- Special investigative report by Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The mystery surrounding a long-questioned and allegedly "fixed" non-partisan 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) bond election in Pima County, AZ continues to deepen as troubling new details have now emerged. The resolution in this matter --- should it ever come --- could spell trouble for supporters of paper-based optical-scan electronic voting systems, since indications are that if the election was rigged, it was done with insiders via the electronic central tabulating computers.

Late last week another new twist was discovered in the years-long election fraud investigation by Democratic and Libertarian Election Integrity advocates in Tucson. The revelations come to light in what was thought by many to have been a settled election, at last, following a long-sought hand-count of paper ballots carried out last year by the office of AZ's Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard. The AG had announced in April of last year that his criminal investigation hand-count had "affirmed" the original results of the election were correct.

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG, which has been covering this bizarre matter for years, plays a small role in this latest development, as a promise that Goddard's office made to us last year concerning the "poll tapes" --- remarks which he was asked about during a press conference at the end of the hand count [see the remarks on video below] --- may have now boomeranged on him.

Given that Goddard is now the likely Democratic nominee to face Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in this fall's Gubernatorial race, this revelation couldn't have come at a much worse time for him.

After many years of litigation, Election Integrity advocates have now finally been allowed to review the long sought-after poll tapes in question. What they've discovered is disturbing and, so far, without legitimate explanation.

Out of 368 precincts, 112 poll tapes are completely missing. Moreover, 102 of the "yellow sheets" --- certified precinct reports, signed by poll workers, detailing corresponding summary information, such as numbers of ballots received, cast and spoiled, as helpful for important auditing functions at the precinct level --- are missing as well.

Furthermore, of the poll tape records that are not missing, 50 of them do not match the results as recorded in the final canvas of the election, according to the Election Integrity advocates who have compared them to the original electronic database numbers...

Yesterday The BRAD BLOG covered the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera against Rightwing activists and dirty tricksters James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles after they'd video-taped him secretly, in violation of California law.

Last night, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC covered it, rather amusingly (and accurately), this way...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

As noted in today's Green News Report, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has ordered a new moratorium on exploratory deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere off the continental shelf of the U.S.. The new suspension may make prior court battles over the previous moratorium moot, even as questions linger concerning apparent conflicts-of-interest by the judge who originally heard the case.

Stating that he was basing his decision on "an extensive record of existing and new information indicating that allowing new deepwater drilling to commence would pose a threat of serious, irreparable, or immediate harm or damage to the marine, coastal, and human environment," Salazar sent a memo yesterday to Michael R. Bromwich, the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM), directing him to issue new suspensions of deepwater drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The new suspensions, presuming they withstand another inevitable court challenge from the oil industry, will run through November 30 and apply to both the Pacific and Gulf Coast regions.

In revealing the new suspensions, Salazar announced...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Has BP finally put a lid on it?; Drilling moratorium Round Two; Haiti's forgotten disaster, six months later ... PLUS: Climate scientists exonerated again, AGAIN (again) ... 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): Zombie lies concocted by climate deniers likely to stick around despite corrections; Reports from four fronts in the War on Warming; Did BP play a role in terrorist's release, to get drilling rights in Libya?; Death toll rises after levees fail in China; PA quarantines cattle contaminated with fracking fluid; Obama admin announces Alaska drilling lease sale; EPA uses industry studies to test safety of weedkiller ...PLUS: Doomsday: Could BP Spill Kill All Life on Earth?...

Wow. Seriously. Just...really...Wow.

Fox "News" analyst and former NJ Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano was featured on a segment of C-Span's BookTV over the weekend, to discuss his book, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History.

While being interviewed by Ralph Nader, Napolitano says what Bush and Cheney did while in office was "blatantly unconstitutional, and in some cases criminal."

When asked by Nader what the consequences should be, the judge says, in no uncertain terms: "They should have been indicted! They absolutely should have been indicted! For torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant."

Wow. Guess his contract on Fox must be up. If it wasn't, we suspect it is now. The text transcript and video --- with Napolitano explaining that the "evidence...is overwhelming" that Bush and Cheney "participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings --- follows below. Take a look...

Now we're talking!...

Rightwing dirty-trickster and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his accomplice Hannah Giles are being sued for invasion of privacy by a San Diego ACORN worker.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired by the 4-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization after deceptively edited and secretly recorded video tapes of a meeting Vera had with O'Keefe and Giles were released by the pair and published on Republican propagandist Andrew Breitbart's websites. The tapes were then widely aired on Fox "News", as well as non-Rightwing media outlets.

Vera is suing for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act which, according to the short, four-page complaint [PDF] filed at week's end in U.S. District Court, "prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded."

In April of this year, CA Attorney General Jerry Brown completed a five-month probe into O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart's secretly-taped ACORN videos and found "no criminality" by any of the ACORN workers seen on what he described as "severely edited" tapes.

He did, however, find that O'Keefe and Giles themselves were likely to have violated California law, and could see private litigation brought against them...

An investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state's top law enforcement agency, has concluded that no charges will be filed against Alvin Greene, the mysterious and unverifiable winner of the Democratic Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate, in relation to the $10,440 filing fee the unemployed military vet paid to get onto the party's June 8th primary ballot.

In that election, the unknown Greene was reported --- by the 100% unverifiable ES&S e-voting system --- to have defeated former four-term state legislator and U.S. Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl 59% to 41% despite having failed to campaign for the nomination, nor even having a campaign website.

Questions have arisen as to how the jobless Greene, who was recently appointed a public defender in a felony obscenity case he faces, was able to afford the filing fee for the U.S. Senate race. As noted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which requested an investigation into the matter, Section 7-25-200 of the SC Code of Laws prohibits anyone from accepting or offering "either directly or indirectly, money, a loan of money, or any other thing of value...as inducement to file as a candidate for any state or federal election office." Greene, who lives with his father, maintains he used money saved from military pay to cover the fee.

Some, including both state Republicans and South Carolina's Democratic U.S. House Rep. James Clyburn (SC), have stated the possibility that Greene was a "plant" on the ballot, given a public poll taken in May, as cited by Rawl campaign manager Walter Ludwig here at The BRAD BLOG, just three weeks weeks before the election, which showed Rawl trailing SC's incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint by just 7 points, 50 to 43%. However, even the "plant" theory can't explain Greene's nearly 20-point "victory" as reported in the June 8th election results.

It's the very last paragraph of CNN's report on SLED clearing Greene, however, which, for the moment, raises both our eyebrow and, possibly, a curious red flag in the results of the Republican-controlled state's investigation into Greene's filing fee...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives at the bottom. Enjoy!]

It's my final night this week guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. Mike will be back Monday, but until then, we'll be BradCasting our last show for a while again LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). It's your last chance for a while to join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE (and very lively!) chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by 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.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• GORDON PETERSON, a long-time Democratic Party activist from Dallas and a now-former Malloy Show podcast subscriber who cancelled his subscription, in no small part, because he hates it when I guest host, believes I'm "election-wise clueless", a "Ludditte", doesn't like my "kneejerk halfassed crap" about getting rid of e-voting, and believes we need "MORE computers, rather than less" in our public election systems. He'll explain all of the above tonight! Should be a lively conversation!
• CLINT CURTIS, former Florida computer programmer/whistleblower who has long-alleged (via sworn affidavit, video-taped testimony to a U.S. House Judiciary panel, and a polygraph test ) that he was asked by former Republican Congressman Tom Feeney to create a vote-rigging software prototype, as originally reported by The BRAD BLOG in 2004, and continuously ever since, and now as told in the documentary: Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story, on his candidacy in California's 4th U.S. Congressional district to unseat incumbent Republican Tom McClintock.
• PLUS: Everything else we didn't get to this week, including YOUR calls on anything you'd like at 877-520-1150, and your tweets to @TheBradBlog and whatever else comes up along the way...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around 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.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: We had a terrific week sitting in for Mike and Kathy, and hope you enjoyed it even a fraction as much as we did. It was a great week of shows, and tonight (I don't think) was no exception. Audio archives all posted down below, and the archive of the chat room, as usual, below it (wherein Gordon showed up to take still more punishment after coming on air, for some reason)...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

A three judge panel of the heavily-Republican 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans rejected the Department of Interior's request for an emergency stay of Judge Martin Feldman's June 22, 2010 preliminary injunction [PDF], which prevents enforcement of the Department of Interior's six month moratorium on exploratory drilling on only 33 "of the approximately 3,600 structures in the Gulf dedicated to offshore oil exploration and production."

The panel's two Reagan appointees, Judge Jerry E. Smith, joined by Judge W.Eugene Davis, ruled that the government had failed to demonstrate that it would be irreparably harmed if a decision on whether to vacate Judge Feldman's injunction was deferred until after the appeal was heard sometime around the end of August or early September. Judge James L. Dennis, a Clinton appointee, dissented, noting that he did not believe Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar had abused his discretion in ordering a moratorium, which, per the government's motion is limited to those drilling operations that apply "the same technologies employed by Transocean's Deepwater Horizon...only to waters over 500 feet deep..." Since, under the Administrative Procedures Act, a court cannot overturn an agency decision absent an abuse of discretion, Judge Dennis appears to have concluded that Judge Feldman erred in issuing the preliminary injunction.

Judge Dennis did have a question, however, about the six month length of the moratorium.

While yesterday's ruling does not mean that the panel will ultimately rule against the moratorium, the Justice Department and the attorneys representing a number of environmental organizations in the appeal face a daunting climb given Judge Smith's expression of the usual appellate court deference to the findings of the district court judge --- a climb up an oil slicked slope given the ties between the oil industry and the judges who will decide the moratorium's fate...

While I'm preparing for tonight's Mike Malloy Show --- the last night of my latest week-long guest hosting stint for him --- and working on a story concerning the exclusive news we brought you on a disturbing new break in a years-long election fraud mystery in Pima County, AZ during Hour 2 last night (audio archive here, listen to "Hour 2"), I thought you might enjoy a very short, but fun clip from the first hour of last night's show.

The caller was "Billy" from Austin, and he was calling to dispute my take on yesterday's encouraging news of the U.S. District Court judge in MA who found the federal ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.

"Billy" was very confused about marriage and about being a "conservative" --- which he isn't, as I explained, while I am. Give it a listen.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 6.5 mins]...

For the record, "Billy" hung up on himself. I didn't hang up on him. Also, bonus points for those who catch the amusing South Park allusion which "Billy" didn't seem to.

[Now UPDATED with full --- highly recommended --- audio archives.]

It's Day 4 of our latest week-long stint filling in for Mike on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. And again we'll be BradCasting LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). I hope you'll join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room, as ever, will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by 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.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• HOWIE KLEIN, political blogger extraordinary from Huffington Post and Down With Tyranny on all the politics that's fit to speculate about! Specifically this November's Congressional elections, the outlook for Democrats, Republicans and those damned Blue Dogs!
• BREAKING NEWS, You'll have to tune in tonight to hear about some rathering disturbing new news in a long-running election fraud case in a specific county, in a specific state. It's one we've been following for some time, and tonight there's breaking news in the case. We'll talk about it with one of the key players in the long running investigation!
• PLUS: Catching up with the week's news and your calls on whatever you'd like to discuss at 877-520-1150, or via tweets to @TheBradBlog and whatever else comes up along the way...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around 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.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Well that was one very lively, very fast-paced show, chocked full of breaking news and exclusives. Check this one out! The audio archives are all posted below (and the chat room archives are posted below that, if your interested.) Enjoy! I know I did!...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record summer heat around the world (where are the climate change deniers?); Is air conditioning making America fat(ter)?... PLUS: BP says relief wells will be ready, just in time for their quarterly earnings report ... 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): Nevada Test Site to house solar projects; Don't expect global warming skeptics to give up on Climategate; PA finds spike in environmental violations from natural gas fracking: PA cattle quarantined from gas fracking contamination; UT kids contaminated with arsenic from pet chickens’ feed; Oil industry ramps up opposition to repealing tax breaks; Critics call Valdez cleanup a warning for Gulf workers ...PLUS: A Beach Walk With the Ghosts of Exxon Valdez ...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below.]

It's hump day for my latest week-long sting filling in as Guest Host on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. We'll be BradCasting LIVE all this week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room will again be up and rolling here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by for that as ya listen! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• DEAN LOGAN, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk on his office's report on the six different failures I encountered while trying and failing (again) to vote last June on the county's ES&S e-voting machines, and on his plans for the future to replace the disastrous systems in the country's largest voting jurisdiction.
• DAVID ROBERTS, Grist.org's climate and energy reporter on the status of federal clean energy legislation, the BP disaster and what cap and trade actually means.
• PLUS: Whatever else you and I feel like talking about, including your calls at 877-520-1150, tweets to @TheBradBlog and whatever else comes up along the way...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around 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.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: A thinking man (and woman)'s show tonight. I think. Lots to bite off and chew into. Enjoy the audio archives below, and the chat archives below them...