Today on The BradCast: Two big election wins for Democrats in the Deep South; More opportunism following the Paris attacks; And mass GOP delusion. (Audio link for the complete show is below.)

After a quick welcome to our newest terrestrial affiliate --- KSOW 106.7FM in Cottage Grove, Oregon --- it's on to the huge victory over the weekend for Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Bel Edwards in his runoff against Republican Sen. David Vitter in the race to replace Louisiana's outgoing Governor and Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal (R).

Also, Democrats held off a Republican supermajority in the Mississippi state Assembly over the weekend by the luck of the draw, literally, as a reportedly tied race for a statehouse seat was settled by drawing straws. The losing Republican candidate is filing a challenge to the election in the Republican MS legislature. Both states, LA and MS, force their voters to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. So, who really won and who really lost the races? Your guess is as good as mine...at least in the MS case.

Then, while elected officials and Presidential candidates shamefully continue their attempt to block Syrian refugees from coming to the U.S. after the Paris attacks, a number of current and former U.S. intelligence officials are just as disingenuously using the tragedy in an attempt to undermine encryption technology on your phone and computer.

Trevor Timm, attorney, columnist, activist and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation joins us to discuss his recent column at the UK's Guardian calling out U.S. intelligence officials for their appalling and misleading opportunism in the wake of the November 13th attacks.

Despite the fact that the Paris attackers were known in advance and communicated with each other via unencrypted text messages and Facebook, top intelligence officials are still fighting to be entrusted with the keys to unlock any and all encrypted communications in all software across the world.

"They're saying, you can use encryption as long as you give us the key," Timm tells me today. "That's the law that they would like to pass. Unfortunately, security doesn't work that way. Put aside the fact that if this was a power given to the government they would inevitably abuse it --- because, as we've seen over and over again in history, they constantly abuse their surveillance powers --- but let's just say, they will only use it when they have a warrant for information. The problem is that key is still vulnerable to all of these other actors who will try to steal it. They will try to steal that key from the U.S. government, which, we have seen, is not that hard to do."

He charges that this effort would result in the government helping us to be less secure by undermining technology that is meant to make all of our lives more secure. "That, to me, sounds like a crazy idea."

Timm also helpfully explains how encryption actually works, for those who don't know, and how some of these same officials --- (talking to you, current CIA Director John Brennan, and you, former CIA Director James Woolsey and others) --- are also, outrageously, actually blaming the Paris attacks on privacy advocates and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden!

"This is a scapegoat that former and current intelligence officials are using to hide and cover up their own failures," says Timm. "When they're out there blaming Snowden, no one is asking them questions about what they could have done better or where they failed. To be honest, it was a pretty masterful PR tactic by them and unfortunately the media took it hook, line and sinker."

Finally, as we were reminded again over the past couple of days, GOPers from Trump to Fiorina to Carson and beyond are now, apparently, completely debilitated by mass hallucinations about 9/11, Planned Parenthood, and just about everything else they've been told to believe is real on Fox "News". I explain how these delusions mean big trouble for the country, the world...and even your Thanksgiving dinner...

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What a week. On today's BradCast (audio link below), Republican legislators and Presidential candidates continue their demonization of Muslims and refugees from war-torn Syria and we pause from their madness to shed some light on a disturbing new scheme to block Democratic policymaking altogether.

First, with an unabashed rejection of facts (and reality and history), Republicans from the state level to the Presidential candidate level put forward stunning new rejections of the nation's values. From the high-ranking GOP lawmaker in Tennessee who wants to use the National Guard to round-up and deport Syrian refugees in his state, to Donald Trump's disturbingly Nazi-like call to force all Muslims to register as such with the federal government, we reach new, shameful lows following the Paris attacks one week ago today.

Also of note: CNN's remarkable double standard in suspending a reporter for expressing sympathy for refugees. (Here's that Don Lemon/CC item I mentioned from The BRAD BLOG in 2010.); And a precious few rays of light from one GOP Congressman (at least for one courageous moment) and then from Stephen Colbert.

Finally, even as that shameful "debate" bottoms out, rightwing schemes to further cripple the ability for Democrats to govern at all on the federal level continue. Ian Millhiser, journalist, Constitutional law expert and author of the new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, joins us to discuss his disturbing observations from this year's annual gathering of the Federalist Society.

As reported in his recent article, "The Little-Noticed Conservative Plan To Permanently Lock Democrats Out Of Policymaking", Millhiser explains the rightwing group's broad new efforts to attack rule-making by federal agencies. He tells me how the group is now trying to "permanently hobble not just the federal rule-making process but the federal law-making process" itself.

"What groups like the Federalist Society are pushing," he charges, "is ways to change the fact that elections matter. To make it so that they can permanently put into place structures --- whether it's declaring something unconstitutional, whether it's changing the balance of power between the various branches of government --- they're looking to permanently put in place structures to make sure that only conservative policies can go into effect."

"The basic idea is to shut down the agency's power to regulate," Millhiser tells me. "Between gerrymandering and so many other factors, it's so difficult for Democrats to take the House [even when they win a majority of votes]. If they [the Federalist Society] can prevent [federal] agencies from regulating, then that means that, well, Democrats might be able to take the Presidency but they won't be able to do anything with it when they have it. It effectively shuts the Democrats out of the policy-making process even when they win the Presidential election."

That idea, he explains, absolutely dominated the group's recent gathering and it's one they hope to implement "by any means necessary", whether in Congress or, more disturbingly, through judicial activism on the federal bench.

While four Supreme Court Justices (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito) are already dedicated Federalist Society members, "the big scary," he reminds us, "is that there are four Supreme Court justices who are likely to retire in the next 5 or 6 years. So if the next President gets to replace four Justices, there's going to be a massive shift in the law. If that next President appoints four very conservative Justices in the vein of Justice Samuel Alito, then whatever agenda the Federalist Society wants to be able to enact in this phase, they're just going to enact it in the Court."

Please take note. And please listen to the full, disturbing conversation on today's BradCast.

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On today's BradCast (audio link below): The U.S. House rolls over for ISIS. And, could NAFTA and TPP lead to a return of the previously rejected Keystone XL pipeline?

First, the U.S. House voted today to do the bidding of ISIS by passing a bill that would essentially block refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq from coming to the U.S.. Shamefully, while the bill was passed mostly by Republicans, some 47 cowardly Democrats voted in favor of what both Bin Laden and ISIS have made very clear they would love to see.

Meanwhile, wingnut conspiracy theories about Obama's super secret plan to force a "Muslim overthrow of the U.S." and the "Islamization" of our country continue to grow from the bowels of rightwing radio up through state legislatures and even into Congress and the U.S. Presidential race.

All of that, as, surprise surprise, a new report finds that illegal Mexican immigration is actually at a net negative during the Obama Administration, with some 130,000 fewer undocumented Mexicans now in the country, versus prior to 2009.

Then, financial journalist David Dayen of The Fiscal Times, Salon, WaPo, The Intercept and more joins us to explain his disturbing assertion about the troubling mechanism built in to both NAFTA and the newly released TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that could lead to approval, after all, of the Keystone XL pipeline --- even though the dirty tar sands project has finally been rejected by the White House.

Dayen explains how KXL's owner, TransCanada, could invoke the "extra-judicial tribunal" known in both trade agreements as the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system in order to force compensatory damages that might either lead to approval of the pipeline after all and/or serve to help scuttle the TPP itself.

The ISDS tribunals, as Dayen explains today, are "composed of corporate lawyers who can act on behalf of the corporation in one case and then sit on a panel judging that corporation on another case." He says that "one of the options" TransCanada now has is that "through the ISDS system in NAFTA, they can sue and say 'this is a violation, you are discriminating against a foreign pipeline operator relative to domestic pipeline operators, and we are going to sue for compensatory damages based on our expected future profits'." The resulting decision could become a "political footbal" at the "worst possible timing for the Administration," as they hope to put TPP up for a vote in a Congress where more Republicans and Democrats are coming out against the agreement.

There is much more that you need to know about in our conversation concerning the proposed TPP agreement, now that its 5,000 or so pages have finally been released to the public and now that the frontrunners for President in both the Republican and Democratic Parties have come out against it. "Political football," indeed.

Listen to today's show for much more welcome clarity on all of the above!

Finally, speaking of pipelines and more, Desi Doyen joins us with our latest Green News Report on yet another rejected Canadian pipeline; the GOP's intensifying witch hunt against scientists (as discussed in more detail on a recent BradCast with David Roberts); and the planet's hottest October ever recorded...

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Following last week's horrific terror attacks in Paris, Republican Governors and Presidential candidates have turned against those fleeing terror in Syria by calling for states to keep out the huddled Syrian masses of men, women and children yearning to be free.

Despite the existing, incredibly onerous, nearly two-year process of vetting such refugees before they are allowed to come here --- and despite state Governors having no direct control over immigration/refugee policies at the federal level, more than 30 of them have now declared they will not allow refugees from the war torn nation to be relocated within their state borders.

Presidential candidates like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and even the supposedly "reasonable" and "moderate" Jeb Bush have declared we need to consider shutting down mosques and/or institute a Christians-only policy for refugees coming to the U.S. from countries under siege by terrorists.

These GOP cowards and liars have little more evidence to back up their assertions about dangerous refugees "pouring into our country from Syria" than they did when they warned President Obama was allowing an Ebola epidemic to land on our shores and kill us all just a few short months ago.

Nonetheless, some gullible and frightened American citizens have responded to the offensive, anti-American rhetoric of GOP leaders by turning against their fellow citizens, sometimes violently, for the "crime" of being Muslim or even just appearing to be of Middle-Eastern origin.

All of the above, of course, is precisely what Osama bin Laden --- and now ISIS --- long ago announced to be exactly what they were hoping for.

All of that and many more disturbing tales from the 'Land of the Free' and the 'Home of the Brave' in today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast (audio link below), I'm joined by anti-war author and activist David Swanson of WarIsACrime.org and RootsAction.org.

We discuss, among other things, the extraordinary response to his article, "Non-French War Deaths Matter", posted just hours after the terror attacks in Paris. The piece, which I read in full at the top of yesterday's show, notes how similar civilian massacres in non-European nations --- many just days before Paris --- are equally troubling, if not more so, yet were almost entirely ignored by much of the media and the world.

He tells me his article began with a Tweet. "Usually, my tweets get 3 or 4 retweets. This one is over 12,000 at this point." Swanson says the interest in the issue was "driven largely by the media-fueled sympathy for the horror and suffering in France, which is entirely appropriate and desirable and needs to be built on. But also, there was this disgust with the politically-driven, selective nature of where the mass media tells us to direct our sympathies." He believes that the interest in the topic is evidence of those who "share my desire to have that sympathy broadened to all victims of organized violence, not just those in a politically friendly government and a white Christian European population."

As to how the media, and our politicians, ultimately end up delivering exactly what terrorists want in these situations, Swanson argues: "What they want is fame. What they want is to be targeted as the prime enemy of the foreign imperialists. What they want is the bombing, and this is what the US government is giving them and France is giving them and the media."

He goes on to list a number of threats that are far more likely to kill Americans (including both McDonald's and Climate Change), but which are rarely, if ever, given the same wall-to-wall media and political spotlight now being enjoyed by the Paris attackers. Nations like the U.S. and France, he tells me, "need to stop repeating this mistake of creating blowback and then using that as justification to escalate the violence that created the blowback in the first place."

But if the way to respond to the attacks by ISIS in Paris and elsewhere is not more war, what are the solutions for the mess the world now finds itself in? For Swanson's answers to that question, you'll need to tune in to today's program.

Also on today's show: CNN's embarrassing coverage and Muslim-blaming; Desi Doyen and the latest Green News Report on climate and energy (or lack thereof) during last weekend's Democratic Presidential Debate in Des Moines, Iowa, and the extraordinary security preparations being made in advance of the upcoming world climate negotiations next month...in Paris...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate and energy get short shrift in 2nd Democratic Presidential Debate; Yes, U.S. Media, climate change remains a national security threat; International climate talks will go forward despite Paris terror attacks; PLUS: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoes major natural gas project... 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): Canadian PM Trudeau effectively kills Northern Gateway pipeline; Antibiotics in Animal Feed May Endanger Kids, Doctors Warn; New Map of Earth's Groundwater To Help Estimate When It May Run Out; Minigrids Seen as Fix for 620 Million Africans Without Power; Brazil's Slow-Motion Mine Catastrophe Unfolds; Beyond what #Exxonknew, refineries face flooding dangers; Manure From Millions of Hogs Fuels Natural Gas Project... PLUS: So You Want to Be a Polar Bear Wrangler? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Before our coverage today on The BradCast of Saturday's Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa, a quick word about the Friday night terror attacks in Paris, courtesy of anti-war activist and author David Swanson, whose response we share at the top of the show. His piece, "Non-French War Deaths Matter", is posted here.

Then, yes, though the DNC apparently didn't want you to know about it, the three Democratic candidates for the 2016 Presidential candidate gathered in Des Moines on Saturday night to hold their second debate of the season. The CBS debate was held less than 24 hours after the bloodshed in Paris and, thus, had more of a foreign policy focus than it otherwise would have, before turning to domestic affairs.

We cover all of the above today. I'm joined for analysis by our reigning post-debate coverage champ, Heather Digby Parton of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, as well as Fred Karger, former longtime GOP political consultant and 2012 GOP Presidential candidate (and, in fact, the first openly gay Presidential candidate from either major party).

As usual, we try to make sense of it all with analysis and fact-checking that, hopefully, serves to help create a smarter and better informed electorate...

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On today's BradCast, the winning streak for environmentalists continues...as does the losing streak for the CIA.

First, new revelations from former CIA Directors about the many months of attempted warnings from the CIA and other national security officials about "significant" and "spectacular" al Qaeda attacks prior to 9/11 and even long prior to the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." Presidential Daily Briefing memo in early August of 2001. Also, new admissions about the agency giving the go ahead to killing women and children during drone attacks on suspected terrorist targets.

Then, another big victory for the climate, this time in New York state where Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday rejected [PDF] a proposed pipeline that would have brought imported liquefied natural gas from Africa and elsewhere in to Long Island. One of Cuomo's stated reasons for vetoing the project in federal waters was due to climate change and the fact that the pipeline would have threatened not only commercial traffic and fisheries in the area, but also the construction of several proposed windfarms for the same location that would have brought clean, renewable energy to the Empire State.

National Resources Defense Council attorney, and former Special Deputy AG for Environmental Protection in New York, Kit Kennedy was at Cuomo's veto ceremony on Thursday and joins us to explain his reasons and the larger implications of rejecting the controversial Port Ambrose Terminal project.

"This was a classic David vs. Goliath fight between dirty fossil fuels and renewable energy," Kennedy explains. "And in this case, Goliath went down and renewable energy has prevailed over fossil fuel and it is a huge victory."

She credits a large local coalition for that "huge victory", another in a recent series that came about due to the dedicated commitment of organizers and activists. "Local residents, elected officials, fishermen, environmentalists of all stripes, came together not only to oppose the project but to support an offshore wind project that was proposed for the same site."

"In vetoing the project yesterday, Governor Cuomo said the risks exceeded the reward of the project," she tells me today, arguing that this victory and other recent ones represent "a turning point" for energy production in this country.

"This is an incredibly exciting time to be working on climate and clean energy issues in the United States. We have all sorts of decisions going the way of clean energy. I think it is a tipping point, and we're going to see our country take strong action to fight climate pollution and to build up the clean energy economy," Kennedy says.

Also on today's BradCast: Did you know the year's biggest entertainment release is all about the effects of climate change?; Free energy in Texas, thanks to wind power; And, now's your chance to get a really great price on an electric car while sending a message to VW and the rest of the auto industry!...

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On today's BradCast we are joined by Sharon Eubanks, the former federal prosecutor who served as the U.S. Dept. of Justice's lead counsel in the historic U.S. v. Phillip Morris USA case. It's an enlightening, eye-opening, and extraordinarily timely conversation. (Link to the complete audio is below.)

We now know, thanks to the investigative work of journalists at Inside Climate News and at the Los Angeles Times, that Exxon scientists, as early as 1977, knew about the "potentially catastrophic" dangers of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Rather than take action to inform the world and save the planet, however, Exxon executives decided to spend millions of dollars, over the ensuing years, funding global warming denialist organizations in an apparent attempt to obscure their own science and mislead the public about the known harms of using their product.

[RELATED: "What Exxon Knew and When They Knew It": BradCast interview with Inside Climate News journalist Neela Banerjee]
[RELATED: "'Beyond Hypocrisy': Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) Calls for Investigation and Prosecution of ExxonMobil": BradCast interview with Congressman on the day he sent his letter to A.G. Loretta Lynch]

On today's program, Eubanks, who is now in private practice after successfully carrying out the largest civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) enforcement case ever filed, explains the currently known parallels between her case against Big Tobacco and the quickly mounting evidence against Big Oil which, she explains on The BradCast today, appear to be "very similar, if not identical".

"The [tobacco] industry sent out its talking heads to say how ridiculous it was when we first filed the suit, that we would file it under RICO," she tells me, after detailing exactly what a RICO case is. "It's an effective way to deal with this type of fraudulent conduct."

In the potential case against Big Oil and their advocates in the denial industry, she says, based on what the documents from insiders at Exxon have now revealed, "an investigation is warranted."

So, what are the parallels between the Big Tobacco case and what seems to have been carried out by Big Oil in this case? Eubanks says the evidence, so far, is "very similar, if not identical, to what the court was looking at in the tobacco litigation."

In Judge Gladys Kessler's 1,683-page finding [PDF] in the tobacco case, Eubanks explains, the court "noted that the industry mounted a coordinated, well-financed, sophisticated public relations campaign to attack and distort the scientific evidence demonstrating the relationship between smoking and disease, claiming that the link between the two was still an open question. Now, if you compare that to what we know about the Exxon documents so far, and just substitute, instead of 'adverse health effects', 'adverse climate effects', and substitute for 'smoking', 'carbon pollution', it seems to me that the activities surrounding that --- mounting a well-coordinated, well-financed public relations campaign to distort the scientific evidence and promote that there was an open question --- is the same thing we see that the [fossil fuel] industry is doing here."

"It seems to me, and this is what an investigation would reveal, that they were financing these activities by giving money and instructions --- not just money but instructions, as well --- to various groups who would be the deniers of climate change, when in fact Exxon knew climate change was real, and they knew, as well, that we had a limited amount of time on our hands to figure out how to address this."

And what of the "free speech" argument that the Fossil Fuel industry's advocates seem to be forwarding right now to justify misleading the public? Does the company and/or the industry have a Constitutional right to lie, as some have posited?

"The companies certainly were responsible for contradicting their own evidence that they had about climate change," Eubanks tells me. "Whether that's something they can do as a 'right' is something that is yet to be demonstrated. Certainly the tobacco industry was not allowed to go forward with that type of misconduct."

There was much more light shed on the entire fascinating issue during today's program. I'd encourage you to give the full show a listen!

Also today: A new poll finds that a majority of Americans correctly see guns as a far greater national security threat than terrorism --- even if Republican voters do not; Another new poll finds that Pope Francis' appeal for action on climate change has had a positive effect among the majority of Americans who are now concerned about global warming, but even more of an effect on Catholics; And, finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report special coverage of this week's GOP Debate in Wisconsin and last week's Democratic Forum in South Carolina...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A very bad week for fossil fuels: Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline; Peabody Coal caught lying to the public about climate change; Exxon Mobil facing investigation for what it knew and when it knew it; PLUS: Second hurricane hits Yemen in one week and Sea World finally responds to critics... 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): What critics of the Keystone campaign misunderstand about climate activism; Exxon, Keystone, and the Turn Against Fossil Fuels; More Oil Companies Could Join Exxon Mobil as Focus of Climate Investigations; A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity; Poll Finds Global Consensus on a Need to Tackle Climate Change ... PLUS: Commercial Dungeness Crab Season Delayed After Tests Find High Levels of Toxins... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, the power of protest and organization.

We start at the University of Missouri after African-American players on the football team there used their power over the weekend to collectively and courageously support a student hunger strike in a protest to force university system President Tim Wolfe to resign amidst a series of racially charged incidents on the Columbia, MO campus. The leverage used by the players is another great reminder of how smart and courageous protest can succeed in making substantive change --- even against some of the world's most powerful entities. Go Tigers!

Speaking of which, my guest today is, once again, Douglas Hughes. You may recall him as the 61-year old Florida postal worker who landed his homemade gyrocopter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in a dramatic protest last spring. He was our guest back in April, just days after the incident where he had hoped to bring attention to the desperate need for campaign finance reform.

He was, at the time, arrested and charged with six felonies that might have netted him more than 9 years in jail for his attempt to deliver an important letter to all 535 members of Congress. Now, he has struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors and joins us to discuss the deal, why he took it, the latest developments in his case, and whether he feels his protest was ultimately worth the extraordinarily high cost.

Hughes tells us today that he has "no regrets" for having "stomped on the dragon's tail", despite losing his job at the Post Office, facing enormous fines, jail time, and even the loss of his ability to vote as a "felon".

"I stomped on the dragon's tail and I knew it was going to turn around and come after me," Hughes tells me. "And it has, and I have no regrets."

He credits the flight with helping to broaden the discussion about the need for reform, and says, despite the extraordinary cost, he'd do it again "in a heartbeat" as he continues his call for a "voters rebellion" to help "get the money out of politics so everybody that's in Congress knows they've got to answer to us."

Though Hughes was reluctant to mention it, he has a GoFundMe page where folks can donate to his legal defense fund and other needs as he is now struggling to survive day-to-date until his Social Security finally kicks in. Please consider helping him out if you can!

Lastly, it's wingnut v. wingnut over at Fox "News"! So, bust out the popcorn!...

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Um...wow... Who's the bigger "liar" and "hack" on Bullshit Mountain?

Tough call.

Bill O'Reilly and George Will have it out --- at each other...Wow...

[Hat-tip Oliver Willis on the Twitters...]

Yes, there is a U.S. House Committee that is even worse than the Benghazi Committee, argues my guest on today's BradCast.

But, first, we follow up yesterday's disturbing show with a few more concerns about the accuracy of the 100% unverified results of Tuesday's Gubernatorial election in Kentucky and state Democrats' ability (or interest) in understanding the dangers of computerized vote tabulation systems. In short, they don't get it. Not by a long shot --- at least if my conversation with folks at the state Democratic Party today are currently any indication.

Next up today, David Roberts of Vox.com joins us to discuss the McCarthyesque behavior of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chair of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, as the Republican assault on science continues. Smith, Robert's reports, is wielding unprecedented new subpoena powers in an unyielding attack on scientists and public institutions researching climate change and more.

"In the almost two years since he's run the Science Committee, Lamar Smith has issued more subpoenas than all previous chairs of the committee, going back some fifty years," Roberts explains. "He's newly empowered and he's going nuts with it."

Roberts details three different cases in point, as laid out in his recent article at Vox, including extraordinary demands being made on a number of different, largely unknown scientists, who had the temerity to study and speak out about findings on global warming.

"Our politics are so crazy these days that it's hard to register anything as particularly extreme or outrageous because there's such a flood of extreme, outrageous stuff happening all the time," Roberts tells me. "But, honestly, the head of a Science Committee accusing the head of a government scientific research body of deliberately falsifying data in order to support a political effort to pass climate policy is really a serious accusation. It shouldn't just be part of the daily noise of politics. This is a serious deal."

Roberts says this amounts to little more than an effort to keep scientists from being able to do their work, to frighten them away from reporting their findings and, hopefully, find something --- anything --- that can be taken out of context in hopes of embarrassing them somehow. "Everybody knows why they want" all these personal emails, he tells me. They want to "look for bits and pieces that, if you yank them out of context, look suspicious, and selectively leak those emails to reporters --- who, history shows, will credulously eat it up. For all the incompetence and haplessness of the current GOP right now, one thing they're really good at is they've figured out how the media ecosystem works."

Making the case that this is all worse than what the ridiculous Benghazi Committee is doing, Roberts explains: "[Hillary Clinton], at least, has the power and the resources and the wherewithal to defend herself. But these individual scientists, they don't know anything about politics. They don't know how to play this game. They don't have money for lawyers. So the damage that this threatens to do to the open practice of science in the U.S., I think, is worse than the danger posed by these more high-profile political committees. The damage that they're doing to the practice of science in the U.S. is much deeper and more disturbing than whatever the ebb and flow of who's up and down in electoral politics."

Finally today, some late breaking news on a story we've been following closely for several months now, as New York's Attorney General files subpoenas against ExxonMobil concerning what the company knew about climate change, when they knew it, and how much they may have worked to obscure that information from the public (and their own investors)...

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Election Day is tomorrow in several states and many more local jurisdictions, but on today's BradCast, we've already got our first "irregularity".

My guest today is John Brakey, a longtime Election Integrity advocate from Pima County (Tucson), AZ. Last week, he caught an election official --- on video tape --- breaking the security seal on the county's new, central vote tabulator after party observers had left county election headquarters following pre-election "Logic & Accuracy" testing of the system.

"I looked at my screen,and I go: 'What is that guy doing? What's he doing over there? He's just opened the box up. Where's the Democratic observer?! Where's the Republican observer?!'," Brakey tells me about the incident on today's program.

He goes on to explain what happened, how he caught the guy, what the county did about it, and how you may wish to be concerned about the possibility for similar corruption with similar electronic systems in your home town.

Thanks to Brakey, the incident led to new L&A tests the next day, though the explanation for the entire affair from Pima County Election Director Brad Nelson (the original "Election Official Gone Wild", as seen in this 2006 video tape), remains questionable --- particularly since Nelson was in the room at the same time his subordinate was seen breaking into the system. We sought comment from Nelson, but he has yet to respond to our request.

For the record, Brakey is one of the stars of J.T. Waldron's riveting 2009 documentary film, Fatally Flawed: The Pursuit of Justice in a Suspicious Election which tells the remarkable --- and, at times, uplifting --- story of the years-long fight by Brakey and a transpartisan coalition of others in Tucson to obtain a recount of ballots from a questionable $2 billion 2006 bond initiative election in Pima County.

Also today: Obama "Bans the Box" that had required job applicants to reveal a criminal record before they've even had an interview on federal employment applications; The GOP's 2016 Presidential candidate/cry babies meet over the weekend to make new demands for networks holding GOP Presidential debates; Another candidate drops out of the 2016 Presidential contest; And, some quick tips (here are some more) on how to try and help protect your vote, and everybody else's, during tomorrow's elections around the country!...

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On today's BradCast... With Boehner out, Ryan in and "all family business settled" (for now) in the U.S. House, the GOP looks elsewhere for enemies.

They find a lot of them.

This week's CNBC GOP debate opened up a great opportunity for new attacks on a favorite old enemy: the so-called "liberal media"! (Yes, they are actually considering Wall Street's favorite wingnut cable channel for the investment class to be part of the "liberal media" now, rather than blaming themselves for the failures of their own Presidential candidates!) But they also find new enemies amongst fellow Republicans like RNC Chair Reince Preibus, who may quickly become the Rightwing's new "John Boehner".

Plus: The White House announces U.S. boots will now be on the ground in Syria --- but does Congress even care?; Is Jeb's campaign really dead? Or should the voters decide that rather than the media?; Hillary joins the growing calls for investigation of ExxonMobil; And, climate change actually finds its way into a Republican Presidential debate!...

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