A bit of good-ish, encouraging news from out of an otherwise horrible year, from this week's New York Times...

The BRAD BLOG has long endeavored to fight back against the disinformation being put forward by the GOP "voter fraud" charlatans and fraudsters contending that massive fraud is being carried out by voters at the polls, requiring the institution of disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place which would result in some 21 million Americans being unable to cast their legal votes, according to the League of Women Voters and most other serious experts on these matters.

Once again, a story out of Kentucky helps us highlight that it's election insiders, not voters themselves, who are, by far, the greatest threat to the integrity of elections.

We reported early last year on the passel of election officials in Clay County, KY, arrested for buying and selling votes, manipulating ES&S electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, and otherwise fixing elections from 2002 to 2006.

As their January 19 trial date nears, more motions are being filed by federal prosecutors. The latest, filed last week, alleges that two of the top officials charged --- one, a circuit court judge and the other, the county school Superintendent --- had been fixing elections for decades before their recent indictments...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Baby it's cold outside! Record cold and storms in U.S. and Europe --- but the hottest decade on record Down Under; Water shortages in Mexico City and water contamination in China ... PLUS: A new tax for an old bag ... 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': New rules curb wind power development in Wyoming; Prison for man convicted of killing China's last endangered Indo-Chinese tiger; Manatees vs. the Military in Florida; Controversial solution to Red River flooding in North Dakota; California state Republicans work to halt climate law; French Constitutional Council nixes carbon tax for being insufficiently tax-y .... PLUS: Tools for doing your own home energy audit! ....

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

The baseball metaphors were theirs. I just thought I'd pick up on them.

Over the holiday weekend, there was a bit of an "academic" tête-à-tête in the upper-blogosphere over President Obama's handling of the arrest, detention and prosecution of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit "Underwear Bomber," as it compared to George W. Bush's almost exactly similar handling of the arrest, detention and prosecution of Richard Reid, the "Shoe Bomber," and other alleged terrorists by the former administration.

While there were swell arguments into which "both" sides could firmly dig their heels, as usual, the conversation that the people of this country really need to be having was shunted far aside in favor of the one Dick Cheney and Karl Rove prefer to be having...

In case you missed this bit of shame and unsurprising-by-now hypocrisy buried in between the holiday news holes...

Glenn Greenwald has more...

[Hat-tip longtime BRAD BLOG toon sherpa Pokey Anderson.]

Guest essay by Ernest A. Canning

In "Beyond Afghanistan," I responded to President Obama's Dec. 1 Afghan escalation speech by quoting from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech: "Somehow this madness must cease."

I directed readers’ attention to King’s assessment that our obsession with war and occupation was but a symptom of “a far deeper malady within the American spirit;" that our presence in Afghanistan and so many other conflicts over the past 60 years was not the product of a desire to insure our safety; that it was the product of a military-industrial complex and a U.S.-led, corporate Empire whose core purpose is to feed the insatiable greed of the privileged few.

In the short time since I wrote “Beyond Afghanistan,” we have witnessed an expansion of the absurd...

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...