Moments ago, the New York state Senate approved a marriage equality bill by a vote of 33 to 29. The legislation, previously approved in the state Assembly, will result in NY becoming the sixth state where same-sex marriage is allowed.

After Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs the bill, as expected, New York will join Massachusetts, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Washington D.C. in recognizing equal justice for all, as per the U.S. Constitution, in regard to marriage.

The right to marry was confirmed by conservative Supreme Courts in both California and Maine, but in each state, ballot initiatives were passed in hopes of nullifying that right. California's Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment banning equal marriage rights, has since been found unconstitutional in federal court, and is likely to be decided, eventually, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

NY's state Senate is the first legislative body with a Republican-majority to approve a bill for marriage equality.

The victory for real conservatives will result in a doubling of the number of Americans guaranteed equal marriage rights under the law.

And, once again, as a service to fake conservatives --- such as those who oppose equal rights for gay, fellow citizens, to marry each other --- a reminder: Even once this bill is signed into law, gay marriage will remain optional, not mandatory, in the state of New York.

UPDATE 9:18pm PT: Via AP...

...And the Empire State Building is lit in rainbow colors in celebration.

According to explosive new assertions from a credible former CIA agent, President Barack Obama's administration is said to have attempted to use the CIA to target, spyon, and smear an American conservative blogger and university professor on Middle-Eastern affairs, simply because he opposed the President's policies in Libya.

The alleged attempt to use the powerful U.S. intelligence agency for domestic spying and/or discrediting of a private American citizen would be in gross violation of the law disallowing domestic use of the agency. Uncomfortably, it's also precisely what so many on the Right have long warned of in regard to this President's proclivity for turning Big Government apparatchiks against the freedoms and liberties of private, law-abiding citizens simply because they dared to use their constitutionally protected rights of free speech to criticize his policies. It would also be, as folks on the Right have also long charged, a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution, which the President is sworn to defend, rather than abuse.

Republicans in Congress have vowed to investigate the matter, while Democrats, hypocritically and shamefully, have remained completely silent.

Given this startling and exceedingly troubling news --- particularly in light of Democrats ignoring the revelations, after so many years of charging George W. Bush with similar behavior --- we have to admit that perhaps we were too quick to ridicule the many Tea Party patriots for their warnings about the dangers of Obama's Stalinist and Maoist tendencies!

If the details of this story turn out to be true --- and so far, they certainly seem credible, as the blogger/professor says he was no longer invited to CIA conferences following the incident --- as much as we'd hate to admit it, we'd suggest impeachment or even legal proceedings against the President of the United States would be entirely appropriate here.

CORRECTION: It's a little embarrassing, but it appears we got at least one key detail in the above story completely wrong...

Good news for Constitutional conservatives such as myself today in two out of three noteworthy court decisions in three separate courts, at least in regards to the rights of we, the people.

Let's start with the two good news items, both related to the Constitutional right to equal protection under the law, and then the not-so-good news item, the one out of Wisconsin, where a predictable partisan divide succeeded in removing rights from American citizens...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Republicans in state after state across the country today, Memorial Day 2011, are remembering those who fought and died to protect our democracy by celebrating recent victories in their renewed effort to remove the right to vote for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of legal American voters.

It's been just days since we filed "GOP Voter Suppression Shifts Into High Gear in State After State as 'Tea Party' Shell Game Exposed" on May 23, detailing new GOP-passed polling place Photo ID restrictions in states like SC and FL, but since then we can report that Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed a bill legalizing polling place photo ID restrictions in TX and Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a photo ID restriction bill in WI.

Both of them, as opponents have documented over and over again, will serve to do little more than to disenfranchise far more legal (largely Democratic-leaning) voters than those who will be kept from fraudulently impersonating other voters at the polling place, which, as even most proponents admit when forced, happens almost never --- if it all.

Thankfully in at least one instance since our last report, Gov. Mark Dayton (D) of MN vetoed a photo ID measure passed by Republicans in his state. So there is one case, at least, where the memories of our fallen soldiers might be appropriately honored this weekend, as one governor has remembered to protect the very thing that so many of them died for.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the enactment of Indiana's photo ID law in Crawford vs. Marion County Election Bd. (2008), both the new WI photo ID law, which may cost WI taxpayers $7 million to implement, and both the SC and TX photo ID laws, which do not even recognize student photo IDs, may be subject to significant legal challenges...

Rightwing activists and propagandists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, employees of con-artist and propagandist Andrew Breitbart, may not use the First Amendment as an excuse for breaking the law in California, according to a federal judge's ruling this week.

Judge M. James Lorenz rejected the defendants' argument and motion for summary judgment in federal court, as part of the civil lawsuit filed against them by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera.

Giles had previously thrown O'Keefe under a bus by arguing that she should not be held accountable at all for violating California's Invasion of Privacy Act [CA Penal Code § 632], since he, not she, was actually wearing the hidden video camera used to secretly tape their conversations with Vera, even after they had asked if their meeting would be kept confidential.

For his part, O'Keefe, a convicted federal criminal, argued that he was allowed to violate the law because the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protected him as a "journalist". The judge ruled against the defendants on all points...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

With the backing of the AFL-CIO, National Nurses United, and the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) simultaneously introduced the American Health Security Act of 2011, a Medicare-for-All single-payer system.

The move triggered a "provocative, interesting discussion," as Sanders described it, during a Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions subcommittee hearing in the Senate last week in which the Vermont Senator squared off with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) (see video below). Sanders and a physician-witness agreed that treating healthcare as a "right" is consistent with the Hippocratic Oath. For his part, Paul, a self-certified physician, claimed that the establishment of healthcare as a right would turn physicians and their staffs into slaves, with the possibility of police barging into their houses at night to arrest them. Paul's theory that medical care for all "enslaves" doctors and all of those who choose to work in their offices, would no doubt come as a surprise to many physicians who live comfortably in single-payer countries, like the wealthy UK physician interviewed by Michael Moore in Sicko!

Dr. Paul's remarks underscore the extent to which ideology has obscured a basic reality that the core problem is not the ability of American physicians to deliver quality healthcare, but the absurdity of a society which places a greater value on accumulating obscene wealth in the hands of the privileged few above the health and very lives of its citizens...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the GOP state legislature received another setback to their controversial anti-immigrant legislation on Monday. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld an earlier U.S. District Court finding that puts the breaks, for now, on a number of provisions in the bill.

In their ruling in United States vs. Arizona, the court found a number of the most controversial provisions of the state's SB 1070 were likely preempted by the federal Immigration and Nationalization Act (INA). The decision leaves in place a preliminary injunction by the lower court barring enforcement of key provisions of the Arizona law.

The case does not, however, address the issue of whether SB 1070 gives rise to unlawful racial profiling.

The doctrine of preemption derives from the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. If Congress intends federal law to "occupy the field" or if state law conflicts with a federal statute, it is said to be "preempted" by federal law, which means that the federal law, as the supreme law of the land, supersedes state law...

As several folks have requested, here is my "Special Comment" on "Democracy's Gold Standard" in the wake of Wisconsin's Supreme Election Debacle from my final night of the week guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show last Friday night. It's presented here in quick and dirty video form in hopes that it'll get a few more eyes and ears than just the audio would by itself...

Please see this article for more on "Democracy's Gold Standard." And here is Nancy Tobi's book: Hands-On Elections: An Informational Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People.

A text transcript of the "Special Comment" follows below...

[Hat-tip Andrew Sullivan...]

Well, this seems about right. Most impressively, the video below explains how corporations are legally required to put the interest of shareholders and the maximizing of profits above all other concerns.

This is just one of the reasons we were so critical of Obama's recent address to the damnable U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest corporate lobbying group in the nation, wherein he seemed to be grovelling for them to work together in the interest of creating jobs for Americans. Silly, that. The corporations he was meeting with have a legal fiduciary duty to maximize profits. Period. They have no requirement to do anything else. In fact, they have a legal responsibility to do nothing but!

In short, corporations will not behave in the interest of the public unless and until they are legally required to do so. Anything short of that is simply whistling past the graveyard and/or a more political kabuki theater.

This video, featured by the DemocracyIsForPeople.org campaign to help the push for a Constitutional Amendment that would undo the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous 5 to 4 Citizens United decision last year by requiring that First Amendment rights apply to human beings only (or, at least, not to for-profit corporations) does a very fine job of explaining in simple terms the entire fine mess this country now finds itself in. It's well worth the 8 minutes it takes to watch...

Guest blogged by John Atlas

Will Chris Christie, New Jersey's tough Republican Governor and rising GOP star, be the next president of the United States? That prospect is much less likely if the accusations of Yvonne Smith Segars, the head of New Jersey's Office of the Public Defender, turn out to be accurate.

In a scathing letter [PDF] sent to the Governor on Monday, she charged Christie with having "violated New Jersey law as well as the State and Federal Constitutions," in his efforts to remove her from her post, and by interfering with the operation of her office. In the letter, Segars threatened to sue him for eroding the constitutional rights of indigent clients. She says he's actively undermining the work of the state's public defenders by "obstructing...management decisions and by impeding the filling of constitutionally mandated positions."

Segars accused Christie of "bullying tactics" in an effort to remove her from office. The tactics, according to NJ's chief Public Defender, included "veiled threats", "pressure to resign", "interference with [the] agency's operations" by thwarting approved promotions, and ordering her press officer to report to the Governor, instead of to her.

Segars adds that she "now fear[s] being physically removed from my office."

If the accusations are true, this and other unpopular actions could well serve to help unravel future political ambitions for Christie, who is regarded as a rising star among the "Tea Party" and right-wing base of the Republican party.

In a blistering email statement, Segars' attorney charged Christie is "tamper[ing] with the independence of the judiciary and now with the independence of the Public Defender" in what amounts to an "illegal and unconstitutional" "power grab" meriting impeachment by the state legislature...

[Now UPDATED below with audio from tonight's show. And it was a good one!]

We'll have another big show tonight as my week guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show continues (while the Malloys Progressively Cruise the Caribbean).

We're BradCasting LIVE again tonight, 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 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.)

Tonight:

• BOB EDGAR, President of Common Cause on their attempts to see accountability for the crimes of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas having falsified 20 years of financial disclosure reports by failing to report his wife's income from Rightwing organizations who profited from SCOTUS' Citizens United decision. And on the organization's attempt to see that ruling vacated by the DoJ due to the many conflicts of interest of both Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
• ERNEST CANNING, attorney, political scientist and BRAD BLOG legal affairs analyst on the Constitutionality (or lack thereof?) of "corporate personhood" and on the scam of U.S. corporate welfare otherwise known as military "aid" in Egypt and elsewhere.
• PLUS: The important news of the day, and whatever else comes up along the way, including 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: I really really enjoyed tonight's show --- from first hour to last (perhaps, especially last, thanks to one great caller from TN). All the audio is now below, commercial-free! I suspect you may enjoy it nearly as much as I did! (The lively chat room archives are also below as well.)...

[Ed Note: The author appeared with me last night, as I guest hosted the Mike Malloy Show. We discussed the following article, as well as his other recent piece examining the dangerous scam of U.S. corporate welfare as military "foreign aid" in Egypt. You can now listen to that interview here. - BF]

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

As Vermont becomes the first state to consider a Constitutional amendment that would put an end to "corporate personhood", it is perhaps worthwhile to examine the historical context in which the concept arose and the forceful challenges to its validity that have been mustered by a minority of Supreme Court Justices.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor created a stir when, during oral arguments in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, she not only questioned the validity of the corporate challenge to limits on campaign spending but questioned a legal doctrine which dates back to an 1886 decision, Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. She observed that it was the courts who "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," and that "an argument" could be made "that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

Sotomayor, whose position was not included in Justice John Paul Steven's dissenting opinion in Citizens United --- a dissent she signed onto --- is by no means the first Supreme Court Justice to question the legitimacy of a long-standing doctrine of U.S. corporate law which has served to undermine the very fabric of individual liberty and democratic accountability, permitting wealth, power and control over mass communications to be concentrated in the hands of the privileged few.

Earlier dissents from Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas not only challenged the legitimacy of extending to corporations Constitutional rights intended to protect the living, breathing human beings who make up our nation's citizenry but exposed the hypocrisy of the activist, Federalist Society Justices, who claim to be "strict constructionists," but who are, in fact, as we've reported previously, part of a corporate-funded, counterrevolution in law...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Follow @WikiLeaks on Twitter? If so, the U.S. government wants your details, and is trying to get at it through an extraordinary legal procedure.

Last month, in covering the landmark appellate court decision, United States vs. Warshak [PDF], which invalidated provisions of the 1986 Stored Communications Act to the extent that the Act permitted the government, without a warrant, in violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause, to obtain electronic communications from an ISP (Internet Service Provider), we cautioned that it was unclear whether our courts would arrive at the same conclusion when the government invokes claims of "national security" issues.

That question is about to be tested as the Eric Holder Department of Justice has obtained what Salon's Glenn Greenwald described as a "sweeping" District Court order seeking --- in relation to WikiLeaks' Twitter account --- "all mailing addresses and billing information known for the user, all connection records and session times, all IP addresses used to access Twitter, all known email accounts, as well as the 'means and source of payment,' including banking records and credit cards." ...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below.]

I've just been asked to jump in tonight (and tomorrow) to guest host for Mike on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. He's taken ill, but should be back in fine fettle on Monday.

So scrambling to put together tonight's show, but hope you'll tune in!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE as usual from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) --- though we'll be pre-empted tonight for hockey in L.A. on KTLK, so see below for LIVE listening links! Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! The LIVE chat room will be up and rolling, as usual, right here at The BRAD BLOG 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 (so far) for tonight:

• DAVID DAYEN, Firedoglake's great newsblogger, and my pal, will join me again (as a follow-up to his appearance with me on L.A.'s KPFK/Pacifica yesterday) to discuss the new rules in the U.S. House and the proposed new filibuster reform [PDF] in the U.S. Senate, where there have been a few new developments since yesterday.
• PLUS: National coverage of Arkansas' new U.S. Congressman, the disgraced RNC vote cager Tim Griffin; Today's rather ironic $1.1 million reading of the U.S. Constitution in the House, and whatever else comes up along the way, including 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.

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

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Fun show tonight! It was U.S. Congress fever tonight! Commercial-free audio archives follow below (and the chat room archives are below those, if you like). Enjoy!...