On today’s BradCast, with the consistent help of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), we connect some of the dots between the Citizens United ruling, the GOP theft of the U.S. Supreme Court and the undermining of climate change legislation. Yes, it’s all of a piece, and it begins well before the fateful SCOTUS ruling in 2010. [Audio link to show follows below.]
Today we go back as far as 1991 when a newly formed rightwing non-profit group by the name of Citizens United spent $100,000 to make sure alleged sexual harasser Clarence Thomas would be confirmed as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Twenty years later, in 2010’s ‘Citizens United v. FEC’ ruling, Thomas then decided with the majority to help unleash a tsunami of undisclosed “dark money” into our political, electoral and judicial system (including more than half a million dollars to his wife’s new non-profit, in the two months following the case’s oral argument at the Court.)
In 2014, Sen. Whitehouse cited that fateful decision as the point in time when Republicans, who used to support action on climate change, immediately stopped doing so. And, this week, at the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch — Donald Trump’s nominee for the GOP’s stolen Supreme Court seat — Whitehouse confronted Gorsuch in a fascinating extended exchange, about dark money corruption in politics, including the $10 million spent by undisclosed rightwingers backing Gorsuch’s confirmation, and the $7 million the same shady groups spent to block the confirmation of Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.
All of that and more on today’s program, including Desi Doyen and the latest Green News Report and the Colorado GOP’s former chairman-turned-talk show host who, one month before last November’s election, told listeners: “virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.” He’s now been charged absentee voter fraud…
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