[Now UPDATED with tonight's audio archives below!...]

We're back guest hosting for two more nights on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show as the Malloys' summer break continues!

Once again, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT) tonight, coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. 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 usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun 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):

• TOMMY CHRISTOPHER, online journalist at Mediaite on being scammed by fictional sources in his "WeinerGate" reporting, and on his full-throated defense of Rightwing scam-artist Andrew Breitbart.
• RICHARD AVERETT, author of the new book ImaginePolitik, featuring a fictional character by the name of "Brad Friedman" who instructs a third-party "Independent Progressive Party" Presidential candidate who has just been named President-elect that his "victory" may likely have been due to electronic election fraud on touch-screen voting machines in the state of Georgia! Totally implausible, of course!
• PLUS: The many crimes, "Judicial Insider Trading" and increasingly apparent ethical bankruptcy of Justice Clarence Thomas, plus everything else of note today, including whatever is on your mind via calls to 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: Tonight's archives follow below, both commercial-free audio and chat room. Enjoy!...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

We're back guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show for the next few weeknights --- tonight through next Tuesday! Hope you can join us!

We'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT) each night, coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. 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 usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun 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):

• FRED KARGER, the GOP 2012 Presidential candidate who has filed a "voter fraud" complaint against GOP front-running Mitt Romney in MA. Karger, as the first openly gay Presidential candidate from a major party is also an activist, who organized boycotts against many of the corporate supporters of CA's Prop 8 banning marriage equality in the state. LIVE IN STUDIO!
• ERNEST CANNING, attorney and The BRAD BLOG's legal correspondent on the recent incitement to violence/murder by Rightwing broadcaster Neil Boortz over our public airwaves.
• PLUS: Media and Democratic Party idiocy over Anthony Weiner; good (and bad) news on Constitutional rights; Bush admin CIA targeted an American middle-east expert/blogger; Fake civil war in the Republican/U.S. Chamber of Commerce Party; and much more, including whatever's on your mind via calls to 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: Fast-paced show, with a GREAT interview with Fred Karger right in the middle! Be sure to give it a listen! The audio archives (and chat room archives) follow below. See ya again tomorrow night!...

Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow led off with the story we covered on Monday concerning Mitt Romney's apparent voter fraud in the state of Massachusetts.

Her piece includes an interview with GOP Presidential candidate Fred Karger, the man investigated the case and who filed an official complaint against Romney in the Bay State on Monday...

Maddow's excellent report does not, however, delve into the recent and growing spate of high-profile GOPers who have, or appear to have committed similar felony voter fraud violations --- such as Romney's potential fellow Mormon GOP Presidential hopeful Gov. Jon Huntsman, Missouri's GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, Indiana's Republican Sec. of State Charlie White (who is currently facing 3 voter fraud-related indictments), or GOP voter fraud queen Ann Coulter.

Neither does she take the opportunity of noting the hypocrisy of Romney's (and the others) apparent voter fraud, when taken side-by-side with the current Republican jihad in state after state across the country to impose disenfranchising polling place voter suppression measures.

Our Monday story on Romney's apparent voter fraud, should you be interested, covers all of the above.

What is it about Mormon Republican Presidential candidates and their proclivity for committing voter fraud?

For that matter, what is it about high-profile Republicans in general and their rapidly growing record of voter fraud, as we have two new reports today of two more very high profile Republicans who appear to have committed voter fraud? One of them is GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the other U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri.

But they are just the two latest in a quickly growing list of Republican vote fraudsters.

In March, as you'll recall, Utah's former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. --- who is believed likely to jump into the GOP Presidential race soon --- was alleged to have committed voter fraud by casting his vote last year via his registration at the governor's mansion despite having resigned and moved out of the address almost two years prior to become President Obama's Ambassador to China.

Previously, of course, we've reported in great detail on GOP superstar Ann Coulter's repeated and now well-documented voter fraud. More recently (and more ironically), Charlie White, the newly-elected Republican Sec. of State of Indiana --- a state with, until recently, the most draconian, disenfranchising polling-place Photo ID restrictions in the nation --- was indicted on seven felony counts, three of them related to voter fraud, after he continued to vote at a residence where he no longer lived (where he also continued to illegally serve on the town council, despite no longer living there).

And now, according to a complaint filed by another GOP Presidential hopeful, it appears that current front-runner Mitt Romney has been playing similarly fast and loose with his own residency and is alleged to have voted, illegally, in last year's special election for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts despite no longer being a resident of the state...

Had been saving this for a rainy day. But as professional scam-artist and serial philanderer Newt Gingrich's entire campaign staff resigned today en masse, the shelf life for this story may be as short as Newt's. Speculation has it he may not be around much longer than Monday's NH debate, so I guess I better run this right now!

Plus, I'm sick as a dog (summer cold), so should prolly stand down for a bit and get better quick cuz I gotta guest host the Mike Malloy Show again next week, and will probably need a voice to do it.

So, with that preamble...Man, do I miss Michael Moore's TV Nation. Here's a classic from 1995 and still fresh as the day it originally aired --- eh, Newt?

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...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"I don’t want everybody to vote," Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, said while addressing a right-wing Christian audience in 1980. "[O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down," he added after he denigrated those who seek "good government" through maximum, informed voter participation as people who suffer from the "goo goo syndrome."

Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While most Americans may think of the poll tax and literacy tests as forms of voter suppression associated the Jim Crow South, the confirmation hearings of the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist included sworn testimony from former U.S. Attorney James Brosnahan and others reflecting that, as an early 60's GOP activist, Renquist intimidated African-American and Hispanic voters in AZ by challenging their ability to read.

1965's Voting Rights Act outlawed both the poll tax and literacy tests. In more recent times, pursuant to a 1987 federal court consent decree, and a subsequent provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993, another GOP suppression tactic, "caging lists," was banned, though as documented by the BBC's Greg Palast, the Bush administration-led Plutocrats didn't let a little matter like illegality get in the way of their use.

21st Century voter suppression operates under cover. Or it had, until the new wave of legislation being passed by GOP legislatures across the country began hitting its stride. Until FL's then-governor Charlie Crist overturned it, for example, the state banned convicted felons from voting even years after they'd been released from prison. In Armed Madhouse, Palast asserts that prior to the 2000 Presidential election, FL's then Sec. of State Katherine Harris, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of candidate George W. Bush, purged 94,000 "felons" from the state's computerized voter rolls, though the only "crime" at least 91,000 were guilty of was "being Black, Democrat or both."

Over much of the past decade, voter suppression efforts have been bolstered by bogus "voter fraud" claims leveled at groups like ACORN, who aided in the registration of those who might be likely to vote against the GOP (minorities and the working class); "non-partisan" GOP astroturf groups like the phony American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) created after the 2004 election solely to create and spread false propaganda about a Democratic "voter fraud" epidemic; laws meant to increase the legal risk to real non-partisan organizations for assisting in registration; draconian polling place "photo ID" restriction laws, and in a reduction of opportunities for early voting.

With the tide of GOP victories at the ballot box last November, those efforts have now been ramped up and are now front and center in some 30 state legislatures across the country...

Whatever you may think about this President, he knows how to tell a pretty good joke, especially at his own expense. He delivered again last night --- along with showing some pretty funny 'birther' videos --- at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner (or "Nerd Prom", as it's also known, though mostly only among those uninvited in the blogosphere)...

Perhaps of most note among the jokes Obama told at the expense of his potential 2012 GOP Presidential rivals, was the lack of any reference to the once-famous Sarah Palin (who was also in attendance last night.)

Similarly, in the headline set by Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers following the President's remarks, jokes about Palin were also conspicuous by their absence. On the other hand, jokes at the expense of Donald Trump, who was in the audience as well, were plentiful in both speeches, and particularly pointed during Meyers' routine. As RAW STORY's David Ferguson observed, The Donald seemed particularly unamused during Meyers' slams, though his "grim, frozen scowl throughout just adds to the viewing pleasure."

The video of Meyers headline remarks follows below...

While prepping for tonight's Mike Malloy Show (which I will be busy guest hosting all week), here are just a few of the items which caught my eye so far today...in no particular order...

• Record amounts of cash being spent by labor unions and the (supposedly grass-roots) "Tea Party" on tomorrow's Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, as the race between the unabashedly pro-Walker Justice David Prosser and Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has turned into a proxy battle between the two clashing ideologies right now in WI. A defeat of Prosser would tilt the court's 4-3 majority from Right-leaning to not Right-leaning. The race is also seen as a bellwether for upcoming recall elections of GOP state Senators likely to occur there in the near future, as Ernie Canning reported on earlier today at The BRAD BLOG.

• Nuclear triage. Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan are dumping 11.5 tons of "low-level" radioactive water into the ocean to make room in filled storage containers for the more radioactive water leaking from reactor Unit 2. They say they have "no choice," but to dump that water (with radiation levels 100 times over the legal limit) as they must continue injecting new water to cool the plant's four crippled reactors, even as the radiated water floods out. Over the weekend, workers were unsuccessful in their attempt to use polymer, sawdust and newspaper (BP "JunkShot" anyone?!) to plug an 8 inch crack in a flooded tunnel at Unit 2 said to be gushing highly radioactive water, at 100,000 times legal levels, into the ocean.

• Transocean, the owner of the BP oil rig which blew up last year in the Gulf killing 11 workers (9 of them from Transocean) has apologized for referring to 2010's safety record as the company's "best year ever". They have not, however, apologized for issuing enormous bonuses to their executives in the bargain.

• A sweeping new election law in Florida is working its way through the GOP-controlled state legislature along predictably partisan lines, just in time for the 2012 Presidential election there. Some of the proposed changes will make it much more difficult for non-partisan voter registration groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to do their work, and will likely lead to a huge increase in "provisional" (and, therefore, frequently uncounted) ballots. Leon County's highly-respected Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho has called the bill "a travesty".

• Former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley --- recently forced to step down for referring to the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning as "stupid" --- compares WikiLeaks to the New York Times. The paper's Editor-in-Chief, who has been bashing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks themselves of late, even though the "paper of record" has written hundreds of stories based on WikiLeaks documents, will not be happy. Good. (Coverage at RAW STORY courtesy of BRAD BLOG alum David Edwards.)

• After relentlessly bashing Democrats for cuts to Medicare vis a vis the 2010 health insurance reform bill, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan plans to largely do away with the program entirely as part of the GOP's proposed budget plans to be revealed shortly.

• Even Republican state Senators in Maine are beginning to become uncomfortable with the radical statements and extremist behavior of the state's new GOP Governor Paul LePage and are asking him to "tone it down". Beginning to see the writing on the wall, boys?

So what's on your radar?

In addition to some of the above possibly coming up for discussion tonight, we will definitely be discussing the U.S. Chamber Plot (which was to have targeted, among others, myself and my family) with my guest U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) who is trying to see some accountability in that horrific affair after House Republicans refused his request for investigative hearings into the matter.

Please tune in at 6p PT (9p ET) tonight --- and all week! We'll have live listening links and a lively chat room right here at The BRAD BLOG during those hours as usual!

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...

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.)

Still on the road and still a bit under the weather, so here's some very quick hits for now...

Naturally Premature Resigners: NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned following the resignation of chief fund raiser Ron Schiller (no relation) after the latter Schiller was featured in a secretly video-taped attempted hit piece with two of convicted criminal and Republican con-man James O'Keefe's flunkies performing as members of a Muslim foundation. Having watched the edited version of the video tape, I have no clue as to why anybody at NPR has resigned. (Sidenote: Imagine if even half of the RWers who committed actual crimes, real ones that actually hurt and/or killed people, resigned in shame as fast as non-RWers resign in shame after having committed absolutely no crime at all.)

Pro-Life in IL: Gov. Pat Ryan (D) signs a bill banning the death penalty in the state. It is the 16th to do so. Prisoners previously on death row have had their sentences commuted to life without the possibility of parole. Welcome to the civilized world, Illinois!

GOP War on Voting in FL: Gov. Rick Scott (R)'s executive clemency board pulled a fast one by changing the rules for re-enfranchising former felons after former Gov. Charlie Crist (R) had previously restored their voting rights. "The board did not release the proposed rule changes to the public until moments before the meeting began and limited public testimony to two-minutes per person for a total of 30 minutes before unanimously approving the changes," reports Palm Beach Post. "Civil rights advocates, including five black lawmakers, objected to the rule changes, saying there is no evidence the current process ... is not working." Leon County Supervisor of Election, and election integrity hero Ion Sancho says the board is turning back the clock to FL's post Civil War era with restrictions "whose sole purpose was to ensure that the former slaves of this state could never reintegrate into the society."

GOP War on Voting Nationwide: ThinkProgress details GOP efforts in 22 states around the nation to impose new polling place Photo ID restrictions likely to disenfranchise millions of elderly, minority and student (read: Democratic-leaning) voters. That, even though there is no "voter fraud epidemic" in this country, or any state in the union, at least not among Democrats. Republican voter fraud, however, as we noted late last week, when IN's new GOP Sec. of State was indicted on 3 counts of felony voter fraud, is a different matter all together.

2012: Newt Gingrich says he cheated on his wife because he loves his country so much. Or something. Sarah Palin won't be in the first GOP Presidential Debate at the Reagan Library (which reminds me that she's only ever been in one national debate, and that was with just one person, Joe Biden. I have a feeling she'll not want to participate in any "real" debates with a bunch of other folks, and therefore, while I don't make predictions, I'll predict she will not be running for President.)

In Memoriam: David Broder, WaPo's "Dean of the Washington Press Corps," died today at the age of 81. The death of the Washington Press Corp itself, however, has yet to be officially reported, even as its passing occurred quietly years ago without public notice.

Discuss.

Dear TeaBaggers: Wondering what a real 'tea party', really fighting for real rights really being taken away by Big Government looks like? It looks like this...

If you're ready to join such a fight, we're quite certain there are tens of thousands of freedom-loving Americans now rallying in Madison, Wisconsin this week who would welcome you in that fight.

For those just joining this extraordinary story in Madison (which also seems to be spreading to other states, like Ohio, where their new Republican governor is also attempting to legislate away the freedom for citizens to collectively bargain with their employers), MSNBC's Ed Schultz, who was on the ground in WI yesterday, has offered the most comprehensive coverage from the start of the still-growing fight for the rights of teachers, fire-fighters and other public employees to collectively bargain for themselves.

But it was Rachel Maddow who may have put things in the best perspective last night, as she offered a persuasive case as to how the purported claims of new Republican Gov. Scott Walker, and the new Republican majority in the state legislature, weren't really about responding to a "budget crisis" --- one that appears to have been "manufactured" by them, in fact --- but rather, a brazen attempt to break the backs of Democrats, via the unions which often support them, prior to the upcoming 2012 election.

"What's happening in Wisconsin right now is not about a budget. This is about elections. This about the Republican Party going after the institutions that make it possible for Democrats to win elections in America," said Maddow in her report last night (video posted below).

What's happening in Wisconsin right now is about Republicans versus Democrats. It's about elections. We saw the same thing with ACORN. Remember the Rightwing jihad against ACORN? What did ACORN do to earn that?," she asked before answering her own question. "Well, ACORN for years registered huge numbers of minority voters and poor voters. Minority voters and poor voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic when they vote.

"There were not any real problems with the way ACORN registered people. This whole 'ACORN voter fraud epidemic' was essentially made up out of whole cloth. The only problem with ACORN and its voter registration program is that they were really good at it! And that helped Democrats," she argued.

"ACORN was not a Democratic organization, but ACORN's work was very politically beneficial to the Democratic Party and so therefore the Right decided that ACORN had to be destroyed."

Unions, she then went on to argue, who are similarly not Democratic organizations, but whose well organized, often well funded work tends to help Democrats in elections and --- especially, since Citizens United --- now remain largely the only thing between Republicans with their enormous corporate benefactors and the chances for Democrats to win elections anywhere.

"The only institutions of any size, with any heft at all on the liberal side, are the unions. So, of course, they too, must be destroyed."

"If you break the public-sector unions in Wisconsin, then you can break them anywhere. And if you break them everywhere, then it is 'Bake sales versus Billionaires' for not only this next election, but for every election here on out. Republicans run the table. Bake sales on one side, billionaires on the other. That's it."

Maddow's seminal report on "The Survival of the Democratic Party", follows below...

[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...

Via TPM who asks, "What 'Shellacking'?"...