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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: India's Prime Minister praises environmental responsibility to Congressional Republicans; Bankrupt Peabody Coal secretly funded dozens of climate change denier groups; Coal use plunges in the U.S.; More oil companies abandon the Arctic; PLUS: Norway becomes the first nation to ban deforestation... 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): Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Emissions to Stone; Lights Drown Out Milky Way For Third Of World's Population; Arctic Sea Ice Breaks May Record . . . By A Lot; Supreme Court Rejects Challenge To Obama Mercury Air Pollution Rule; Idaho Superfund Site Is Still a Toxic Mess, With Legacy of Suffering; Is Coal Ash Killing an Oklahoma Town?; On Kodiak Island, Flywheels Are In And Diesel Is Out... PLUS: House Opposes Carbon And Oil Taxes In Symbolic Votes... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, guest host Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio traces the filthy past and the bogglingly successful present of TV "holy man" Peter Popoff. Then it's excerpts from Angie's chat with Derek Cressman, about his book When Money Talks: The High Price of “Free” Speech and the Selling of Democracy.

Over the holiday weekend, Angie came face to face with her first "Miracle Water" TV commercial. She's only thirty years behind the curve, because charlatan Peter Popoff has been reaching through the TV screen and into the pockets of the most vulnerable since the early 80s. By the end of that decade, his schemes were publicly exposed, he was tarred, feathered, and bankrupt --- so how is he back on TV, making more money than ever? It's a long trail, and on the way Angie found clues on how to chase him back into his hole --- along with the rest of his ilk.

Then it's Derek Cressman, with solid, smart ideas on how to get money out of politics --- and no, you haven't heard this exact song before. Not only does he plumb history and the Constitution for new insights, but he's run for office himself. In excerpts from an In Deep show taping in March, he details his time on the campaign trail and a map for future reform.

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Are Republican voters 'warming up' to the science of climate change? A new study suggests as much, as CNN columnist and environmental reporter John D. Sutter details on today's BradCast. [See link to audio of today's show at end of article.]

That news comes not a moment too soon, as record high temps in Alberta, Canada's tar sands oil region (ironically enough) sets the town of Fort McMurray on fire and sends some 80,000 residents scrambling for their lives amidst "apocalyptic" devastation. But are the attitudes of GOP voters on the planet's climate crisis changing quickly enough to prevent the worst effects of global warming, even as the Republican Party's apparent standard-bearer this year, Donald Trump, regards the science as little more than a massive "hoax"?

"I think there's a lot less division on this issue than gets made out in the media," Sutter tells me on today's show. "The skeptical voices, especially on the conservative side, are often heard the loudest. They come through the loudest on blogs. They have big media platforms and they get attention. But I don't think that's representative of what the actual American public thinks, and what the voters think. I do think there's a lot more room for agreement on climate change between conservatives and liberals than is often made out in the media."

In fact, as Sutter notes in his column on the new survey from the Yale and George Mason University's programs on on Climate Change Communication, "The percentage of conservative Republicans (not just Republicans but conservative Republicans) who believes climate change is happening has jumped 19 percentage points in the last two years, to 47%." He goes on to explain why that movement seems to be occurring now and to offer his explanation for the apparent contradiction between a huge majority of GOPers who support research into clean, renewable energy, even as so many of them remain climate crisis deniers.

"I think there's a disconnect between what people believe out there in reality and what politicians are willing to say. Because for them to propose regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, for example, they'd have to go up against some pretty monied special interests," he says. "There's a difference between real people and what politicians are willing to take up."

We also discuss Sutter's very encouraging recent reporting on the upcoming Washington state Initiative-732, which would put a price on carbon emissions --- "this often gets called the 'Holy Grail' of climate change policies," he says --- so that polluters will no longer be allowed to pollute for free. Just over the border in British Columbia, where a carbon tax was implemented in 2008, he explains, "the sky didn't fall" as predicted by fossil fuel industry opponents. In fact, "their economy has actually been out-pacing the rest of Canada" and "the level of support for the carbon tax has grown over time."

While Sutter's reporting on these issues at the CNN website is fantastic, I felt I still needed to ask him about the dearth of climate reporting on CNN's airwaves where, as a study last month found, viewers "see far more fossil fuel advertising than climate change reporting."

Also on today's BradCast: The U.S. Dept. of Justice notifies of North Carolina that their new law to discriminate against the LGBT community is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act and may cost the state more than $2 billion in federal education funding; and Donald Trump, who will desperately need Hispanic voters if he hopes to win the Presidency this November, offers a remarkably offensive tweet on Cinco De Mayo. Because, of course he does.

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On today's BradCast, we catch up on a number of items in the news, almost all of which underscore a rigged system in the U.S. and the need to unrig it.

From the new effort by more than 100 bipartisan state Attorneys General to see former AL Gov. Don Siegelman (D) turned political prisoner receive a pardon from President Obama; to the obscene amount of corporate and billionaire cash now pouring into U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan's Republican campaign machine; to new lawsuits filed in Arizona by the DNC (with both the Clinton and Sanders camps joining), as well as by transpartisans charging voter suppression in the state's disastrous March 22nd primary; to remaining concerns about the results of recent Presidential nominating contests around the country.

All of those stories, including the increasingly loud insistence (whether supported by the evidence or not) from Sanders and Trump supporters who believe that both major political parties have "rigged" the Presidential nomination selection process against their favored candidates, underscore how the broken U.S. system desperately needs fixing.

So what to do about it? Some of our listeners have ideas, even ones I may or may not agree with. All of that and much more, including our latest Green News Report, on today's program...

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Fighting to keep our eyes on stuff that matters, on today's BradCast we cover several new concerns for voters in upcoming Presidential primary elections in WI, NY and D.C., as well as some surprising new poll numbers, before moving on to the most important story of our time. [Audio link to complete show at bottom of article.]

Climate scientist and author Dr. Michael E. Mann joins us to discuss, among other related matters, the new temperature records that have stunned even folks like him, as new data was released this month on an increase in global heat that scientists are describing as "staggering", "astronomical" and like "something out of a sci-fi movie".

Professor Mann, who heads up the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, tells me that, with this year's El Niño event finally subsiding, scientists had expected global temperatures to decline along with it. "But, instead, the February numbers came in and not only did we not see a cooling off, we saw unprecedented warmth. It was the largest departure from the average for a given month that we've ever seen."

"What was so surprising was just the magnitude of that warmth, basically taking us now into the territory of more than 2 degrees Celsius warming," years earlier than expected, he says, referencing the amount of warming that scientists, worldwide, believe to be a threshold for dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on humanity and our climate systems. "We're still on track for the globe to exceed that permanently in a matter of decades. What we didn't expect was that we'd actually cross that threshold so soon."

The creator of the infamous "hockey stick graph", and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines explains the new "warning sign" represented by the latest data which, he says, looks like "maybe we accidentally took a temperature from February 2030 from a climate model simulation."

Mann goes on to explain the details of another stunning new report finding that the amount of carbon now being introduced by man into the atmosphere by no parallel on Earth, even going back 66 million years when the planet was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. That was due to a still-unexplained yet massive carbon release of about 1 billion tons each year for some 4,000 years, resulting in 100,000 years of warming. Now, however, humans are emitting about 10 billion tons of carbon annually and changing the planet much more quickly than during that Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM) period some 56 million years ago.

"You can think about it as a medical experiment," says Mann, "where a dose was given to a set of patients, and that dose led to near-death. The biosphere nearly died in the sense that we had mass extinctions during the PETM. That was for a dose of one unit. What we're doing now is we're giving the patient ten times that dose. And to expect that we're not going to see similarly bad things happen as a result would be foolhardy. We are literally hitting the system harder than Nature, to our knowledge, has ever hit it."

The good professor, who has long been personally targeted by the Rightwing climate denialist industry also offers a few thoughts on the "bad faith" arguments on climate change by the Koch Brothers and the various Republican Presidential candidates, as well as the corporate mainstream media's (lack of) coverage of this existential threat. And, I'm happy to add, he also shares "a little bit of good news" along with all of this, including details of some tentative new studies suggesting our ability to overcome the looming disasters may not be "as bleak as we once thought."

So there's that, before we finish up today's show with some rather encouraging news about electric cars that might just help a bit with all of the above...

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Wednesday night was the final Democratic debate before next Tuesday's crucial Election Day in OH, IL, MO, NC and FL, when almost 700 delegates will be up for grabs. It was also the final debate scheduled at all, at this point, between the two Democratic Presidential hopefuls.

Today on The BradCast [audio linked in full below], we analyze, debunk and critique last night's face-off sponsored by Univision and Washington Post in Miami, Florida, between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with my guests journalist Joshua Holland of The Nation and "Politics and Reality Radio" and Jacki Schechner, health care reform advocate and journalist, formerly of CNN and CurrentTV.

We cover the political and policy substance --- and lack thereof --- from both candidates and media alike, in the debate focused on immigration and on the heels of Sanders' surprise victory over Clinton in MI the night before. While there was some dirty pool at the debate, as we discuss, there was also Climate Change making what might be its first ever real appearance during any Presidential debate.

So, tune in for all the good, bad and ugly (including our fulfillment of our FCC requirement to mention the name "Donald Trump" at least once every 15 minutes), on today's very lively BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast: Breaking news out of Oregon and California, more disturbing voter suppression news out of New Hampshire and elsewhere and a new study finds hard evidence that "racial resentment" is central to the so-called "Tea Party" movement.

First up, the latest breaking news on the bizarre and bitter end of the Rightwing militia standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and the concurrent arrest of Nevada's scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy.

Next, more disturbing Photo ID voter suppression news out of New Hampshire and elsewhere, including a new paper out of UC-San Diego finding that strict Photo ID restrictions result in an alarming rate of suppressed Latino and African-American votes. In general elections, for example, based on examinations of some 50 elections in states both before and after implementation of polling place restrictions by GOP lawmakers, "states with strict photo ID laws show a Latino turnout 10.3 points lower than in states without them."

Then, after a brief throwback to the early days of the so-called "Tea Party" (our complete short documentary from 2009, Rise of the Tea Bags, can be enjoyed here), I'm joined by political science researcher Sean McElwee of Demos to discuss his new study, with Jason McDaniel, offering empirical evidence that it is not opposition to "Big Government" or concerns about the economy or spending or taxes that mainly drives those who identify as being sympathetic to the Tea Party --- it's racial resentment.

McElwee explains how his study controlled "for race, ethnicity, partisanship, ideology, income, education, gender, religiosity" and that "once you compare the various strengths of these variables, the one that ends up becoming really the overwhelming predictor of Tea Party identification is racial resentment."

"From the beginning," of the movement, he tells me, "what you're seeing is this sort of racially-coded rhetoric. So, right from the beginning, you have a very great explanation of conservative politics of the last 30 years --- which is plutocratic policies being wrapped up in racist rhetoric in order to benefit a plutocratic agenda. And you have a lot of white middle class and working class people who have bought into that agenda."

"What Fox [News] has done is taken that model and actually weaponized it, politicized it, and used it to attack policies that benefit the vast majority of Americans," McElwee argues, even as the Rightwing network's viewers have little clue how they are being played. "What we have in a lot of cases are people who are very frustrated about what is going on, but lack the political knowledge to actually understand the causal mechanism for how this bad thing is happening. And if you don't have that --- if you don't connect government policy to your lived experiences --- what you end up doing is saying 'I'm upset, I don't know why my life is bad'. And if someone tells you your life is bad because 'immigrants are taking your jobs', or 'the government is helping black people with your tax dollars', people are susceptible to that message."

McElwee goes on to explain how his research finds that many who previously identified with the Tea Party have now folded into the Trump campaign, even though the Republican 2016 front-runner has called for massive government programs and increased spending --- things that Tea Partiers previously decried. We also discuss much more, including whether hatred for Obama from the Right can be attributed to the fact that he is black or, simply, that he is a Democrat.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report and the breaking news out of Porter Ranch, CA that the month's long, massive methane gas leak there has finally been stopped...for now...

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On today's BradCast...

First up: New polling shows Bernie Sanders surging in NH among Democrats and Gov. John Kasich --- yes, John Kasich --- surging to second place among Republicans in the state...if you believe those sorts of things. At the same time, during the GOP establishment's half-hearted search for an alternative to Cruz/Trump, the Republican Party appears to be plummeting in popularity during the course of the 2016 Primary cycle, even as actual Republican voters seem to be warming up to the idea of Trump as their party's nominee.

Then, a remarkable new study from Oxfam finds that the world's richest "62 people own the same wealth as half the world" (the planet's 3.5 billion poorest!) And, some of those 62 richest-people-on-the-planet --- like the Koch Brothers and the Walmart heirs --- are amongst the biggest spenders when it comes to attempts to buy our political system.

So, what can be done about that last part? Jon Schwarz, Senior Editor at The Intercept, joins me to discuss how, despite "eloquent" comments suggesting otherwise during his State of the Union address last week, President Obama could take executive action immediately, on his own, to help radically reduce the "dark money" in our electoral and political system.

"One thing that Obama absolutely can do, by himself, this afternoon, if he wants to, is sign an executive order placing requirements on federal contractors," Schwarz explains, describing other similar actions that the President has taken in the recent past concerning federal contracting. "He can do it and he's done it in the past. What he could do about money in politics now is issue an executive order saying that federal contractors have to disclose any dark money contributions that they're making."

"If he did that, that would cover about 70 percent of the biggest corporations," Schwarz tells me. "So, it would not force the disclosure of any and all dark money, but it would force disclosure of a great deal of that. And, as I say, he could do that this afternoon."

We discuss some of the reasons Obama has failed to do this, to date, despite his calls for campaign finance reform throughout his career and as recently as last week's SOTU --- even with so many calls from so many quarters to take this action. "Obama likes to say really great-sounding stuff about money in politics --- he's said it his whole Senate career, his whole Presidency --- but he's never done anything. It's really extraordinary."

Finally on today's show, a few words on last night's passing of The Eagle's Glenn Frey and the latest on the outrageous lead poisoning crisis in Flint, MI, caused by the tyranny (literally) of Gov. Rick Snyder (R)...

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On today's BradCast: How outrageous new fees imposed on behalf of Nevada's monopoly electricity company and the state's Big Government Republicans have suddenly resulted in thousands of lost jobs, ripped-off consumers, and a mass exodus of solar companies from the state where the industry had previously been booming.

What did GOP Governor Brian Sandoval --- whose top staffers are also lobbyists for the state's NV Energy company --- know and when did he know it? And how much did he personally have to do with his appointees on the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) ripping off solar customers by raising rates on them, while lowering the amount of money rooftop solar owners are paid for selling back unused, clean power to the grid?

Lauren Randall, manager of public policy for Sunrun, which describes itself as the largest dedicated residential solar company in the U.S., and a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice the rooftop solar industry's advocacy group, joins us to explain what just happened in NV and how it has resulted in Sunrun, Solar City and several other rooftop solar companies being forced to shut down entirely in the state. That, after Sandoval had previously offered incentives to encourage private consumers to invest in clean, solar energy.

"It's absolutely outrageous," Randall tells me on today's program. "The easiest way to understand this is it's a 'bait and switch'. Nevada passed incentives to attract residents to go solar, and then after baiting homeowners with incentives, the state switched the rules, penalizing solar homeowners to deliver basically additional profit to NV Energy."

She says there is a "tremendous amount of backlash from both sides of the aisle on this," after "the rules were changed in the middle of the game for over 16,000 customers who went solar to save money on their electricity bills and to move the country away from fossil fuels and on toward more clean energy."

During the interview, she details how her company is now suing the state to force Sandoval to release communications between himself and his staffers, the PUC and NV Energy, as the industry hopes to roll back the devastating new rules which were announced just before Christmas and took effect on the first of the year.

Sandoval's commission, Randall explains, "just presented the most anti-business, anti-solar rules that we've seen, really anywhere in the country. It's been just catastrophic for families in Nevada. What we're seeing now is upwards of a thousand job losses from this."

Randall is hopeful that public outrage may force the PUC to overturn their new rules that have otherwise just killed the solar industry in sunny Nevada. She charges that the effort is a "coordinated campaign" among fossil fuel-based utility companies in a number of states (and could be coming to a state near you!) and asks folks to sign up to help in the fight.

Also on today's busy show: The Koch Brothers empire was built on Nazi money as well as communist Russian money; Martin O'Malley could decide whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders wins Iowa; and Desi Doyen joins us for Green News Report coverage of Obama's final State of the Union address...

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On today's BradCast, the Wisconsin Supreme Court drops the next amazing shoe in the mindblowing case against the "John Doe" criminal probe into campaign improprieties by Gov. Scott Walker and his Koch Brothers-funded rightwing crony organizations during the 2012 recall elections in the state. (Audio link posted below.)

I'm joined once again by Brendan Fischer of the Center for Media and Democracy today to discuss the unprecedented move by the state's high court that has, in effect, resulted in the firing of the Republican special investigator in charge of the probe looking at illegal campaign coordination between those powerful "dark money" groups and the controversial Republican Governor.

"The Wisconsin Supreme Court has a four justice majority," Fischer explains in recounting this remarkable, and under-reported turn of events. "And that four justice majority was elected to the bench with $10 million dollars in spending from the same groups under investigation. The same groups that Walker was accused of coordinating with. The same groups that were party to the case. And the same groups that would be affected by an adverse ruling by a decision that what they did was illegal."

"Despite these conflicts of interests, these justices declined to recuse. They shut down the investigation, rewrote the law to benefit their biggest donors, and then the Special Prosecutor asked the Court to reconsider its investigation."

In response to that Motion to Reconsider, Fischer tells me, the Court's bought and paid for majority went far beyond what anybody might have imagined they would do. "Not only did they dismiss the Motion to Reconsider, they rewrote their July decision to say, 'you as Special Prosecutor can no longer be involved in this case.' Which means that he would be unable to appeal up to the U.S. Supreme Court and challenge the conflicts of interest on the WI Supreme Court."

The result, as both Fischer and the Court's minority note, is that we are now in wholly unprecedented territory for this case in the Badger State and for illegal campaign finance and coordination in Wisconsin and, potentially, the rest of the nation as the Right has been paying close attention to this case and spending a lot of money for the results they now seem to have achieved.

Please listen to the full amazing interview below!

Also on today's BradCast: Corporate media finally begin to notice the mess they've helped foster in this country over the past decade (and more) and some good news, for a very welcome change, in our latest Green News Report as the UN climate summit in Paris (COP21) reaches crunch time...

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On today's BradCast, breaking news on President Obama's final Keystone XL pipeline decision and more fallout following the completely unverified results of Tuesday's Gubernatorial election in Kentucky. (Audio link to complete show is below.)

On Keystone: Obama finally rejects TransCanada's application to build the controversial tar sands pipeline from Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. Our producer and green news expert Desi Doyen joins us to help separate fact from fiction on the long-awaited decision, and to offer long-overdue kudos to those citizens who organized, activated, advocated and otherwise successfully took on the most powerful interests in the history of civilization to block the project in the name of the environment.

On Kentucky: Several new developments following the completely unverified results of Tuesday's Gubernatorial election in Kentucky, where pre-election polls all predicted the opposite of the 'landslide' reported by the state's computer tabulators. Among those developments: A KY newspaper fires their well-respected pollster rather than bothering to find out if the polls were right and the results were wrong; Another reminder of why hand-marked paper ballots like those in KY are swell, but only if you bother to actually count them; We weather a few attacks from progressives who charge us with forwarding conspiracy theories and don't think we should bother to count ballots; And, new information out of Pima County (Tucson), AZ to remind us why citizen vigilance and oversight is needed to assure the survival of democracy.

Also today: The Koch Brothers tell MSNBC they are champions of the environment and MSNBC doesn't bother to correct them --- so, we do. Plus, a few other pieces of important news at week's end...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Koch Brothers claim they are environmental stewards; New legislation to stop all fossil fuel extraction on federal public lands; More bad news for Volkswagen; PLUS: US State Department rejects TransCanada's request to hit 'pause' on the Keystone XL pipeline... 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): The harm Exxon Mobil has done; NASA found a way to track ocean currents from space. What they saw is troubling; Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica - that it's inherently unstable; 50 Years After Warning, No Debate in Paris on the Science; Fracking: EPA Finding of No 'Widespread, Systemic' Problems Under Fire; Is the USDA Silencing Scientists?... PLUS: Powerful 'Gene Drive' Can Quickly Change An Entire Species... and much, MUCH more! ...

Last week at the Center for Media and Democracy, their general counsel Brendan Fischer warned "Darkness descends upon Wisconsin." Today, on The BradCast, Fischer joins me to explain the three new pieces of legislation being quickly rammed through the Republican-dominated state legislature in the Badger State, which, taken together, are set to serve an unprecedented blow to transparency, elections, and democracy. (Audio link to complete show follows below.)

Formerly, one of the most transparent states for election oversight and the ability to either prevent corruption or, at least, discover it and hold those accountable for it after it is found, WI is now set to become the very opposite unless something happens to prevent this full package of election reform bills from being enacted. Yes. Darkness descends upon Wisconsin and, frankly, the rest of the nation if these laws are all passed and signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R-Koch) expected.

One of the bills has already been adopted by the legislature and was hastily signed over the weekend by Walker. That one bars state prosecutors from investigating political corruption under the state's "John Doe" provisions. A WI John Doe investigation is akin to a grand jury process, but allows prosecutors to carry out criminal probes under the auspices of a state court. Such investigations in the past, for example, resulted in the conviction of six top aides and allies to Walker. A more recent John Doe probe into illegal campaign coordination between the Governor and his Koch Brothers-funded allies during the 2012 recall elections in WI, was shut down earlier this year by the same state Supreme Court justices elected and funded by those very same Koch Brothers-funded groups who stand to benefit from this entire package of "reform".

The other two bills were passed in the Assembly last week and are now pending in the state Senate. One replaces the state's non-partisan Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.) --- the commission of retired judges convened to oversees state elections following a massive campaign finance scandal by both Dems and Republicans (uncovered by a John Doe probe!) back in 2007 --- with a new commission of partisan appointees modeled after (incredibly enough!) the entirely broken Federal Elections Commission!

Finally, saving the worst for last: The last of these three bills would allow unlimited undisclosed financing of political groups and campaigns in Wisconsin, as well as allow the millionaire and billionaire funders of those campaigns to remain completely secret to everyone but the candidate whose campaigns the funders would be supporting with unlimited cash payments!

"This is not something that voters in Wisconsin are calling for, neither Republicans nor Democrats," Fischer explains. "The only groups lobbying in favor of these three bills are the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity and other organizations with deep ties to Americans for Prosperity and Koch-tied groups. It's almost like a wish list of the Koch Brothers or other wealthy billionaires who want even more influence in elections."

"It's going to allow unlimited money from billionaires and corporations to political parties and legislative leaders. It's going to allow unlimited coordination between candidates and dark money groups," he tells me. "The implication of that is a candidate could form a non-profit group --- even have it operated out of its campaign headquarters --- and politicians can say to donors: 'Give to this dark money group I am working with. You can give as much as you want.' It can come from anywhere. It can come from Koch Industries corporate treasury. The money could even come from foreigners and the politician is going to know where the money is coming but the public will not."

And, of course, the existing non-partisan commission meant to oversee elections won't be able to block it (because they likely will not exist) and if there is anything left that is still illegal in such campaigns, state prosecutors will have much of their ability taken from them to be able to investigate it. It's a breathtaking set of reforms that, arguably, makes Walker's gutting of collective bargaining back in 2010 look like child's play. And all of this legislation and its provisions are being watched very closely by the GOP nationally, as this gutting of democracy is exactly what the party now hopes to see in every state, as well as at the federal level. Citizens United was not even the beginning of their scheming to undermine fairness and transparency in elections and campaigns.

Fischer goes on to note that, "with rightwing Republicans in control of a lot of state legislatures," similar "reform" is likely to be pushed forward elsewhere after it takes effect in WI, "even though it's not voters who are calling for it."

Please listen to today's program and pass it along to others! This matter needs a lot more national attention than it is currently receiving!

Also on today's program: Death and destruction over the weekend from Oklahoma to British Columbia to Pakistan and Afghanistan, even as Mexico and the U.S. may have dodged a bullet, of sorts, after the most powerful hurricane on record barreled ashore as a Category 5 storm.

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On today's BradCast: Pope Francis' historic addresses to the U.S. Congress on the heels of his landmark remarks at the White House yesterday.

Rev. Mitch Hescox of the Evangelical Environmental Network --- an organization working to bridge the partisan gaps on climate stewardship --- joins us to discuss both. He was at the White House on Wednesday for the Pope's address there and joined the throngs on the Mall in D.C. today. He describes the experience yesterday as "probably my most memorable experience".

He explains why that is and how the event has given him hope that we may get out of "our partisan silos" and "actually accomplish something in the United States. Instead of just having these partisan divides. We could agree on the things we agree on, and least dialogue on the things that we don't agree on."

We discuss why it is that, following the call for action on climate change and global warming from previous Popes we did not have the same kind of denialist response from the Right as we are now seeing. "What the Pope does more than anything else," Hescox says, "is he puts the issues of climate change...about being as pro-life, about being hope for rebuilding the economy, about sustainable energy for all. And that's the kind of language that, I think, awakens conservatives --- both theologically and political.

"I think that puts a little fear in people that the momentum is gathering against those who would differ on climate change, for all sorts of reasons... And it also puts fear in those whose way of life and, quite honestly, maybe whose funding sources may change."

Hescox rebuts the GOP/Fox "News" notion that Francis is "being political" in his positions on climate and other (suddenly) controversial issues. "He stands in the tradition of the Bible, which mandates to care for the Earth, to be good stewards of it and certainly, as we all know, to care for 'the least of these', which climate change impacts the most severely, both here in this country and around the world."

"Pastor Mitch" was last on the show in June, following the release of the Pope's encyclical on climate change. He tells me today that, since then, he's seen "a groundswell building" in the religious communinty and even saw, by way of one example, his own "moderate" Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), "support the EPA's Clean Power Plan basically because of his faith, because of the Pope's actions."

In the meantime, however, GOPers continue to try and marginalize the Pope as "meddling in politics" or, worse, as a "false Pope". Those folks are roundly criticized and held up to the ridicule they so richly deserve on today's program...which also includes one of the funniest moments in BradCast history. (At least in my opinion --- if not Desi Doyen's.)

Also today: More than 700 Muslim pilgrims are killed during an horrific stampede near a holy site in Saudi Arabia.

Download MP3 or listen to the complete program online below...

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On today's BradCast...

First: The Nation's Washington Correspondent and Wisconsin native son John Nichols joins us to explain what went wrong with the Walker campaign and what to expect in the wake of a state Supreme Court Justice dying yesterday in court.

"The fantasy," upon which Walker's campaign was built, Nichols tells me, "was that Americans hate trade unions so much --- they hate living wages, they hate good benefits, they hate weekends off, they hate vacations --- so much, that they were ready to elect a guy whose only argument for himself was that he got in a fight with the unions. And when Walker actually got the spotlight and he started talking about his record, what he wanted to do, everybody got bored in about five minutes."

Even Republicans "said, 'what else do you have for us?'," he says. "In fact a fifth of Republicans say they think unions should be stronger. So the notion that there's some scorching anti-union sentiment out there isn't true."

Nichols contends it wasn't a lack of funding that did Walker in, but he also explains why the Koch Brothers --- who have long been Walker's his biggest supporters --- didn't bother riding to his rescue. "When you play with billionaires, they always set the rules of the game," he explains.

Also, Nichols details how yesterday's sudden death of state Supreme Court Justice N. Patrick Crooks could shake up the balance of the court --- perhaps even more in Scott Walker's favor than it already is --- as another contentious court election battle now looms once again in the Badger State.

Next: The U.S. Judicial Conference sends its report [PDF] to the U.S. Congress on the now-resigned and long-disgraced U.S. District Court Judge Mark F. Fuller, following his arrest on domestic violence charges last year. Turns out, as we've long suspected and reported, Fuller was found, during the year-long investigation, to be a serial wife-beater.

"Judge Fuller physically abused [his second wife] Kelli Fuller at least eight times, both before and after they married, which included and culminated in the assault that took place on August 9, 2012, in the Riz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Atlanta, Georgia," the cover letter on the report to Congress reads. The Special Commission of federal judges investigating the matter also found the Judge lied (committed perjury) to the panel of federal judges carrying out the probe, and should be impeached by Congress for his "reprehensible conduct", even though he has already resigned.

I offer details and background on the full case on today's program, including information on Fuller's lifetime appointment to the federal bench by George W. Bush in 2002, his participation in the Karl Rove-cabal takedown of Alabama's Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman (who is still in federal prison following his sentencing by Fuller), and more.

My full report on this latest Fuller news, including some of the apparently false information his attorney offered me earlier this year (which I declined to report at the time), and Kelli Fuller's chilling 911 call from that hotel room in Atlanta last year, is now posted here.

Finally: Mid-show today, we received word that Hillary Clinton finally decided to take a public position on the Keystone XL pipeline. We've got her announcement and reaction to it from her fellow Democratic 2016 opponents and even a predictable thought or two from the Republican side of the contest...

Download MP3 or listen online to the complete show below...

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Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)