Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

While it should hardly be necessary, given the extent to which the GOP's billionaire-funded direct assault on workers' rights has exposed the Orwellian deceptions of the so-called 'Tea Party' movement, there are times when the adage, "sex sells," seems unavoidable, especially when it involves exposing the vast gap between the right-wing's professed "family values" and "fiscal responsibility" and a reality that includes infidelity and an eager willingness to squander public funds on friends and the billionaire sociopaths who fund their campaigns.

No doubt, Chris Bowers, the Campaign Director of the Daily Kos, understood this when he sent out a fund-raising email which, as reported by Rich Mitchell of the Conservative Daily News, reads, in pertinent part:

Mitchell denounced the salacious allegations as a "smear", though he offered no evidence in support of that claim to counter what appears to be an accurate account of Hopper's infidelities and the questionable hiring of his girlfriend, the GOP operative Valerie Cass, by the new administration of Gov. Scott Walker.

While there is always a legitimate question as to whether marital infidelity should disqualify an individual from holding public office, here the issue arises in the context of allegations of nepotism and hypocrisy, not to mention the issue of whether the Fond du Lac Republican could lawfully cast a vote opposing his own recall, now that, as his estranged wife admits, he no longer resides in his own district. He lives with Cass elsewhere.

This new sex scandal adds to a powerful, substantive recall message which has gained a great deal of momentum over the last several weeks...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below! Enjoy!]

It's a well-deserved "Spring Break" for the Malloys, so once again, we're thrilled to be back and "keepin' it lit" for the next six weeknights as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE again each night from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as ever, during the show. So please come on by and say hey while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• REP. JACK KIMBLE (R) Yes, a GOP U.S. Congressman has agreed to come on the Mike Malloy Show (Don't tell Mike!) tonight to talk about his support for rolling back some child labor laws(!) and whether he'll be joining every other R in the world considering a run for President in 2012. The Congressman represents California's 54th district, and we promised to let folks know you can, and should follow him on Twitter at: @RepJackKimble.
• IAN MURPHY, Editor of Buffalo Beast and the guy who punk'd WI Gov. Scott Walker when he called him pretending to be "David Koch"! Murphy is now running for the U.S. Congress in NY's 26th, and this time, we think, he's not kidding!
• JOE LINEHAN Chicago's brilliant and extremely subversive political satirist, and man of many characters, joins us for our special First Day of April edition of the Mike Malloy Show!
• PLUS: Has there been anything else in the news since we were last guest hosting the Malloy Show in early Feb? Any popular uprisings, new wars, natural disasters or nuclear catastrophes? Sigh... All of that, and your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: What a fun show! I'll not give anything away, in case you've yet to listen, as the audio archives are now posted below (along with archives for the chat room, if you're interested)...

This is just too funny (were it not so sad) to not post in full. From Jess Zimmerman at Grist...

If you’re a climate hawk, or even a climate hobbyist, this graph should look familiar --- it’s the warming trend over the last 100-odd years. Except the guy who busted this out at the House climate science hearing yesterday was brought in by the Republicans to debunk global warming. (The black line is his data.) Haha, whoops!

This graph is the result of physicist Richard Muller’s project to get maximally accurate temperature data. Climate change deniers assumed that his skepticism about existing temperature data meant he was on their side (well, that and he’s also been spreading misinformation about the “Climategate” emails). The Kochs were so convinced of this that they donated $150,000 to his lab --- which makes it all the more delightful that Muller is now all “thanks, suckers, here’s the same data everyone else already had.” (Okay, he put it like this: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups. … I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.” But you know what he meant.)

Muller was one of the only scientists the Republicans brought in --- among their five experts were an economist, a lawyer, and a professor of marketing. But hey, when there are so few scientists who are actually on your side, you have to go with what you’ve got. And evidently, even that doesn’t always work.

Tony Pierce, filling in for Andrew Malcolm (columnist and Laura Bush's former press secretary) at Los Angeles Times' "Top of the Ticket" blog picks up (with attribution, gracias) on our scoop earlier this week about the 100% unverifiable, yet highly hackable Diebold touch-screen e-voting machines out of Van Wert County, Ohio, now for sale, on the cheap, at eBay...

Pierce offers more information in his piece on that landmark Princeton hack from September 2006 and the hackability of these systems in general.

Long time readers of The BRAD BLOG likely recall the Princeton hack came about when VelvetRevolution.us (as co-founded by The BRAD BLOG) gave the Diebold touch-screen system to computer scientists there for the --- at the time --- highly secretive, first-of-its-kind examination, after we'd received the machine from a source of ours. We originally broke the story of that hack exclusively both here at The BRAD BLOG and in a slightly shorter version at Salon.

The alarming hack --- which demonstrated how a virus could be inserted into one of these systems and invisibly flip the results of an entire election --- received a great deal of attention from the mainstream media at the time, and was even covered in a live video demonstration on Fox "News". (See that video at right.)

Though the Princeton hack was on a Diebold AccuVote TS (with no so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" printer) versus the TSX model (with VVPAT) being sold now on eBay, the many ways available to game them in order to flip election results with very little possibility of detection are essentially the same...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama's 'new' blueprint for energy security --- not so 'new' after all; Offshore drilling --- not actually 'safer' after all; US falls further behind in the global clean energy race; PLUS: The 'Chernobyl Option' for Japan's nuclear reactors at Fukushima, as radiation continues to spike and spread ... All those disasters 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): US energy efficiency gains eclipsed by new gadgets; Dead dolphins confiscated from Gulf scientists; PA enviro chief to personally approve violation citations; PA's gas drilling commission stacked with industry; Lose the 'smart' meter, but it'll cost ya; Packaged foods raise levels of BPA; Organic farmers sue Monsanto; Aircraft contrails impact climate change; Joshua Tree NP escapes nearby landfill threat; CA approves nation's strongest clean energy standard; Student's Solarball creates drinkable water ... PLUS: At least he's honest: Pawlenty Admits 'Every One Of Us' Running For President Has Flip-Flopped On Climate Change ....

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Rep. John Mica (R-FL), Chair of the House Transportation Committee, inserted union-busting language into the 2011 Federal Aviation Administration Re-authorization bill.

His remarkable display of contempt for the democratic aspirations of working class Americans comes as little surprise, unfortunately. Mica, during his time in office, has received more than $620,000 in campaign contributions from the airline industry.

The Mica clause would block a rule adopted by the federal National Mediation Board which, according to the Communications Workers of America permitted airline and railroad workers to achieve "union representation based on a majority of votes cast, in line with the National Labor Relations Act rules governing union representation across all other industries." Instead of accepting the rules of a democratically held election of workers, Mica wants to count those who are eligible to vote, but who fail to do so, as votes against unionization.

Over the dissent of three Republicans and every Democratic member of the Committee, the House Transportation Committee rejected "an amendment by Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL) to strip Mica's anti-union language from the bill."

Mica's new definition of "democracy" underscores the observations we set forth in "Gov. Walker's Wisconsin 'Union Busting' Exposes 'Tea Party' Scam, Duped Americans" as to how so many working class Americans have been "taken in by the lies and deceptions of billionaire sociopaths, like oil-baron David Koch...[whose] aim is not liberty, freedom, and jobs but American fascism, corporatocracy, and the 'eternal subjugation of the common man.'"

That subjugation flows from the disparity of power that accompanies a growing disparity of wealth, which, in turn, correlates with the demise of unions in the U.S...

Today on my Wednesday show on KPFK (L.A.'s Pacifica Radio affiliate) we covered - guess what?! --- the latest news on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Desi Doyen, my partner on the Green News Report, joins me for the latest.

Also, a very few minutes (never enough time on a 30 minute show --- have to figure out how to do these!) on Diebold's touch-screen machines now being sold for pennies on the dollar at eBay, just in time for 2012, and a bit on the latest Republican voter fraud criminal, potential 2012 Presidential contender Jon Huntsman, Jr. of Utah.

MP3 Download or listen online below [appx 28 mins]...

P.S. I should probably come up with a name for this show. Anybody have any good ideas?

P.P.S. It's no April Fools Joke! I'll be guest-hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show again for a week starting this Friday, weeknights through next Friday (4/1 - 4/8). We'll be running our live chat rooms right here each night while the show is live from 6pm - 9pm PT (9pm - Mid ET), so please stop on by and say hey!. We'll also have links to live listening streams right here if you're not lucky enough to get Mike's show on the public airwaves where you live! Don't miss one thrilling episode!

As we noted in today's Green News Report for radio, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan told Parliament on Tuesday that the country remains on "maximum alert" in regard to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis as Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) workers and members of the country's Self-Defense Force continue to struggle heroically to prevent complete meltdowns at four of the plant's six reactors. They were each knocked out of commission by the March 11th magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Kan was, for the first time, publicly critical of TEPCO's inadequate safety measures for the plant where, as AP detailed in an investigative report on Sunday, the company had "dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history," when planning safe-guards against tsunamis there.

"It's undeniable their assumptions about tsunamis were greatly mistaken," Kan explained on Tuesday. Engineers had designed the plant to withstand waves of up to 18 feet, while the wave that swamped the nuclear plant knocking out power and flooding back-up diesel generators in the basement was believed to be more than 40 feet high...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fallout from the nuclear nightmare in Japan leads to a political shift in Germany; Plutonium found in the soil around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant; Americans trust the EPA more than Congress... so the GOP attacks the EPA --- again ... PLUS: Questioning America's emergency response to a Fukushima-style nuclear nightmare ... 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): UN report: Cities ignore climate change at their peril; Study: freshwater in upper Arctic Ocean increased 20%; China 'to overtake US on science' in two years; Court OKs Air-Pollution Restrictions for Ships; TX could require disclosure of drilling chemicals; China leads clean energy ranking as U.S. falls; Massey coal mines hit with 80 citations for safety violations; Can Canada's boreal forest be saved?; Russian support for nuclear power weakens as Chernobyl anniversary nears; Trouble stalks Hanford Nuclear Waste Site, America's largest; Enviro lawyers "tied in knots" over court's ruling on CA climate law; Pittsburgh's ash, oak trees expected to die off ... PLUS: San Diego dolphin deaths linked to navy training ....

Because practice makes perfect...

With 2012 just around the corner and these babies still in use at polling places all over the country, why not get one or more of them now for your very own?! With one of these future door stops, you too can learn all the ins and outs of "voting" before the pressure of Election Day, when that "vote" will really "count"!

Great for social clubs, like political parties, or even terrorist groups! Why wait? They're sure to disappear fast! Just like the 100% unverifiable "votes" cast on them!

Because they were made by Diebold, you know it comes from a company you "trust," whether you'd like to or not. And with bids starting as low as, well, anything you like, this tens-of-thousands-of-a-kind e-voting machine is sure to be a "steal"!

More from the Ebay ad (cached here for history's sake):

UPDATE: The seller tells The BRAD BLOG the systems, more than 100 of them, come from Van Wert County, Ohio! And from a state like Ohio, you know the machines work just as they are supposed to! Get yours now and become the life of the party!

UPDATE 3/31/11: Thanks to Tony Pierce, filling in for Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times "Top of the Ticket" blog for picking up on this story, adding some helpful details to it (and for giving appropriate attribution in the bargain.)

"The number is not credible," Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) spokesman Takashi Kurita told reporters on Monday in Japan, apologizing for the error. "We are very sorry."

Kurita was referring to their alarming report on Sunday night (local time) that radiation from iodine-134 in water of the basement of the turbine building at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times higher than the normal level, leading workers to another hasty evacuation of the plant. That number, Kurita explained, turned out to have been an incorrect reading.

But just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...Turns out the radiation levels in the flooded water at Unit 2 were actually "only" 100,000 times safe levels.

Mark McKinnon, the East Asia correspondent for Canada's The Globe and Mail may have said it best when he tweeted: "Congrats to TEPCO for finding a way to make radiation '100,000 times normal' sound almost like good news."

And with that, TEPCO confirmed the radioactive water has been detected in all four of the plant's six troubled reactors. It's "only" 10,000 times higher than normal at the those other reactor buildings...

Just one sign of hope among many more of sheer despair from The Atlantic's amazing photo essay, two weeks after Japan's great earthquake...

At left, a road in Naka, running between Tokyo and the Ibaraki prefecture, as photographed on March 11. At right, the same 150-meter section of road fully restored just six days later on March 17.

A few new developments over the weekend at Fukushima. Thankfully, none of them explosive. Will try to do a quickie update with those new items later tonight if possible. For now, our last update on the Fukushima nuclear crisis is still largely up-to-date and remains operative, in general. Have been covering new developments all weekend, as they happen, via Twitter, however, if you'd like to check that in the short term.

The GOP voter fraud epidemic continues unabated. The latest alleged felon? Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China, former Utah Governor --- and potential 2012 GOP Presidential candidate --- Jon Huntsman Jr.

Teddy Partridge at FireDogLake charges (accurately) that Huntsman "Pulls a Coulter," as The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

Of course, Huntsman is a Republican, so different "voter fraud" laws apply to them, in general, than to other Americans.

"It is generally illegal for voters to cast ballots using a residential address where they no longer reside," the Tribune notes before giving Huntsman a pass. "But state and federal law seem to back Huntsman’s ability to still vote using the governor’s mansion as his home because that was his last address before he left for Beijing to serve as an employee of the U.S. government."

Despite that, as the very same article notes, "Last June, Huntsman purchased a $3.6 million home in a tony D.C. neighborhood." So while he may have had cause to specify his last U.S. address as Utah prior to last June, one wonders why officials are overlooking the fact that he owned a D.C. home well prior to last November's general election, when he voted using a registration at a residence where he hadn't lived for more than a year and a half.

One doesn't have to "wonder" for long, however...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"The fact that the U.S. government could...seek to put away people because of their political dissent was a real major eye-opener to me." - Leonard Weinglass, commenting on the 1968 Chicago Seven trial.

The cause of civil liberties has lost a legal champion.

Throughout a long and distinguished legal career, during which he defended, among others, the Chicago 7, Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers Case, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Julian Assange, and the Cuban Five, Leonard Weinglass served as a vital buffer between an increasingly oppressive, corporate security state and those who would dare to challenge it.

He will be sorely missed.