

It's our final night for a while guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show as the Malloys return from summer break tomorrow night! [Pausing for cheers.]

So we're back for one more night, BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT) tonight, 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):

• ME, YOU (AND DESI DOYEN!), Yup, we'll be taking the opportunity to catch up on all the stuff we haven't been able to cover over the past week, including Wisconsin, GOP voter fraud and much more, and even a visit from the Green News Reports' Desi Doyen!

• PLUS: Anything else of note today, and whatever is on your mind via calls to 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: My thanks to you all for a great week on the Malloy Show! We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...but until then, you can listen to tonight's commercial-free audio archives and read the chat room archives, all down below. Enjoy!...

[Now UPDATED with tonight's audio archives below!...]

We're back guest hosting for two more nights on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show as the Malloys' summer break continues!

Once again, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT) tonight, 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):

• TOMMY CHRISTOPHER, online journalist at Mediaite on being scammed by fictional sources in his "WeinerGate" reporting, and on his full-throated defense of Rightwing scam-artist Andrew Breitbart.
• RICHARD AVERETT, author of the new book ImaginePolitik, featuring a fictional character by the name of "Brad Friedman" who instructs a third-party "Independent Progressive Party" Presidential candidate who has just been named President-elect that his "victory" may likely have been due to electronic election fraud on touch-screen voting machines in the state of Georgia! Totally implausible, of course!
• PLUS: The many crimes, "Judicial Insider Trading" and increasingly apparent ethical bankruptcy of Justice Clarence Thomas, plus everything else of note today, including whatever is on your mind via calls to 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 archives follow below, both commercial-free audio and chat room. Enjoy!...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Having failed to prevent Tuesday's scheduled hearing before the Indiana Recount Commission on a Democratic Party complaint that he was illegally registered to vote at the time he declared his candidacy and thus, ineligible to have been elected as Indiana's Sec. of State, Charlie White has filed a motion [PDF] to compel a grant of 'use immunity' in exchange for his and his wife's testimony before the commission.

Separately, White is facing seven felony counts, including three for voter fraud related to his having been registered to vote at a house where he did not live, while serving as a member of a town council in a town where he also didn't live. Trial in that criminal case is scheduled to commence on Aug. 8. The two special prosecutors assigned to the case have declined to provide the Whites with use immunity --- with good reason. They no doubt want to avoid what happened to the Iran/Contra independent counsel when, for example, an appellate court ruled in United States vs. Col. Oliver North that a grant of use immunity to North shifted the burden to the independent prosecutor to "demonstrate an independent source for each item of evidence or testimony."

Granting use immunity to White would make the job of the prosecutors in the criminal case that much more difficult.

White need not testify to the Recount Commission, where he is entitled to invoke the 5th Amendment. He and his wife are attempting to present testimony, however. Granting use immunity for that testimony (which is not likely needed in order to show that he had not been lawfully registered to vote at the time he declared his candidacy) would likely undercut his felony trial. That may well be White's interest in providing such testimony and seeking a grant of use immunity before the commission.

[UPDATED: Late Friday, the IN Supreme Court denied White's motion to stay the Recount Commission hearing pending the outcome of the criminal case. Early today, a Marion County Circuit Court judge denied White's motion to compel a grant of use immunity. Since anything the Whites say could be used against the couple in the criminal case, it is likely that both will invoke their 5th Amendment privilege if called to testify before the Commission tomorrow.]

White is one of several very high-profile Republicans recently facing allegations of voter fraud, though the only one currently facing criminal indictment...

Via Oliver Willis:

Hat-tip Washington Monthly's Steve Benen who adds:

Of course, the new indictments handed down against Ehrlich's aides in MD (Ehrlich ended up losing the election anyway) are hardly the only examples of GOP election fraud going on out there, even as there are rarely indictments for any of it.

We recently detailed the story of the high-ranking Clay County, KY, election officials (including the County Clerk, a circuit court judge, and the school superintendent --- and other members of the County Election Commission) who were sentenced to a combined total of some 150 years in the federal penitentiary jail, for gaming elections for years in the county via buying and selling votes as well as, in 2006, actually changing the votes of voters on electronic touch-screen voting machines.

That's election fraud. As to actual voter fraud --- the thing that Republicans pretend exists in epidemic form, but doesn't, so they can use the propaganda to bolster implementation of their disenfranchising polling place Photo ID voter suppression schemes --- early this week we reported on the new complaint filed against former GOP Governor and current Republican Presidential front-runner Mitt Romney for having committed voter fraud in the state of MA. It appears that Romney voted in MA last year, even though he no longer actually lived there.

The facts of the case highlight Romney as just the latest in a rapidly growing list of high-profile GOP vote fraudsters, as detailed in our article, including Utah's former Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (also set to run for the GOP Presidential nominee), Indiana Sec. of State Charlie White (who's already been indicted for 3 voter fraud related felonies), Missouri's U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (who's running for U.S. Senate), and GOP voter fraud queen Ann Coulter.

The complaint against Romney was filed by fellow GOP Presidential candidate Fred Karger, who was my in-studio guest last night on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show (which I'm guest hosting this week and the beginning of next). The audio from my interview with Karger last night about his voter fraud investigation and complaint against Romney, and much more, can be downloaded here [MP3], or listened to online below...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

On his Tuesday radio show, syndicated over the public airwaves on some 200 stations, Rightwing talk show host Neal Boortz said:

His entire rant, appearing to encourage the vigilante murder of unnamed "thugs" across the major Atlanta metropolitan area, can be heard below.

The question now is: Did Boortz incite murder over our public airwaves and should he be prosecuted for it? Moreover, will complaints be filed by the public at the FCC's website (hit the "Take Action" button there, if you'd like to file your own complaint), demanding an investigation and prosecution for the potential crime and/or sanctions against the affiliate stations who broadcast it to the public?...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

We're back guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show for the next few weeknights --- tonight through next Tuesday! Hope you can join us!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT) each night, 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):

• FRED KARGER, the GOP 2012 Presidential candidate who has filed a "voter fraud" complaint against GOP front-running Mitt Romney in MA. Karger, as the first openly gay Presidential candidate from a major party is also an activist, who organized boycotts against many of the corporate supporters of CA's Prop 8 banning marriage equality in the state. LIVE IN STUDIO!
• ERNEST CANNING, attorney and The BRAD BLOG's legal correspondent on the recent incitement to violence/murder by Rightwing broadcaster Neil Boortz over our public airwaves.
• PLUS: Media and Democratic Party idiocy over Anthony Weiner; good (and bad) news on Constitutional rights; Bush admin CIA targeted an American middle-east expert/blogger; Fake civil war in the Republican/U.S. Chamber of Commerce Party; and much more, including whatever's on your mind via calls to 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: Fast-paced show, with a GREAT interview with Fred Karger right in the middle! Be sure to give it a listen! The audio archives (and chat room archives) follow below. See ya again tomorrow night!...

Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow led off with the story we covered on Monday concerning Mitt Romney's apparent voter fraud in the state of Massachusetts.

Her piece includes an interview with GOP Presidential candidate Fred Karger, the man investigated the case and who filed an official complaint against Romney in the Bay State on Monday...

Maddow's excellent report does not, however, delve into the recent and growing spate of high-profile GOPers who have, or appear to have committed similar felony voter fraud violations --- such as Romney's potential fellow Mormon GOP Presidential hopeful Gov. Jon Huntsman, Missouri's GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, Indiana's Republican Sec. of State Charlie White (who is currently facing 3 voter fraud-related indictments), or GOP voter fraud queen Ann Coulter.

Neither does she take the opportunity of noting the hypocrisy of Romney's (and the others) apparent voter fraud, when taken side-by-side with the current Republican jihad in state after state across the country to impose disenfranchising polling place voter suppression measures.

Our Monday story on Romney's apparent voter fraud, should you be interested, covers all of the above.

What is it about Mormon Republican Presidential candidates and their proclivity for committing voter fraud?

For that matter, what is it about high-profile Republicans in general and their rapidly growing record of voter fraud, as we have two new reports today of two more very high profile Republicans who appear to have committed voter fraud? One of them is GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the other U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri.

But they are just the two latest in a quickly growing list of Republican vote fraudsters.

In March, as you'll recall, Utah's former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. --- who is believed likely to jump into the GOP Presidential race soon --- was alleged to have committed voter fraud by casting his vote last year via his registration at the governor's mansion despite having resigned and moved out of the address almost two years prior to become President Obama's Ambassador to China.

Previously, of course, we've reported in great detail on GOP superstar Ann Coulter's repeated and now well-documented voter fraud. More recently (and more ironically), Charlie White, the newly-elected Republican Sec. of State of Indiana --- a state with, until recently, the most draconian, disenfranchising polling-place Photo ID restrictions in the nation --- was indicted on seven felony counts, three of them related to voter fraud, after he continued to vote at a residence where he no longer lived (where he also continued to illegally serve on the town council, despite no longer living there).

And now, according to a complaint filed by another GOP Presidential hopeful, it appears that current front-runner Mitt Romney has been playing similarly fast and loose with his own residency and is alleged to have voted, illegally, in last year's special election for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts despite no longer being a resident of the state...

Who coulda guessed it? And, once again, a nation built on the premise of self-governance owes its continuing great thanks to WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning.

[Hat-tip @TomTomorrow.]

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Limbaugh and Santorum, positively frothy in their propaganda jihad against climate science; Unfair & Unbalanced coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency; Crunch time at the UN on the Kyoto climate treaty; Feds shut down an oil pipeline; PLUS: Scientists are screaming that global warming is accelerating, but our media is obsessed with Weiner --- Anthony Weiner ... 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): Breakthroughs, launches, and warnings on World Oceans Day; Pollution worsens kids' asthma, but Congress split on action; 'Dramatic' solar flare could disrupt earth communications; UN's Food & Agriculture Organization sees stubbornly high food prices; Food demand eating into tropical forests; Judge upholds environmentalist lawsuit against Exxon; Hundreds protest Marcellus Shale drilling in PA; Utility groups trade blows on new EPA emissions rules; Autism experts urge reform of U.S. chemicals law; Decontamination trial planned at Japanese nuclear plant; After Japan, where's the next nuclear weak link?; Federal regulators: Nuclear accident plans are lacking; Oil falls after Saudis face opposition to OPEC quota increase; FDA: some chicken may contain arsenic ... PLUS: Planet Earth doesn't know how to make it any clearer It wants everyone to leave ...

He had inappropriate sexual entanglements with a number of women and lied about it repeatedly to the American people. Yet nobody --- save for one Colorado law school prof --- seems to be calling for Justice Clarence Thomas' resignation for some reason.

That, even though Thomas, unlike Rep. Anthony Weiner, appears to have actually, and flagrantly, and repeatedly, broken the law.

As we reported in January, Thomas appears to have "knowingly and willfully" filed falsified Financial Disclosure Forms which withheld disclosure of nearly $700,000 his wife received from the rightwing Heritage Foundation for the better part of the last 20 years. Only once it was pointed out publicly this year did Thomas bother to file "self-initiated amendments" to the forms he had signed just above the legal warning in bold and all caps which reads: "NOTE: ANY INDIVIDUAL WHO KNOWINGLY AND WILLFULLY FALSIFIES OR FAILS TO FILE THIS REPORT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CIVIL AND CRIMINAL SANCTIONS (5 U.S.C. app. § 104)"

While there has been little indication that law enforcement is actually investigating the crimes of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice (which, as we pointed out in January, are punishable by up to $50,000 and/or 1 year in jail for each instance of falsification), last Friday when Thomas' Financial Disclosure Form for 2010 [PDF] was released, the matter appears to have gotten shadier still, leading at least one government watchdog organization to describe what Thomas and his wife Virginia "Ginni" Thomas may be been doing as "Judicial Insider Trading."

Connecting the dots, it would seem the couple made huge profits from Thomas' participation and insider knowledge of last year's Citizens United ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court, as we'll show you below.

While Barack Obama's DoJ seems to be looking the other way, there was one person in Congress trying to bring attention to this issue last week with his ConflictedClarence.com website: Rep. Anthony Weiner...

By way of marking today's 10th anniversary of George W. Bush's job-killing, society-crushing tax cuts for the rich --- which we recently illustrated via one very clear chart, as the largest factor, by far, in exacerbating our current public debt --here, courtesy of Think Progress, is just a few of the things this country could have had for the same 10-year price tag as those tax cuts for rich people who didn't need them...

Well, that all might have been nice for all Americans.

So how are the current crop of GOP contenders for the 2012 Presidential nomination responding? Here is former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's economic plan, as outlined in a speech today, which promises to triple the size of the existing Bush tax cuts...