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Latest Featured Reports | Monday, March 18, 2024
Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
Guest: Labor journo Steven Greenhouse; Also: Putin's 'election'; Trump can't find $450M...
Sunday 'Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya' Toons
FEATURING: Moses Mike...Trump II Terror...TikTok Truth...and more in our latest collection of the week's most secular toons!...
Schumer Steps Up; Trump Associates Paid Biden 'Bribe' Liar $600k: 'BradCast' 3/14/24
Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continues; Repubs' Project 2025 would ban Paris Climate Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for the salmon...
Previous GNRs: 3/12/24 - 3/7/24 - Archives...
After Accountability for Fraud, What's Next for the Corrupt NRA and Gun Safety Reforms?: 'BradCast' 3/13/24
Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
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'Green News Report' 3/12/24
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Biden's Bold SOTU, Britt's SOTU Border Lies: 'BradCast' 3/11/24
Listeners ring in on that, Brad's hack of Daylight Saving Time and more...
The GOP's Exploitation of Laken Riley
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SCOTUS 14.3 Ruling a 'Sham' Says Group That First Raised Issue: 'BradCast' 3/7/24
Guest: Ron Fein of FSFP; Also: Sweden in NATO; Biden aid to Gaza; 'No Labels'; More...
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2024 nominees set, climate stakes couldn't be higher; Broken utility pole caused TX fires?; Coastal U.S. cities sinking; PLUS: N. Atlantic keeps breaking heat records...
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Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

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Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
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ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
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So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
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Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Guest: Former diplomat, Rep. Tom Perriello of Open Society Foundations US on our nation's need for accountability beyond impeachment...
By Brad Friedman on 1/13/2021 6:42pm PT  

On today's BradCast: Donald John Trump made history yet again on Wednesday by becoming the first President to be Impeached twice. Plus, a former Congressman and diplomat warns accountability is needed if the nation ever hopes to recover. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

The U.S. House voted 232 to 197, with 10 Republicans joining all of the Democrats, to charge the soon-to-be-former President with "Incitement of Insurrection" [PDF] for inflaming his violent MAGA mob before they stormed the U.S. Capitol just one week earlier. Using false claims that he had actually won the election in a landslide, he told his infuriated supporters to "fight like hell" to prevent the 2020 election from being stolen for Joe Biden. At least five people, including a police officer, were killed during the insurrection, another officer later committed suicide. Scores of both law enforcement officials and rioters were hospitalized as the marauders attempted to find and kill Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers.

Soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to the historic day by ruling out a trial on the charge in the U.S. Senate before next week's inauguration of Joe Biden. He did not, however, rule out his own vote to convict the twice-impeached President. Some close to McConnell have reportedly suggested that he may see the impeachment and a subsequent conviction of Trump as a way to distance the GOP from the nation's worst and most divisive President.

We share a number of the statements made during the House floor debate, both for and against Trump's impeachment, on Wednesday, including from one of the Republicans who broke with his party to vote to impeach the President.

Then, we're joined by former Democratic Congressman and diplomat TOM PERRIELLO, who now heads the Open Society Foundation for the U.S. Perriello, after serving as Representative for Virginia's 5th Congressional District, went on to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to the African Great Lakes Region during the Obama Administration. Earlier in the 2000s he worked as a U.S. diplomat with the UN-mandated Special Court for Sierra Leone and as a consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice in Kosovo (2003), Darfur (2005), and Afghanistan (2007).

Comments from Perriello caught our eye last week when he was quoted by the New York Times following the attempted coup at the Capitol. It was an article on the growing demands by Democrats for accountability for Trump, his family and his associates after he leaves office. In the piece, Perriello is cited --- based on his experience helping to resolve political crises in various developing nations, including one in which a President attempted to stay in office beyond his constitutional term --- noting: "Countries that skip the accountability phase end up repeating 100 percent of the time --- but the next time the crisis is worse."

“People who think that the way forward is to brush this under the rug," he told the paper, "seem to have missed the fact that there is a ticking time bomb under the rug."

On a day in which a majority of House Republicans argued and voted against accountability for last week's Trump-incited violent assault on the U.S. Capitol --- with many arguing, hypocritically, that impeachment would merely serve to anger Trump supporters and lead to more divisiveness and hostility at a time the nation needs healing --- Perriello's insight based on his years of experience abroad is enlightening. Citing, for example, the efforts to rebuild Liberia following the tumultuous, criminal reign of its former President Charles Taylor, was to bring charges. "The only real path to peace involved accountability for him and the other warlords who had driven so much of that conflict across the region."

"Accountability can take a lot of different forms, but there's a reason you don't have a lot of candidates out there and politicians saying they want to be the next Richard Nixon or the next Joe McCarthy. These are people who faced public accountability in the form of censure and resignation, with real consequences to them. And that tends to define the path forward," ," Perriello tells me. "There's a reason that in Germany, there are not statues set up to Hitler and other Third Reich figures. The way in which we choose to understand our history and hold people to account has real consequences for other leaders in the future, and the actions they choose to take."

Citing his concern about what could happen in the coming days, in the wake of last week's attempted coup, he notes: "The insurrectionists are already planning escalations. The failure to take seriously such similar provocations or promises, really, is part of what got us into this mess. ... To me, as someone who has worked in conflict zones and on transitional justice, the most scary image was them walking out not in handcuffs, because those images were ones that simply invited the idea of impunity. And impunity leads people to repeat those events, and repeat them with escalation. Allowing even a 24-hour news cycle in which these people could exit as heroes, was something that was almost certainly going to lead to more violence down the road. And that's why this issue of introducing accountability is important." 

So, is the best way for Joe Biden to help "heal" the country to look forward, not back, as the Obama Administration did when taking office after George W. Bush, when they failed to bring accountability for torture and domestic spying by the Administration or for those whose crimes resulted in the 2008 financial crisis? Or should the Biden Administration hold Trump and his enablers to account for their actions? Should some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Committee be formed to help the U.S. out of its current seemingly-intractable morass, as Perriello helped oversee in overseas, third-world nations?

He offers his thoughts on all of that, on Biden's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for Attorney General, as well as on today's history second impeachment of Donald Trump, and even explains why he believes "this may yet be our finest hour." All of that on today's jam-packed program!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Climate crisis; Impeachment madness; 2020 debates; GOP voter purges...
By Brad Friedman on 12/17/2019 6:45pm PT  

The gods must be angry. But they have very good cause. Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to show is posted below]...

  • At least four were killed and dozens injured as some 27 tornadoes reportedly ripped across the Deep South causing "total chaos" on Monday and Tuesday. In December. Is that normal?;
  • DNC Chair and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez steps in to help resolve a labor union dispute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles that had threatened to derail Thursday's 2020 Presidential Debate. Now, it won't. And the union workers got a great deal out of it;
  • Nine Democratic Presidential candidates, led by Sen. Cory Booker (who did not qualify for Thursday's debate), petition the DNC to relax qualification thresholds for upcoming Presidential debates. The Party says it won't;
  • Another former Trump campaign officials is heading to jail. Rick Gates, Trump's former Deputy Campaign Chair and a top Transition official, receives 45 days in jail, three years of probation and a $20,000 fine for fraud and lying to federal investigators --- to which he pleaded guilty last year. His sentence comes despite prosecutors seeking no jail time after Gates had cooperated with federal officials in Robert Mueller's Special Counsel probe, by helping to to secure guilty verdicts against Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort and longtime Trump associate Roger Stone;
  • Donald Trump unleashed a bizarre, blistering, six-page, single-spaced, Donald Trumpian rant, disguised as a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [PDF] on Tuesday, decrying his looming impeachment as a "perversion of justice" by Democrats. The jokes seem to write themselves here, but for how pathetically sad, dangerous and threatening to our Constitutional order the behavior of this President of the United States now actually is;
  • That threat continues to spread to Congress, where the House Rules Committee on Tuesday set terms for Wednesday's House Floor debate on the two Articles of Impeachment against the President, as Rep. Jim McGovern, Chair of the Committee said he looks at Trump's attempt to use Ukraine to help him win the 2020 election as "a crime in progress", with Democrats "trying to prevent the President from rigging the next election";
  • While over in the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused a request from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to subpoena the testimony of four top Trump officials who were first-hand witnesses to Trump's Ukraine extortion plot. The officials, whose testimony is sought for the almost certain upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate --- in which Senators are supposed to serve as impartial jurors to determine whether Trump should be removed from office --- include Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Advisor;
  • As McConnell continues to rig the Senate trial on behalf of Trump, Plan B for the removal of this President involves the ballot box. There too, Republicans are attempting to rig next year's election results. In Wisconsin, which Trump reportedly won by just 23,000 votes in 2016, a Republican-appointed Circuit Court Judge ordered the removal of more than 200,000 voters from the voting rolls before the 2020 election. The voters were previously set for removal in 2021 as the Wisconsin Elections Commission had planned, and as the League of Women Voters had argued in favor of. A rightwing group sued to have them removed before 2020 instead, and the GOP-appointed judge agreed. Dems vowed today to re-register them;
  • In Georgia, a federal judge allowed the purge of more than 300,000 voters identified by the Republican Sec. of State for moving or failing to vote in recent elections. But voting rights advocates argue that approximately 120,000 of them should not be on the list at all. The judge allowed the mass removal to move forward on assurances from the state those voters can be quickly restored after further hearings on the matter;
  • But, it's not just rightwing controlled states where voter registration concerns are rearing their ugly (if expected) head before 2020. Due to what is being described as a "computer glitch" related to the state's new, automatic registration system, as many as 100,000 voters in California may have had their party preference incorrectly changed on their registration files in advance of next year's upcoming March 3rd Presidential primary. The state's rules for who can vote in which party primary are particularly confusing. So, its a very good idea for residents who believe they are registered to check their registration at VoterStatus.SOS.CA.GOV to make sure they are still registered, and for the party they think they are. Those who are registered as permanent "No Party Preference" vote-by-mail voters but who wish to vote for a Presidential candidate in a party primary on March 3rd, will need to make that request with their County Registrar very soon or will receive a vote-by-mail ballot with no Presidential candidate options!;
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as the U.N. climate talks in Madrid end without an agreement, but with much disappointment and rancor, thanks in no small part to sabotage by the U.S., and a new report finds the Greenland ice melt is on track for scientists worst case-scenario predictions of catastrophic sea level rise by the end of the century.

The gods have very good reason indeed to be angry again today...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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370 to 40 vote a rebuke to GOP war hawks like McCain, Graham...
By Ernest A. Canning on 7/25/2014 4:16pm PT  

The U.S. House has finally found something they can agree on. They want President Obama to remove U.S. troops from Iraq.

In an overwhelming bi-partisan vote on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Concurrent Resolution [PDF], which, pursuant to Section 5(c) of the War Powers Act, directs "the President to remove United States Armed Forces, other than Armed Forces required to protect United States diplomatic facilities and personnel from Iraq" within 30 days, unless it is unsafe to do so.

Section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution states:

...at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

The bi-partisan Resolution, adopted by a 370 to 40 vote, was introduced by Reps. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Walter Jones (R-NC) and Barbara Lee (D-CA).

Last month, the President authorized up to 300 more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq as military advisers in the wake of the takeover of a number of Iraqi cities by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That brought the total of U.S. troops in the nation to more than 800.

Win Without War, a national coalition of anti-war organizations, released a statement describing today's vote as "a strong message to President Obama that there is no authorization for any escalation of US military involvement in Iraq."

"After nearly 13 years of trying to solve such challenges militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little success, the American people simply do not support another war in the Middle East," the group said in their statement. "Instead, we hope today's clear message against military escalation will encourage the President to double down on diplomatic efforts and a robust humanitarian response."

While the House Resolution is directed to the President, it also represents a stinging rebuke to GOP war hawk Senators like John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC). Earlier this month the pair criticized the President for refusing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government after he came to office, which would have "kept U.S. troops there", following George W. Bush's Status of Forces Agreement struck with Iraq in 2008. That agreement called for the removal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The vote on Friday is believed to be largely symbolic, however, as it would require similar passage in the U.S. Senate, where Senators like McCain and Graham would likely seek to block a vote on the matter. Then, again, matters could lead to a "politics-make-strange-bedfellows" moment if Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were to come together in support of the Concurrent Resolution.



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