On today's BradCast, we start where we left off on yesterday's show, regarding Thursday's amazingly corrupt and disturbing ruling in favor of Scott Walker and his cronies --- by the amazingly corrupt Wisconsin Supreme Court --- and how, if Republicans have their way, that ruling may soon enough become the law of the land for the entire nation.

As our producer Desi Doyen noted on today's show: "This is your early warning system." Ignore at your peril. Then it was on to a couple of quick items and updates, including dumb Confederate flag wavers in Oklahoma and Maine's even dumber Governor Paul LePage.

From there, we head to North Carolina, where "the most extreme anti-voter bill passed by any state since the Jim Crow Era", as we initially described it when it was passed by state Republicans back in 2013, is finally now facing trial against the NAACP, the ACLU, the DoJ and other democracy and voting rights advocates.

We are joined by The Nation's author/journalist Ari Berman, who was in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem, NC this week as the trial finally got under way. The results of this trial are likely to head all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, one way or another, and may well determine the future of voting rights in this country. The new voting restrictions were passed in 2013, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court demolished the provision of the Voting Rights Act that otherwise, says Berman, would have kept this law --- which is "already disenfranchising voters" --- from even taking effect.

"That's such a clear case study to me that the Supreme Court was wrong when it said that the special protections of the Voting Rights act weren't needed." Berman goes on to explain why he believes NC, a state which had made astounding progress in voting rights over the previous decade, has now become the new Selma, Alabama, where the bloody fight for voting rights led directly to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965.

"In North Carolina, they had seemingly everything," Berman tells me. "They had all these voting reforms --- early voting, same day registration, pre-registration for 16 &17 year olds. And it was all taken away or reduced" when the GOP took over both the state legislature and Governor's mansion for the first time since Reconstruction in 2013.

"What Selma in the 1960s and what North Carolina in the 2013-2015 era shows is how far these conservative white Southerners will go to protect political power. There aren't billy clubs. There aren't literacy tests. But they're saying this is how black turnout increased --- North Carolina went from 48th in voter turnout in the late 80s, to 11th in voter turnout in 2012 --- Republicans there basically said we're gonna tamp this turnout down."

And now it's left to the courts to find out if those rights, once granted, can be taken away by political whim --- and if NC, and other states with a history of racial discrimination in elections, will be forced once again to face preclearance from the federal government before they can enforce any new voting restrictions.

Berman has a lot of insight on all of this. His new book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, will be published next month to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of passage of the VRA. As I note during the show, the book is an exhaustively researched and heart-wrenching documentation of the uniquely American and harrowing tale of the fight to vote in this country --- and the outrageously long and continuing effort to block it. That fight continues, sadly, to this day. Go buy his book!

Finally, Desi joins us again for some listener email and then a stunningly upbeat Green News Report for a change!...

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I had to ask my guest on today's BradCast whether I was being overly dramatic in seeing today's stunning news from the Wisconsin Supreme Court as "the death of democracy". He did not warn me off that thinking.

Before that, however, we quickly covered two other breaking stories today: The verdict in the Aurora, CO shooting case and another new shooting today at two U.S. Marine facilities in Chattanooga, TN --- along with some thoughts on both of them.

Then, it's onto the jaw-dropping WI Supreme Court verdict in the challenge to the prosecutorial investigation into blatant collusion between Gov. Scott Walker and a number of Rightwing groups which spent millions in an alleged "criminal scheme" to help Walker win his 2012 recall election.

Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy joins us to explain the outrageous ruling. It's disturbing on several levels and bodes ominously for campaign finance laws across the entire nation. It's a must-hear interview, frankly.

In short, Walker and his campaign colluded with those "outside" groups in violation of state campaign finance law and what the U.S. Supreme Court said, in Citizens United, was not supposed to happen. But, it did --- to the tune of millions of dollars to help get Walker elected. Amazingly, it was the Rightwing groups that went to court in this matter to claim that their rights were being abridged by the prosecutors' investigation (a Republican prosecutor, by the way). We explain, in detail, how they made that case and how the Court's Justices went along with them to shut down the so-called "John Doe II" investigation.

But, the most outrageous part is the fact that the very same groups who sued to quash the probe also funded the elections (to the tunes of millions of dollars) of the very same Rightwing WI Supreme Court Justices who found in their favor today. That, despite both the prosecutor's request that those Justice's recuse themselves and a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Caperton v. Massey) finding that judges must recuse if the case they are hearing involves a party with a "significant and disproportionate influence" on their elections.

"This is not just about past conduct, this is about future conduct, as well," Fischer tells me. "The court has okayed outside coordination between outside groups and candidates. It applies to their own campaigns, it applies to elections for judges....And the exact same groups that were parties to this case are going to be able to coordinate directly with these justices when they are up for re-election."

And, as if all of that isn't outrageous enough, this case, as I've long warned, is part of a national effort to eviscerate similar campaign finance restrictions across the entire nation --- because Citizens United and McCutcheon etc. apparently isn't yet enough for these Republicans.

"There's really not a whole lot left," Fischer says. "And you can see this being a huge mile-marker in the continued erosion on limits of money in politics. And it's not going to turn out well." Oh, well. I did try to warn everyone at least a year ago that this case was "about much more than just Walker and his corruption."

There's much more. But, as I said, a must-hear conversation today.

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We've spent no small amount of time over the years here at The BRAD BLOG calling out the duplicity, hypocrisy, cruelty and even felony crimes of Ann Coulter.

We've personally run her off the radio waves, helped discourage otherwise legitimate news outlets from giving her airtime, lest they damage their own credibility, helped her become persona non-grata at CPAC (where she was previously queen), and helped to document, in no uncertain terms, her own, personal, multiple cases of voter fraud in at least two different states.

People used to ask why we even bothered with her. She was and is, after all, clearly a horrible person with grotesquely ugly, hateful and violent views, and a years-long proclivity for propping herself and her career up at the unapologetically cruel expense of others.

But Ann Coulter mattered. As a GOP Superstar, she helped set the agenda for a huge segment of the nation (whether the chumps, rubes and suckers she helped to influence even knew it, much less were willing to admit it.) And few were able to respond to her bullshit effectively to set the record straight.

The good news, as Heather Digby Parton explains in a detailed column at Salon this week, Coulter, officially, no longer matters. Her books no longer sell, she is no longer the darling of the news networks and, as even she admits, she now has a very difficult time getting booked anywhere, much less being able to sell her once-popular, book-shaped screeds.

"They're ignoring me now!," Coulter whined last month to New York's Annie Lowrey in an article headlined "Ann Coulter Wants to Know Why She Doesn't Make You Mad Anymore".

"Coulter has found herself struggling to annoy, enrage, and otherwise provoke the mainstream media or the left," Lowrey reports. "Bloggers have left her alone. Twitter has left her alone. The networks have left her alone. 'Nobody will debate me!' she said. 'There's been no ABC, NBC, CBS for me on this book!'"

Parton's brief, if detailed history of the once-very relevant rightwing polemicist is actually quite fair (far more than we would have been), as is her conclusion in Salon analysis, explaining why it is --- particular at the dawn of this new Progressive Age --- that Ann Coulter, simply, no longer matters...

Greece is the word! On today's BradCast, financial journalist David Dayen joins us to explain the latest news in the Greek fiscal crisis and how austerity measures being forced on them continue to harm the nation even as the Eurozone and IMF move to make things worse, citizens head to the polls to help decide what to do about it and the "vultures" continue to make out like bandits.

"The problem is that these European institutions want Syriza [Greek's currently ruling leftist party] to suffer because they want to snuff this out," Dayen explains. "If an anti-austerity party is successful in one country in the Eurozone, that's going to tell the rest of the Eurozone that they don't have to live under these conditions anymore."

Dayen also tips us off to a similar fiscal mess now unfolding in Puerto Rico and how, even though "FastTrack" authority for the TPP (and other trade agreements for the next six years) has now been passed by Congress and signed by Obama, the controversial secret trade agreement could still be blocked in the U.S. House.

Then, I explain the Supreme Court decision you probably didn't hear about this week, which --- though good in that it tells Republican "voter fraud" fraudster and KS Sec. of State Kris Kobach to go to hell --- still leaves more than 30,000 otherwise perfectly legal voters in Kansas (and many in Arizona as well) unable to cast a vote in their own state.

Finally, Trump-mania continues as The Donald is fired by one group after another yet still manages to vault into 2nd place in Iowa polling. Donald Trump is the modern Republican Party id, whether they'll admit it or not, and they've got a real problem on their hands. On the other hand, I couldn't be enjoying it more!

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On today's BradCast...The U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision [PDF] in King v. Burwell, a case that would have gutted the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare"). As usual, Justice Scalia, on the losing side once again, displayed his extraordinary hypocrisy in his dissent to a case that was stupid to begin with. I explain on today's show.

Then, the last election challenge of 2014 (as far as we know): Dr. Laura Pressley joins me explains why it's impossible to know whether the results of her runoff election for Austin City Council were accurately tabulated on the 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems used in Travis County, across much of the state of Texas and across much of our country.

"We're not just fighting this for our single city council district race. This is a bigger issue," Pressley explains. "Elections have to be verifiable. Candidates need to have the right to question and ask for validation. This is a tenet of our democracy."

Pressley charges that the unverifiable Hart-Intercivic eSlate voting systems actually violate the Lone Star state's own elections laws, even as they clearly undermine overseeable democracy. Remarkably, she says she is now facing a potential court fine of $100,000 for simply bringing her challenge, following some rather disturbing irregularities on the voting systems during her runoff and a complete inability to recount thousands of in-person electronic ballots despite an exact tie on the Vote-by-Mail paper ballots.

Her case was dismissed in state court, but she is appealing the decision and tells me: "One of the comments [in court] was, we needed to be punished as a candidate for challenging these electronic voting systems and that the sanctions should reflect a punishment to deter other candidates from bringing this forward."

Plus: Fox 'News' discovers that electronic voting systems can be hacked; Texas continues preparation to survive its impending take-over by the U.S. government. All on today's BradCast!...

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As I suggested earlier today, I believe Donald Trump just blew up the 2016 Republican Presidential primary, and maybe even the 2016 general election.

All bets are off, now that, as our guest on today's BradCast, Heather 'Digby' Parton of Salon and Digby's Hullabalo explains, the very embodiment of the misbegotten Reaganist American Dream --- and a TV star, at that --- has entered the contest for the Republican nomination.

Born a millionaire, Trump "became a billionaire, which is really kind of the ultimate American Dream. In fact, it's the only American Dream now," Parton opines. "You're a billionaire or your not and anything less than that is, you're kind of a loser."

Am I right when I argue that media and political pundits who disregard him as a clown (which he is), "misunderestimate" Trump's candidacy at their own peril? Parton, a 2014 Hillman Foundation Prize winner for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, seems to believe I could be. After all, she notes, "this is the culmination of about 30 years of propaganda" that folks like Reagan, Fox "News" and Roger Ailes put in place.

Trump "is channeling the GOP id," she says, adding: "The grand metaphor of this era, is Frankenstein's monster getting out of control. And that's what happened on the Right. And Donald Trump is another manifestation of that particular metaphor coming to life."

Plus: Speaking of misbegotten Reaganists, how Gov. Sam Brownback's Kansas has officially become "a Dickensian nightmare"; And Politifact fails again in rating Hillary Clinton's facts about the voting rights records of her opponents...

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On today's BradCast...Jeb Bush makes it official! (But don't notice his brother!) Who could have guessed he'd run, after spending so many months violating federal campaign finance laws? And Hillary launches her campaign with a rally on Roosevelt Island in NY, promising to support a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and "end the flow of secret, unaccountable money distorting our elections".

Public Citizen's Craig Holman joins us to discuss all of the above and how "we are now being besieged --- in the last election it was $300 million --- by dark money. Money that influences our elections, but we have no idea where it came from."

More specifically, Holman discusses how Republicans on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) continue to block any and all enforcement of existing campaign finance law, as seen in the organization's ongoing lawsuit attempting to hold Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS accountable for campaign finance violations from as long ago as 2010!

"Just as big of a problem, when it comes to enforcing our campaign finance laws, is the Federal Elections Commission," Holman says, while explaining again how the FEC has become purposely paralyzed by its three Republican commissioners who flatly refuse to enforce existing statutes. "When [the FEC] cannot act and when it cannot make a decision, we literally have no cop on the beat when it comes to money in politics."

His use of the word "literally" there, is literally correct, for a change. That's right, even without the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision --- even if it eventually gets overturned somehow --- unless the courts or the DoJ step in to take control of the matter (which, he explains, they actually can!), the GOP and their operatives on the FEC will allow campaigns to get away with campaign finance murder during yet another Presidential election. Listen to today's show for much more on this. But, yes, Citizens United ain't the half of it...

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Oh, look! NPR says "EPA Finds No Widespread Drinking Water Pollution From Fracking"! Politico reports "EPA: Fracking's no big threat to water"! And wingnut Washington Times declares "EPA: Fracking doesn't harm drinking water"!

But is that what the EPA really said in their new draft assessment of the known effects of oil and gas hydraulic fracturing on drinking water? Earthworks Action's Lauren Pagel joined me on today's BradCast to try and help set the record straight. Wish us luck.

Also today: Hillary Clinton joins the Democratic fight for democratic rights. We cover her speech today at Texas Southern University on restoring voting rights suppressed by Republicans and the Supreme Court, and expanding those rights to include 20 days of early voting in every state and automatic universal registration for all citizens 18 years of age and older.

Plus: The indicted former TX Gov. Rick Perry jumps in to the 2016 GOP race; Jeb Bush finally agrees to follow the law (eventually); Georgetown University divests from coal (for what it's worth) and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, which happens to be on almost all of the above...

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We've reported for years about the ease with which foreign entities could hack a computerized US election with little possibility of being discovered. Well, guess what classic book was reportedly found on 'Bin Laden's Bookshelf'? We discuss on today's BradCast!

Then, my guest is the imprisoned Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL)'s son Joseph Siegelman (pictured above with his father and sister Dana just before his father was sent back to federal prison in 2012 to serve out his 6.5 year sentence on "bribery" charges), on the latest disturbing ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals concerning his father's appeal for a new trial and/or reduced sentence in his outrageously politicized prosecution by the Bush Administration.

Joseph, now an attorney, explains what the court's decision this week means; where the case goes from here; whether he thinks the Obama Administration will ever right the wrong; and how you can help to restore justice in this matter.

"This is something that shouldn't happen in America," he told me. "If a sitting governor can be unseated and prosecuted and imprisoned for something that he did not do --- and for something that had not even been considered a crime in this country until he was convicted of it --- what chance do anyone one of us have?"

That and a bit more, including listener mail and some breaking voting news out of MD, on today's BradCast...

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We've long warned about the dangers that electronic voting and tabulation systems pose to our democracy, not just from simple insider attacks and domestic hacking, but also from foreign governments and other, even shadier entities.

In 2009, just by way of one of scores (if not hundreds) of examples, we covered the chilling presentation given by the CIA's cybersecurity expert Steven Stigall to a panel convened by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) during a field hearing in Orlando, FL. Stigalll warned at the time: "You heard the old adage 'follow the money. I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to...make bad things happen."

"For several years," Stigall said, according to the transcript [WORD], "I've worked with others in my organization to try and identify foreign threats, emphasis on 'foreign threats,' to important U.S. computer systems. A few years ago it occurred to us that that should include potential foreign threats to the computers upon which our elections in this country are increasingly dependent."

Well, funny thing. Remember that Osama Bin Laden guy? On Thursday, The Hill and others published a list [PDF] of about forty English-language books said to have been found at Bin Laden's compound when he was killed. Among them, amusingly enough, were "9/11 conspiracy theory" books. Another was the New York Times best-seller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by our friend, investigative reporter Greg Palast.

Interesting. But look at what else showed is said to have been found on Osama's bookshelf...

We've been talking about reality here a lot lately, and the difficulty a huge portion of our population has with it.

On today's BradCast: Our nation's untethering from reality, as it affects accountability for Iraq War war crimes and torture, the 2016 race, climate change and much more. We can't fix our problems until we can agree on the facts, but Governors Chris Christie and Scott Walker remind us once again that we are nowhere near such agreement. (Even as we must take a side trip through the Bush Family's relationship with Nazi Germany to help understand it all.)

Journalist-turned-media-activist and documentarian Sue Wilson from Media Action Center joins us to discuss the FCC ruling that upends the First Amendment and Walker and his supporter's efforts to make things even worse in a Wisconsin criminal investigation into his 2012 recall election that may have an enormous impact on the entire nation in 2016.

Plus: Minimum wage boosted to $15/hour here in Los Angeles; Another huge oil spill in Santa Barbara; and much more on today's BradCast...

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It's been an entire year since the First Amendment suffered a gigantic blow as a result of the 2012 Scott Walker recall campaign in Wisconsin, though it's one that very few Americans above and beyond astute BRAD BLOG readers, even know about. And now, there is another threat to Free Speech, stemming from that same recall of GOP Presidential hopeful Walker looming at the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

Walker's attorneys are now arguing at the Wisconsin State Supreme Court that it is a violation of the First Amendment rights to even investigate whether the Walker campaign broke state law by the controversial candidate personally soliciting funds from non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups so donors to his campaign could remain secret. In a separate gambit, they also tried to make that case to the United States Supreme Court, which early Monday sent the case back to Wisconsin.

And it now appears that Right Wing Radio talkers --- at the core of a very real First Amendment blow suffered one year ago --- are, once again, in the thick of all of it.

This is all related to what Media Action Center (MAC) members discovered during the 2012 recall campaign when talk hosts on Wisconsin radio giants WTMJ and WISN gave hundreds of hours of free airtime for GOP luminaries like Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and Wisconsin GOP Vice Chair Brian Schimming in order to promote and recruit volunteers for Walker during that contentious campaign....

The polling place Photo ID voting restriction enacted by Republicans in Texas has been repeatedly found in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Most recently, late last year, a federal judge found, after a full trial on the merits of the law, that the restrictive statute "creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose." U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos went on to note in her 147-page ruling [PDF] that the law also "constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax."

Based on evidence from the state examined at trial, the law could serve to disenfranchise as many as 600,000 already legally registered voters in the state, not to mention more than a million eligible voters in Texas over all.

Naturally, Texas Republicans who currently run the state are appealing that ruling. Not because they have been able to demonstrate any actual "voter fraud" that might have been deterred by their restrictions, but because, with rapidly changing voter demographics in the Lone Star State, keeping legal voters (specifically, those that tend to lean towards Democrats) from being able to cast their otherwise legal vote has become a top priority for the GOP if they hope to keep their stranglehold on political power there in coming decades.

With all of that in mind --- including the existing law having been found in violation of both federal law and the U.S. Constitution --- state Republicans are hoping to make the law even more restrictive, and last week in the state House, the GOP passed another law to make it even more difficult for certain people to vote...

Today on The BradCast I spoke with Tyson Slocum,the Director of Public Citizen's energy program following the explosion and now oil spill into the Hudson River at the controversial Indian Point nuclear facility just 30 miles north of New York City and the 20 million people in harms way in the metropolitan area. What went wrong at the facility? Why is it still even in operation? And, oh, yeah, should we be worried still about what is happening at Fukushima while we're at it?

Then, I was joined by "DocDawg" of Daily Kos whose startling analysis published late last week, documenting an as-yet unexplained plummet in voter registration forms submitted via public assistance agencies in North Carolina since Gov. Pat McCrory (R) took office, has now lead to the threat of legal action by civil rights groups [PDF] who see a disturbing violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or "Motor Voter Act") of 1993. Someone has some explaining to do in the Tar Heel State where Republicans there have also enacted the most extreme voter suppression law since the Jim Crow era. You gotta check out this disturbing story!

Plus, some breaking news on the jackass George Zimmerman who was reportedly involved in yet another shooting today and a new report finding that the Baltimore City Jail turned away thousands of arrestees since 2012 after they were brought in by police but too injured to be admitted.

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Today we covered two stories I've been trying to get to for a while on The BradCast, and they're both related.

The first is the story of the state lottery insider who hacked the system to "win" a $14 million jackpot --- begging the question: if a state run lottery with a multi-million dollar security system can't protect against insider manipulation, how can a local election official do it, particularly with Internet Voting systems that partisans and profiteers continue to push for?

The second also relates to the first. Computer science and security expert Jeremy Epstein of Virginia Verified Voting joins me to discuss the immediate decertification of 1/5 of Virginia's voting systems after a state analysis found what many of us had been warning about for years: the AVS WINVote system is so simple to hack that, Epstein says, if it hadn't already been hacked in the decade its been in use there, "it was only because no one tried."

A must-listen version of The BradCast, if I say so myself. Or you can wait until Halloween if you're looking for something really scary.

We also covered some encouraging economic news out today, and who to "blame" for it; Missouri Republicans overriding the Democratic Governor's veto to cut off public assistance to children and families; and what the NRA wants you to get mom for Mother's Day...

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