Remember that 2009 Dept. of Homeland Security report about Rightwing Domestic Extremism that Republicans forced the Obama Administration to retract?

We do --- once again --- on today's BradCast, particularly in the bloody wake of this week's domestic terrorist attack at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church. For some reason, Rightwingers don't want to remember that report, much less describe this week's attack at "terrorism". Wonder why. And so does Jon Stewart.

Then, speaking of extremist Republicans, the state of Texas has overruled a voter-approved ban on fracking in the city of Denton and declared such local control illegal. TX Gov. Greg Abbott actually says, with a straight face, that, in fighting for fossil fuel industry profits over people, he's protecting private property rights from the "heavy hand of local regulation." (Yes, he actually said that.)

Adam Briggle of FrackFreeDenton.com joins us to discuss how Denton hopes to fight the GOP's Big Government attack on democracy, local control and private property rights across the state --- ya know, all that stuff Republicans like to pretend they believe in.

"The industry went to the legislators that they have bought and paid for, and they wrote a new law for them to change the rules," Briggle tells me. "They just bought a new law that changed the standards by which you evaluate the constitutionality of local ordinances."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, on the Pope's climate encyclical and Donald Trump's global warming denialism...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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The videos were good for a barrel of laughs. The Director of Florida's Div. of Emergency Management, Brian Koon was forced to engage in verbal gymnastics so as to avoid violating a state ban on using the words "climate change."

In another clip, replayed by Comedy Central's John Stewart, former FL EPA employee Kristina Trotta uses the words, "nuisance flooding," to evade the ban on mentioning "sea level rise." That drew an amusing Stewart suggestion that, in order to evade mentioning that a global warming-connected rise in sea level could eventually lead to an underwater Miami, state employees could refer to "moisture inconvenience!"

The exchanges were hilarious. But there is nothing funny about the attempt to erect thought control regimes, first in Florida and now in Wisconsin. In both states, the practice is verging on that deployed by Oceania's Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984. In that classic but ominous work of fiction, written accounts of inconvenient truths were incinerated inside "memory holes."

While ominous, the clumsy efforts at "thought control" are quite useful. They underscore the warnings we offered nearly five years ago that the real future offered by the so-called "Tea Party" and the Koch Brothers' brand of "libertarianism" includes "Fascism [and] Feudalism --- an authoritarian reality that has already come to fruition in states like Florida and Wisconsin where Charles and David Koch, along with other rightwing billionaires, have already tightened the reigns of oligarchic control over ostensibly "public" institutions...

We're a few days late on this, but its worth it. If you didn't catch this in our laugh-out-loud Green News Report on Thursday (or even if you did), here's the full high-larious video of Brian Koon, Director of Florida's Div. of Emergency Management, trying and trying not to say the words "climate change" as he faces questioning from state Sen. Jeff Clemens (D)...and is roundly laughed at and mocked by pretty much everybody present...

The hilarity above comes after four former FL Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) employees claimed that the state banned the official use of words like "climate change," "global warming," "sea level rise," etc., after Gov. Rick Scott (R) first came to office in 2009. State officials have denied it, but it appears it was a spoken policy rather than a written one.

Since then, a current DEP employee has claimed that he was put on leave and required to undergo a mental exam after sharing his views on climate change in one of the states likely to be most affected by it. (Been nice knowin' ya, Miami!) And then comes the testimony seen in the video above, wherein Koon, the Florida state official in charge of emergency management, ties himself into knots trying not to utter the phrase "climate change" out loud, in his official capacity, for some odd reason.

While the video testimony is hysterical on its own, for extra credit, here's the full segment from last night's The Daily Show, as Jon Stewart takes it all apart...

During Tuesday night's Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, the show lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for showing up to showboat before Congress two weeks before his own election back home, and for misleading everybody on Iran.

But it was this "ad" --- as seen in the video below from 1:50 to 2:30 mark --- that we enjoyed the most. Particularly the last line...

Sounds about right.

I'm on the road this week, but was able to carve out a minute or two upon learning that some in our trusted news media seem to have lied about the Iraq War! Can you believe it?!

As Jon Stewart declared on The Daily Show last night: "The media is on it! Now this may seem like overkill. But for me, no, it's not overkill. Because I am happy. Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War!"...

By the way, when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow produced her excellent Hubris: Selling the Iraq War documentary in 2013, to mark the tenth anniversary of our invasion, she cited the blatant and knowing lies that resulted in the war. While congratulating her on the fine work, we also took the time to document just some of the many lies told and/or facilitated by NBC and MSNBC themselves which helped lead us into that disaster in the first place...

For what it's worth, just a quick note in response to some of the folks who either disagreed with or were otherwise disgruntled by my observation over the weekend explaining why I believe that "Not Voting IS a Vote", following the 36% voter turnout during the midterm elections.

Though I said I thought it was a "dumb vote", I also noted that "it was a landslide". The central part of my argument, in response to politicians and pundits who blame the American people (rather than themselves) for the fact that 64% of the registered electorate didn't turn out, was this:

Some seem a bit irritated with me for pointing that out. But on Monday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was on The Colbert Report (full interview posted below), making a pretty impressive play for a Presidential run in 2016.

During the conversation, Colbert asked him for a response to the "Red Tide" results of the 2014 elections and whether it signaled bad news for Democrats as a rejection of "liberal philosophy". Here was Sanders' concise answer:

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

(Don't hate the playa; hate the game.)

Colbert's complete 11/17/2014 interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders follows below...

I've been looking into a few deeper dive stories of late --- for next week, at this point. So, until then, since the Colbert Report is soon disappearing (which makes me incredibly sad), please enjoy this segment from earlier this week.

It's not particularly political, really (other than beating up on one particular jackass at Fox "News" who really deserves it), but the last part of this thing just struck me as so goddamn funny at a time when I'm guessing you and I both could use some "goddamn funny"...

I'm a little late on this, but it's well worth the wait if you've yet to see this segment.

It ran on Monday's The Daily Show (we quoted it briefly in the "snarky comment" portion of yesterday's Green News Report), but every goddamn thing Stewart has to say here --- and every goddamn bit of exasperation he clearly displays in this piece --- I completely share with him.

It's just nuts... But, of course, stupid dangerous nuts, for everyone on the planet who doesn't happen to own a dirty fossil fuel company...

If you'd like to see the more extended --- and even more embarrassing --- exchanges last week, as White House Science Advisor Dr. John Holdren absolutely destroyed the jackasses heading up the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology(!), along with links to, ya know, actual science and stuff that demonstrates how imbecilic these Republican fossil fuel industry tools actually are, check them out here...

It's that time of year again. Memorial Day weekend. When politicians of all parties love to pretend they care about the men and women they send away to fight and die for wars of political expediency, only to pretty much completely ignore them for the rest of their lives once they come back home.

The latest "outrage" about the various failings of the Veterans Administration is just more evidence of that. The Obama administration has known about many of the problems for years, but hasn't done nearly enough to fix them. Now that the issues have found their way into the media again, the Republicans, who've spent years denying veterans benefits and refusing to fund the VA at levels adequate to support their much-beloved wars-without-end, are pretending to be upset about it all --- now that they believe they can use it to hurt their real enemy, this particular President of the United States.

And that's where The Daily Show's Jon Stewart jumped back in to the matter last week, pointing out that the latest hypocrisy is, in fact, not particularly new for the U.S., not by a long shot.

Our friend Tom Courbat of Riverside, CA (decidedly not to be confused with Pennsylvania's democracy and freedom hating Gov. Tom Corbett) --- a Vietnam-era Agent Orange and Multiple Myeloma Surviving veteran, as well as great homefront hero of Democracy for many, many years --- requested we post Stewart's latest take over this Memorial Day weekend. We are all too happy to do so. It is, quite literally, the very least we can do to say thanks to Tom and all the others vets who have given far more for their country than it will ever be able to return in kind.

As Courbat writes us about Stewart's take (posted below): "Nothing, nothing I have EVER seen summarized as well how our country has managed to screw over our vets, going all the way back to our war for independence from England! You will be blown away by what you learn --- and this MUST be shown for the Memorial Day."

And so it shall be. Both parts of Stewart's epic takedown from Thursday night's show follow below. If you only have time for one of the two parts, let it be PART 2...

"Hannity ate up that story so hard, Bundy should have charged him grazing fees," observed Stephen Colbert by way of introducing his brilliant Ballad of Cliven Bundy. "Like every folk hero," Colbert continued, "he deserves a folk song"...

While that tune and that segment couldn't be more brilliant, the Bundy situation on the range is now just getting plain sad. Here's a clip of his fairly pathetic appearance on CNN this morning...

As I snarked last night on Twitter...

The time at the #BundyRanch is now 14:59.

— Brad Friedman (@TheBradBlog) April 25, 2014

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show's fantastic --- MUST-WATCH (just for the crying clips!) --- take on the outrageously absurd and demeaning media-enforced double-standard faced by female politicians over their male counterparts...

Seriously. Must-watch.

Occasionally --- almost as frequently, if not more so, than actual corporate mainstream news outlets --- The Daily Show produces real journalism.

One such example (among many) was Aasif Mandvi's stinging 2010 report on Nevada's United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union paying temporary non-union workers minimum wage and no benefits to protest Walmart's low wages, lack of benefits and blocking of unions.

Last night on The Daily Show, Mandvi did it again, this time offering a scathing, must-see report on "third-world" health care conditions in...Knoxville, Tennessee...and some stunning Rightwing hypocrisy about it...

Over the years, whenever I chat with one of my neighbors (who happens to be gay) about various issues of marriage equality in the news, the state of Utah inevitably seems to come up as the conversational worst-case-scenario stand-in for the dying status quo.

"It'll be interesting to see what effect the new Supreme Court ruling in the Windsor case will have across the country," I might say. "Will a gay couple who were married in California, for example, suddenly stop receiving their federal recognition and marriage benefits if their job requires that they must move to, say, Utah, for their work? Will the courts stand for a couple receiving full federal recognition in one state, but allow that recognition to be removed simply because they moved to another? That doesn't seem either legally or Constitutionally sustainable...Even in a state like Utah."

Welp, guess we now have our answer to that speculation at least, and much more specifically than any of us might have thought over the past year or three, now that a federal judge yesterday found Utah's state constitutional ban against gay marriage to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Some 30 other states currently have similar laws or state constitutional bans on equality for all.

"The court holds that Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law," Judge Robert J. Shelby (an Obama appointee) wrote in his 53-page ruling at the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division. "These rights would be meaningless if the Constitution did not also prevent the government from interfering with the intensely personal choices an individual makes when that person decides to make a solemn commitment to another human being."

I guess I'll have to find another "Utah" for purposes of neighborly speculative conversation about equal marriage rights legal issues. The Deep South states like Mississippi or Alabama might have seemed like good candidates. But between the fairly clear, conservative --- and surprisingly early --- holiday message sent by Judge Shelby in the Utah case yesterday (which is, of course, being appealed by the state, but that will fail soon too), and the awesome message from this Daily Show video from last month, I suspect we'll be running completely out of status quo states all together pretty soon. Or, at least, we'll have 50 status quo states...

On last night's Colbert Report, Stephen was joined (hilariously!) by Poncho Denews, aka heroic old-school newsman Charlie Skinner from "HBO's documentary The Newsroom", aka Sam Waterston to absolutely destroy CBS' completely bogus and now mildly "corrected"/retracted super-explosive extra-special exclusive on BenghaziGate!!! Nailed it (in two must-watch parts)...

The Daily Show also took on Lara Logan and 60 Minutes' "Meh Culpa"...and, once again, also deservedly eviscerated Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) along with it. That one follows below...

Really. And kudos to Daily Show correspondent Al Madrigal...