Guest Blogged by Peter B. Collins

Since I signed off the syndicated Peter B. Collins radio show in March, I've been able to zoom out from the close-up view of day-to-day political combat.

On a daily basis, I reflect on the "change we can believe in" that candidate Obama promised us just a year ago. Certainly, the new administration is better than the Bush/Cheney gang on many fronts; and Bush left Obama an economic meltdown and other serious problems that need attention.

But consider:

• we still have 135,000 troops and even more contractors in Iraq, with no clear plan or timeline for our exit, just vague promises and the hope that the Iraqis will kick us out next year. Most of the US troops that have left Iraq went to Afghanistan;

• the escalation of our presence in Afghanistan is very dangerous, and contradicts some of Obama's own statements about the prospects for "success" there. He had the chance to reverse direction after the election, but chose to double down on the "good war";

• the massive interception of domestic electronic communications continues, and the Obama Justice Department has reinforced and expanded on the bad legal precedents set under Bush/Cheney. Most Democrats are silent on this issue, and I see no effort to restore our privacy rights.

Remember how they dubbed Ronnie Reagan the "Teflon president"? Obama seems to have a new and improved coating, I call it "Leftlon," protecting him from challenges from the progressives who helped him beat Hillary for the nomination.

He keeps reaching out to GOP nuts who want to scuttle his tepid health care "reform," refuses to allow investigations while Cheney spits at him regularly, and expects us to trust the Goldman Sachs Alumni Association to fix the economy that they continue to plunder.

When will Obama deliver for the progressives who got him elected?

That's the central question I'm exploring in my new podcast series. Drop in to www.peterbcollins.com or you can subscribe (free, FREE!) at iTunes.

Here are two fresh programs I'd like you to check out. You can download each and/or listen online below. One is co-hosted with me by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, featuring NSA expert James Bamford as guest. The other is my exclusive interview with Mark Klein, former AT&T technician turned NSA surveillance program whistleblower...

In case you missed this, it's an amazing admission, and should be a part of every debate about government-run healthcare --- tossed in the face of every wingnut who says government can't run anything, much less healthcare. And yet, we allow the government to run the healthcare system for our troops, who, Bill Kristol admits in this interview, deserve "first class health care," while "the rest of us can go out and buy insurance."

The uncomfortable inference, for Kristol, is that government-run healthcare is as good, if not better than, that available to private citizens. To make it worse, Kristol is booed when he argues that's the way it should be. Whoops...

Thank you again, Jon Stewart. No wonder the country finds you (in TIME's online poll anyway), "America's Most Trusted Newscaster."

The video above, featuring just a part of their healthcare discussion, is courtesy of RAW STORY. Stewart's complete interview with Kristol, which was trimmed down for length before airing last night, follows in full below...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: U.S.-China summit begins today in D.C.; Arctic ice photos finally declassified... PLUS: Chicken feathers! For both biodiesel and Republican Senators... 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' (links below): Krugman: Is the threat of speculation a reason to shun cap and trade?; Tropical deforestation and its impact on global warming; Colorado Solar Customers Fuming Over Proposed Fee... PLUS: Could algae be the solution for biodiesel?...

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

AllSpinZone's Richard Blair comes out of self-imposed blogging hiatus --- writing via email that he's "not sure what it means that my internal levy finally broke this evening" --- to notice:

Is there a reset button for the reset button? If so, the coming Congressional recess would be a good time to hit it, boys and girls on Capitol Hill.

"The Mendacity of Nope"...

Kudos --- for the actual reporting and literal legwork --- to Mike Stark of Firedoglake ("Scum of the earth," according to Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)) for nailing this in between FDL reader-funder Capitol Hill reportage on health care (ya know, stuff that actually matters).

Kudos too to Rep. Tommy Franks (R-AZ), for his willingness to admit, for the camera --- unlike all of the other Republicans that Stark tried to get comment from on the Hill --- that Obama is a natural born "citizen of the United States of America."

We were prepared to offer Franks a much-sought, but too-rarely bestowed BRAD BLOG Intellectually Honest Conservative Award, but then he blew it at the very end by noting his condemnation of Obama "for promoting abortion on demand, for standing by and letting Jihad gain traction in the word, and for doing things to undermine our constitution and for turning us into a Socialist nation." Too bad. And you were so close, Mr. Franks!

BTW, in a very related late update, FDL's Jane Hamsher notes...

I was taking a few (merciful) hours off yesterday, so missed Ms. Palin's farewell, as she completed her first term gubernatorial abortion to become America's premiere celebrity community organizer. But if you, as I, missed her speech, AKMuckraker kindly provides the transcript (Immoral Minority offers the video, if you prefer it) reinforcing the old saw about the 'difference between George W. Bush and Sarah Palin: Lipstick'. Oh, and speech writers.

Much of her theme throughout the weekend's "word salad" speeches, was the old "support our troops" strawman. She repeated over and over, that our military protects our freedoms. It is, perhaps, futile to point out, yet again, that our Military does not protect our freedoms. Our Constitution does. Our Military is supposed to defend it. So are folks like Palin, Bush, Cheney, Obama etc. who swear an oath to do so, but too often end up doing just the opposite.

Suffice to say, Washington's Farewell Address --- which, as EarlyAmerica.com describes, extolled the benefits of the federal government; noted the necessity of taxation; warned against the party system, permanent foreign alliances and "overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty" --- Palin's long "goodbye" was not.

Of the passages which jumped out at me for various, sometimes inexplicable, reasons:

• "Together we stand."
• "It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future."
• "I remember on that December day, we took the oath to uphold our state constitution, and it was written right here in Fairbanks by very wise pioneers. We shared the vision for government that they ground in that document."
• "[W]e have done our best to fulfill promises that I made on Alaska Day, 2005, when I first asked for the honor of serving you."
• "Don’t forget Alaskans you are the resource owners per our constitution and that’s why for instance last year when oil prices soared and state coffers swelled, but you were smacked with high energy prices, we sent you the energy rebate. See, it’s your money and I’ve always believed that you know how to better spend it than government can spend it." (Ed Note: Why do Sarah Palin and the wingnuts applaud such socialism in Alaska, but nowhere else? Why does nobody in the media seem to point that out?)

So with another thanks to Mudflats (and sincerest apologies to our own Jeannie Dean), here are a few priceless photos for the scrapbook from Saturday's Governor's Picnic in Anchorage, one of the last stops on her Farewell-for-Now Tour...

In response to AP's Friday headline announcing "Conyers wants criminal probe of Bush 'abuses,'" David Swanson posts this "important breaking sarcasm"...

See Swanson for the rest...

Salon's Glenn Greenwald (whom I interviewed last night on the Malloy Show on somewhat related topics, audio archive now here), covers this morning's latest "entirely unsurprising" news that Cheney tried to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens following 9/11. And unaccountable-DoJ-attorney-for-all-illegal-unConstitutional-seasons John Yoo was happy to supply a "legal" memo for him, describing how the U.S. Constitution could be entirely ignored by any President at any whim.

Greenwald begins this way [emphasis in original]...

[Now updated with audio archives...]

Malloy is still down with a virus, so I'm in again tonight as Guest Host on the The Mike Malloy Show. I'll be 'Bradcasting' LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Hope you'll listen in, since I've decided it's "Accountability Friday"!

Since it's "Accountability Friday," whom do you hold most accountable for the unending mess we're in right now? Repubs, Dems, Media, Corporate America, American people who aren't doing enough about it, Teabagging Birthers, anyone else, all of the above? Give us a call tonight to name names at 877-520-1150, and/or speak up in comments on this Open Thread item!

Scheduled guests so far tonight...

• GLENN GREENWALD, master blogger, attorney and accountability expert from Salon's daily must-read Unclaimed Territory, and author of Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.
• GREG PALAST, muckraking investigative BBC journalist, author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild and star of the new documentary video Greg Palast Investigates.
• DESI DOYEN, Co-host and managing editor of The BRAD BLOG's Green News Report, running on radio stations and websites around the country (and if it's not running on your station, call and write and ask them to add it! It's free!)

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

Use this item for tonight's Open Show Thread, hosted, as always, by the ever-affable "Agent 99." See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: Sorry for the delay...Our good man Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org is working overtime, and was forced to wrestle with some technical demons today to boot! But we've now got the audio archives, all three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, thanks to Ben) available below. Great guests, great calls on "Accountability Friday". Enjoy!...

[Now updated with audio archives...]

Malloy caught a bug, so he's asked me to fill in as Guest Host tonight and tomorrow on the The Mike Malloy Show. I'll be 'Bradcasting' LIVE tonight from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Hope you'll listen in!

Among our scheduled guests so far tonight...

• GOV. DON SIEGELMAN, former AL governor, free on appeal, and fighting outrageous political prosecution by Karl Rove and gang, as covered recently here...
• REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH), on the fate of progressive healthcare initiatives in Congress at this point.
• JOHN BONIFAZ, Legal Director of Voter Action on new initiative pushing for electoral reform in Congress.
• IGOR VOLSKY of Center for American Progress, contributor to the book Howard Dean’'s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, on the latest in healthcare politics and fear.
• AKMUCKRAKER, master Alaskan blogger from The Mudflats and Huffington Post, on the ethics, or lack thereof, of Sarah Palin, Alaska's soon-to-be-former Governor.

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167, or listen to the free online stream here or here!

This item will be tonight's Open Show Thread, hosted, as always, by the never-cranky Agent 99. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE, AUDIO ARCHIVES: Well that was a lively show!

Audio archives of all three "hours" (about :36 mins each with commercials removed, courtesy of Ben Burch at WhiteRoseSociety.org) follow below...and are worth listening to, again, and again, and again, sez me. Enjoy!...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Honey, I shrunk the fish!; Off-shore drilling vs. California's budget; "Clean coal" vs. reality; Tourism vs. Safety in Missouri.... PLUS: Onion Power! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail, onion juice? 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' (links below): Greening the U.S. Army; AT&T to save millions by switching to LEDs; Battery technology for cars juiced to take off... PLUS: Clinton, Indian Minister Clash Over Emissions Reduction Pact...

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

[Update 7/24/09: I chatted about the issues in this article with noted Mudlflats blogger & Huffington Post contributor AK Muckraker --- an expert on all things Palin --- while Guest Hosting Thursday's Mike Malloy Show. Listen to the interview right here. Select Hour 3 audio archive. Interview begins about 10 minutes into the archive.]

A brief, two paragraph statement [PDF] by the private attorney of Alaska's very-soon-to-be-former Gov. Sarah Palin was posted on the governor's official public state website on Monday.

Attributed to "THOMAS VAN FLEIN --- Personal Attorney for Governor Palin," the statement posted to the Governor's officially run state website at www.gov.state.ak.us decries the latest ethics complaint filed against Palin --- alleging the improper disclosure of gifts and the receipt of free services --- as an abuse of the state Ethics Act.

That the official state website would be used to publicize the private response of Palin on Monday to another ethics charge is somewhat ironical, given Tuesday's leak of a preliminary independent report [PDF] from a state ethics commission investigator finding "probable cause" that Palin's "official" legal defense fund violated the Ethics Act in that it made use of her "official position for personal gain."

Citing Alaska Statute 39.52.120(a) which states that a "public officer may not use, or attempt to use, an official position for personal gain," the state's independent investigator, Thomas M. Daniel notes that "personal gain" is defined by law as "a benefit to a person's or immediate family member's personal interest or financial interest."

Does the use of the state's website to publicize Palin's personal attorney's response to an official ethics complaint constitute the use of "an official position for personal gain"? Was the complainant allowed to post her attorney's response to the complaint, or to Palin's personal response to it, on the official Alaska state website? Of course not.

Perhaps one more ethics complaint needs to be filed in Alaska before Palin quits her job as Governor this weekend.

We came across Monday's publicly posted private response via a Monday night tweet on Palin's personal Twitter page which linked to it:

But, as still more irony would have it, Palin and/or her attorney may have also committed a legally actionable act of defamation in their response to the leak of yesterday's confidential "probable cause" finding....

And on a "lighter" note, Colbert takes a look at the report that AG Eric Holder is "on the verge of" appointing a prosecutor to look into Bush/Cheney torture, and the media's dismal coverage (hello NBC's Chuck Todd!), contending that carrying out the Rule of Law against politicians --- apparently only Republican ones --- should be avoided, because politicians would debate about it on television...

[Update 7/24/09: I interviewed Seigelman on Thursday about these matters and the latest status of his case, while Guest Hosting The Mike Malloy Show. Listen to the interview right here. Select Hour 2 audio archive.]

How it's even possible that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's bribery case and conviction has not long ago been dropped by the Dept. of Justice is beyond us. There is now so much evidence of clear conflicts of interest, overt partisan political prosecutorial targeting, failures to recuse by at least one conflicted prosecutor as well as the judge in the case, evidence withheld from the defense team, and now evidence of the coaching and strong-arming of witnesses in exchange for a lighter prison sentence and a promise to conceal embarrassing personal information, it all makes the prosecutorial misconduct in the case of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens --- a Republican whose case was dropped by Obama's Justice Dept. shortly after they came to power --- look like jaywalking.

Official declarations filed along with a recent motion by Siegelman, requesting a new trial in light of the new evidence, reveal what seems just the tip of the iceberg of a flagrant and wholly inappropriate case of wide-spread prosecutorial misconduct. The allegations (with much evidence to back them up) paint a compelling picture of an illegally targeted political prosecution/witch-hunt carried out by Karl Rove and his Alabama-based Dept. of Justice cronies in an attempt to remove Alabama's most popular Democrat from the political grid all together.

The scheme worked, as Siegelman is currently fighting his conviction on appeal and --- now armed with new evidence gathered by the defense team of fellow defendant Richard Scrushy, the man alleged to have "bribed" Siegelman --- is calling for a completely new trial. The government is to answer Siegelman's motion next week, and the decision will be made by the same federal U.S. District Court judge, Mark E. Fuller, reported to have severe conflicts of interest in the entire case, including a specific "grudge" against Siegelman.

The new declarations, believed to be posted here publicly in full for the very first time ( PDF links follow below), reveal a startling case of inappropriate misconduct by federal investigators, as Siegelman's former aide Nick Bailey, the government's star witness against him, is revealed to have been "coached and cajoled and threatened," as Siegelman's late June motion for a new trial describes it, throughout some 70 interviews and phone calls. Bailey, the documents describe, was said to have been frightened for his life and facing a possible years-long sentence in federal prison, if he failed to testify precisely as investigators had required him to.

The investigators went so far as to require Bailey to write down his testimony after he had failed, time and again, to offer the same answers to prosecutors' questions during undisclosed interviews. Yet, evidence of that coaching was allegedly concealed from the defense, according to the new documents and testimony, in violation of federal law, and in what appears to directly parallel the precise reasons for the dismissal of the Stevens case in Alaska.

Siegelman tells The BRAD BLOG that after the years-long prosecution, this is the first time the information has come to light about coached witnesses, and undisclosed documentation of government interviews.

Star witness Bailey, who testified that he saw Siegelman in receipt of a $250,000 check alleged to have been a "bribe" from Scrushy --- a check that was actually dated several days later than the day Bailey testified he saw it in the hands of the Governor --- is said to have been so unable to remember the specific details prosecutors wanted him to testify to, that he was given written questions and instructions to write down his answers to practice for the actual trial. He was, according to the new documents, told quite specifically how to answer questions.

The hand-written notes from Bailey's attempts to memorize his testimony to the satisfaction of prosecutors is said, in the new affidavits, one from Baily himself, to have included a page in which he responded to the government's specific instructions by hand-writing "bullshit," in response, on one of the undisclosed pages.

A complete notebook of those hand-written documents and other records of interviews with Bailey was apparently never given to the defense teams in either the Siegelman case or in Scrushy's, who also filed a motion for a new trail in late June...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Obama to ban antibiotics? (in farm animals, that is); Mining the Grand Canyon; Chevron refuses to pay for environmental damage; The bulb is back.... PLUS: Wal-Mart going green... 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' (links below): Missouri withheld E. coli contamination data in popular lake; China announces huge solar subsidies; Talk about power --- Jet turbine could power hybrid electric car; No solutions for toxic Dallas River; Tougher home building rules to save energy for decades... PLUS: Are the world's fish shrinking due to global warming?...

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