Via Tanya Somanader at ThinkProgress...

Add Frank's to the stories of 96-year old Dorothy Cooper in TN who has voted in every election since woman were granted the right to vote, but who no longer may be able to cast her vote on Election Day next year, and 86-year old WWII veteran Darwin Sparks in the same state; along with hundreds of thousands of others who are likely to find themselves unable to cast their legal vote on Election Day next year thanks to new voter suppression laws implemented in about a dozen states by GOP legislatures and governor's since they took control in 2010.

In Wisconsin, where "an estimated 177,399 Wisconsin residents 65 and older do not have a driver’s license or state photo ID — 23 percent of that population," and where Frank may have to pay as much as $200 to cast her legal vote under the GOP's new anti-democratic and anti-Democratic polling place Photo ID restrictions, the non-partisan League of Women Voters has filed suit charging the law is in violation of the state's constitution, as The BRAD BLOG detailed in October. That case is still pending.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Newt makes stuff up; Historic drought in TX now worst in a century; This week's newest oil spill, now in CO; Extreme weather disasters will cost even more due to global warming; One step forward, two steps back in UN climate negotiations; PLUS: House GOP wins another courageous battle in the fight against imaginary regulations ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): In spite of Solyndra, military solar project a GO; How to slash CA's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Abrupt climate change possible from melting permafrost; Study: Renewables can reduce pollution at no cost to the economy; Running dry on the Great Plains; Algae bloom baffles scientists; Study Shows Worse Picture of Meltdown in Japan ... PLUS: The end of world as we know it: a surprisingly uplifting documentary... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: What was Newt thinking?!; SPECIAL COVERAGE: UN Climate Conference in Durban, S. Africa; 'Occupy Durban'?; Canada's hard right turn on climate; 2011 not hottest year on record; PLUS: Fake hoax redux: Climategate 2.0! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Radiation covers 8% of Japan; Fukushima crisis 'stunting children's growth'; Majority in U.S. Support Carbon Tax ... PLUS: The New Story of Stuff: Are we reaching "peak stuff"? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

A post on Tuesday on the hard right Republican website Free Republic suggests that opponents of the Occupy Wall Street movement may well be injecting themselves into the demonstrations' open consensus process in order to confound the objectives of the nascent movement.

"[We n]eed LA Freepers to show up to block this vote by the Occupy LA General Assembly," the poster identifying him/herself only as "joinedafterattack" wrote in apparent hopes of scuttling a discussion that night about a proposal being negotiated with the LA City Council to trade 10,000 square feet of office space and some farmland with demonstrators in exchange for their voluntary exodus from the lawn in front of City Hall.

The call by the rightwingers to take part in a General Assembly meeting at OccupyLA for the specific purpose of blocking a proposal (one that was rejected, in any case, by the majority of demonstrators that night) exposes the vulnerability of Occupy Wall Street's "consensus" decision-making and an internal contradiction between a movement which rails against rule by the 1% even as it permits the one to block the will of the many...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Last September The BRAD BLOG, unlike the corporate-owned media, offered detailed coverage of a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing on the spate of GOP voter suppression laws (PART 1 and PART 2).

Now, Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films has produced a powerful video that exposes the Koch-funded assault on your democracy, along with a petition that you can sign demanding that the Eric Holder-led Department of Justice live up to its name...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Meet the world's newest oil spill, now in Brazil and starring Chevron!; Supercommittee FAIL a big win for Big Oil; Confirmed again: Extreme weather is the New Normal; Bye-bye oysters; PLUS: Surprise! Fox News deceives its viewers on climate change, or the more you watch Fox, the less you know ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Not-so-fresh round of hacked climate science emails leaked online; TX towns will run out of water in 2 weeks; Hackers target US water utility; Future cancers from Fukushima plant may be hidden; Solyndra accounts for less than 2% of the DOE's loan program; Scientists slam BLM’s coal-friendly slant on climate change; Obama Says Climate Threat ‘Cannot Be Denied’... PLUS: The art of talking about climate science ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Political kabuki theatre in the U.S. House over the Solyndra bankruptcy; Obama says "climate change", but only in Australia; It's official: the weather is getting weirder; PLUS: Harvesting water from the desert air... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Does government regulation really kill jobs? NO.; New federal fuel economy rules: 54mpg by 2025: CEO: "No question" new EPA rules create jobs; Defense Science Board warns of "failure to anticipate and mitigate" climate change... PLUS: VIDEO: Watch global CO2 go up and up and up ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Occupy Wall Street's bicycle-powered generator trashed by police in raid?; A huge victory for Keystone XL pipeline opponents --- but will it last?; Fracking chemicals found in Wyoming drinking water; PLUS: A prominent climate change skeptic calls for climate change action in Congress ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Clean energy: highest rate of return of any federal program; Why solar is better than stocks; American Electric Power CEO: 'No doubt' EPA regulations create new jobs; The false gospel of green marketing ... PLUS: Reinventing Fire: How the U.S. can change energy use forever ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Wow. Until very recently (like, today recently, when Newt Gingrich --- yes, Newt --- found himself atop two new national polls! Party like it's 1994!), this man was the front-runner for the GOP nomination for President of the United States...

UPDATE: NBC's Chuck Todd tweets to say the Cain campaign responded to the video above by saying he "Didn't say anything wrong or inaccurate, it just took him a while to recall the specifics of Libya."

And NBC's Andrew Rafferty tweets: "Cain camp tells @NBCNews that Libya video being taken out of context. Cain going on 4hrs sleep, just took him a while to gain bearings."

The complete, 5-minute answer above was..."taken out of context." Got it.

Now back to news that actually matters. Sorry for the distraction there. But sometimes the insane freak show that has replaced actual political affairs in this nation is just too much to not take notice of here. This has been one of those moments.

The effort to recall Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker begins in earnest tomorrow, November 15. As TPM's Eric Kleefeld reports, Democrats and other opponents of the WI GOP's big government removal of public union collective bargaining rights will have just 60 days to collect more than 540,000 signatures in order to put the controversial Governor onto a recall election ballot early next year.

It won't be easy, as the initiative must succeed in gathering an average of more than 9,000 signatures each day between now and the 60-day deadline in January. To make matters worse, if indications on a number of Facebook pages are to be believed, some Walker supporters are planning to sabotage the effort with a number of dirty tricks, including collecting signatures under cover and then burning and shredding the petitions...

- Brad Friedman (Originally published by Truthout on 11/8/11)

Yeah, I know, the GOP is at War against citizens' rights to do just about everything that isn't U.S. Chamber of Commerce approved these days. That's just one of the reasons citizens are finally taking to the streets to fight back. One of the ongoing Republican Wars getting very little attention is their War on the right of citizens to sue huge corporations for negligence, malfeasance and other wrong-doing.

A few weeks ago I spent some time at a conference for mass tort plaintiff attorneys in Las Vegas, as hosted by my friend Mike Papantonio, the co-host of radio's Ring of Fire (along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Sam Seder). Pap is one of the nation's premier class action plaintiff attorneys, one of those folks willing to go to bat for the little guy when they're screwed over by huge conscience-free corporations.

I was invited to the conference to speak on a panel concerning the proposed $12 million hit scheme discovered earlier this year being plotted on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to turn tools developed by U.S. government contractors for the "War on Terror" against U.S. citizens like myself and my family. According to emails released on the Internet, the Chamber was working with mega-law firm Hunton & Williams and three federal cyber-security firms (HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies, and Berico Technologies) to smear, defraud, plant false documents, and spy on their perceived political enemies such as myself and other progressive organizations.

The Chamber, which is all too happy to use mafia-like tactics to take down its perceived opponents, has also long been leading the charge on behalf of their enormous corporate members for so-called "tort reform," meant to do little more than make it next-to-impossible for citizens to fight back in a court of law against corporate abuse, neglect, and malfeasance...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Perry can't remember the name of the Dept. of Energy --- but wants to shut it down; BREAKING: State Dept. may re-route controversial Keystone XL pipeline; Australia passes world's first carbon tax; More wacky extreme weather in weird places; PLUS: IEA: 5 years to avoid the worst consequences of climate change ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Oil Executive: use military-style 'Psy Ops' to fight opposition "insurgency"; Video: 'The Story of Broke'; U.S.-China trade war in solar taking shape; Studies link auto pollution to autism; 1st commerical plane flight using biofuel; Oil Lobbyist likes oil industry subsidies: 'There Are No Loopholes ... PLUS: Current global warming unprecedented compared to last 20k years ... and much, MUCH more! ...

The voters of Maine appear to have registered a stinging rebuke to their Republican Governor and Legislature's attempt to kill the state's 38-year tradition of Election Day voter registration at the polling place.

As the Lewiston Sun Journal reports tonight: "And it wasn't close."

That's an understatement. The People's Veto of the GOP bill was on the ballot tonight and, if the results are accurate as reported, the people of Maine couldn't have been clearer. Question 1 has is said to have passed by a remarkable 61 to 39% 60 to 40% margin (with 90% 98% 100% of the results in), quite literally winning in every single county in the state:

The overwhelming victory for voters' rights in the Pine Tree State comes on the heels of Maine's GOP Chair Charlie Webster embarrassing himself and his party over the last several months with his complaint to the GOP Sec. of State Charles Summers, Jr. that out-of-state college students were committing "voter fraud" in the state.

Despite some 200 names Webster submitted to Summers for an investigation, no evidence of fraud was found by the SoS. That lack of evidence of voter fraud, however, didn't keep Summers from sending intimidating letters to those legal student voters.

Nonetheless, Mainers of all stripes today appear to have soundly rejected the GOP's "voter fraud" fraud in their People's Veto at the ballot box.

"The advantage we had was the truth," David Farmer, a spokesman for Protect Maine Votes told the Sun Journal. "The facts carried the day. Same-day voter registration works and it has for nearly 40 years. Unlike other states, Mainers wouldn't stand for the erosion of their voting rights. They should be very proud of that."

They should indeed.

The contrast was stark, however, from results being reported in Mississippi tonight...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive protest at the White House against massive pipeline across the country; Oklahoma quakes rattle the heart of fracking country; Record spike in global emissions; 2011 breaks all records for record-breaking weather disasters; PLUS: Massive crack discovered in Antarctic glacier... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Australian parliament passes landmark tax on carbon emissions; BP wants US investigations barred from civil oil spill lawsuits; Protests at Koch Industries in KS; Current global warming unprecedented over last 20,000 years; Debunking the deniers on 'global cooling' --- again; Energy corporations received $24 billion from taxpayers... PLUS: EPA's secret 'Watch List' reveals fed failure to curb toxic air pollution... and much, MUCH more! ...