During this highly unorthodox election cycle, some of the harshest criticisms of Donald Trump have been leveled by respected members of the right-wing establishment.

Early on, the fascist label was first affixed to Trump’s policies not by Bernie Sanders but by John Noonan, foreign policy advisor to Jeb Bush.

Now, just weeks away from the November 8, 2016 Presidential Election, Max Boot, a neocon apologist and former foreign policy advisor to hawkish Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) informs us in a Los Angeles Times editorial that he can hear "Nazi echoes in Trump's tweets".

Specifically, Boot makes a troubling comparison between the fact-free tweet the Republican nominee posted in response to the firebombing of a North Carolina Trump campaign office to the deliberately deceptive Nazi response to the Reichstag fire of Feb. 27, 1933...

Today on The BradCast, Donald Trump might be having second thoughts about all of those calls for "law and order", even as he's clearly already having second thoughts about his years of on-the-record climate change denialism.

After a breaking news update on the deadly commuter trainwreck this morning in Hoboken, NJ, we move back to the ongoing Trumpwreck in these United States, including two brand new investigative reports on Trump's, um, extralegal activities regarding the New York Attorney General's probe into multiple apparent illegalities carried out by the GOP nominee's personal use of his "charitable" foundation and a blockbuster new Newsweek exposé concerning his company's unlawful business in Fidel Castro's Cuba at the height of the U.S. embargo against the island nation.

All of that, even as Trump continues to pretend to be the "law and order" candidate. Also, another new report today offers more evidence, despite both the candidate and his campaign's insistence to the contrary, that the GOP nominee treats female employees of his organization poorly.

Then, as yet another massive rain and flooding event plays out today, this time in North Carolina, Desi Doyen joins us for some fact-checking in response to Trump's denial of his own global warming denialism from the first Presidential Debate, as well as a response to charges that Hillary Clinton herself has not done nearly enough on climate and environment issues.

Finally, don't worry! Just in case we've brought you all down today, we finish with a song almost certain to cheer you up! You're welcome! Please enjoy lawfully...

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On today's BradCast, a whole lotta liars, cheats and scam artists! (So what else is new?) [Audio link follows below.]

First up today: The terror plot that unfolded this week that you likely didn't hear about. (It concerned a white, domestic terrorist, allegedly hoping to blow up a building. So, who cares, right?)

Then: as we struggle (along with the rest of the media) with the difficulty of how to appropriately and effectively and accurately cover the dangerous threat to our nation and world known as Donald Trump, David Farenthold offers a new scoop at Washington Post on how the GOP Presidential nominee unlawfully used his supposed charitable foundation (comprised of other people's money) for "self-dealing" --- essentially, as a slush fund to get his businesses out of legal trouble.

Next: Sen. Elizabeth Warren's epic take down of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf in the U.S. Senate today, following his company's admission, and his own claims of "accountability", concerning millions of fraudulent customer accounts the bank created to scam investors and increase profits. We play an extended, must-listen excerpt from her grilling of Stumpf today, as she called on him to resign and for him to be criminal investigated for his part in the scam.

Finally: Just one more reason, among many, that the U.S. was found, yet again, to have "the worst ranking of any established democracy" in the new Election Integrity Project report from the University of Sydney and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. A federal judge rules that the state of Texas has already violated a court-ordered remedy to their illegal Photo ID voting law, just weeks after striking a very specific agreement with the U.S. Dept. of Justice and private plaintiffs to assure all legally registered voters would be able to cast a regular ballot this November without challenge...

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On today's BradCast, the bombshell passage of Britain's EU 'Brexit' Referendum is shaking both world markets and politics. Is the rise of nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment in the UK a disturbing omen for the U.S. Presidential election this fall? [Audio link to complete show is below.]

Donald Trump certainly hopes so, as he's changed his position on European unity from just three years ago, when he was for it, to today, when he's apparently against it, now that he's running for President. On today's show we discuss a number of things that Americans can and should learn from both the dishonest politics of the Brexit vote and the way the election itself was carried out (on publicly hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots.)

Meanwhile, back here across the pond, the fight to count votes from the June 7th primary in California continues, and the fight to keep (certain) voters from voting at all continues as well in a federal courtroom in North Carolina (No, Washington Post, Photo ID is not required to board an airplane and you should let your readers know as much), and in the great state of Texas, where so-called 'conservatives' have spent millions of taxpayer dollars attempting to defend their illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional Photo ID voting restriction year after year in case after case. (Texit, anyone?)

Finally, we look at details from the unlawful purge of voters in Brooklyn, which came to light after the NY state primary in April. Were Sanders voters purged at a higher rate than Clinton voters, as Sanders supporters have been charging? We look at some of the actual evidence now in, which suggests otherwise (and as we've previously argued.) Plus: Death toll rising along with flood waters in West Virginia and in China; And Bluegrass fans lose a legend...

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On today's BradCast [audio link below], we examine the reported results of Hillary Clinton's huge victory over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina over the weekend: What do they mean? Can the results be "trusted"? Are corporate media such as NY Times and Washington Post misleading Americans about what the current numbers, including the Democratic Party delegate count, actually suggest?

Then, I'm joined by Current Affairs magazine editor Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his recent feature article which makes the case that "unless the Democrats run Sanders, a Trump nomination means a Trump Presidency".

Robinson, an attorney, Harvard PhD student and children's book author, offers one of the most persuasive arguments I've heard to date regarding the "electability" of Sanders versus Clinton --- at least under the presumption that Trump is to be the Republicans' standard-bearer.

"The problem with polls is that they are unable to foresee events that will occur in the future that will change the way people think," Robinson explains about perceived advantages that some see in Clinton's favor right now. "Things that happen in the campaign change people's opinions, make them more favorable to one candidate, less favorable to another."

The "key point" in Robinson's calculation: Donald Trump as the GOP nominee. "That is something that the Democrats need to start thinking when they ask all these questions about electability. 'What's going to happen? Who is going to be attacked and how?' They need to be thinking in terms that Donald Trump is likely to be the nominee."

While it's true the Right has been attacking Hillary for years --- something that Sanders has yet to face --- she has never come under the full withering force of Trump's particularly aggressive and personal campaign style, argues Robinson, who says he's not personally a fan of either Clinton or Sanders (or Trump, for that matter.) He details why he believes Clinton stands to be pulled under by Trump's onslaught, whereas Sanders stands a far greater chance of surviving the type of campaign that Trump has shown himself willing to wage against his Republican opponents.

We discuss what is likely to happen in both a Trump v. Sanders and Trump v. Clinton race, how Democrats who are focused on the inevitable attacks from the Right against Sanders as a "Socialist!" may be missing a much larger concern, and how all of this calculus completely changes if someone other than Trump somehow manages to win the GOP nomination.

Finally, the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has already had a profound effect on the Court. On Friday, Dow Chemical dropped their planned SCOTUS appeal of a $1 billion judgment against them, citing the "increased...likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for business involved in class action suits." And, today, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke up to ask questions during oral arguments at the Court for the first time in 10 years!...

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In anticipation of Thursday's formal announcement, the L.A. Times described the effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to secure the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States as a "long shot."

That assessment is consistent with a recent ABC News/Washington Post Presidential Preference Poll finding that Hillary Clinton not only trounces any potential Democratic challenger but also showing her well ahead of specifically-named GOP candidates. It is also consistent with the MSM's past practice of immediately setting out to marginalize candidates who pose a threat to corporate wealth and power.

The "long shot" perception is both a reflection and product of what Prof. Noam Chomsky, in Failed States, described as the "democracy deficit" --- the significant gap between the policy positions of the electorate and their elected representatives. Long before the Supreme Court handed down its infamous Citizens United decision, Chomsky attributed the "democracy deficit" to the manner in which "elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population…freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people."

As reflected by this Washington Post headline from Chris Cillizza --- "Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be president. That’s not the point." --- the 2016 MSM marginalization strategy is already in play. Without waiting to see how the public, itself, would react to a Sanders/Clinton debate, or even see how they'll react to his policy positions when and if they get to hear them, the Post tells its readers to just forget about it.

Sanders countered Cillizza's contention during his April 30 news conference: "We're in this race to win." (See video below)

As Sanders, himself, appears to recognize, it is not Hillary Clinton, but the "democracy deficit," that is his true opponent. "Hillary Clinton is a remarkable woman with an extraordinary history of public service," Sanders said earlier this year, during an address at the National Press Club. "It would not be my job to run against her. It would be my job, if she ran and if I ran, to debate the serious issues facing our country."

In this age of deception, where the oligarchy's PR industry and corporate-owned MSM tirelessly strive for message control, Sanders' effort to bridge the "democracy deficit" by way of a campaign based on "serious issues" is a daunting task. But it's one that, if successful, could not only lead to a Sanders landslide but also to nothing less than a "democratic revolution"...

The pace of GOP voter suppression stories and scams is now cascading in faster than we're able to fully check out or report in detail. So, for now, here are a few very important stories that are likely to become even more relevant in the coming days, even as we've only time for quick coverage here at the moment...

Well, it took long enough for Washington Post's editorial board to take notice of wife-beating U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller, but at least they finally have...

The paper then details the police response to the horrifying 911 call from Fuller's wife Kelli after the Judge reportedly "threw her to the ground, pulled her by the hair, kicked her and hit her in the face" (the actual 911 call is more horrifying still), leaving her bloodied inside their Ritz-Carlton hotel room in Atlanta on August 9th, and the disturbing similarities to the case of the NFL's Ray Rice, who was also allowed off the hook by the court system after beating up his then-fiancee/now-wife, as "first time offenders". (Even though Judge Fuller's previous wife alleged similar physical abuse during their divorce trial).

And then...

In a blog item on Monday, law professor Ilya Somin, of the Washington Post's right-leaning "Volokh Conspiracy" blog, declared the weekend's reported 96.7% vote in favor of Crimea joining Russia to be either fraudulent or the result of voter intimidation of some kind.

In the article, Somin called the results "dubious" and "highly improbable," declaring at least three times in his very short, 6-paragraph item that the referendum's results were "achieved" (his quotes) and/or "likely tainted by fraud or intimidation" --- the likelihood of which Somin describes as a "fact."

"It is highly improbable that 96.7% would have voted yes in a genuinely free vote, since the Crimean population includes large Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar minorities that are overwhelmingly opposed to a return to Russian rule," the George Mason University School of Law professor instructs. "Crimean officials are also reporting a high 83% turnout. If that figure is correct, it makes it unlikely that the 96.7% result is explicable by selective turnout. If, on the other hand, officials are lying about the turnout, they could be engaging deception about the vote margin as well."

Mainstream corporate media in the U.S. have a very difficult time reporting on real evidence of fraud in American elections, much less reporting it as "fact." But when it comes to elections overseas, particularly those which involve perceived geopolitical foes of the U.S., papers like the Washington Post seem to have little, if any, reluctance in offering exceedingly speculative arguments that all but declare elections held by others to be "fraudulent." (See this head-spinning irony, also involving Ukraine, just days after the very same disparity in Exit Polling, carried out by the same firm, resulted in questions about the legitimacy of results from Ukraine's November 2004 Presidential election, but not the still-disputed results of the 2004 Presidential elections in the U.S. just a week or two earlier.)

But 96.7% is, indeed, an outrageously high number for any election result. So how much legitimacy should be given to the results of the voting announced from the weekend referendum in Crimea, given what we know about the balloting and what we don't? And can the U.S. learn anything --- for better or worse --- about the way votes were cast and counted in Crimea?...

Still on the road (back full time as of next week), but thought this video from yesterday's The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN was well worth popping here quickly, if you've yet to see it.

It's a fantastic and very lively debate about Edward Snowden and, perhaps most-interestingly, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, between journalist Glenn Greenwald and Washington Post op-ed columnist Ruth Marcus. Greenwald describes Marcus here --- much to her apparent consternation --- as an Obama Administration "loyalist" for, among other things, what he sees as a double-standard for her calls for the prosecution of whistleblower Snowden, versus the seeming free pass she's willing to give to Administration officials such as Clapper who has admitted to misleading Congress with false testimony (aka Lying to Them). That would be a felony crime...if anybody bothered to prosecute it.

Greenwald is tenacious (as usual) in forcing Marcus to answer his question about whether Clapper should be prosecuted. For her part, she does a decent job of acquitting herself, sort of, even as the entire conversation --- and the two staked-out positions here --- really do help to illustrate, as Greenwald describes it, how "the D.C. media" and "people in Washington continuously make excuses for those in power when they break the law."

"That's what people in Washington do," he charges. "They would never call on someone like James Clapper, who got caught lying to Congress, which is a felony, to be prosecuted. They only pick on people who embarrass the government and the administration to which they are loyal, like Edward Snowden. It's not about the rule of law."

"People in Washington who are well-connected to the government like she is, do not believe that the law applies to them. They only believe that the law should be used to punish people and imprison people who don't have power in Washington or who expose the wrongdoing of American political officials," Greenwald argues. I'll let you watch to see how Marcus responds.

This one is very much worth watching in full. If you prefer, the complete text transcript is posted here...

I was joined on this week's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast by Dan Froomkin, formerly of the Washington Post, where he worked for more than a decade before becoming Washington Bureau Chief for the Huffington Post before becoming the founder of the soon-to-be-launched Center for Accountability Journalism at FearlessMedia.org.

My first question to him: Why should anyone in the public, other than journalism industry insiders, actually care that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post this week?

His response to that question and others on the recent shameful history and hopeful future of journalism were much more optimistic than mine --- but, as I note during the show, I really need a break (which I hope to get somewhere in the mountains next week), so I may be a even more cynical this week than usual.

Speaking of cynicism, I also ranted a bit on the United States of Fear and Redaction, on CA Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley's vote to continue violating her constituents' and every American's civil liberties, and even found some time to offer some improbable kudos to WI Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner for his support of the Voting Rights Act.

All that, a bit more, and even Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report can be enjoyed in this week's BradCast.

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

"If a tree falls in the forest (because of global warming), but the media doesn’t report on it, does it make a sound?," asks Joe Romm at Climate Progress, along with a pretty incredible observation.

Romm highlighted the Washington Post's front page banner the day after this week's State of the Union speech, during which President Obama spent a rather large chunk of it on issues related to climate change and energy.

Nonetheless, when WaPo summarized the percentage of the speech devoted to each of the various topics mentioned during the address, here was the front page banner used to detail it on Wednesday (click graphic to enlarge):

As Romm notes:

Amazing.

But, maybe such things just aren't very important to the "State of the Union" after a year of record drought, record heat, and a record number of global warming-related natural disasters.

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

Citizens United rejected a congressional legislative ban on corporate campaign contributions. It says nothing about the ability to tax such contributions...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"When you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, a woman’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body." - Georgetown Univ. Law Student, Sandra Fluke

One unfortunate aspect of the firestorm surrounding Rush Limbaugh's profoundly uninformed, deceptive and misogynistic vitriol and calls for accountability for the Rightwing radio blowhard, is that it has completely overshadowed the substance of Fluke's testimony on the importance of access to prescription contraceptives to women's health.

The Limbaugh firestorm has also overshadowed the fact that the American Taliban (aka the elected Tea Party House Republicans) prevented Fluke from testifying at a House Oversight Committee hearing, framed by the Republican majority as a hearing on "religious freedom", because, as the Washington Post described, "she was not a member of the clergy."

Indeed, while much is made of the fact that the first panel at the 2/16/12 House Oversight Committee examining an issue vital to women's health was all-male, few have taken note that it was also all-clergy. In opening the hearing, Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced: "Today, the committee will hear testimony from leaders of different faiths."

Not only did the right-wing GOP House leaders fail to so much as recognize Fluke's right to be heard, but, according to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (see video embedded in above-linked Washington Post article), they also refused to permit House Democrats to use the House Recording Studio as part of an effort to try and prevent the public from seeing and hearing Fluke's testimony at all. Instead, Pelosi and the Democrats of the Democratic Steering Committee were forced to hold a separate, unofficial "forum", in order to hear Fluke's testimony.

The video of Fluke's opening statement, the testimony that Republicans sought to prevent from being heard at all, is now posted below.

But it is the larger, arguably more disturbing constitutional ramifications of the actions of House Republicans that we'd like to take a moment to highlight on, as they have been almost entirely overlooked in this unnecessary brouhaha...