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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Wildfire season turns tragic - 19 firefighters killed in AZ and the climate connection; Record SW heat wave "one of the greatest in American history"; L.A. bets on solar; Billionaire Koch Bros. sneaky 'No Climate Tax' pledge ... PLUS: Obama keeps up climate change pressure ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Bike Boom: more Americans now choosing bicycles to get around; A new normal for Arctic sea ice; MIT: new solar cell could be 1,000x more powerful; Chemical, oil companies say EPA rule will expose trade secrets; Sunday news shows ignored Obama's historic climate speech; GOP silent as DOE launches billions in fossil fuel loan guarantees; Maine lobstermen now support climate action; CO2 has big consequences for ocean food chain ... PLUS: The Coal Lobby's Fight for Survival ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?! Via TPM...

Once again, in case this is still not clear to opponents of marriage equality: Just because same-sex marriage is now allowed in CA, it is not now, nor will it ever be mandatory here, or anywhere else. So you're cool.

Two additional things strike me in regard to the above, at the moment. 1) The group trying to block gay couples who love each other from marrying each other in California is from Arizona?! 2) Their organization is called "Alliance Defending Freedom"?! Really? Proving once again that irony is not just merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.

UPDATE: Justice Kennedy, who sided with the Supreme Court majority decision that allowed marriage equality to return to CA this week, rejects the Alliance Hating Freedom's request "with no additional comment", according to AP. But the Prop 8 supporters say they plan to "continue their efforts to halt gay marriage by filing their request with another Supreme Court justice."

In a ruling hailed by voting rights advocates today, Arizona's requirement that newly registered voters submit proof of citizenship with their registration has been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision. Justice Antonin Scalia authored the opinion for the majority, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

The court rejected provisions of Proposition 200, a ballot measure approved by AZ voters in 2004, which mandated that state election officials reject all applications to register to vote that did not include documentary proof of citizenship. Those documents, however, are not currently required by the Federal Form for voter registration, as approved by the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) pursuant to provisions of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).

Today's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona [PDF], is grounded upon the plenary power given to Congress by the Elections Clause (Art. I §4 of the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to preempt state regulations governing the "Times, Places and Manner" of holding federal elections. The court found that the NVRA mandate that states "accept and use" the Federal Form for voter registration takes precedence, and that Prop 200 is invalid because it conflicts with the Congressional intent that the NVRA help ease the ability of citizens to register to vote.

Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia observed that if a state could "demand of Federal Form applicants every additional piece of information the State requires…the Federal Form ceases to perform any meaningful function, and would be a feeble means of 'increas[ing] the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office.'"

This does not close the door on the issue altogether, however. Justice Scalia noted that, pursuant to the NVRA, any state can ask that "the EAC alter the Federal Form to include information the State deems necessary to determine eligibility." If the EAC then rejects such a request, the state "may challenge the EAC's rejection of that request [in court]"...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Bad timing for sequester cuts to hit US firefighting budget; NM county bans fracking due to drought; CT passes law to require GMO labeling...sort of; NV ditches coal plants; Renewable energy breaks out across US; PLUS: National Mall's new monument...to climate change! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The ‘Social Cost Of Carbon’ Is Almost Double What The Government Previously Thought; Invention could wrap buildings in solar panels; World’s Biggest Coal Company Is Turning To Solar Energy To Lower Its Utility Bill; USDA helping farmers adapt to climate change; AFP targets Dems over non-existent carbon tax; LED lightbulbs saved $657m this year; Study: trash litters ocean floor ... PLUS: The Most Important Day of the 21st Century ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: L.A. to be 100% coal-free; TN conservatives slam mountaintop removal coal mining - by China; NV coal company faked air pollution reports; Green jobs are the fastest growing job sector in the nation; PLUS: Leave it to beavers - 'hero' beaver dam halts oil spill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): State Dept. hid ties to Keystone XL pipeline company; Toyota Unveils New I-Road; NOAA: ‘Robust’ independent evidence confirms thermometer measurements; Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee; Pope Francis calls for defending environment; Report: Security risks of climate change; Enviro groups criticize Obama's DOE nominee energy industry ties; Polar bear habitat shrinks even more... PLUS: How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Too pooped to pope': Pope Benedict's green legacy; Did global warming find Nemo?; State of the Union - Obama's next act on climate change; Wind power now cheaper than coal in some countries; PLUS: Fox 'News' surrenders to Germany (in the clean energy race) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Koch-backed 'Tea Party' started in 2002 with Big Tobacco; Meet your newest national park; Shell's damaged Arctic drilling rigs go to Asia; Map of cities to avoid as sea levels rise; Keystone XL pipeline: Just Say No; National Journal covers rising costs of inaction on climate change; Bloomberg's clean energy investor factbook; Flame retardants linked to ADHD; Why the US drilling boom lowered gas prices ... PLUS: Energy Subsidies and the 'Free Market' Lie ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama talks big on climate at his 2nd Inaugural, but will the Administration follow up with action? A final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and other climate & energy conundrums loom in the 2nd term of President Barack Hussein Obama ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): '2012 Was Once Considered Hottest Year On Record, Man In 2024 Remembers Wistfully'; Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to EPA pollution rule; Crop innovation saves water, boosts yields; Solar panel prices continue to fall; Antibacterial ingredient tainting US lakes; Widespread contaminants in Chesapeake Bay; Study: melamine from containers can leech in food; David Attenborough Calls Humans a "Plague Upon the Earth"... PLUS: Koch-funded study finds global warming is "manmade", "solar forcing does not appear to contribute" ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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: Crunch time at UN climate talks in Doha; More dire warnings from the Arctic; Pollution regulations really do save lives; PLUS: Exxon hates your children (?!?!) ... 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): NASA: Climate Models Project Increase In U.S. Wildfires; UN climate may never pass US Senate; Driver still missing in coal ash slurry pond breach; Oil trains on the rise in U.S.; NJ toxic train wreck won't be cleared for a week; Divide over coal trains in Pacific NW; Starving snowy oils flock south to British Columbia ... PLUS: Photos: 60th anniversary of the deadly Great Smog of London ... and much, MUCH more! ...

While we've been watching the situation, and talking about it on radio over the past week, here at The BRAD BLOG we've yet to have time to cover what's going on in Arizona --- most acutely in Maricopa County (Phoenix) --- where some half a million ballots remain untallied a week after the election when many Hispanic voters who thought they were registered to vote, were directed to cast a provisional ballot instead...for some reason.

Under Arizona law, those voters have until Wednesday to show up to the County Clerk's office with ID to prove they are who they said they were when they cast their ballots last week. The approximately 486,405 uncounted ballots across the state include 307,620 early ballots and 178,785 provisionals. That's 1 out of 4 ballots cast across the state still not included in the results, to date.

In the bargain, a whole bunch of Arizona races --- including their U.S. Senate race, a number of U.S. House races, and several state and local races --- remain officially "undecided" at the moment and/or could see their currently announced "winners" become losers.

The DoJ's Civil Rights Division, according to TPM, may, or may not, be keeping their eyes on the situation there.

The Hispanic community in the state, thankfully, is not taking this one sitting down...especially not after standing in line for hours just to cast their vote, or, in this case, provisional ballots that may or may not be counted. They have been surrounding the Maricopa County Clerk's office in a 24 hour vigil, and phone-banking to call those who were forced to vote provisionally, to let them know they need to get back to the Clerk's office ASAP to try and assure their vote actually gets counted.

This is among the darkest sides of the GOP's War on Democracy that we've been covering all year (for many years, actually) and the shameful battle continues at this hour. We may have more details in the days ahead (on this, and other uncounted ballots and undecided races in other states as well), but, for now, Rachel Maddow did a great overview on MSNBC last night, of the assault on democracy currently being played out in Arizona...

President Barack Obama may have voted for Mitt Romney yesterday when he cast his Early Vote at the Martin Luther King Community Center in Chicago's 4th Ward. Nobody knows for sure. Even him.

He cast his vote on a 100% unverifiable touch-screen e-voting system made by Sequoia Voting Systems (which is now owned by a Canadian firm named Dominion Voting.) It is scientifically impossible to ever know if his vote was recorded accurately, as per his itent, or not on that type of voting system.

"I can't tell you who I voted for," the President joked, as noted by our colleague Mark Crispin Miller in a short blog item today wryly headlined "Obama votes for Romney". The President's joke may not have been nearly as funny as he had intended it.

We confirmed with the Chicago Board of Elections that Early Voters in the Windy City must do so on the oft-failed, incredibly-vulnerable, and easily-hacked (see below for details) Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen voting system which is still used according to VerifiedVoting.org's database for Early, Disabled-Accessible or Standard polling place voting in some 234 jurisdictions across all or part of some 13 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

On Election Day, the Board's Communication Director told The BRAD BLOG, voters are allowed to vote on their choice of either paper ballots (also tallied by Sequoia's incredibly faulty computer tabulators --- the same ones which announced losing candidates as "winners" in 3 different elections in Palm Beach County, FL earlier this year) or Sequoia's 100% unverifiable AVC Edge touch-screens.

The Intellectual Property of those Sequoia systems is still a proprietary trade secret owned by a Venezuelan firm named Smartmatic, which has been tied to the country's long-time President Hugo Chavez. That point was lied about by Sequoia's then CEO Jack Blaine when he was asked directly about it by a Chicago Alderman some years ago, as The BRAD BLOG detailed exclusively back in 2008.

Sequoia has since been purchased by the Canadian firm Dominion Voting, which also subsequently lied about the company's Intellectual Property being owned by the Chavez-tied company when they announced their takeover of Sequoia in 2010. Dominion confirmed as much when we called them on it after their announcement. And, yes, we are still the only ones to have reported that as well.

A few other quick points of note which should deeply concern every voter in the nation --- of any party, or none at all --- about the 100% unverifiable Sequoia touch-screen voting systems that the President foolishly entrusted yesterday to accurately record his vote...

Once again, as they're coming in too fast for us to fully dig in to most of these, but you should know about them, so here's our quick round-up, for now, of the latest...

• Maricopa County, AZ Gives Wrong Election Date to Hispanic Voters. Again.: The largest county in AZ, the one with Phoenix in it, admitted last week that materials for Hispanic voters had incorrectly given the date of the November 6 election as November 8. They said it was a small error that didn't affect a lot of voters. This week, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Elections Department admits that they did it again: "Yvonne Reed confirms to ABC15 that bookmarks distributed by the elections department incorrectly listed the date of the general election in Spanish as November 8. The flip side of the bookmark correctly lists the date in English as November 6. Reed tells ABC15 the bookmarks were distributed at the three election counters throughout Maricopa County and that the department has no way of knowing exactly how many people received the bookmarks."

• 13,000 La Porte County, IN Voters Wrongly Purged by GOP Officials: "Back in 2011, some 800 voters were supposed to be purged from the La Porte County voter registration system. Instead, more than 13,000 got the boot and now the voter registration office is scrambling to get them online before Nov. 6." La Porte Dems are calling for a federal investigation. Over at DailyKos, blogger Dan Briggs explains how it happened.

• Fake Voter Purge Letters Sent to Florida Voters: The phony letters have shown up in 23 counties, so far, warning voters they have 15 days to show up at the local Supervisor of Elections office and prove their citizenship, or they'll be removed from the rolls. Unlike the very real letters sent in FL Gov. Rick Scott and Sec. of State Ken Detzner's failed "non-citizen" voter purge earlier this year, these letters are forgeries meant to look real. "The letters mimic notices that local election officials did send out to voters this past spring and summer when the state began a process of trying to purge the voter rolls of noncitizens who were illegally registered to vote. The original process, which identified 2,600 voters as noncitizens, was fraught with problems and incorrectly targeted hundreds of naturalized citizens. ... [FL State Dept. Spokesman Chris] Cate said that the department was still collecting information and has notified all the election supervisors of the problem. He urged Florida voters who receive anything similar to contact election officials immediately." On Wednesday, the FBI joined in the investigation.

As we've yet to see a copy of the fake letter or email warning about it sent to FL's county Supervisors of Elections on Monday posted online, we've posted both of them here, since we received a copy from a source earlier this week.

• Touch-Screen Vote-flipping in VA: And so it begins again. Expect many more of these in the days ahead, as usual, particularly in states like VA which continue to have so little respect for voters that most are forced to cast their votes on 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems. An email sent to Fairfax County, VA Democrats on Wednesday warns: "We have received several reports of touch screen voting machines switching the names on the ballot before the vote is cast." It goes on to advise voters who experience the problem to "Stop and alert the Election Officer - don't vote on that machine; Record the number of the voting machine; Record the name and phone number of the voter affected" and then to notify the local Democratic office immediately. We'd also add you should notify the Sec. of State, the local media and call 866-OUR-VOTE if this should happen to you.

The Fairfax Dems also offer this very sage advice: "Also, we encourage voters to use paper ballots (optical scan machine) where available." But good luck finding paper ballots in VA. (If you can still vote absentee there, please do, but deliver the paper ballot in person on Election Day, if possible!)

When touch-screen machines flip votes, they should be taken out of service immediately and quarantined. Unfortunately, most election officials allow technicians to try and re-calibrate the machines while they are in "Election Mode" and most vulnerable to manipulation. It's insane. We've been saying the same thing for years now, but few election officials seem to give a damn.

• Kochs team up with religious groups to target voters: Our friend journalist Zach Roberts, part of Greg Palast's intrepid team, obtained audio recordings from a fundraiser at a Focus on the Family-related group in Alaska where the man who runs the Rightwing outfit there boasted of their new affiliation with the Koch Brothers, the million-dollar voter targeting database they'd acquired from them, and the fact that, in the wake of Citizens United, political and religious groups may now work together more seamlessly than ever. Said the Alaska Family Council and Alaska Family Action President Jim Minnery at the event: "And so, the organization Alaska Family Action has the same board; I'm still the person in charge of that organization. We literally have to switch the light switch off and on when [laughter from crowd] we have a board meeting, because we have to be a separate nonprofit corporation according to IRS regulations." Also in attendance at the event: former Alaska Lt. Gov. Loren Leman (R) and Alaskan Gov. Sean Parnell (R). Roberts also reports that "Thirty-eight states with 'family healthy councils' across the country are in the midst of forming action groups and working with the Koch brothers' Themis database to target voters." Minnery also told the crowd, when explaining how the Kochs pitched the database to him: "So, they introduced this project to us by basically saying, 'Listen, we know more about you guys than you could ever hope to know, but the good side is, we're going to be able to use this for the glory of God and to get conservatives in power'".

• Davidson County (Nashville), TN Poll Workers Being Trained to Turn Away Voters?: "'Poll workers have been trained by the election commission to judge them (voters) by how they sound and how they look to determine their citizenship,' explained Eben Cathy of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition. Cathy's claims are based on a Powerpoint slide shown to poll workers who were trained in Davidson County earlier this month. On the slide, one bullet point states that only US Citizens who are Tennessee residents may vote. Below that are the words 'naturalized citizenship require reading, writing, speaking basic English.'"

Davidson County is also the place where the Republican official in charge of the Board of Elections once told us to our face that "paper ballots are the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Funny. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) keeps saying it's Global Warming. These guys should have more meetings.

• TX AG Threatens to Arrest U.N. Observers: We previously told you that U.N. monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE] were planning to observe this year's election, following a request last March by the NAACP and other groups who were (justifiably) concerned about voter suppression. Texas AG Greg Abbot has another idea: "'The OSCE representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offense for OSCE's representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place's entrance,' he said. 'Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE's representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law.'" --- Um, "may be"? Isn't he the AG? The OSCE responded Wednesday in a letter to Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: "'The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections,' it said. 'The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable.'"

Either way, the U.S. Dept. of Justice is also planning to observe in Texas this year...Unless Abbot thinks they have no right to be there either. Why so worried about people observing at the polls? Got something you don't want them to see, cowboy?

• VA County Registrar Incredible Dishonest or Just Stupid: The Washington Post joins the ranks of us "conspiracy theorists" by reporting on concerns about Mitt Romney's business associates and major supporters and their takeover of Hart Intercivic, the nation's third largest voting machine company. But it was the last line of the piece we found the most amusing: "Falls Church [,VA] registrar David Bjerke said that he was aware of the discussion surrounding Hart but that he regarded the system as completely secure. 'There’s no way for the count to be manipulated,' he said."

What a Bjerke.

Well this item from Washington Posts' "The Fix" blog today is rather troubling. It seems the the media consortium which previously ran Exit Polls on Election Day --- the best indicator of fraud and failure in election results (as opposed to pre-election polling which is far less accurate) --- is being scrapped in some 19 states, for the very first time, in the upcoming Presidential Election...

That would seem to be an invitation to fraud in those states, since Exit Polls have traditionally served as a helpful check and balance against fraudulent or simply inaccurate election results, particularly for the almost 100% unverified election results that the media now count on to report results in all 50 states. Those results come from often-failed, easily-manipulated computer tabulators used across the entire country.

This news is disturbing, as you probably already noticed, for a number of reasons...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The horror that played out during the recent midnight massacre inside a Century theater in Aurora, CO is but the latest example of the danger posed to our safety and our very lives by the radical right's expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment.

On June 28, 2008, that view --- that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected to service in a state militia --- became the law of the land, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court's hard right quintet's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller ("Heller") --- a 5-4 decision that ignored precedent, history and basic rules of constitutional interpretation.

Heller not only elevated the profits of the domestic small arms industry above the ability of government to protect our safety, our general welfare, our domestic tranquility and our very lives, but provided a disturbing new context to the eerily prescient 1991 warning provided by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) when he likened the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to a game of "Russian Roulette"...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Good news and bad --- mostly bad --- from the Rio+20 Earth Summit; Deluged in Duluth - record storm, record floods; Awkward!: 3 new oil spills complicate Canada's Keystone XL pipeline dreams; PLUS: Greenpeace billboard rejected --- you'll never guess their offensive slogan (no, really!)... 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): Outdoor recreation jobs outnumber oil jobs 3 to 1; CA leads the way on GMO labeling; US Dems demand stronger fracking rules; Senate rejects block to new mercury rules; L.A. to get much hotter (we ain't talking bikinis); AZ mining company wants pollution fines reversed; Not-so-bad farm bill passes Senate; Canada's new budget 'buts' environmental protections ... PLUS: 'It's madness' that waste isn't a bigger international priority ... and much, MUCH more! ...