On today's BradCast, I'm back! And with huge thanks to Nicole Sandler of the awesome RadioOrNot.com for filling in for me and Desi over the holidays to help us get some some much-needed time off!

First up on today's show: President Obama announces his Executive Actions to combat the scourge of gun violence in this country.

Then, I'm joined by Stewart Rhodes, Founder and President of Oath Keepers, a group which describes itself as "a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'"

While the Oath Keepers were on the front lines of the armed 2014 standoff against the federal government at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, Rhodes has declined to join the ongoing armed take-over of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon by other members of the so-called "Patriot Movement," including two of rancher Cliven Bundy's sons.

Rhodes explains how he believes the showdown at the Bundy Ranch differs from the current situation at Malheur. He claims the former resulted in stopping the "assassination" of the Bundy clan by federal officials, whereas, in the latter case, "I haven't seen any direct threat to anybody's life."

He describes one of the men holed up in the federal Oregon facility as "either insane or an agent provocateur who...wants to see violence," and another as a "loose cannon idiot who has a martyr complex." He suggests that Bundy's son Ammon, who helped lead the takeover in Oregon, is "naive" and "has people right there with him who are unstable, who may initiate violence."

"They want to go down in a glorious firefight," Rhodes warns about at least two of the individuals. "If they don't get that, it's entirely possible they might initiate it." And while the other Bundy son, Ryan, has reportedly said he was "willing to kill and be killed if necessary," in the stand-off, Rhodes rejects the idea that the men are "terrorists".

I also pressed Rhodes about critiques of his own organization, which has been described as "conspiracy theorists", "vigilantes", "rightwing extremists" and even "racists" at various times. Many have accused them and others in the Patriot and Militia Movements of looking to pick fights with the federal Government. I ask him why his group and others like it didn't come to the aid of the Occupy Movement when those peaceful protests were brutally crushed by local, state and federal officials back in 2011 and why they haven't been louder in opposition to the ongoing epidemic of police violence across the country.

We also discussed the claims made in a Rolling Stone feature article this week, charging that former Oath Keeper Sam Andrews was drummed out of the group for attempting to organize with African-Americans in Ferguson, MO. Rhodes calls Andrews a "liar".

As to the Bundys, Rhodes claims the family took advantage of his group back in 2014. "We didn't go there to get cattle back. We went there to keep the Bundy family from being murdered. They then took advantage of that situation and went and got their cattle back," he tells me. "They didn't say 'come help us with armed supporters to go get our cattle back'. That's not what they did. They said 'we're about to be murdered, come protect us'. And so Ammon Bundy has displayed the propensity to deceive people. And he's doing that right now [in Oregon.]"

There was a lot more in our spirited conversation --- we both agree, for example, about the outrage of "minimum sentencing" laws of the type at the center of the current dispute up in Oregon right now, as well as at the heart of the so-called "Drug War" --- but you'll have to give the full show a listen for complete details...

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On today's BradCast, ownership of our nation's media gets more and more rightwing in advance of the 2016 Presidential elections.

First up, in Ohio, a newspaper owner/publisher fires the paper's editor, a 31-year employee, for daring to talk with staffers about an editorial critical of the NRA that the owner/publisher had spiked.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, the state's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is secretly purchased by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's largest single funder during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. After a week of mystery and lies from Adelson --- and investigative reporting by the journalists who actually work at the paper, who had no idea who they now work for --- the billionaire admits that, yes, it was his family that bought the paper...and a hugely inflated price.

Media Matters' Salvatore Colleluori joins us to explain why Adelson's mysterious purchase of the R-J is so disturbing on a whole bunch of levels. Among them: While the paper was already a right-leaning news outlet, the purchase could result in still more of Adelson's far rightwing political views making it into print in the key swing-state of Nevada in a Presidential election year. Moreover, as we discuss on today's program, the takeover could also serve to help keep coverage of Adelson's own highly suspect business dealings --- from China to The Vegas Strip --- out of the pages of the biggest paper in the state's biggest city all together.

"The other newspapers that he owns have very, very distinct stances that are very much in line with him," Colleluori tells me on today's program. "Owning the biggest newspaper in the state gives him a major mouthpiece going into, not only the 2016 election, but with a big Senate election coming in Nevada, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for him to throw his weight around in the state."

"As the old adage goes," he notes, "If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."

Also today: Some thoughts on the rightwing talk radio outlet which CNN partnered with for this week's GOP debate, where, as we note in our latest Green News Report, CNN also completely avoided discussion of climate change and the largest world agreement ever struck just days earlier, and how a record warm December in the Midwest and North-East is ending what is now almost certainly going to be the warmest year ever recorded on Planet Earth...

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Initially utilized by William Shakespeare in Hamlet, the phrase "to be hoisted by his own petard" now refers to someone who is hurt or destroyed by their own plot or device. That phrase may well come into play by July 18, 2016 when the Republican Party gathers in Cleveland for its national convention --- precisely because of the undemocratic nature of the GOP's own primary rules.

The Democratic Party will, for the most part, select pledged delegates to its national convention on a proportional basis, based on primary and caucus results in each state. Additionaly, the Democratic Party employs an undemocratic feature in the form of "superdelegates", consisting of Democratic governors, members of Congress, members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other party leaders, including current and former Democratic Presidents.

Like the Democrats, the Republicans also utilize "superdelegates" who are able to play a role in final selection of the party's Presidential nominee. Beyond that, however, the process the Republican Party uses to select its rank and file delegates to their national nominating convention is notably different. Only 16 states, which hold primaries or caucuses prior to March 14, 2016, will select delegates on a proportional basis. All other pledged delegates to the 2016 RNC will be selected based on a winner-take-all system from each state's primary or caucus system.

Where some, like the right-wing National Review, suggest that the crowded field of GOP presidential candidates could produce the first brokered Republican convention since 1976, recent polls suggest a greater likelihood that the GOP will nominate as its standard bearer the candidate least likely to succeed in the general election.

A recently released Quinnipiac University poll, reports that, "with 20 percent of Republican voters, Donald Trump is the clear leader in the crowded Republican presidential primary field." At the same time, interestingly enough, he also "tops the 'no way' list as 30 percent of Republican voters say they would definitely not support him," according to the Quinnipiac poll. Trump has "the worst favorability rating of any Republican or Democrat, a negative 27-59 percent among all voters." The poll also finds that whether matched up against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, Trump would lose the general election by a wide margin.

It really doesn't matter that, nationally, 80% of Republicans may prefer another GOP candidate. In winner-take-all states, like Florida, where Trump leads his closest rival, the state's former two-term Governor Jeb Bush, 26% to 20%, Trump does not have to secure a majority of Republican votes. He need only secure enough votes to defeat whoever comes in second to gain the entire list of Sunshine State delegates to the convention. Accomplish that feat in enough crowded primary states, and Trump becomes the next GOP nominee for President of the United States.

Thus, there's a distinct prospect that the GOP may be hoisted by its own, undemocratic winner-take-all primary petard.

CORRECTION: Originally, we erroneously reported that pledged delegates to the RNC would be selected on a proportional basis in only 4 states. The correct number is actually 16. The article above has been modified to reflect those accurate numbers.

Well, this is an interesting turn of events. It includes a bizarre twist that even we would not have foreseen, involving a Republican operative who is now threatening legal action against us for reporting (accurately) on his companies' relationship to voter registration fraud and deceptive voter registration practices during the 2012 election and in previous cycles.

Remember that massive, multi-state GOP voter registration fraud scandal just before the 2012 election? The one that started in Palm Beach, Florida, spread to several different counties, then several different states? The scandal resulted in the Republican National Committee firing the Arizona firm they had secretly hired for millions of dollars to carry out voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in a bunch of key swing-states, including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado in advance of the Presidential Election.

The firm at the center of the RNC scandal was named Strategic Allied Consulting. It was created and run by Nathan Sproul, a notorious Arizona-based Republican operative with a checkered past, who ran Republican voter registration drives and other on-the-ground GOP activist campaigns. Sproul's name was not used in the legal filings which created Strategic Allied Consulting in advance of the 2012 election, due to his various companies facing voter registration fraud allegations and criminal investigations in a number of states going back as far as the 2004 Presidential election. Because of that unfairly tarnished background, Sproul claimed when the 2012 scandal first surfaced, the RNC didn't want his fingerprints on the operation. The RNC was dodgy about the issue, but fired Sproul and his firm in several states once the scandal came to light, despite having paid millions of dollars for the effort.

The BRAD BLOG broke a number of stories related to the RNC scandal at the time, including details on the very first reports of "hundreds" of fraudulent registration forms turned in to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections after they were collected by Sproul's workers and turned in by the local Republican Party.

In the same series of articles, we also exposed the deceptive (and perhaps illegal) registration scheme employed by Sproul's firms in states where they operated. The scheme involved registration workers trained to pretend to be pollsters asking voters who they planned to support in the Presidential election. If they answered the question correctly (Romney) Sproul's workers would help them register to vote. If the unsuspecting citizen answered the "survey" question incorrectly (Obama), the workers would wish them a nice day, and then move on to the next target.

As we documented with video, email and other records at the time, including admissions by Sproul himself, his firm used this same deceptive tactic in state after state and in a number of recent election cycles.

Now, a two-year Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) investigation has finally wrapped up into the 2012 allegations in that state. It has led to yet another arrest of one of Sproul's workers, found no evidence of conspiracy by the company in that state, confirmed The BRAD BLOG's reporting on their deceptive registration technique, and sent Sproul scurrying to threaten us via email (posted below) with a lawsuit...for something...

The "streets" did not "flare up". The cops in Ferguson flared it up, perhaps, according to pretty much all of the live coverage we followed for hours last night on TV, on the web and, most crucially, on Twitter.

No clue what "problem" Fire Boy above thought he was trying to solve with his 9/11 Wars souvenir, but you can bet it hasn't been solved.

We recently wrote a "Tale of Two Protests" comparing the mostly peaceful protesters of Ferguson, MO following the police shooting of unarmed African-American teen Michael Brown, to the threatening armed protests by supporters of scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy in Bunkerville, NV earlier this year.

Where the amped-up, Hollywoodized, militarization of the police in Ferguson has resulted, largely, in making the cops look like clowns and idiots for their over-aggressive tactics and firepower (see the front page of today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch above for just the latest example of that buffoonery, here's more), the amped-up, Hollywoodized, militarization of the so-called "Tea Party" "patriot" protesters in Bunkerville and their semi-automatic rifles trained on the heads of law enforcement officials, succeeded in little more than making those protesters look like clowns and idiots. It also offered an apparently compelling reason as to why law enforcement "needs" to arm up in response to such deadly, direct threats.

Meanwhile, over at his own blog today, Patrick Blanchfield offers a related observation of the shameful differences between the nation's treatment of a rancher who stole more than a million dollars from the federal government in Bunkerville, versus the kid in Ferguson who was shot at least six times by a police officer after having, allegedly, taking a handful of cigars from a convenience store. And its additionally embarrassing.

[An updated version of this article has now been published by Salon. Updates to the version posted here, following the weekend's developments in Ferguson, are posted at the end of the article.]

On Wednesday night, I had snarked on Twitter about the lack of so-called "Tea Party" "patriots" --- like those brave boys and girls who, earlier this year, pointed their big assault-rifles at federal officials to protect the "right" of a scofflaw rancher in Nevada to illegally graze his cattle for free on land that he did not own --- failing to show up to protect the actual rights and freedoms of so many being denied them by actual Big Government Tyranny in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

Some Rightwingers, like libertarian Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com shot back at me (figuratively) on Twitter, arguing that "The Bundy patriots didn't take BS from the cops. They stood and fought," adding that the Ferguson protesters were facing the "same fight" and, had those protesters only brought guns with them, the police would have backed down. Or something.

"Would the cops be murdering blacks in #Ferguson if the people were armed? No," Raimondo told me, as if he just arrived in the U.S. from some other planet. "Armed resistance tends to discourage aggression," he insisted, between some silly ad hominem bluster in which he charged me with "worship[ing]" the government, and "lov[ing] the state that murders blacks" (also of being a "loser" with a "fat ass" or some such, but that's even easier to laugh at).

And then something changed on the streets of Ferguson Thursday night, which made Raimondo's comments seem even more transparently silly.

After the fully-militarized police were pulled away, ordered by the Missouri Governor to be replaced by grown-ups who marched with the protesters, calm and even jubilance returned to the previously tear gas-filled streets of Ferguson, MO. The contrast on Thursday night from the days prior couldn't have been more stark, according to virtually everyone on the ground there. It was the police, not the protesters, who had exacerbated roiling racial tensions, arrested reporters and needlessly filled the streets with panic and tear gas in the days prior, just as assuredly as it was a Ferguson cop who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teen who was supposedly stopped for nothing more than alleged "Jay Walking".

It was peaceful citizens, with their empty hands in the air --- not pretend "patriots" aiming long guns at the buffoonish, intimidating, embarrassing, jungle-camouflaged-in-exurban-streets cops --- who may ultimately be seen as the ones who helped begin a national rollback of the absurd militarization, perhaps better described as "Hollywoodization," of our nation's law enforcement organizations.

It was not armed resistance, but peaceful resistance that may have brought about real, if tenuous, change in Ferguson, and maybe even the rest of the country...

It's been a stupid busy news week this week, but I tried to fit as much of it as possible into this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio.

So grab a pencil to take notes and buckle up before listening. We've got a lot of exclusive reporting for you in this week's episode!

Among the stories covered this week: The ignored and unverified votes in the Eric Cantor Bombshell/Guessing Game; the shamefully retracted 2009 DHS Report on Rightwing Extremism in the U.S. in light of continuing and recent carnage from RW terrorism in the U.S.; the 'Tea Party' Trio's Mississippi Mystery Courthouse Caper in last week's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in MS; the CA legislature's move to restrict election recounts to all but the wealthiest of individuals.

And, as if all of that's not enough, a few callers and the delightful and ingenious Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report. Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

P.S. We've been asking of late, but few have answered the call. Please consider supporting The BRAD BLOG with a one-time donation or a monthly sustaining donation. Everything that we do here --- including our survival and our independence and much of the exclusive reporting offered for free above --- depends on your support to help us continue. It's getting very difficult to do so. So please consider helping us out if you can afford it. Every bit really helps!

In July of 2011, just days after the massacre of 77 mostly children at a youth summer camp by a Rightwing extremist in Norway, Brian Levin, the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University interviewed Daryl Johnson, formerly of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS).

Johnson was the agency's senior domestic terrorism analyst from 2004 to 2010. He was also the lead author of DHS' April 2009 draft report --- which was, shortly thereafter, retracted under pressure from Republicans, rightwingers and some veterans groups --- entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" [PDF].

After the public outcry from the Rightwing victimization industry, the DHS shamefully apologized for working on the report at all, even though it was begun during the Bush Administration; was being produced in response to a mandate from Congress; followed a DHS report on Leftwing extremism [PDF] (which received no similar outraged protestations) in January of 2009; and was authored by Johnson, who describes himself in the interview below as a pro-life, pro-gun, conservative Republican Mormon.

The draft 9-page DHS report had cautioned about the re-emergence of potentially violent extremist groups "that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely."

It warned that similar conditions to those in the 1990's (an economic recession, a Democrat in the White House) which had led to, among other domestic terrorist incidents, the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, had brought about a "growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors."

The report cautioned that "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States" and concluded that "rightwing extremism is likely to grow in strength."

Following the deadly attack on two police offers and another person on Sunday in Las Vegas, allegedly carried out by two married members who self-identified as part of the so-called "Liberty Movement" and who appeared at the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy during the recent armed protest against the federal government with others in the movement, it seems a good moment to revisit that 2011 interview with the lead author of that retracted DHS report.

The alleged killers in the tragedy over the weekend later killed themselves. They reportedly draped the dead bodies of the two cops they shot with the Gadsden ("Don't Tread on Me") flag, popular with those in the "Tea Party" and "Liberty" movements, and were said to have kept Swastikas and other Nazi memorabilia in their apartment.

Neighbors told reporters that the two "had a reputation for spouting racist, anti-government views, bragging about their gun collection and boasting that they’d spent time at Cliven Bundy’s ranch during a recent standoff there between armed militia members and federal government agents."

In other words, the warnings of Johnson, both in the retracted 2009 DHS report and in his 2011 interview, seem extraordinarily prescient today, for some odd reason.

Here are extended excerpts, some of them chilling in retrospect, from that 2011 interview of Daryl Johnson by Brian Levin...

"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

Republicanist attorney John Hinderaker of the silly, hyper-partisan, rightwing PowerLine blog has always been more than happy to offer "legal" arguments to support whatever Rightwing nonsense his tribe would like to hear. When he's unable to come up with an actual legal argument, he's also happy to just type words to let the tribe know he's still on their side...even when the law isn't.

Commenting Monday night on the weekend's Bundy Ranch idiocy --- in which a scofflaw Nevada rancher who says he doesn't "recognize [the] United States government as even existing", has refused for the last twenty years to pay grazing fees for the use of public lands, as all other ranchers do --- Hinderaker admits that, "legally, Bundy doesn't have a leg to stand on."

Nonetheless, the Republican lawyer/blogger twists and turns to argue, "you should be sympathetic toward" ranch owner Cliven Bundy anyway. The reason for that sympathy takes some explaining, and some pretty impressive gymnastics to result in Hinderaker's final, rather laughable, argument for it.

Hinderaker must be desperate to get himself onto the non-RINO right flank of the Rightwing "FakeTriots" who rode in to southern NV last week with big manly guns a-blazin', but who, notably, did not ride in to the rescue when actual Big Government tyranny was actually cracking down on the public's right to occupy public spaces --- when the government actually used extraordinary violence to crush peaceful First Amendment-protected protests all around the country.

Neither does he, nor they, seem to give a damn when Big Government intrudes on the Constitutionally protected rights of women to privately take care of their own bodies; nor for the rights of millions of legal voters to freely cast their votes; nor for the rights of homeowners who've gone bankrupt and/or lost their homes thanks to Big Government-abetted crimes of gigantic, lawless, Wall Street corporations.

But what's most amusing about Hinderaker's article, in which he desperately (and transparently) attempts to get on the right side of folks he knows are wrong, but who are on his own political team, is that by the end of his article, he's finally figured out how to blame Big Bad Barack Obama and Harry Reid and, I guess, Liberalism or something for all the woes that Bundy is facing brought on himself. That, instead of calling out the rancher for his lack of personal responsibility in disobeying long-settled law, all while enjoying the Big Government welfare of "free" cattle grazing lands.

To do this, Hinderaker offers a pretend argument that the federal government isn't necessarily against development on public lands --- only certain types of development...

It was quite a moving show last night in the Nevada State Senate, as a Joint Resolution was passed that would repeal the Constitutional ban on marriage equality in that state, as passed by voters over a decade ago.

All of the state Senate's Democrats supported the resolution, and one Republican jumped onto the right side of history in a surprise last-minute move. One Democratic Senator even came out as gay during the floor proceedings.

The measure passed the Nevada Senate 12 to 9 and will now head to the Assembly. If successful there, it will face one more vote in both chambers in 2015 before appearing on the 2016 ballot for approval by voters who, according to recent polls there, are now believed to be in favor of lifting the ban. So, as MLK famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Dramatic speeches on the floor during debate on the resolution led even jaded long-time Nevada report Jon Ralston, who covered the debate live via his Twitter feed, to observe: "Too often we who cover politics think of these people as automatons pressing a red or green button. Not tonight. Raw, emotional, human."

"Great to be not just a witness to history (or the beginning, at least), but to see politicians stripped down to who they are was something," he noted, before adding: "I feel sorry for reporters who weren't here to feel the electricity in this chamber."

But with Democrats across the country now seemingly falling over themselves to suddenly support marriage equality --- redefining the word "evolution" (or, perhaps, more accurately, attempting to redefine the word "flip-flop") --- even Republicans, at least Republicans in the Northeast, are also now showing signs of scrambling to get onto the right side of history as well.

This early evidence of that arrived in my inbox this morning, from the FreedomToMarry.org group...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Disturbing updates on the Exxon tar sands oil pipeline spill in AR; Majority of Republicans believe global warming a 'hoax'; 'Tsunami of rain' in Argentina; China cheating on fish catches?; Golf in the Arctic? PLUS: 'Monsanto Protection Act' - Sneaky legislation exempts GMOs from the law... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate science denier calls for "alarmists" to face death penalty courts; Amazon tribe threatens to declare war amid row over Brazilian dam; NV Energy to decommission coal plants; Ogalalla Sioux: Resounding NO to Keystone XL Pipeline; Bill Gates, investors, back sodium battery startup; Canada may abandon expensive mine cleanup; Green pols get billionaire ally, money; climate researchers discover 1,800-year-old 'Rosetta stone' ice cores; PLUS: Obama on climate change: ‘The politics of this are tough’ ... and much, MUCH more!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: L.A. to be 100% coal-free; TN conservatives slam mountaintop removal coal mining - by China; NV coal company faked air pollution reports; Green jobs are the fastest growing job sector in the nation; PLUS: Leave it to beavers - 'hero' beaver dam halts oil spill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): State Dept. hid ties to Keystone XL pipeline company; Toyota Unveils New I-Road; NOAA: ‘Robust’ independent evidence confirms thermometer measurements; Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee; Pope Francis calls for defending environment; Report: Security risks of climate change; Enviro groups criticize Obama's DOE nominee energy industry ties; Polar bear habitat shrinks even more... PLUS: How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change already hitting Rocky Mtn ski resorts; House Dems slam Republicans for obstruction of climate action; Shell Oil calls it quits in the Arctic --- for now; Fox 'News' makes a stunning admission; Drought in the West, Flooding in Europe PLUS: Finally, some good news for kids in Detroit ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Sequestration would be bad news for clean energy and a clean environment; You may be eating toxic chemicals, even if you eat organic, avoid plastic; High court throws out $1B fraud verdict in Exxon leak case; US nuclear dump is leaking toxic waste; USDA warns farmers of accelerating climate change; Loss of wild bees serious threat to crop yields; Weather extremes provoked by trapping of giant waves in atmosphere ... PLUS: The New Abolitionists: Global Warming Is The Great Moral Crisis Of Our Time ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Last year we spent quite a bit of time detailing what we described, with much justification, as The Year of GOP Election Fraud.

From the three felony voter fraud convictions of Indiana Sec. of State Charlie White (R), to the admitted ballot petition fraud of the campaign of Newt Gingrich (R) and of the staff of U.S. House Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R) to the attempted voter fraud by Rightwing propagandist James O'Keefe's co-conspirators, to the registration fraud allegedly committed by employees of the firm hired by the RNC to carry out voter registration in seven key swing states, to the actual apparent voter fraud of the GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and beyond, it was another year in which the Republican Party pretended there was a massive Democratic voter fraud epidemic in order to institute new polling place voter suppression laws, even while carrying out their own crime spree which largely went ignored by the very same media covering the GOP attempts to enact polling place Photo ID restrictions.

But it wasn't only the GOP superstars named above who attempted to game the system. Some of their gullible followers, who were distracted and conned into buying into the pretend "Democratic voter fraud" panic, decided to take matters into the their own hands by attempting to double-vote, claiming they were simply "testing the system".

Two different such cases in two different states led to voter fraud felony arrests last November. One of the cases, in Nevada, has now been settled with a guilty plea. The other appears to still be pending in New Mexico against a man who claims he thought his job as a Republican precinct challenger was to challenge the system itself...