Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning

Sorry, Mr. Gibbs, but your description of a "professional left" whose critiques of your boss, President Barack Obama, should be disregarded as the "crazy" musings of "people who ought to be drug tested" reflects that you are both authoritarian and out-of-touch.

The vast majority of citizens who supported the President in 2008 favor positions on policies that are far more progressive than anything which has emerged from either the corporate-controlled Democratic "leadership" in Congress or the Obama White House. The majority of Americans are by no means obligated to ignore the "democracy deficit" or the betrayal of the President's promise to bring "change we can believe in."

While one can readily agree that many of the Obama administration's policies are an improvement over those which are advanced by the reactionary fascist billionaires, and their mindless "Tea Party" followers, there are many instances in which the policies of the current administration threaten more harm than those of its predecessor. E.g,, those documented by a recent ACLU report (see Democracy Now video below) in which the current administration has created policies that may "enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration."

Perhaps most disturbing is that the President's zeal to please his true constituency --- corporate America, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex --- comes from the same Presidential candidate whose soaring and lofty, yet deceptive campaign rhetoric gave rise to hope in so many that Election Day 2008 would mark a return to economic fairness, transparency, a restoration of the rule of law, an end to the fear-driven perpetual "war on terror," and a restoration of nature's ecological balance.

The title of Studs Turkel's powerful book is Hope Dies Last.

Even during the darkest days of the Bush/Cheney cabal, there was the hope that the foundering American ship of state could be righted by way of the electoral process. By raising the hopes of the American people during the course of the 2008 campaign, only to dash those hopes by betraying his own rhetoric, President Obama has, in some measure, caused more harm than the Bush/Cheney regime...

Via Ezra Klein:

The conservative victories in favor of the Constitution and equal rights for all continue, as the Reagan/Bush I-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has just ruled that same-sex marriages in California may resume once again as of 5pm PDT, August 18th.

Opponents of equality have until then to appeal the decision at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Walker's ruling today follows his recent ruling which found that the state's Prop 8 constitutional amendment banning such marriages is in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection and due process clauses.

• The court's 11-page ruling, lifting his temporary stay, is now here [PDF].
• CNN coverage
• MSNBC coverage
• Fox "News" coverage (emphasizing possibility of appeal)

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Russia's fires reach Chernobyl's forests; Pakistan flooding now a humanitarian crisis; EPA issues new rules for mercury pollution; Bay Area gets electric car chargers; Grey wolves get a break ... PLUS: Greenland's new 'ice island' threatens shipping lanes ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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...PLUS: RIP Ted Stevens, architect of the Alaskan petrostate ...

[As noted, I'm on the road this month, so blogging has been catch as catch can for me while on the roll. Have had terrible net access from the road of late. So apologies for the lateness of this one --- and others I've been trying, but failing, to log over last day or three, but haven't been able to. But better posting this here late, rather than never. For the record.]

The host of Late Night with David Letterman, during his interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last week, used uncharacteristically harsh language to describe the discredited Rightwing hitman, race-baiter and pathological liar Andrew Breitbart. Yes, he called him an asshole...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Thousands dead from heatwaves and fires in Russia; Thousands dead from flooding and mudslides in Pakistan and China; Massive 'ice island' breaks off of Greenland, as the heatwave continues in the U.S. (Global warming? What global warming?) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): First signs of puberty seen in younger girls; Australia agriculture faces climate upheaval; Whole buildings could become solar panels; EPA issues new regulations for mercury pollution from coal plants; China to shut 2,000 factories to save energy; Oil spill shuts India's busiest port; Highway projects don't help the US economy ... PLUS: 100+ Quick Rebuttals to Common Climate Change Denier Arguments (collect them all!)...

Seriously, what part of "conservative values" and the "U.S. Constitution" do Fox "News" "conservatives" not get?

As we've been pointing out for years, and as we re-iterated yet again on Wednesday when CA's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage was found to be unconstitutional by a Reagan/Bush I-appointed federal judge, the ruling was "Great news for real conservatives who believe in the U.S. Constitution and its guarantee of equal protection under the law!"

Poor Fox "News" viewers, however, have been so obscenely and opportunistically disinformed for so many years about what "conservatism" actually means (basically, they've been told by the Fox/GOP opportunists that Republicanism is the same thing as conservatism, when it's usually anything but, and foolish folks on the non-Right have continued that fiction by describing them as "conservatives"), that they've had a next-to-impossible time wrapping their grotesquely disinformed brains around what last Wednesday's extremely conservative ruling actually means.

The scam that has been played on wingnuts --- inaccurately and opportunistically conflating Republicanism with Conservatism --- has rarely been more clear than it was on Fox News Sunday today, when anchor Chris Wallace's "conservative" disinformation train ran smack-dab into the brick wall of conservative facts and reality offered by Theodore Olson, George W. Bush's former Solicitor General (he of the infamous Bush v. Gore), who happens to be the plaintiff's victorious lead attorney in the Prop 8 case.

So, we'll ask again: What part of "conservative values" and the "U.S. Constitution" do Fox "News" "conservatives" not get? As we've got many such disinformed phony "conservatives" trolling us here at The BRAD BLOG, we'll look eagerly forward, as always, to their amusing, self-defeating, non-conservative, anti-Constitutional comments in reply to this video [courtesy of RAW STORY]...

New York's WBAI Evening News tracked me down while I was on the road in the sweltering wilds of SE Texas yesterday to discuss the story of the Rightwing cabal which had been revealed as having secretly and systematically worked to kill/bury/down-vote links to stories from The BRAD BLOG and other non-wingnut news sites before they could reach the front pages of major social aggregator networks like DIGG. See our coverage of this from Thursday.

One point I was able to make during the WBAI interview, which I didn't in the quick Thursday article, is that this episode illustrates, yet again, that even these Rightwingers recognize their own ideas are so weak they can't stand up to legitimate scrutiny on their own. The system must be gamed in hopes of giving them an edge in the public arena.

Moreover, if the Right is willing to sabotage social networking sites and willing to publish faked videos (see their ACORN "Pimp" Hoax videos, Shirley Sherrod video, etc.) in dishonest hopes of scoring political points, then why wouldn't they be similarly willing to steal elections whenever/however possible? That is, after all, the greatest prize and it's all for a greater purpose, right?

My interview on WBAI Evening News follows below. (My thanks to WBAI political reporter Rebecca Myles for sending me the audio while I was otherwise on the road and largely off the grid all day yesterday.)

MP3 Download or listen online below [appx. 8.5 mins]...

P.S. In a related note, Dave Johnson at "Seeing the Forest" reminds me that he pointed out last year how the same concerted Rightwing effort seems to go into gaming material at Wikipedia. I can also attest to that first-hand, as I've seen the "Brad Friedman" article over there defanged, tagged and even targeted for deletion by the same Right-leaning Wiki-administrator over and again throughout the years.

P.P.S. Billy Dennis, the "Peoria Pundit," picked up on our Thursday article, and offers some additional thoughts, along with this one at the end which I think is meant as a compliment :

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse." - Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir

In a March 25, 2009 article, "Prosecute or Perish," in which I urged that "the survival of our Constitutional Democracy may hinge on factually justified criminal prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal," and again in "Fixing the Facts and Legal Opinions Around the Torture Policy," I took dead aim at the sophistry employed by President Barack Obama to evade his constitutionally mandated obligation to see that the laws are faithfully executed. The same Harvard Law School-educated President who said that, in torture, America had lost its "moral bearings," suggested we must only look forward --- an "illogical formulation [that] was incompatible with the very essence of the rule of law."

I was naive. I thought the President was merely evading his constitutional obligation out of political expediency; that he actually intended to restore the rule of law and salvage what was left of our nation's honor.

A growing body of evidence, including confirmation contained in the recently exposed Afghan "Pentagon Papers," suggests the President did not look back at his predecessor's war crimes because he saw, in the failure to prosecute, the ground work for his own round of "Unitary Executive" lawlessness --- an expanded, illegal and increasingly covert "war on terror" in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of paramilitary assassins, operating in secret and beyond the rule of law, carry out targeted killings of "suspected" terrorists on a global scale --- a program that has already produced massive collateral casualties amongst innocent civilians who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Worse, as revealed by a newly filed lawsuit, the Obama administration has moved beyond the Bush/Cheney cabal's assertion of unchecked Executive lawlessness in the form of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture. The Obama administration has now not only asserted a right to assassinate anyone that the Executive branch labels a terrorist, including U.S. citizens, but has gone so far as to place lawyers in legal jeopardy should they seek a court order to block an extrajudicial execution unless the executive branch grants the lawyer permission to do so...

As usual, when Rightwingers can't win outright, they cheat. Such is the case on the very popular social aggregator website DIGG, as documented today at Alternet.

We've suspected for quite some time that links to The BRAD BLOG's articles as posted on DIGG have been quickly "buried" by Rightwingers hoping to keep our stories from reaching the front page --- or even the "upcoming" page, where others might see the story rising in DIGG "votes," so that it might then be propelled to the front page, where millions more would then see the link to the article.

The AlterNet piece details a "massive" Rightwing cabal which has been doing exactly that, and we weren't particularly surprised when we found The BRAD BLOG named in the piece as one of several non-wingnut websites that have been targeted for "burial" by a Rightwing group of Internet hacks calling themselves "Digg Patriots"...

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Great news for real conservatives who believe in the U.S. Constitution and its guarantee of equal protection under the law!

A U.S. District Court Judge, first nominated by Ronald Reagan and then appointed under George H.W. Bush, has struck down CA's Prop 8 which added an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage equality. The state's majority Republican-appointed Supreme Court had previously found no basis for banning same-sex marriage in the CA constitution. That finding was, in effect, overturned at the ballot box in November 2008 by Prop 8 which ended same-sex marriage in the state and left thousands of marriages in limbo until today's finding.

As New York Magazine was first to report...

TPMMuckraker's Rachel Slajda reports that "Supporters of Prop 8 (that is, opponents of gay marriage) have already promised to file an appeal," and she now offers more quotes from Judge Vaughn Walker's landmark decision.

• Here's a copy of the final ruling [PDF].

And just a reminder to those of you foes of equality and the Constitution: Remember, where same-sex marriage is found to be legal and Constitutional, it will still be voluntary. You will not be forced to marry someone of the same sex. Just in case that's been unclear up until now.

UPDATE: CNN reports that, in a separate ruling [PDF], Walker grants a stay to his finding, pending appeal by the opponents of equality. If appealed, as is almost certain, the case will go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then likely to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel tweets a very interesting point, worth remembering, in relation to the likely inevitable hearing before the U.S. Supremes...

The news this summer has largely focused on an unstoppable, slimy, toxic, oozing gusher polluting our nation. That, and on the BP oil disaster.

As to the unstoppable, slimy, toxic, oozing gusher, the Associated Press has continued in the recent tradition of its failed corporate media brethren by gracing Rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart with yet another puff profile piece today. The more Breitbart reveals himself to be a fully-discredited, pathological-liar, race-baiter and opportunist, it seems, the more the corporate media regard him as a player in modern Republican politics. That kind of makes sense when you think about it.

If one regards the "crazy-cons" that have become today's GOP as little more than one half of today's Right/Left, Red/Blue, Republican/Democratic, Conservative/Liberal "politics as usual" --- if, by "usual", one means the years immediately proceeding the American Civil War --- then why not offer another friendly profile to one of the four top leaders of that once-legitimate party? (The others being Beck, Limbaugh and Palin.)

So that's what AP's Michael R. Blood did today.

Since we tell the truth here at The BRAD BLOG, rather than just make shit up, and were, in no small part, somewhat responsible for helping to demonstrate to the nation that Breitbart's only actually "successful" disinfo campaign --- his faked ACORN "Pimp" Hoax tapes --- were completely phony, the AP has neither profiled us, nor even called us for comment as a "critic" of Breitbart's for their story. (They haven't issued corrections for their myriad of articles which misreported the ACORN story either, for that matter).

All of that makes sense, of course, because, as Media Matter's Eric Boehlert points out today, "in [their] 2,100-word profile coming in the wake of Breitbart's Sherrod debacle, the AP only set aside 13 of those words to quote a Breitbart critic."

And even those 13 words --- reported by Blood as "Critics said the heavily edited [ACORN] tapes shaped a deceptive narrative" --- are quickly made moot by AP as little more than an indeterminable, open-ended, he-said/she-said "charge Breitbart denies". Close enough for corporate mainstream media work, apparently.

Boehlert describes it this way...

No wonder rightwing extremist Andrew Breitbart is so angry about the outrageous insult to his fellow clansmen. Can't imagine where that "racist" NAACP came up with the crazy idea that there are "elements of racism" in the Tea Party. [Hat-tip Maddow Blog.]...

And while we're on the topic, kudos, at least, to former National Review editor David Klinghoffer for correctly identifying in an LA Times opinion piece over the weekend, the hateful disaster that has become the once-legitimate, now insane-beyond-repair conservative movement in this nation. The item is headlined "From neocons to crazy-cons" and is aptly sub-titled: "Once the conservative movement was about finding meaning in private life and public service. But it has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism."

Here's a few more grafs worth reading. Breitbart might be heart-broken, if he had one. [Hat-tip Eric Boehlert.]...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Thousands dead in Pakistan floods; Temperature records shattered around the world; Plankton levels plummet around the world (and why it matters to you and me); Alarm bells ignored in the MI oil spill... PLUS: It's official! The BP oil disaster in the Gulf is now the WORST accidental oil spill in the history of mankind... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are 12 Times Support for Renewables; Can regulation beget innovation?; China oil spill far bigger than stated: expert; Rand Paul: Congress has no business protecting miners; Garbage islands threaten China's Three Gorges dam; US inaction threatens international climate negotiations; Why We'll See $300 Oil by 2020; 2010 Gulf 'Dead Zone' One of Largest Ever; 5-yr Restoration Plan for Gulf Coast ...PLUS: Slimeburger in paradise?: Avoiding pink slime in your ground beef ...