In the lead up to this Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII, an advocacy group calling itself SackNFLTaxBreaks.org announced its formation "to sack the National Football League's anti-fan behavior, its nonprofit tax-free status, as well as the overall government subsidization of the league."

Co-founded by "New Orleans Saints fan Lynda Woolard" and Ryan Rudominer, "a proud shareholder of the Green Bay Packers, the NFL's only publicly owned team," the group says it hopes to "bring together supporters from associations, nonprofits, unions, corporations, government, journalism, think tanks, academia, the law, and leading advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum."

Their advocacy, to date, is largely built upon a petition launched last year by Woolard calling on Congress to revoke the non-profit, tax-exempt status of the National Football League. Her petition, so far, has obtained more than 300,000 signatures.

On their home page, the group notes that "Despite making $10 billion annually in profits, and paying Commissioner Roger Goodell a whopping $29.5 million dollars-a-year (15 times more than the nonprofit tax-free league gives to charity), the NFL receives a billion dollars annually in government assistance."

The NFL is a separate entity from the individual teams in the league, which do pay taxes. At least two U.S. Senators, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn and Maine independent Angus King (who caucuses with the Democrats), have recently "started a push to end" the NFL's non-profit status.

While the movement to end the NFL's special tax breaks is relatively new, the issue of corporate welfare via professional sports has been the subject of previous, blistering critiques...

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Yesterday's horrific, tragic and enormous tornado in Moore, OK has been described as "the biggest, most destructive tornado in the history of the world."

In its wake, many are questioning the relationship between such monster storms and climate change. Here's a statement from Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in response to that question, as obtained via email today by Peter Sinclair (he, of the geat Climate Denial Crock of the Week website):

So, in short, Trenberth seems to suggest that while one cannot directly "blame" climate change itself for any particular storm, the altered weather patterns, thanks to global warming and the increased moisture in the air, increase, fairly radically, the probability of such storms and, in turn, their size and destructive power.

Or, if you prefer, you can listen to leading climate science denier Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma who has said many times in the past that concerns about man-made climate change are nothing more than "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and nothing to worry about.

While we haven't heard him say as much today yet, for some odd reason, he has explained that he --- like his fellow Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, will support federal disaster relief funding for his state, unlike their vote against federal disaster relief funding for the East Coast after Superstorm Sandy last year. Why? Because, as Inhofe explained today, the money for his state won't simply be a "slush fund", as he described the relief for the millions of East Coasters affected by Hurricane Sandy. "That won't happen in Oklahoma," he said.

Meanwhile, Coburn (who is also a climate change denier), after also voting against relief for Hurricane Sandy while tens of thousands were left homeless on the East Coast in the middle of winter, slammed those who charged hypocrisy in his promise of federal relief "without delay" for his own OK constituents.

"It is crass," his office said in a statement to reporters, "for critics to play disaster aid politics when first responders are pulling victims from the rubble."

By Coburn's reckoning, apparently, the time to "play disaster aid politics" is a few days or months later, as he did with Sandy aid, when victims were freezing and without power or homes.

We don't usually offer much space here to sex scandals, unless, in some cases, they demonstrate, for example, blatantly offensive hypocrisy in regard to everyone else's civil rights (talking to you, disgraced former Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)) --- or, as in the case of disgraced now-former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), charges of blatant criminality.

The details out of the bi-partisan, unanimously approved 68-page report released late yesterday by the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee --- which usually does absolutely nothing --- referring the Ensign case to the Dept. of Justice and the FEC for criminal prosecution are stunning, and much worse than previously understood.

In their letter to the DoJ [PDF] the Committee's Chair and Vice-Chair, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) respectively, refer the matter...

But even that damning summary of wrong-doing fails to adequately describe the offensive squalor at the heart of this mess, as you'll see below.

Moreover, another reason worth mentioning the whole scandal here: there may be at least one scofflaw still on the loose in regards this matter, still serving in the U.S. Senate --- namely, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), one of the very few involved in this extraordinarily ugly, sad and shameful scandal to have, so far, gotten off largely scot-free despite his apparent role in attempting to cover it all up for his friend Ensign.

Finally, there is still one more reason to mention all of this: to highlight the fact that Ensign has now been replaced in the U.S. Senate by the scofflaw, and lying, former NV Secretary of State Dean Heller. Be sure to read on below for details on him and how he too has been allowed to avoid accountability for years despite having, in 2004, illegally certified the 100% unverifiable e-voting systems now used across the state of Nevada (and also used to elect him to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006.)

Rachel Maddow did a fine job of summarizing the remarkable Senate Ethics Committee report on Ensign on Thursday night, so we'll happily allow her to do so again below, as we're buried in several other stories ourselves at the moment...