Josh Marshall at TPM: "Sen. John Ensign goes on CNN to demagogue the terrorism issue and gets ambushed with a series of questions he's never answered about his affair and the ethics investigation surrounding his and his parents efforts to cover it up with lobbying infractions and pay-offs ... Truly must-see."

Brad at The BRAD BLOG: There must be some confusion here. CNN is asking actual and persistently dogged and tough questions of a high-ranking public official, a member of Congress no less, live on TV and everything, like actual journalists or something. And the guy isn't even a Democrat! What the?!...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Rounding up the biggest green news stories of the Year ... and the Decade! ... PLUS: Who won the poll for the World's Biggest Eco-Villain of the "Aughts"? (or the "Naughts"...or the "Naughties"... or the '00's....or the "Zeroes"...whatever) ... 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': Jesse Ventura Body-Slams the Climate Change "Conspiracy"; Uh-oh: China's near-monopoly on rare earth elements crucial to renewable energy technologies; Demanding accountability for the CERN Supercollider!!!!!; Quebec Adopts California's Auto Emissions Standards; Campbell's Soup? Really?: New Faces Among the Climate Lobby; Majority Of [Climate Change Denier] Tea Party Group's Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It; How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad; GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases.... PLUS: Reality bites: The coming climate panic?....

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Guest blogged by Frank Schaeffer (with a little help from Rachel Maddow)

I am the father of a Marine who served his country with honor in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that role --- as part of the military family --- I call on anyone who cares about this country to speak out against the Republican Party, its leaders and followers and tell the truth: they are trying to cash in on the Detroit/terror attempt in a way that has clearly crossed a line. They are over the line of not just good taste, but into an area that has to be called what it is: unpatriotic, un-American cynicism on a new level.

I was going to write a post on this but Rachel Maddow said it better on MSNBC last night...

Please watch and pass on. One last thing: why is Rachel Maddow the only journalist who seems to be doing her job on this (and so many other matters!) of actually fact-checking?

UPDATE/ADDENDUM FROM BRAD: With all due respect to the indispensable Rachel, and our friend Frank Schaeffer, Glenn Greenwald and a few others in the blogosphere, were also early on this particular beat, as the non-Rachel corporate media were predictably performing their usual failure. And, if we may say so ourselves, we had a word (okay, a coarse and infuriated rant) or two on these very same matters, while guest hosting last night's Mike Malloy Show ourselves. That rant, at least a good chunk of it, can be downloaded here [MP3] or heard by hitting the play button below...

ANOTHER UPDATE FROM BRAD: Finally, a Democrat manages to grow a pair, and pushes back --- loudly and directly --- at the outrageous, appalling, hypocritical, anti-American attacks from Cheney and the rest of the America-hating Right...

It's my final night guest hosting for the The Mike Malloy Show from Dallas' AM 1360 Rational Radio. It's almost their last night on the air too, unless an angel flies in to keep progressive radio on the public airwaves in a city that needs it as much or more than any!

We're on again from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) and, as last night, we'll be VIDEO WEBCASTING the entire show! Check back here just before showtime for the live video feed embedded below (if you can stand to look at me for three hours).

If you'd like to use your public airwaves tonight --- before they disappear in Dallas --- the call-in number this week only will be: 800-277-1637, ext. 703. Our handy-dandy live chat room will be up and operating here during the show, along with the video feed, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We'll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

TONIGHT...

• Mis-reported/under-reported stories of the year and/or decade! (Gonna need more than three hours, I think!) My top stories and yours at 800-277-1637, ext. 703
• PLUS: We'll be checking in with some old friends along the way! Tune in to find out who they are!

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams here or here!

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show, hosted by Zen mistress "Agent 99". Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: Thanks for a great week in Dallas, guys! The audio archives, rants and all, are now below, along with the archive from our live chat during the show. Enjoy! Happy New Year! And thanks to Mike and Kathy for allowing me to sit in once again. Always a pleasure and honor!...

Add this to our post yesterday calling for a 'War on Lightning', since the chances of being a victim of same in any given year (1:500,000) are so much higher than being a victim of terrorism on an airplane in the last ten years (1:10,408,947).

And yet it's those nasty terrorists the cowardly wingnuts are afraid of. Lack of health insurance? Salmonella? Firearms? Not so much.

Blue Texan at firedoglake has more...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

A little more than seven months after launching her second attempt to unseat California's powerful eight-term Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Jane Harman, the PDA-backed Marcy Winograd recently sent out a fundraising email in which she described Harman as the Joe Lieberman of the House.

In the campaign letter, Winograd notes Harman's claim in her 1998 election, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: "I was flattered to be introduced in the last election as the best Republican in the Democratic primary."

The Harman campaign did not respond to an email requesting comment on the quote above, though a spokesperson from the Winograd camp sent us a copy of the archived 1998 LA Times report on the Congresswoman's comments to "several hundred civic leaders" in downtown Los Angeles, containing her direct quote which ends with Harman adding: "I accept."

The race presents a classic David and Goliath match up. With a net worth ranging between $236 million to $558 million, Harman, is said to be one of the richest members of Congress. Winograd, by contrast, is running a bottom-up progressive campaign of the type I advocated for recently in "Progressives of America - Unite!". The match-up presents a stark contrast in directions for a conflicted Democratic Party...

I'm guest hosting the The Mike Malloy Show again tonight (through Wednesday), LIVE from AM 1360 Rational Radio in Dallas, from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please tune in!

The call-in number this week only, for access to your public airwaves is: 800-277-1637, ext. 703.

Our LIVE chat room will once again be up and operating here during the show, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We''ll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

So far scheduled for tonight...

• ANDY WORTHINGTON, blogger/journalist, historian, and author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison and filmmaker (with Polly Nash) of the new documentary, Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.
• CHARLES JOHNSON, founder and publisher of the formerly rightwing Little Green Footballs blog, (now estranged) co-founder of the still rightwing Pajamas Media, on why he left the Right, what the hell is wrong with the wingnuts, and how/if we can ever get back to political sanity in this country.
• PLUS: My rants, Karl Rove's newest divorce, your calls at 800-277-1637, ext. 703, and whatever else comes up along the way...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams here or here!

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show, hosted by the ever-patient "Agent 99". Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: Much cool to get the video stream working tonight for the first time for am1360! Sorry for the voice/picture delay in the first hour, but I think we finally got it fixed. Anyway, other than that, I believe it was another good show, and audio archives are now posted below! Chat room archives are posted below them for your replay pleasure...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Here we go again: another oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound; Mercury rising --- in Americans; Senate Democrats get squishy on climate and clean energy legislation ... PLUS: What really happened in Copenhagen? ... 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': Famous California alpine lakes warmer faster than surrounding region; First case of highly drug-resistant TB found in US; The Rise of Super Bacteria: Disinfectants Cause Some Bacteria to Adapt, Thrive; Oklahoma Company Recalls 248,000 Pounds of Beef; More than 125 whales die in New Zealand strandings... PLUS: Really? Carbon Dioxide Gift Certificates?....

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Odds of being on an airplane attacked by a terrorist over the past decade, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com: 1 in 10,408,947.

Odds of being hit by lightning in any single year: appx. 1 in 500,000.

Odds the U.S. will wage a War on Lightning: 0 in a Gazillion.

Odds we'll talk about all of the above tonight when I guest host The Mike Malloy Show: appx. 1 in 3 (if that high).

UPDATE: And furthermore, why no 'War on Salmonella'?

I'll be guest hosting the The Mike Malloy Show tonight through Wednesday. This time around, I'll 'Bradcasting' LIVE from AM 1360 Rational Radio in Dallas, from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please tune in!

If you'd like to use your public airwaves tonight, the call-in number this week only will be: 800-277-1637, ext. 703.

Our handy-dandy live chat room will be up and operating here during the show, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We''ll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

So far scheduled for tonight...

• IGOR VOLSKY, of Center for American Progress, contributor to the book Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, on where the hell we are now in the ongoing fight for health care reform.
• FRANK SCHAEFFER, former rightwing fundamentalist leader, BRAD BLOG guest contributor, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) on America-hating Republicans, and his controversial case for Barack Obama.
• PLUS: My rants, your calls at 800-277-1637, ext. 703, and whatever we want to talk about at the end of this crazy year...

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams here or here!

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show, hosted by the ever-patient "Agent 99". Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: "Explosive" fun from Texas! Audio archives of last night's show are now posted below (sorry for the delay, due to tech prob) and the archive of last night's chat room is posted below that. Enjoy! And see ya again tonight!...

Straight-party ticket voters have long been getting screwed by touch-screen voting systems, whether they knew it or not, in election after election, as the systems have failed in various ways in states around the country for years.

But, for a modicum of good news on that front, finally, last week a panel of federal judges in Dallas County, TX, have responded to a lawsuit from the Texas Democratic Party --- who finally bothered to notice the problem --- by halting the use of such systems until corrective action of some sort can be taken. As the Dallas Morning News reported the county's E&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems have now been decertified for the moment, leading the chair of the Texas Democratic Party to declare a "victory," even as he went on to demonstrate he still seems somewhat unaware of the overall problems of voting at all on such systems...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"There is a basic weakness in governments, however massive their armies, however vast their wealth, however they control images and information, because their power depends on the obedience of citizens....When the citizens begin to suspect they have been deceived and withdraw their support, government loses its legitimacy and its power." - Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

With all that talk of "Peace on Earth," often spelled out in festive shopping mall lights over the Christmas weekend, it seems few actually mean it. But on the presumption that readers of The BRAD BLOG actually do, allow me to note that in my recent editorial, "Beyond Afghanistan", I argued that there is no legitimate basis for our continued presence in Afghanistan and that the currently planned escalation serves to perpetuate, in the words of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a "criminal enterprise."

While not yet approaching the level of critical mass resistance that will be required to bring our presence in the Afghan quagmire to an end, the "Rethink Afghanistan" petition (video in support thereof at right) calls upon Congress to vote against any bill to fund troop escalation in Afghanistan. It provides an initial step in what I had argued was the right direction. The petition is sponsored by Brave New Foundation, Credo Mobile and True Majority. It was read into the Congressional Record recently by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL).

The petition bears the names of more than 100,000 citizens. Perhaps if that number swells to 100 million, members of Congress will take seriously the fundamental truth it bears, though those who support the petition would do well to address the difficult questions as to "how" we could safely withdraw our forces in an expeditious fashion through such means as a negotiated ceasefire with the Taliban pending an orderly withdrawal.

From Saturday's Houston Chronicle [emphasis added]...

To help discourage terrorism, let's give as much attention as possible to the Detroit plane bomber. Wall-to-wall coverage on Fox should teach those terrorists a thing or two. Let's put his face on the cover of TIME and Newsweek while we're at it. I'm sure it's the last thing he'd want.

UPDATE 6:12pm PT: Was trying to enjoy the rare luxury of few down hours to watch Sherlock Holmes with family here in Dallas (where I'll be guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show this week from Mike's local affiliate AM 1360 Rational Radio) when my iPhone alerts start buzzing. It's another TERRORIST ATTACK! SAME FLIGHT FROM AMSTERDAMN TO DETROIT! ANOTHER NIGERIAN! LOCKS HIMSELF IN BATHROOM!!! ... Of course, as you likely know by now, it was a Nigerian businessman whose "strange behavior" was walking back and forth to the bathroom.

Here is what I was forced to re-tweet from the movie theater...

Seriously, people. Can we get a grip? For more "explosive" news like the above (such as this re-tweet of Dave Roberts from Grist on the same topic, or this from Josh Marshall and this from Glenn Greenwald, both re-tweeted prior to the later afternoon Fox Fear Fest) which I may have neither the time nor inclination to bring you here on The BRAD BLOG, be sure to follow our Twitter feed. It's elementary, dear reader.