A few quick follow-up items, for now, in advance of tomorrow morning's Part 2, from Part 1 of my exclusive secret Koch tapes scoop at Mother Jones this morning which went very viral, very quickly today, as I figured it probably would.

• As I noted in UPDATE to my short stub story this morning linking over to the MoJo article, the Kochs finally decided to respond today, first to Jake Tapper at ABC News, after days of their refusing to give me a response --- even though I pressed them, multiple times in advance, for an explanation of Charles Koch's seeming comparison of "Saddam Hussein" to Barack Obama and the 2012 election as the "Mother of All Wars." See their response, and my response to it, in that UPDATE.

• CNN's Brian Todd did a decent report on the Situation Room today, in which I offer a quick comment...

• After years of appearing on Fox "News" and CNN, it was nice to finally be invited today to appear on MSNBC for the first time. Here's my appearance this evening on The Ed Show...

And just a few more quick points for now...

We've now got well over 4,000 followers on the Twitters (Twitter.com/TheBradBlog) --- 4,228 at this exact moment, to be specific --- but our Facebook presence (Facebook.com/TheBradBlog) is lagging shamefully way behind for some reason!

Please "Like" us below to join up & help spread the word!...

The OC Weekly's Matt Coker picked up on my Monday report describing my experience over the weekend at the Orange County Registrar's booth at the Orange County Fair wherein my attempt to try out their 100% unverifiable Hart Intercivic electronic voting system, um, didn't work out too well.

Coker's amusing take on the apparent system failure that occurred while I was testing it out with assistance from employees of the OC Registrar's office is described as "akin to making an illegal U-turn in front of a motorcycle cop. ... or letting it slip to 'Woodstein' that Tricky Dick audio taped everything in the Oval Office."

His coverage is much briefer than mine. So if you've yet to read my account of what happened and want a more-to-the-point version, please see Coker's piece.

For the record, for those who've asked, no, I've yet to hear back from either OC Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley or from anyone at CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen's office about what happened on Sunday. I've contacted all them via email, with a link to my original article, seeking comment. If I hear back from any of them substantively, of course, I'll let you know.

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

We're back in one more night, as Mike wings his way back from Seattle's weekend Progressive Voices conference, filling in to guest host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show starting tonight (through Monday)!

We'll have another big night (unfortunately), as both President Obama and House Speaker Boehner are set to give live addresses to the nation during our show! We'll cover as much as we can of both of them LIVE.

As usual, we're BradCasting LIVE again 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):

• OBAMA/BOEHNER, live coverage of each one giving their addresses to the nation on the GOP's hostage crisis "Debt Ceiling" crisis, as the Republican's put a gun to the nation's head and continue their fiscal terrorism, in lieu of actual governing, jobs and all the rest. What will the Dems give away in response to the terrorists? Perhaps we'll find out tonight.
• ROBERT SCHEER, the great veteran journalist, columnist and now Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig.com joins us with perspective on the entire fine mess, from his unique perspective.
• JOHN AMATO from Crooks and Liars joins us to make sense of the President and Speaker's dueling addresses on the "debt ceiling" crisis. Or at least to try to!
• PLUS: In whatever time we'll have left over: Rightwing extremist mass murder/terrorism in Oslo, the GOP games the polling place w/ their Photo ID restrictions in WI; and anything you'd like to tell me about 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 SiriusXM Ch. 127. 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: Thanks for another great three days on the Malloy Show! Tonight's audio archives (commercial-free) are now posted below, along with the chat room archives as usual! Until we meet again in MalloyLand, thanks, Truthseekers! Enjoy!...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below!]

Mike is in Seattle for the Progressive Voices conference this weekend, sponsored by local show affiliate am1090, so I'm back in the saddle guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show again tonight (and Monday)!

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):

• DAVID DAYEN, from the news desk at Firedoglake, on the late breaking news out of DC on the debt ceiling meltdown, Beohner's walk-out from negotiations, Obama's angry evening presser, and other late news on the GOP's manufactured "crisis"...
• BOB FITRAKIS, attorney, political-science professor and award winning investigative journalist and editor of Ohio's FreePress.org, on the latest court filings in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville v. Ohio Sec. of State (2004 Ohio election fraud) lawsuit, the finally-unsealed 2008 pre-Election Day deposition [PDF] of the mysteriously-deceased GOP IT guru Mike Connell, the ongoing battle over the 2010 subpoena to depose Karl Rove in the case, and what it all now means to Ohio and the Presidential election as a whole in 2012.
• PLUS: Latest on the GOP's fake crisis over the debt ceiling; Obama's late presser tonight; More madness, and anything you'd like to tell me about 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 SiriusXM Ch. 127. 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: Lots of interesting (and breaking) news, and occasional rants, in tonight's show, which is now available, commercial-free, in three swell archive "hours" for you below! Enjoy! And we'll see ya again right here, Monday! Same Brad Time! Same Brad Channel! For another thrilling episode of the Mike Malloy Show!

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

Mike is off to Seattle for a Progressive Voices conference this weekend, sponsored by local show affiliate am1090, so I'll be filling in for a few days to guest host the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show starting tonight (through Monday)!

As usual, 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:

• HOWIE KLEIN of DownWithTyranny.com with a big scoop (so he tells me) on the debt ceiling showdown (or, as I call it, fake crisis.)
• ERIC BOEHLERT of MediaMatters.org on Murdochaplyse! The quickly growing Rupert Murdoch/News Corp. hacking scandal, and on James O'Keefe's latest, lamest video scam.
• PLUS: Much, much more, and anything you'd like to tell me about 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 SiriusXM Ch. 127. 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: If you missed the show tonight, or any portion, the audio archives are now posted below (along with the chat room archives). Enjoy!...

I found being off the grid over much of the past week, just about as confusing as being on it. See above.

But we've made it back from our brief stint into the wilderness and now have much catching up to do (along with a few days of Mike Malloy Show guest hosting later this week and a few big stories I've been working on for a while) in the days ahead.

So please stay tuned...Back at full speed shortly...Please chat amongst yourselves until then...

Today on my show on Pacifica Radio's KPFK in Los Angeles, I spent the first part on a "Republican War on Democracy" update.

The update kicked off this week with the latest details in the story of Indiana's new Republican Sec. of State Charlie White who is facing seven felony charges, three of them for voter fraud, as yesterday, the Indiana Recount Commission found (incredibly enough) that though White was registered at his ex-wife's house to vote (rather than his own) and had re-married and purchased a condominium, he actually hoped to someday move back into the ex-wife's house. Therefore, he wasn't illegally registered to vote, so he was not illegally on the ballot, so he gets to remain as Indiana's Secretary of State. So sayeth the Indiana Recount Commission.

The Democrats who filed the complaint with the commission may still decide to take the case to court where, in the meantime, White is still facing those seven felony violations. (Did I mention that three of them are related to voter fraud?)

As well, I offered a quick review of all of the other recent high-profile GOP vote fraudsters, such as Ann Coulter, Gov. Mitt Romney, Ambassador Jon Huntsman and Rep. Todd Akin, and the latest news on which states' GOP-fueled voter-suppressing polling-place Photo ID restrictions have been passed into law, and which ones have been thankfully stopped by gubernatorial vetoes.

Also, there was a remarkable statement by Ohio's new Republican Sec. of State John Husted against Photo ID disenfranchisement recently! He deserves big props for that!

That part of the show is here:

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 15 mins]...

In the second part of the show, I was joined by Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program. He's an expert on the dangers and pitfalls of nuclear power and other fossil fuels. We discussed the unprecedented floods threatening the Fort Calhoun and Cooper nuclear plants in Nebraska; the wildfire threats to New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear site; the woeful state of nuke plants across the country (as detailed of late in Jeff Donn of AP's remarkable investigative reports here, here, here & here); and the fact that there seems to be absolutely nobody at the federal level of our government able or willing to do a damn thing to protect the citizens from the looming and growing dangers.

My interview with Slocum (and a shot at climate change denying Rep. Steve King (R-IA)) is here:

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 14 mins]...

How many times can the New York Times, the country's so-called "Paper of Record," misreport the very same story?! Even after being called out repeatedly on it? They seem to be working on breaking their very own previously set record at this point.

In the yet another puff-piece on Rightwing scam-artist Andrew Breitbart, published over the weekend, in which he's described as being "careless with facts," the Times' Jeremy W. Peters continues the paper's long and proud record of being exceedingly careless with facts themselves in reporting on the faked ACORN "pimp" videos created in 2009 by Republican activist and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe, as published by Breitbart.

That, even as Breitbart would once again provably lie to the media --- this time to Fox "News" anchor John Stossel --- about the tapes once again just late last week....

It's been a very busy start to the 8th year here at The BRAD BLOG. So busy, in fact, that we've been able to do almost no fundraising at all, despite our desperate need to do so.

If you've gotten anything from our coverage this year --- from our month-long, round-the-clock detailed coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, to our coverage of Wisconsin and other electoral disasters, outrages and political scoundrels, to our twice weekly Green News Reports --- I hope you'll consider tossing a little (or big) something in our very empty tip jar.

Over the past year alone, we've learned The BRAD BLOG has been long-buried by a cowardly Rightwing cabal at Digg and Reddit, censored by AOL, and, most disturbingly, targeted as part of a $12 million smear, disinfo, fraud, forgery, spy plot by the insidious U.S. Chamber of Commerce which has made its way all the way to the U.S. Congress. So, um, I guess we're doing something right.

If you can help us continue, it would be greatly appreciated and really piss off the crooks and cretins at the U.S. Chamber. Our resources are somewhat lighter than the evil Chamber's, and your generous donations are not likely to level that playing field. But at least it'll help to allow us to keep paying the rent, exposing the bad guys for who they are, and pissing them off to no end when we do.

Please consider a vote of support for the work of The BRAD BLOG, with an online donation via Credit Card or PayPal here. Or, if you prefer, an automatic monthly sustaining donation of any amount you choose, via the simple light blue form about half way down our sidebar at right!

Snail mail donations are, of course, also quite welcome. Please send your checks or money orders to: "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028."

We'd far prefer to spend time covering stories that few, if any, others in the media do or will, over asking for your support. But it is, unfortunately, a necessary evil --- at least until an angel shows up. The BRAD BLOG receives no corporate or foundational support. Nobody owns us, other than us! So truly, it is all up to you to help us continue! Please consider doing so! And thank you in advance! --- Brad

[UPDATE! Block on Bradblog.com links to AOL users finally lifted! At least for now. See UPDATE at bottom of story for more details! And thank you to those who contacted them with your complaints! - BF]

If you use an AOL email address, AOL is doing you the favor of making sure you do not receive email containing any links to BradBlog.com in it.

Not email from a BradBlog.com address, mind you, as if I were a spammer or something (which, obviously, I'm not), but any email from anybody that has a link to this site, or to one of our news stories.

I learned this swell news early this week when someone was kind enough to let me know that their attempts at sending a link to this site to a friend bounced back to them with an error message. That error message was "HVU:B2". What is that error?:

That's right, "substantial complaints" from someone, whatever that means, will result in no links to stories at The BRAD BLOG getting through to any of AOL's millions of members. And they will never know about it.

Again, these are not even emails from BradBlog.com. They are simply emails from anybody to any AOL email address which has my domain linked in the body of the email.

Neat, huh? I wonder what would happen if there were "substantial complaints from AOL members" about, say, FoxNews.com? Or MSNBC.com? Or NYTimes.com? Would that result in millions of members not being able to receive any email that links to anything at those sites? Sounds like a great way to ratfuck someone you don't care for politically, doesn't it?

So what did I do about this? What level of hell have I had to descend to over this past week in trying to solve this problem?...

While prepping for tonight's Mike Malloy Show (which I will be busy guest hosting all week), here are just a few of the items which caught my eye so far today...in no particular order...

• Record amounts of cash being spent by labor unions and the (supposedly grass-roots) "Tea Party" on tomorrow's Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, as the race between the unabashedly pro-Walker Justice David Prosser and Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has turned into a proxy battle between the two clashing ideologies right now in WI. A defeat of Prosser would tilt the court's 4-3 majority from Right-leaning to not Right-leaning. The race is also seen as a bellwether for upcoming recall elections of GOP state Senators likely to occur there in the near future, as Ernie Canning reported on earlier today at The BRAD BLOG.

• Nuclear triage. Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan are dumping 11.5 tons of "low-level" radioactive water into the ocean to make room in filled storage containers for the more radioactive water leaking from reactor Unit 2. They say they have "no choice," but to dump that water (with radiation levels 100 times over the legal limit) as they must continue injecting new water to cool the plant's four crippled reactors, even as the radiated water floods out. Over the weekend, workers were unsuccessful in their attempt to use polymer, sawdust and newspaper (BP "JunkShot" anyone?!) to plug an 8 inch crack in a flooded tunnel at Unit 2 said to be gushing highly radioactive water, at 100,000 times legal levels, into the ocean.

• Transocean, the owner of the BP oil rig which blew up last year in the Gulf killing 11 workers (9 of them from Transocean) has apologized for referring to 2010's safety record as the company's "best year ever". They have not, however, apologized for issuing enormous bonuses to their executives in the bargain.

• A sweeping new election law in Florida is working its way through the GOP-controlled state legislature along predictably partisan lines, just in time for the 2012 Presidential election there. Some of the proposed changes will make it much more difficult for non-partisan voter registration groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to do their work, and will likely lead to a huge increase in "provisional" (and, therefore, frequently uncounted) ballots. Leon County's highly-respected Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho has called the bill "a travesty".

• Former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley --- recently forced to step down for referring to the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning as "stupid" --- compares WikiLeaks to the New York Times. The paper's Editor-in-Chief, who has been bashing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks themselves of late, even though the "paper of record" has written hundreds of stories based on WikiLeaks documents, will not be happy. Good. (Coverage at RAW STORY courtesy of BRAD BLOG alum David Edwards.)

• After relentlessly bashing Democrats for cuts to Medicare vis a vis the 2010 health insurance reform bill, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan plans to largely do away with the program entirely as part of the GOP's proposed budget plans to be revealed shortly.

• Even Republican state Senators in Maine are beginning to become uncomfortable with the radical statements and extremist behavior of the state's new GOP Governor Paul LePage and are asking him to "tone it down". Beginning to see the writing on the wall, boys?

So what's on your radar?

In addition to some of the above possibly coming up for discussion tonight, we will definitely be discussing the U.S. Chamber Plot (which was to have targeted, among others, myself and my family) with my guest U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) who is trying to see some accountability in that horrific affair after House Republicans refused his request for investigative hearings into the matter.

Please tune in at 6p PT (9p ET) tonight --- and all week! We'll have live listening links and a lively chat room right here at The BRAD BLOG during those hours as usual!

Washington Post's Dan Eggen reports tonight for Tuesday's paper that "more than a dozen" Democrats in the U.S. House are now calling on "Republican leaders" to open an investigation into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plot which had been set to target the Rightwing lobbying firms' perceived political enemies (which turned out to include me and my family at the top of their list, as reported in detail previously) with a proposed $12 million smear, forgery, fraud, and disinformation campaign.

While the Democrats letter calling for a Congressional probe will not be released until Tuesday [Update: The full text of the letter is now posted at the end of this article below], Eggen's reportage makes it clear that their concerns focus on the same disturbing point which we highlighted in one of our first detailed reports on this matter. Namely, that the Chamber's law firm Hunton & Williams was organizing the plot with three government-contracted cyber-security/intelligence firms that had planned to turn tools developed for the "War on Terror" against U.S. citizens, journalists, and progressive organizations [emphasis added]...

As we also noted some weeks ago, Eggen reports, "The companies proposed forming a 'corporate information reconnaissance cell' and discussed tactics such as creating online personas to infiltrate activist Web sites; planting false information to embarrass U.S. Chamber Watch and other groups; and trolling for personal information using powerful computer software."

Those "other groups" would include the non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization VelvetRevolution.us, as co-founded by The BRAD BLOG, in response to VR's StopTheChamber.com campaign launched in late 2009 to help expose the U.S. Chamber's perfidy and mafia-like tactics in their extremist Rightwing corporate "advocacy". The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the nation's largest corporate lobbying firm and has spent millions in disinformation campaigns fighting against clean energy legislation and health care insurance reform, just to name two of their recent projects.

While a Congressional investigation would normally be a no-brainer in a plot as pernicious as the one exposed here --- revealed by the release of tens of thousands of emails detailing highly dubious, and most likely illegal, schemes of this sort --- the fact that the U.S. Chamber and its member corporations also spent millions as the top funders of Republican Congressional campaigns in 2010 makes the likelihood of such hearings questionable in the now-GOP-controlled House.

A letter to Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice, demanding a special prosecutor be assigned to this case would be equally, if not more appropriate. Unfortunately, the DoJ is also compromised in this affair, having been the ones, incredibly enough, to refer the Chamber's law firm Hunton & Williams to the Bank of America for a parallel plot with the same three private security firms, in order to target WikiLeaks with a focus on discrediting their perceived supporters such as Salon journalist Glenn Greenwald. Given the DoJ's dubious involvement here, it seems similarly unlikely that they would take up such an investigation themselves either, but a letter calling for same from Congressional members might help.

In more new developments in this story tonight...

On Thursday night, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert waded into the HBGary muck with an explanation of the scam that the cyber-security intelligence firm, along with two other firms (government contractors all) were putting together for law firm Hunton & Williams on behalf of Bank of America, in hopes of discrediting journalists and organizations that supported WikiLeaks.

As readers of The BRAD BLOG likely know by now, a parallel $12 million scheme was being hatched by the same law firm and same three cyber-security firms on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, targeting me and my family, as well as other citizens and progressive organizations the U.S. Chamber had regarded as their enemies.

(I was likely targeted due to my roll in The BRAD BLOG's co-founding of the non-profit, non-partisan VelvetRevolution.us which has, since late 2009, been running a StopTheChamber.com campaign to expose the insidious, mafia-like tactics of what has become the largest, most extreme corporate lobbying outfit in the nation. Relatedly, late last week, VR filed a complaint with the D.C. Bar Association against the three H&W attorneys heading up these schemes. I hope to have more on that at a later date, but you can now read the complaint yourself right here [PDF]. Legal Times coverage is here, Washington Post's coverage today is here.)

Though the U.S. Chamber side of the plot is not discussed here, here's Colbert summing up the scheme as proposed for Bank of America...

...And here is the short interview that followed with Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald who, the same as I in the U.S. Chamber plot, was placed front and center in the Bank of America plot...

By the way, though I didn't notice it while watching a Tivo'd verison of the interview above on Thursday night --- so don't know if it was in the actual broadcast, or just added online, by someone --- PC Magazine noticed a curious anomaly at the 3:22 mark of the above video. For no more than a moment, the infamous Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta, often used as a sort of trademark by the "hacktivist" collective Anonymous (the group which inadvertently exposed both of the above described plots when they broke into HBGary's corporate servers and stole the emails describing all of this) is briefly superimposed over Colbert's face, for reasons unknown --- but amusing.

For much more on the U.S. Chamber Plot, please see the links below for The BRAD BLOG's previous coverage of this disturbing story...

Sad to say the best video coverage so far (though that's not saying much as I noted Friday night), of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plot to dishonestly, and perhaps illegally, try and discredit, smear and illicitly undermine their perceived political enemies (such as me and, for some reason, my family) comes from HNN. That's right, from the Hacker News Network.

The report on the U.S. Chamber plot (and the related BofA/WikiLeaks plot) is the very first story --- approximately 5 mins --- right at the top of the video...

See? Was that so hard? [Hat-tip Jeannie Dean.]

UPDATE 3:55pm PT: GRITtv also covered the story in an in-depth discussion with ThinkProgress' Lee Fang and Firedoglake's Michael Whitney last Wednesday...

Previously related at The BRAD BLOG:

2/18/11: U.S. Chamber Plot Update: Malware, Fake Personas, Government Contracts, Public Shame, Bar Complaints, Media Failures and Other News

2/15/11: Special Green News Report on the U.S. Chamber Plot

2/14/11: Late Updates on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Plot to Target, Discredit, Defraud Political Enemies

2/14/11: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used 'Terror Tools' for Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family, Other Progressive U.S. Citizens, Groups

2/10/11: Hacked Emails Show U.S. Chamber of Commerce Targeted VelvetRevolution.US, Other Progressive Groups With Massive Disinfo Campaign