On today's BradCast, I'm back after a brief health scare over the weekend, and apparently I've got a lot to talk about concerning the reported results of last week's election! [Audio link to show posted below.]

First up: The difference between fake news and real news in our new "post-truth" world, and what the hell can be done about it when fake news comes from even supposedly legitimate corporate news outlets.

Next: North Carolina's awful Republican Gov. Pat McCrory appears to have lost his re-election bid in a reportedly very close race to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper. But the GOP is demanding a 'recount' following the failure of a very popular (if oft-failed) paper ballot optical-scan computer tabulation system...and his voters deserve one.

Then: Should Americans have confidence in the reported results of the Presidential election? Some explanations for disparities between the results and the pre-election polls are not holding up. Voter suppression likely played a role. But what about those magical computer voting and tabulation systems? Were they manipulated? Did they fail? How would we know if they did? Why do the same-day Exit Polls results, once again, differ from the reported election results? And will Americans ever demand that hand-marked paper ballots be publicly counted by actual human beings, instead of by vulnerable computers which often fail and/or report results incorrectly?

If a manual hand-count is needed to determine for certain who voters selected to become NC Governor, don't U.S. voters deserve no less in determining who will be the next President of the United States? We review what we (so far) know and don't about legitimate questions some voters (and electronic voting system experts) have about the results of the Trump/Clinton race, as currently reported by computers without virtually any verification by actual human beings.

Finally: With me out sick earlier this week, Desi Doyen joins us for a slightly less snarky Green News Report today!

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On today's BradCast: Did the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and new restrictions on voting in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states give the election to Donald Trump --- who is now staffing up his new administration with a swamp full of corporate lobbyists? [Audio link to show posted below.]

"Drain the swamp" of lobbyists and insiders in Washington D.C.? Who did Trump think he was kidding with that oft-repeated line during his campaign? Apparently, he was kidding a lot of folks, including both his supporters who fell for it and the corporate mainstream media which helped facilitate it. With the transition now underway, it is being led by dozens (hundreds?) of corporate lobbyists and former politicians, all staffing up federal agencies that will pretend to oversee their clients from the very same industries --- banking, communications, the environment, defense --- that they are supposed to be regulating. Sadly, many in the corporate media, like the New York Times' Richard Fausset, continue to fail in educating the electorate about Trump's big con. It's gonna be a rough bunch of years.

In the meantime, are the reported election results trustworthy? A few words on whether we can (or should) "trust" the results as reported by electronic voting tabulation systems (which, once again, fail to match reported pre-election or Exit Polling results), before a look at whether new restrictions on voting in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states after SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, may have affected the results.

Journalist Ari Berman of The Nation, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, has been relentlessly and heroically covering this beat for years now, while most of the corporate media have regarded voting rights as a fringe issue. He joins me today to discuss what we know so far --- and what we don't --- about why the turnout was reportedly the lowest since the 2000 election, and if suppression may have flipped any states from Hillary Clinton to Trump.

For example, as Berman reported this week: "27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID" as now required by state Republicans to vote there at all. "Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives."

"I talked to a lot of voters who jumped through lots of different hoops to be able to vote, or didn't vote at all because they didn't have the right documentation or they couldn't get the right documentation, or they got so frustrated with the entire process," he tells me. "How many people didn't show up because they didn't want to deal with it? How many people thought they wouldn't be able to vote?"

"The head of elections in Milwaukee said he believed voter ID had an impact, that the parts of the city where voter ID was going to have the biggest impact, that turnout there declined there the most," he says. "The fact that we made it harder for people to vote, for no good reason, to me, is a scandal." And all of that is before we even get to states like Florida in our discussion, where, Berman reminds us, the state recently "blocked 1 in 5 African-Americans from voting by taking away the right to vote for ex-offenders."

"Isn't the right to vote the most fundamental aspect of a democracy? And if you're not disturbed by people being turned away from the polls, there's something wrong with how you're approaching this," he says, before we turn to the media's role in ignoring this issue, which he describes as "an unbelievably huge failing, particularly by cable and broadcast news."

There is much more in today's conversation with Ari than I can adequately summarize here, so please give today's show a listen.

Finally, a few closing thoughts, for now --- from The Daily Show, from Stephen Colbert, and finally from me --- on what the horrific and painful news of this week means to the nation and the world and how we will need to survive (and resist) together...

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On today's BradCast: Documenting trouble for voters at polling places from coast to coast today on Election 2016 (Yes, it's finally arrived!) as Americans struggle to take part in their own democracy. [Audio link to today's program is posted below.]

Among the breaking news stories covered on today's program...

• After Hillary Clinton wins the first contest of Election Day...
• Broken voting machines, electronic pollbooks and shamefully long lines are reported in parts of Arizona, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere.
• Misinformation about ID needed to vote and polling place closing times and registration requirements in a number of states is being reported as well.
• North Carolina's NAACP calls for poll hours to be extended in Durham County.
• A judge in Nevada firmly rejects the Trump campaign's claim that polls were improperly left open during Early Voting over the weekend (in Hispanic areas.)
• The woeful Governor of Maine Paul LePage lies about student voting requirements in his state, hoping to intimidate them, after fliers are posted at a local college doing the same.
• An Idaho county elections office also wildly misleads to discourage student voting.
• Trump and his campaign misinform voters.
• Rightwing disinformation expert and dirty trickster James O'Keefe pretends to find "voter fraud" in Pennsylvania.

And many other developing shameful stories (and occassional hopeful ones) from Election Day 2016 --- as a glimmer of light may be shining at the end of our long national tunnel...or is that just an oncoming train?...

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On today's BradCast, the last one before Election Day(!), we debunk a lot of nonsense --- and out-and-out lies from the Donald Trump Campaign, in several instances --- from over the weekend and in to today. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the stories and avalanche of news covered on today's BradCast:

• FBI Director James Comey confirms there is nothing in newly discovered emails (most of them duplicates they'd seen before) that would lead to an indictment of Hillary Clinton;
• And, no, there is no "murdered FBI agent" involved, no matter what you saw on Facebook over the weekend;
• There was also no "assassination attempt" on Trump in Reno, NV over the weekend by a Republican sign-holder despite his campaign suggesting otherwise;
• There was, however, a Trump supporter with a gun intimidating voters outside a VA polling location;
• There appears to be record early voting turnout in dozens of states, and notably in Hispanic areas, where Trump's campaign blatantly lied over the weekend about polls being kept open "illegally" after hours;
• Nathan Sproul, a long-time GOP operative whose companies have a checkered past related to voter registration fraud in several states, was secretly hired by the RNC in 2012 and then fired once more fraud allegations became public. He's now been quietly hired again by the RNC and Trump camp in 2016;
• Dems lose several 'voter intimidation' lawsuits against Trump (but may have actually won anyway);
• There will be at least 868 fewer places to vote in 2016, thanks to SCOTUS gutting Voting Rights Act
• Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach is ordered (yet again, and hopefully once and for all!) to allow all registered voters to vote in both state and federal elections;
• North Carolina is ordered by a federal court to restore all unlawfully purged voters to the rolls before Election Day;

And, much more, as we head into Election Day together, near the end (hopefully?) one of the darkest and most insane cycles in U.S. history...

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As we note on more than one occasion on today's BradCast, buckle up! [Audio link to show is at bottom of article.]

Just days before the Presidential election, Democrats are in court in 6 different states attempting to preemptively block alleged "voter intimidation" schemes by Trump and the GOP, and today a federal judge slapped a restraining order on the Trump campaign and his operatives, to try and prevent it. (The order is now posted here [PDF].)

Meanwhile, the GOP nominee is just a narrow polling error away from defeating Hillary Clinton, according to the experts at FiveThirtyEight, who now find Trump's chance of winning the Presidency to be about 1 in 3. So every vote will count --- at least if it's counted correctly.

Longtime non-partisan election integrity expert Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org joins us to explain her startling new discovery of functionality built into computer vote tabulators --- both touch-screen and paper-ballot systems in use in 99% of the nation's jurisdictions --- that, she says, would allow some votes to be weighted more than others in a way that would be nearly impossible to detect.

Harris details what she describes as "Fraction Magic" (see a real-time video demonstration here) and how that functionality, and its use by election insiders (or even outside hackers --- as the U.S. Government continues to warn about), could determine the results of elections on Tuesday, from the Presidential level on down to local races and ballot initiatives.

This ability to fractionalize votes (for example, the functionality allows certain types of voters to have their votes weighted as 1.2 votes, while other votes are counted as just .8 of a vote, so the final results will still tally up to the correct number of votes cast), was originally discovered in the GEMS tabulation system, used with Diebold/Premier voting systems and, Harris explains, systems made by almost all of the other private vendors used across the country. "It's now been confirmed in Hart Intercivic, in 2006. In Dominion. They've admitted it. And ES&S, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, has also got it in there. ES&S counts about 60 percent of the votes in the U.S. So it is actually pretty pervasive."

"We are putting our whole system at risk," warns Harris, about both "Fraction Magic" and the use of voting and tabulation systems that are difficult, if not impossible, for the public to oversee. "Sooner or later, if we keep running these mystery elections, there's going to be something that is actually destabilizing, kind of a perfect storm. This is predictable. Sooner or later, when you keep running elections that are not accountable to the public, that are not something we can verify with actual evidence --- i.e. ballots and ballot images --- there's going to be a meltdown that's destabilizing. This is actually rather dangerous."

Like you didn't think you had enough to worry about between now and Election Day?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the last Green News Report before Election Day, and we round up a few other last minute voting concerns in swing-states North Carolina and Ohio...

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On today's BradCast: Rightwing extremist groups are reportedly plotting to wreak potential havoc on Election Day, as Donald Trump's candidacy has helped to mainstream previously fringe organizations. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite Trump's repeated claims that millions of 'dead people' are voting, the evidence --- reported many years ago by The BRAD BLOG and more recently even by a mainstream corporate news outlet investigation in Wisconsin --- continues to show otherwise.

But while the threat of zombie voters has long been wildly overstated by Republicans, rightwing extremist groups --- neo-nazis, the KKK, militia organizations and others --- are claiming they have plans to mobilize a "show of force" at polling places across the country next Tuesday. That, as another black church in Mississippi is set on fire this week with the words "Vote Trump" spray painted onto it.

So, do these radical groups pose a real threat for chaos and disenfranchisement on Election Day? Or are they just latching on to Trump's racist coat tails in hopes of intimidating American voters? Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups, joins us to answer those questions and much more related to this extraordinary election and the not-coincidental emergence and rise of the so-called "Alt-Right".

Potok, who tells me he believes "there's a real possibility of sporadic violence" next week, says "the Radical Right in America today has a hero, in the [Republican] nominee for President of the United States. They see Donald Trump as the best thing, politically, that they've seen in a half-century or more, going back to at least George Wallace and probably further. They're thrilled. They are very energized."

He tells me that in his 25 years on this beat, he has never seen the radical right play such a key role in an American Presidential election, and explains that the term "Alt-Right" is little more than "a re-branding of white supremacy for the digital age."

"Trump," he explains "has taken the lid off Pandora's Box in a very real and substantial way." But will the threat that they pose to the nation be worse if Trump wins or if he loses? Tune in for that and much more (including --- make sure you are sitting down for it --- my defense, of sorts, of the late, rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart! Yes, there's another example of how insane this election year has become.)

Also on today's BradCast: In North Carolina, a federal judge finds the state's statute allowing challenges to the voter rolls to be "insane", and the state's incumbent U.S. Senator who is locked in a close re-election battle, apologizes for disturbing comments about 'targeting' Hillary Clinton, but vows to keep anybody from being seated on the U.S. Supreme Court for the next four years if she wins.

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Today on The BradCast, voters are fighting to cast their vote, as voting machines, election officials and GOP suppression efforts continue to work against them. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

The RNC may now be facing another 8 years of court-ordered restrictions against targeting minority voters, as the DNC files to have a federal Consent Decree from the early 80s extended, charging that the RNC and Trump campaign have colluded to unlawfully suppress the vote through so-called "ballot security" schemes and other intimidation tactics.

In the meantime, confidence in accurate election results is plummetting nationally and voter suppression seems to be working against voters in North Carolina, where early voting has been shortened in many counties and some voters --- including a 100-year old African-American woman --- are finding themselves threatened with being purged from the rolls after being challenged by Republican "caging lists".

In Wisconsin, Democratic lawmakers are begging the U.S. Dept. of Justice to send poll monitors after the state's GOP Photo ID voting restrictions are said to be resulting in havoc, confusion and disenfranchisement.

In Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Illinois (so far) 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen style) voting systems are reportedly flipping votes from R to D and from D to R and, once again, election officials are blaming voters, rather than themselves.

Also today: Militarized troops in North Dakota clear out Dakota Access Pipeline protesters near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and the owners of the pipeline are revealed to be big Trump funders while the GOP nominee is revealed to have large stock holdings in the companies that own it; The Yale Record does "not" endorse Hillary Clinton and neither does Libertarian Party Veep nominee Gov. William Weld (wink); and Desi Doyen joins us to "blame the cows", among other things, in our the latest Green News Report...

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On today's BradCast, as a major, mysterious automated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took huge Internet sites like Twitter, Netflix and Amazon offline for hours today, Democrats and Republicans, including the President, continue to mislead the public about the vulnerability of our voting, tabulation and voter registration systems. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Just weeks ago, as you'll recall, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were warning of the vulnerability of U.S. election systems to intrusion, manipulation and attack from outsiders (and all but ignoring the more direct threat from election insiders). Now, as Donald Trump has ramped up his claims that the election is being "rigged", Democratic and Republican officials alike are claiming the opposite is true, that "there's no way to rig an election in a country this big". They are either misinformed or lying. Take your pick. Either way, they are misinforming the American people. I explain in detail on today's show.

Speaking of disrupting the election...

• "Unnamed intelligence officials" float yet another warning of how bad actors could cause havoc during the elections in November. (And recent evidence suggests that route would be quite easy.)
• A federal court ordered Ohio this week to allow millions of unlawfully purged voters to be allowed to cast a provisional ballot this November, after the state's Republican Sec. of State Jon Husted (who also claimed this week that the election can't be rigged) fought an earlier court order to restore those voters to the rolls;
• Republicans in Tarrant County, Texas may have violated a federal court order by targeting Democratic polling places with an "EMERGENCY VOTER FRAUD ALERT";
• The state of Utah (Utah!) has been moved into the toss-up category in the Presidential contest;
• Early voting numbers look promising for Democrats;
• Evidence that Donald Trump loved both Bill and Hillary Clinton very recently...at least until he ran for President, started losing "big league" and decided she was a "nasty woman";
• And, finally, the GOP Presidential nominee offered a little noticed admission during the final debate that Democrats have been right all along the necessity of regulations on businesses.

All of that and much more on today's BradCast, as our Shocktober Spooktacular continues...

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On today's BradCast: Bad hombres! Nasty women! And SUSPENSE! Real coverage of the final Presidential Debate of 2016, some of which is almost guaranteed to piss off just about everybody in one way or another. You're welcome! [Audio link to show posted below.]

For our analysis of the final --- and, by our count, 25th! --- debate of the 2016 cycle, I'm joined once again by award-winning journalist Heather Digby Parton of Salon and the Hullabaloo blog, and by David Dayen, of Fiscal Times and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud.

As you probably expect, we spend some time focusing on Trump's dishonest claims that the election is being "rigged" and his refusal to promise a peaceful transfer of power. But we also discuss the, at times, disingenuous outrage about it all from the media as well as both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom seem to have developed more than a bit of convenient amnesia about recent elections, about the mechanics of our electoral system, and even very recent assertions about all of the above.

Yes, election fraud and election integrity are topics about which we have some familiarity around here. And, while nuance and complexity and facts may not play well in the corporate media or among angry partisans near the end of an insane election cycle, no small amount of each are called for today. We do our best.

"Digby" and Dayen also bring insight on a number of the other surprisingly substantive issues raised at the debate (as well as important issues that, once again, were not), many of which have been largely overlooked in the wake of Trump's latest embarrassing tantrum(s)...

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On today's BradCast, another Republican run state appears to be blatantly violating federal court requirements on voting rights, just over one month from Election Day. [Audio link to show posted below.]

While Donald Trump and his businesses have continuously violated state and federal law, even as he calls for 'Law and Order' on the campaign trail as detailed, yet again, on yesterday's program, Republican controlled states continue to violate federal court orders on voting rights. The latest appears to be Wisconsin who, as Ari Berman at The Nation reported, is systematically failing to supply voters with Photo IDs at Departments of Motor Vehicles as the state had promised the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in late August. That promise prevented the court from weakening or killing the GOP's Photo ID voting restriction which has been found, over and over (and over), to disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Joining us to discuss the news --- which has resulted today in a federal judge, on his own motion, ordering the state back in to court to explain themselves --- is Kathleen Unger, President of VotersRiders.org. Her non-profit, non-partisan organization, as Berman detailed, visited 10 DMVs around the Badger State and found only 3 of them prepared to provide Photo IDs to voters who need them to vote within the promised 6 days. Many of the others said the process would take anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks at best, long after Election Day is over and after tens of thousands of voters will have lost their right to vote.

"These Voter ID laws are an unfunded mandate on citizens," Unger explains, for minorities as well as seniors, students, low income voters and others who must take time off work and travel to get the very narrow type of IDs now required to vote in states where these laws have been allowed by courts to stand.

She offers details on the disturbing revelations discovered by her group during visits to WI DMVs with otherwise eligible voters, and what --- if anything --- can now possibly be done to correct the situation less than 40 days out from Election Day and with early voting already under way. She also hopes to point folks towards VoteRiders' downloadable, wallet-sized Photo ID information cards detailing the laws in each state. Informed voters may be the only hope, as chaos in many such states on Election Day is, yet again, a very serious concern.

Wisconsin, as Unger and I discuss, is just the latest scofflaw "red" state to blatantly violate recent federal court requirements concerning voting rights, following on the heels of Texas, Kansas, Ohio and others.

Also today: Yet another major newspaper breaks with years of tradition by asking readers to vote against the Republican nominee; Trump unleashes a bizarre overnight Tweetstorm railing against (and lying about) his former Miss Universe, and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report recapping what little climate discussion there was at Monday's Presidential debate...

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On today's BradCast, the corporate media fall for yet another Trump Trap, while we focus on crucial court rulings on voting rights in both Kansas and Ohio that could determine who ultimately wins the White House. [Audio link to the show posted below.]

First, the MSM beclowned itself yet again today, This time, giving free live coverage to the opening of Donald Trump's new hotel and endorsements from some military members, as the Republican nominee eventually offered lies about his 'birther' claims, in which he has spent years attempting to de-legitimize President Obama as an American and all other African-Americans along with him.

That same de-legitimization effort is at work from Republicans around the country attempting to make it harder and often impossible for certain voters (Democratic-leaning ones, disproportionately African-American) to cast a vote in the upcoming election.

This week we saw court rulings, both good and bad, on that front in both Kansas and the crucial battleground state of Ohio under their voter-restricting Republican Secretaries of State Kris Kobach and Jon Husted, respectively. On today's program we review those court decisions and their effect on the electorate as national polling now reflects a virtual tie between Trump and Hillary Clinton nationally, with the Republican nominee having taken a narrow lead in the Buckeye State, and 538.com giving Hillary Clinton just a 57% chance of winning if the election were held today.

Also today: Bernie Sanders urges potential third-party voters to vote for Hillary Clinton instead; Stephen Colbert offers a "polite reminder"; the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein will not be invited to join the first debate; And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us to try and cheer everybody up with the latest Green News Report. (We wish her luck!)

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On today's BradCast, I'm back after the holiday weekend, but you should tune in anyway! We're live today from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in Los Angeles, as I try to catch up on stuff we missed over the long weekend, and breaking news today.

Among the stories we cover on today's program...

* Tightening Presidential polls [PDF] as pollsters change their methodology to move from "registered" to "likely" voters, as Donald Trump has taken a lead or is tied with Hillary Clinton in a couple of national polls and gaining in some swing states. Nonetheless, Clinton maintains her lead in the Electoral College and even remains competitive in a number of "red" states where she is receiving support from some surprising corners.

* North Carolina's vote suppressing Republican Governor Pat McCrory believes states should have "voting rights", as opposed to people/voters.

* We're reminded today, once again, that every vote counts (or, at least, should), as Helen Purcell, the controversial election chief in Maricopa County (Phoenix), appears to have won her Republican Primary by just over a hundred votes out of more than 300,000 cast, after trailing by just a few hundred votes following last week's state primary in Arizona. The exact percentage flip (she was reportedly losing the day after the election 49.93% to 50.07% against her challenger Aaron Flannery, before defeating him 50.07% to 49.93% as of today, according to Purcell's optical-scan computers reported on Purcell's website) reminds us once again of the need to publicly hand-count paper ballots on Election Night. Purcell, Maricopa's Republican County Recorder since 1988, was roundly criticized for reducing polling locations from more than 200 in 2012 down to 60 during the Presidential Primary in March. Flannery, her challenger last week, has said he cannot afford to mount a challenge to ask for a hand count, but will consider running again in 2020. If the current results hold, Purcell will face Democrat Adrian Fontes in November.

* Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest on the growing protests and emergency legal battles by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota against the desecration of sacred sites with the construction of the massive, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-approved (and EPA-opposed) Dakota Access Pipeline and the bad faith actions of its supporters.

Finally, we take listener calls on all of the above! Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast, the Primary season is still going (believe it or not), and we've got several important results from Arizona and Florida's contests on Tuesday. Also, important breaking news for the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Obama Administration gets sued to stop new leases to oil and gas companies on federal lands. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First today, Donald Trump goes to Mexico for a brief visit with the Mexican President. Our coverage is mercifully even briefer.

Then, the Scalia-free U.S. Supreme Court splits 4 to 4 in response to North Carolina's emergency attempt to stay a blistering ruling from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal in late July, where the state Republicans' massive voter suppression law was struck down after being found to have been enacted with "racially discriminatory intent" that "target[ed] African-American with almost surgical precision". The tie at SCOTUS means the lower court's ruling, nixing the law, will stand, even though four Justices (guess which ones) on the highest court in the land would have preferred to keep a law broadly seen as the nation's worst voter suppression law since the Jim Crow era in place for this November's Presidential election!

Speaking of elections, we review the results of several key races from Tuesday's state primaries in Arizona and Florida, where the reelection battles of Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio may determine the balance of the U.S. Senate this November. Also, the controversial Democratic FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz survives, as does controversial Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ. But the news for Helen Purcell, Maricopa's Republican County Recorder in Phoenix, who many blame for the disastrous Presidential Primary in the state earlier this year, may have reached the end of her 30-year career, with just a few hundred votes (out of more than 25,000 cast) now hanging in the balance.

Then, why is the Obama Administration, which has placed a moratorium on new federal land leases to coal companies, still selling millions of acres of leases to oil and gas companies? Jeremy Nichols, Director of the Climate and Energy Program at WildEarth Guardians, who, with Physicians for Social Responsibility, filed a suit last week seeking a moratorium from the Administration's Bureau of Land Management on such auctions, joins me to discuss the landmark federal lawsuit.

"What we're seeing here is a pattern and practice of the Administration continuing to hand over rights to our public lands to the oil and gas industry," Nichols explains. "By leasing these lands, they basically convert them to the ownership of the industry, and industry can hang on to these lands for as long as they want. It really is what we call an irreversible commitment of public resources here."

He goes on to tell me that while, in many respects, the Obama Administration has been a champion for the climate and the environment, on this issue, it seems, they appear to have "a very serious blind spot."

"We feel that it's high time for this administration to apply the same scrutiny to the oil and gas program that is has applied to coal-fired power plants, its coal mining program, and other aspects of our fossil fuel consumption," says Nichols. "We are in essence condoning the release of a lot more carbon into our atmosphere and, at this moment in time, pumping more carbon into the atmosphere is the last thing that this administration --- and we as the American public --- should be condoning."

At the same time, he says, the fossil fuel industry is actually suing the Obama Administration for not making more land available to them. "It's really a shocking filing on their end," Nichols argues. "They're basically saying that even though they've gotten everything they want on our public lands --- 10 million acres of our public lands since President Obama has taken office --- that it's not enough for them."

Finally today, a few follow-ups on a number of stories we've been covering over the past week, from Maine Gov. Paul LePage's mental and political breakdown to the reports of an official law enforcement investigation into more high-level GOP voter registration fraud in Florida, this time by Trump's top campaign chief. Oh, and Vladimir Putin has been arrested at a supermarket in Florida! No, really!

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On today's BradCast: As several polls tighten in advance of the Presidential election, the FBI issues a new warning to states about voting system intrusion and last minute battles continue in federal courts over voting rights access to the polls.

First up, a new report today from investigative journalist Michael Isikoff warns of recent intrusions, believe to be by foreign entities, into voter registration systems in both Illinois and Arizona. The report cites an "FBI Flash" warning [PDF] from its Cyber Division, recently issued to state election officials in hopes of warding off similar intrusions to electronic registration and voting systems in advance of the November election.

The latest news on the completely foreseeable vulnerabilities in our voting and registration systems underscores (yet again) what we've been warning about for so many years at both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast. Unfortunately, as usual, reporting on this issue from mainstream corporate media comes too late to make much of a difference before the next election, after which the warnings are likely to be all but forgotten...until just before the next election.

Then, BradBlog.com's long-time legal analyst, attorney Ernest A. Canning joins us for an update on the roller coaster-like voting rights battles still waging in federal courts across the country, including the latest disturbing news on Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin and why something known as "The Purcell Principle" will, once again, play a key role in all of those legal fights this year.

Canning, who also wrote about the just the latest example of GOP "voter fraud" hypocrisy over the weekend, summarizes the latest dispositions in a number of key court fights against racially discriminatory Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina, and related legal battles over access to the polls in states such as Kansas, Arizona and the swing-state of Ohio. All of those cases are likely to have an impact on results up and down the ballot this year.

Finally, we say goodbye to the hilarious Gene Wilder today, a regular presence --- in both voice and spirit --- on The BradCast...

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Today on The BradCast, it seems the Republican Party's Presidential nominee can't keep alleged criminals from running his own campaign --- but he wants the American people to trust his plan to keep them out of the country?! [Audio link to today's show posted below.]

Donald Trump may want to carry out some of that "extreme vetting" he has planned for immigrant refugees hoping to come to the U.S., on his own campaign staff. Credible new reports today reveal that Trump's newest campaign chief, Stephen Bannon --- hired after two previous ones were fired --- was charged with domestic violence in the 90s and allegedly threatened retribution against the victim, one of his former wives, for testifying against him.

Separately, it appears that Bannon, previously the chief executive for the far-rightwing Breitbart "News" site, also may have committed voter registration fraud and possibly tax evasion, by registering to vote in a state where he doesn't appear to have ever lived. (Since finishing today's show, the Guardian has now posted a second story to report that, since their first exclusive, Bannon has now moved his Florida voter registration to a different residence.)

If the new evidence reported today holds up, Bannon's case, as I detail on today's program, would be just the latest example of another very high profile Republican who appears to have committed the type of election-related fraud that Republicans disingenuously claim Dems are carrying out, and for which the GOP continues to enact voting restrictions that disproportionately block minority voters at the polls.

As discussed on today's program, we have covered, at The BRAD BLOG, on The BradCast, and in many other publications, in great detail and documentation over the past decade or more, the many cases of actual, well-documented voter and voter registration fraud carried out by the likes of GOP superstars like Ann Coulter, Mitt Romney, the former Sec. of State of Indiana, and a host of many other high-profile Republicans. That long list includes many who have, themselves, long called for "anti-fraud" measures meant only to make it harder for certain perfectly legal voters (Democratic-leaning ones) to participate in U.S. elections.

And, as if Trump's "extreme vetting" for his own campaign staff hasn't yet failed spectacularly enough by now, we end today's show with still one more brand new example! Yes, it's an epic romp through recent historical GOP hypocrisy on today's BradCast. Buckle up, and please enjoy responsibly!...

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