Gov. Chris Christie (R) could have made 24 New Jersey school teachers millionaires today. But, instead, he decided to spend the taxpayers money on a Special Election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) this October, just three weeks before his own previously scheduled election in November.

"Party leaders sent around a list of the kind of budget cuts that Mr. Christie could restore with the money to be spent on the special election," the New York Times noted. "$10 million he cut from after-school programs for children in the state’s most troubled cities; $8.6 million in tuition subsidies for college students; and $12 million in charity care at hospitals. Just weeks ago, they noted, Mr. Christie vetoed a proposal to establish early voting, saying the price tag — $25 million — was too high."

"I don’t know what the cost is and I quite frankly don’t care," said the Governor who has pretended, since coming to office in 2009, to be a fiscal conservative. "We’re not going to be penny-wise and pound-foolish around here," he said cryptically.

"Despite the governor's public denials, Christie allies were concerned that if a special election coincided with the gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Barbara Buono could benefit," reports National Journal. "With [Newark Mayor Cory] Booker as the favored Democratic Senate nominee, less-reliable Democratic voters, particularly African-Americans, would be more likely to show up at the polls. Even with a comfortable lead in the race, that's not a risk Christie welcomed."

Republicans, already incensed that Christie had the temerity to meet President Obama during a horrific natural disaster and not punch him in the face, are furious about it all.

While quietly working for a number of weeks prior to breaking the story of the Secret Koch Brothers Tapes and Christie's secret keynote stem-winder at their 2011 Summer Seminar, I recall, as I researched through hours of his speeches and various appearances, that this guy would have been the Democrats' worse nightmare had he decided to run for President in 2012. He was incredibly under-rated by Democrats who saw him only as a former Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney hack. He may have been a bald-faced liar, but he was really good at it, and really charming to boot, when he wanted (or needed) to be.

That, of course, was back when he was seen as a hard rightwinger (which he is, even today, as many have forgotten). Back when David Koch described him as "my kind of guy" after secretly meeting with him in New York City. Back prior to Christie's re-invention as a "reasonable bi-partisan Republican" --- a stroke of "luck" blown onshore by Superstorm Sandy and a common-sense willingness to not be a complete asshole while tens of thousands of his own constituents were literally drowning and/or fighting for their lives in the freezing cold, even if it was just days before a Presidential election.

That, in turn, earned him the eternal loathing of many of the base Primary voters in a party that hasn't a clue what's good for them, and stunningly high approval ratings from Democrats who may have forgotten who Christie really is, and just how opportunistically disingenuous he is willing to be.

His transparent edict today, declaring an extraordinarily wasteful Special Election only weeks before his own was already scheduled in the state, may remind Democrats about some of that, even as it further pisses of Republicans at the same time. But, at least just about everyone seemed happy to ignore his absurd protests that "There's no political purpose" to his purposely political move today. "The political purpose," he claimed with a straight face, "is to give the people a voice [because] the issues facing the United States Senate are too important not to have an elected representative making those decisions."

Yes, after waiting four months for that elected representative, the people of New Jersey simply couldn't have waited four months and three weeks. That would be a bridge too far. A bridge he'd be willing to sell you for about $24 million.

I don't have a whole lot to add right now to all of this, but it's a helluva fun story, so I figured I'd open it up to readers of The BRAD BLOG who may have some thoughts of their own to share on all of this. Will all be forgiven by the time the 2016 Primaries roll around? Will Christie be able to thread the impossible needle his party has created for him? Or will his rising star fall as quickly as it rose?

UPDATE 6/6/13: Jon Stewart now takes his own whack at Christie right here...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Scotland has a message for Donald Trump's hot air on wind farms; The IMF has a message for the oil industry (and they're not gonna like it); PLUS: A whole lotta frackin' going on --- from PA to CA, new revelations --- and earthquakes --- crack the fracking industry's facade ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iceland baffled by Chinese tycoon's Arctic golf resort; How US can shift from oil & gas; Iraqi oil now mostly China’s; Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya; Republican mayor leads CA city to nation's first solar energy mandate; Water wars: NM farmers vs. fossil fuel industry; Another bleak drought season for U.S.; Red states use more energy than blue states; UK's record weather extremes linked to Arctic sea ice loss; White House supports relaxing nuke rules; Rat poison manufacturer fights EPA ban ... PLUS: "You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice." ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: On the one hand, Obama moves the environmental ball forward --- on the other hand... not so much; Oil leak in CO; Fish populations rebound (thanks, Big Government!); BP trial update; Abu Dhabi opens world's largest solar plant; Power failure at stricken Fukushima nuke plant; PLUS: Wind turbine sickness caused by anti-wind propaganda ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): High-resolution charts show carbon impacts skyrocketing; Democratic senators intro legislation to end oil industry tax breaks; March's extreme weather swings; Emergency cleanup at abandoned gold mine; Canada scientists muzzled by Harper Administration; Debunking the Daily Mail -again; Days of promise fade for ethanol ... PLUS: "De-extinction": Why we shouldn't bring back extinct species from the dead ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Will WA state ship dirty coal to China?; Wacky winter weather strikes the Southeast; Which kills more birds - wind farms or house cats?; ALEC pushes anti-science curriculum; PLUS: A green tech oasis rises in the desert of Qatar ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Scientist: 69 ft of sea-level rise in motion; Opportunity costs to not using renewable energy; Breakthrough promises solar power cheaper than coal; Study: energy industry water use set to double by 2035; Alaskans try to flee climate change impacts; Fracking, now for uranium!... PLUS: How can Germany be both a green leader and remain an industrial powerhouse? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Superstorm Sandy disaster aid finally passed by Congress; Transportation Secretary to step down; Catastrophic flooding in Australia, while drought worsens in US; Poll: climate action a winner with voters; PLUS: Who in New York is paying to protest wind farms in Scotland? ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): UK's Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change'; Judge OKs BP’s guilty plea in Gulf oil spill; Keystone XL work veers onto wrong land; Wind Energy Surpasses Nuclear in China; Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink; EU sets common standard for elec. car chargers; Rare earth mining boom raises toxic risks ... PLUS: Exposing the Kochs: Billionaire Koch Bros. get sweet tax breaks by secretly funding climate change deniers ... and much, MUCH more! ...

"I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me." – Former FL Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, 9/6/2012

"Anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined." - Rep. Peter King (R-NY), 1/2/2013.

In the wake of the Jan. 1, 2013 decision by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to postpone a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief until after the 113th Congress was sworn in, NY Rep. Peter King's sense of betrayal, which he described as "a knife in the back" in a remarkable floor speech, is understandable, but his proposed remedy is woefully deficient.

The only way that Republicans in an entire region of the country --- the Northeast --- can achieve meaningful representation in the 113th Congress may be by way of a massive party switch. The increasingly rare breed of "moderate House Republicans" may soon only be left with the choice of emulating the late Sen. Arlen Specter's 2009 party switch, by either becoming Democrats or by becoming independents who will caucus with the Democrats.

Of course, that didn't work out terribly well for Specter either...

In "High Cost of Willfully Misinterpreting the 2nd Amendment" we touched upon the price the American people have paid in lives, injuries and grief, as measured against the extraordinary profits of U.S. small arms manufacturers whose domestic sales of increasingly sophisticated weapons, including the AR-15 and AK-47 styled assault rifles, similar to the one used in the mass shooting in Newton, CT last Friday, climbed to 14 million guns in 2009 alone --- greater than the total number possessed by 21 of the world's standing armies combined.

As the nation reels in the wake of the latest horror at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, it seems a worthwhile task to take a quick look at a partial history of mass shooting events in the U.S., starting with the 1966 University of Texas massacre so that we can take stock of what our nation's strange fascination with guns and ammo has truly wrought --- with increasing frequency since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive pipeline explosion melts WV highway; More bad news for wolves, this time courtesy of MI Republicans; Judge lifts Keystone XL pipeline restraining order; PLUS: There they go again: House GOP threatens to hold Hurricane Sandy recovery funds hostage ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): No 'Get-Out-of-Jail-Free' Card on Sea Level; Colorado River water supply to fall short of demand: study; Hundreds rally against PacNW coal trains; Interior Dept. delays fracking rules; UK lifts ban on fracking; Feds open CA lands to fracking development; Is A123 battery sale to China a threat to US security? PLUS: Question posed at AGU: “Is Earth F**ked?”... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Time's running for UN climate talks (and for the planet); Record winter heat blasts the Midwest (again); NY, NJ press for billions in Sandy disaster recovery; PLUS: Cannibal lobsters ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Air pollution regulations increase life expectancy in US; Mississippi River near record lows, threatens 20k jobs; Typhoon Bopha kills 40 in the Phillipines; Costs double for new French nuke plant; Bye, CFLs?: Cheap lighting breakthrough; 44 hazardous pollutants near gas drilling sites ... PLUS: 4 Reasons to hope we can still avert the worst impacts of climate change ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Lisa Graves, of The Center for Media and Democracy [CMD], is "asking citizens to contact their Senator and demand hearings on the way 'dark money' has stealthily influenced the election." The CMD's proposal includes a specific demand that Charles and David Koch be subpoenaed to testify --- something which, Graves explains, the oil and chemical magnate brothers evaded some 15 years ago when U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) blocked efforts to force them to testify about their use of front groups to influence elections.

Unlike the GOP, whose calls for "Watergate-style" Benghazi hearings have been described as "political theater," the incoming 55-member Senate Democratic Caucus is in a position to conduct a broad and thorough set of hearings that could expose the ever-present threat to the very survival of democratic governance by what former Vice President Henry A. Wallace described as "the American fascist."

Coming within the context of near universal opposition to the flood of corporate money that drown out the voices of ordinary citizens, such hearings could also serve to catapult growing calls to not only overturn the infamous Citizens United decision but to end the concept of "corporate personhood" and establish that money is not "free speech."

The United States Senate has not been in a position to conduct hearings of such monumental import since Sen. Sam Ervin (D-SC) chaired the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices aka the Senate Watergate Committee...

Amidst disaster, a silver lining?

Hurricane Sandy demolished the policies of individual greed that found their most absurd application in Mitt Romney's prior proposal to privatize disaster relief. The super storm tested the inner resolve and character of a Republican governor, who was forced to choose between the doctrinaire insanity required by his dirty energy billionaire benefactors and responsible governance that, of necessity, includes coordination of critical disaster relief between federal, state and local agencies.

If there's a silver lining to be found in the death and devastation, it exists in how disaster can bring out the best in individuals operating together as a community and in the public function of government of, by and for the people...

[This article cross-posted by Salon...]

Since both before Superstorm Sandy hit, and after, we've been reporting on concerns in states where voters are forced to vote on electronic voting systems on Election Day and, thus, could be kept from being able to cast a vote at all in this Tuesday's Presidential Election should power be unavailable at polling sites.

We've noted that voters simply cannot cast a vote at all on such systems when the power is out, and that it's just one more reason why no American should ever be forced to vote on the 100% unverifiable voting systems, incredibly, still in use across most of states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and parts of Ohio which were all hit hard by the storm, along with New York, Connecticut and elsewhere.

We've got a bit of good news to report today, for some of the voters whose ability to vote at all has been imperiled by this inexcusable, completely foreseeable failure by public officials who have long ago been warned about this possibility and yet refused to do the sensible thing and move to a verifiable paper ballot system to avoid it.

The news is more encouraging in states like NY and CT, where officials respect voters enough to allow them all to vote on paper ballots, even when natural disasters haven't struck...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: With Hurricane Sandy recovery underway, Bloomberg endorses Obama, Romney is heckled, and the impacts of climate change finally begin to dawn on corporate media and public officials; PLUS: Planning ahead for a climate changed future ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): CIA's Climate Change Security Report Delayed Due To Hurricane Sandy; Winter Storm May Hit In Early November, Possibly On Election Day; Energy company CEO: Why do we have to talk about climate change today?; Australia Rejects Calls From The Fossil Fuel Industry To Roll Back 20 Percent Renewable Energy Target; Exxon And Shell Earn $54 Billion So Far In 2012, After Taking $800 Million In Annual Tax Breaks; KFC UK will no longer source from Asia Pulp & Paper ... PLUS: The Onion: Nation Suddenly Realizes This Just Going To Be A Thing That Happens From Now On ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[This article was cross-published by Salon.]

With just 5 days to go until the nation holds its next Presidential Election, power remains out in large swaths of the Eastern Seaboard, according to Google Maps' special Hurricane Sandy power outage map.

The outages persist in a number of states which force the majority of their voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines to cast their votes at the polls on Election Day. If power is out at the polling place on Election Day in those states, voters may not be able to cast their vote at all.

As we warned before Sandy barreled ashore earlier this week, the ability of voters to vote at all --- presuming polling places are not flooded and voters are able to get to them --- is imperiled by states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and even Ohio, all of which force all, or some of their voters to vote on systems which simply do not work if they do not have power.

While most of those states require a small percentage of emergency paper ballots be made available at the precincts, that number is unlikely to be enough in the event that voting machines are unavailable all day at the polls on November 6th. Moreover, battery backups on the electronic touch-screen systems are unreliable at best and, even when working, can only be counted on for a small number of hours.

In Pennsylvania, for example, as noted yesterday by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "In case of power loss, local election officials are encouraged to keep enough paper ballots on hand for 20 and 25 percent of their registered voters."

While the PA Dept. of State claimed in the same report that voting machines can run on backup batteries "about six hours," a Lehigh County, PA election official offers a more realistic assessment, noting their touch-screen system backup batteries last just 2 and a half hours at best.

The BRAD BLOG has long warned that power loss on Election Day is just another, among a myriad of reasons why forcing voters to use such systems is insane and extraordinarily disrespectful to the electorate in such jurisdictions. Other reasons why these type of voting systems should never be used: They are 100% unverifiable in every case (whether they include a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" or not, as some do) and computer scientists and security experts have long warned, in virtually every instance where these type of systems have been examined over the past decade, that they are both prone to failure and easily manipulated, by both election insiders and hackers alike, in ways that are unlikely to ever be detected.

At The Nation today, Ari Berman notes that "Thanks to a wave of new voting restrictions passed by Republicans, the 2012 election was already shaping up to be pretty chaotic before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, which left 8.2 million households without power in 15 states and the District of Columbia."

He then goes on to detail some of the worst hotspots for concern...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: HURRICANE SANDY SPECIAL REPORT: The storm, the aftermath, and the impacts of climate change; PLUS: A reminder of one Presidential candidate's position on federal disaster relief --- Mitt Romney has called for privatizing it ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Chevron: $2.5 Million To GOP Super PAC. Single Largest Corporate Donation; BP Oil Spill: Researchers Take a Deep Look at Gulf Seafood Safety; BP returns to profitability; WY coal art dispute rages on; There Is No 'Simple Fix' for Commodity Farming; Protests Against Expansion of China Chemical Plant Turn Violent; Sand Mine Riches Are Tough to Refuse ... PLUS: Hurricane Sandy: Haiti in emergency aid plea as disaster piles upon disaster ... and much, MUCH more! ...