"There is nothing for us to correct ... We stand by our reporting." That was the innocuous enough position from Greg Brock, New York Times "Senior Editor/Standards," in reply to a Letter to the Editor sent to the Times by a reader of The BRAD BLOG requesting a correction to recent reportage from the "paper of record" concerning rightwing activist James O'Keefe, on the heels of his federal felony arrest late last month. O'Keefe was arrested in New Orleans as an alleged ringleader in a conspiracy with three others, attempting to gain access, for reasons still unknown, to the phone system of Louisiana's Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu.

Incredibly, Brock originally cited claims by Fox News and O'Keefe himself as sources for why the New York Times stood by their apparently unverified and apparently incorrect report. "We believe him," Brock wrote, because he said as much on Fox News, apparently.

But the matter went from the absurd to the ridiculous in fairly short order, as Brock then seemed to contradict himself by claiming their source wasn't actually Fox or O'Keefe, but that the Times stood by their reporting because of a mysterious, unpublished video said to back up the claim, along with testimony from ACORN employees.

Though both the video and statements from ACORN employees were cited as evidence their story was right, Brock would refuse to share evidence for either of the claims. That, even after an independent report from the former Attorney General of Massachusetts --- released in early December, but never mentioned in the Times' recent report (or any report at the paper to my knowledge) --- directly contradicts their reportage.

In short, the Times suggested in an article a week ago Sunday --- and at least seven others prior to it, all published after the release of the former MA Attorney General's report --- that O'Keefe was wearing his infamous pimp outfit inside the offices of ACORN while speaking to employees in his now-infamous hit videos. In actuality, according to the December 7th report by AG Scott Harshbarger, in direct contradiction to the Times reporting, he was not.

As Harshbarger writes:

Instead of acknowledging the Times' error, and the fact that the "paper of record" never seems to have even reported the findings of the Harshbarger report at all, the remarkable email thread with Brock, published in full below, devolves into absurdity. He went on to suggest he didn't actually speak for the Times; that his comments on their behalf in reply to a Letter to the Editor should not be published publicly; and that the video he claims to have seen which backs up the Times' reporting was never actually released publicly and couldn't be shared with me. Also, he explained, the interviews with ACORN employees, which he said described the pimp outfit that O'Keefe was wearing, were run elsewhere, not by the Times, though he was unable to cite exactly where it was that those comments were run.

The entire matter, after I eventually jumped into it myself in hopes of making sense of it all, would eventually include a request to the Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, to examine the puzzling "standards" applied by Brock, their "Senior Editor/Standards," in the entire bizarre affair.

That bizarre affair is likely best illustrated by the actual emails themselves, posted below, in order, in full. But first, the background as to what happened here, and why this particular original request from a reader, for an important correction from the "paper of record," is no small matter, particularly as the investigations move forward on O'Keefe's righwing dirty tricks schemes and several alleged state and federal crimes. The country and the bulk of the corporate media relies in no small part --- and apparently, at their own peril --- on the New York Times to get these sorts of stories right. If this incident is any indication, the country is in big trouble...

The Background...

The original Letter to the Editor of the Times, from BRAD BLOG reader Bob F. (he has requested we do not use his full name here) sought a correction to a rather fawning Sunday, January 31st feature article in the Times on O'Keefe and his cohorts. The story, once again, forwarded the perception that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp in his infamous, secretly --- and apparently illegally --- taped video interviews filmed inside ACORN offices around the country last year.

The BRAD BLOG discussed the Times' somewhat embarrassing 2,250-word report, which seemed to make folk heroes out of the accused felons and rightwing operatives, following another report in which we detailed how horribly the media had misreported O'Keefe's original ACORN video scam.

As noted in those two articles, O'Keefe's heavily-edited hit videos showed ACORN employees appearing to behave stupidly, though not illegally, as clarified in two separate official, independent reports, one by the Congressional Research Service [PDF] released on December 22, 2009, and the other by AG Harshbarger [PDF], released several on December 7, 2009.

In Harshbarger's report, "An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN: The Path to Meaningful Reform" --- commissioned by ACORN as an external review of alleged wrong-doing seemingly revealed by those video tapes --- he notes quite specifically that O'Keefe was never actually dressed as a pimp in the ACORN offices, despite the tapes, as released on Republican activist Andrew Breitbart's websites and played heavily on Fox "News," showing him dressed as such in video cutaways outside of the offices.

Harshbarger noted clearly in his December 7, 2009 report, which concluded that no crimes appear to have been committed by ACORN employees:

Harshbarger also notes that the videos were "in some cases substantially" edited, including the use of over-dubbing and voiceovers such that it was "difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding."

Of course, one of the many ginned-up criticisms of ACORN which unfairly poured forth following the release of those videos included the underlying notion of how dumb those stupid federally-subsidized ACORN employees must have been to have believed for even a second that this skinny little white kid was actually a pimp. Couldn't these idiots tell he wasn't --- just by looking at his ridiculous get-up?

Of course not. Because he wasn't dressed in that get-up, despite giving that impression in both the videos themselves, and his appearances on Fox "News" and elsewhere thereafter.

In fact, the New York Times helped create that false perception itself long ago. In a September 19, 2009 report by Scott Shane, for example, O'Keefe is directly quoted telling the paper: "'I'm a skinny nerd, the least convincing pimp in the world,' he said."

Following the release of the videos, and the ginned-up outrage over them --- helped in no small part by their purposeful misrepresentation by O'Keefe, Breitbart, and media outlets like Fox, New York Times, and many others that misreported them --- Congress passed legislation to deny federal funding to the non-profit community organization. That legislation was subsequently found to be an unconstitutional "bill of attainder" by a federal judge, but the damage was done to the anti-poverty group whose "crimes" were little more than having the temerity to legally register millions of low- and middle-income (and thus, largely Democratic-leaning) voters so they could legally participate in their own democracy.

But the tapes were, in no small part, a scam. They were, for example, misrepresented as an "ACORN child prostitution investigation" by O'Keefe and Breitbart to this day. They were anything but that. And they never, to either my knowledge or Harshbarger's, included shots of O'Keefe actually dressed as a pimp in any of the offices. O'Keefe's partner in the videos, Hannah Giles, was dressed as a fairly conservative looking prostitute, and was represented as such to ACORN employees. But O'Keefe represented himself to the ACORN employees as her college boyfriend who was considering a Congressional run someday, and who was now trying to help rescue Giles from an abusive pimp.

And yet, the Times' "Senior Editor/Standards" Greg Brock first claimed in his original email to Bob F. that the Times stands by their reporting that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp because --- get this --- "Mr. O'Keefe himself explained how he was dressed --- and appeared on a live Fox show wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN's offices."

For evidence, Brock then went on to link to a video clip of O'Keefe's live appearance on Fox where he sat on the couch, dressed in his pimp get-up, and was introduced by Fox's Steve Doocy as being "dressed exactly in the same outfit he wore in these ACORN offices up and down the Eastern Seaboard." O'Keefe confirmed Doocy's inaccurate introduction, and that was apparently good enough for the Times.

Brock then told Bob F. that if he had any further concerns, he should take them up with Fox News if he believed "they doctored his imagine in this television interview" or "check with Mr. O'Keefe and ask him if he was lying when he went on this live Fox show and told the anchors that he was dressed on the show exactly the way he was dressed when he went into the ACORN offices."

In other words, as Brock confirmed in concluding his very first note, he was taking Fox and O'Keefe's word for it, even though it's clear that O'Keefe was lying, at least according to both the report from the former MA Attorney General, and the publicly released videos that also show otherwise.

But the New York Times apparently believes Fox and O'Keefe instead, according to Brock!

"If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O'Keefe himself. We believe him," Brock incredibly asserted. "Therefore there is nothing for us to correct."

But things got quickly even worse, as Brock seemed to dig himself deeper and deeper into the hole with new, unsupported assertions in each note following Bob F.'s follow-up which pointed to the quote from Harshbarger's report. It then got worse still, after I eventually jumped into the conversation myself following Brock's assertion --- seemingly pulled out of thin air --- that:

It was then, with Bob F.'s permission, after he'd shared the full email exchange to date with me, that I jumped in to politely request a link to the video Brock alluded to in the comment above, and to the report which he said quoted "ACORN employees who...described [O'Keefe's] costume."

At that point, things went even farther down the rabbit hole with Brock first telling me he would have no comment to me, then asserting he didn't speak for the Times, even though every email was sent from his Times email address, SeniorEditor@NYTimes.com, and originally signed as "Greg Brock, Senior Editor/Standards."

The thread continued to devolve, as I grew increasingly gobsmacked by Brock's unsupported assertions, and as he was clearly unable and/or unwilling to provide any of the requested cites to either the video he specifically mentioned as evidence that supported the Times' reporting, or the comments from ACORN employees which allegedly did the same.

With each new note, new, puzzling explanations and apparent backtracking emerged for Brock's unwillingness to offer actual support for his contentions. E.g.:

• "My response wasn't addressed to the public and wasn't a statement on behalf of The Times."
• "...just because I send an email response to one reader does not mean that the content of that email is THE official statement to the public and all media outlets on behalf of The Times."
• "Perhaps ... you read more into my note to Mr. F. [full name redacted for privacy] than was there. I said our statement was based on a video. I did not say that we saw the video online or that it ever was online. ... Many of our reporters have done a great deal of reporting on Acorn over a good period of time. And through that reporting --- whether it was watching videos, interviewing sources (who would not always go on the record) or doing other research --- we feel we have confirmed the information we reported. Just because I am not willing to give you a link --- or don't even have a link --- doesn't mean our reporting is in error."
• "On my reference to comments by ACORN employees, I made that point to Mr. F. [full name redacted] based on my having read ad naseum [sic] about this case for months on end. I was not saying that the specific comment about "dressed as a pimp" was from our interviews with ACORN employees. But others have reported such comments."

And near the end of our exchange, in one of the final notes, Brock finally asserted this extraordinary claim in reference to his very first note to Bob F: "Please re-read that reference to Fox and Mr. O'Keefe. I did not cite that as our source."

Yet, in his very first reference to Fox and O'Keefe, again, who Brock says he "did not cite ... as our source" was this very first sentence he ever wrote to Bob F.:

...And that very first note then concluded with:

At this point, I'll refer you to the emails with Brock in full, as posted below, to fully appreciate it all. Also, in hopes that you may be able to help me understand what I may be missing here --- including any information about the supposed evidence that Brock asserts actually exists somewhere to back up the Times' reporting, even though he still refuses to do so himself and continues to stand by their reporting nonetheless.

The willingness of O'Keefe and Breitbart to allow this sort of massive misrepresentation of their ACORN scam --- considered to be a successful one --- is a very important point. It should be accurately reported and kept in mind when examining their current claims concerning the more recent scam which resulted in the felony arrests of O'Keefe and his buddies, one of them the son of the acting US Attorney in Louisiana, inside a U.S. Senator's office, attempting to gain access to her phone system!

If O'Keefe, and Breitbart, who still employs him, were that willing to out-and-out lie about the ACORN scam, seen as a successful one, just how far would the two GOP operatives be willing to go to get off the hook for what appears to be a very serious federal felony?

As O'Keefe quickly published a statement explaining his version of what he was doing in Landrieu's office, and as that explanation just as quickly was shot full of holes, his past willingness to lie is very much a matter to keep in mind at present as the federal criminal prosecution in Louisiana moves forward.

That's the background, as we wait to hear if the Times' Public Editor Clark Hoyt wishes to jump in and help sort out this disturbing matter at the same "paper of record" which somehow managed to bring us a full year of Judith Miller's horrific and inaccurate front page reports concerning "evidence" of Saddam Hussein's non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Those reports, of course, eventually helped lead the nation into an unnecessary, seemingly endless, trillion-dollar war and an uncountable death toll of U.S. and others' troops, private contractors, and Iraqi citizens alike.

Where I used to scratch my head in wonder as to how that could have happened at the once-great newspaper, I now look at the exchange below, and the paper's failures --- by their most senior editors --- seem to begin to make a lot more sense.

The emails with Brock follow below, right after a few quick examples of...

The Times' Ongoing Misreporting on O'Keefe "Posing" as a Pimp...

For the record, it was not just the Times' 2,250-word January 31st feature story headlined "High Jinks to Handcuffs for Landreiu Provocateur" on O'Keefe and his alleged co-conspirators which clearly suggested O'Keefe was wearing his pimp outfit when seeking advice from secretly video-taped ACORN employees. The paper consistently misreported as much, time and again, in at least eight different instances since the release of Harshbarger's December 7th report which directly contradicts that point.

The Times, from my quick search of its website, apparently never bothered to report, even once, the findings of that report or those from the Congressional Research Service. Both reports determined that ACORN staffers committed no crimes. Nonetheless, the paper has filed one story after another on the O'Keefe/Breitbart ACORN videos, including these which misreport the O'Keefe's pimp costume, even after Harshbarger's December 7th report:

• After Arrest, Provocateur's Tactics Questioned
Campbell Robertson and Liz Robbins, Published: January 27, 2010:
"Mr. O'Keefe is a conservative activist who gained fame last year by posing as a pimp and secretly recording members of the community group Acorn giving him advice on how to set up a brothel."

• High Jinks to Handcuffs for Landrieu Provocateur
Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Robertson, Published: January 31, 2010:
"Mr. O'Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn - eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become Acorn's undoing."

• O'Keefe Talks to Fox About His Landrieu-Office Arrest
Kate Phillips, Published: February 2, 2010:
"James O'Keefe, the young videographer who caused an uproar last year by surreptitiously recording himself and an associate, posing as a pimp and prostitute, getting business advice from workers at Acorn..."

The Times website also published a number of reports from wire services such as Reuters and Associated Press which forwarded the same inaccurate assertions:

• Activist Accused Of Tampering With Senator's Phone
By REUTERS, Published: January 26, 2010:
"...among those arrested on Monday was James O'Keefe, who, posing as a pimp and accompanied by a woman pretending to be a prostitute, filmed workers with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN..."

• 4 Men Accused of Scheme With La. Senator's Phones
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: January 26, 2010:
"A hero of conservatives who bruised the liberal group ACORN by posing as a pimp on hidden camera..."

• Phone-Tampering Case: Prank or Political Spying?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: January 27, 2010:
"Last year, O'Keefe, a 25-year-old self-described investigative journalist, posed as a pimp in the hidden-camera videos that embarrassed the community organizing group ACORN."

• Activist Touted 'Project' Before Phone Tamper Case
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press, Published: January 27, 2010:
"Last year, O'Keefe, a 25-year-old self-described investigative journalist, posed as a pimp in the hidden-camera videos that embarrassed the community organizing group ACORN."

[The above article was replaced on the Times site by the next one for some reason. The old link is still there when searching NYTimes.com, but it now goes to the following story instead]

• Lawyer: Phone Scheme Meant to Embarrass Senator
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: January 28, 2010:
"...activist James O'Keefe, known for posing as a pimp and using a hidden camera to target the community-organizing group ACORN..."

Complete Email Thread with Greg Brock, New York Times, Senior Editor/Standards...

With the Times have firmly established to their readers, over and again, in at least eight reports under their own masthead, that O'Keefe "posed" as a pimp, in the period following former MA AG Harshbarger's report finding that "at each and every office, [O'Keefe] was dressed like a college student - in slacks and a button down shirt", here is the complete, extraordinary email exchange with Greg Brock, Times "Senior Editor/Standards"...

[NOTE: The bolding and underlining in the following were in the original message sent by Brock to Bob F.]

At this point, after Bob F. shared all of the above with me, I jumped in with my own note to Brock in order to request the specific cites to which he was referring. After 24 hours or so without a reply, I resent the message to him in case he missed it. That message is below, and includes the original email. [Emphasis was mine, as included in the original note to him].

At this point, Brock replied, but only to me. No longer did he REPLY ALL to those who were CC'd on the thread to date (which had included Bob F. and New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt by that point)...

The article brings the story of Edmonds, who was twice-gagged by the Bush Administration's outrageous use/abuse of the "States Secrets Privilege," fully up to date following her naming of names, finally, under oath, in remarkable testimony last summer. (Some of those names: Hastert, Burton, Blunt, Lantos, Schakowsky, Wolfowitz, Perle, Grossman, etc.)

The Hustler piece, "Sibel Edmonds: The Traitors Among Us," also explores reasons for the perhaps-even-more-remarkable complete avoidance of her 4-hour, detailed, video-taped testimony by the corporate media (Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine excepted, if you consider them to be "corporate media") concerning allegations of blackmail of sitting U.S. Congressmembers, the theft and sale of nuclear secrets to the foreign blackmarket, and other allegations of treasonous activities by top State and Defense Department officials over the last decade or more, as we have covered in great detail here at The BRAD BLOG over the years, as the story has unfolded.

So there's your latest excuse to go buy Hustler. While you're at the newsstand, please pick up a copy of the February issue of Maxim as well, featuring Simon Worrall's feature article on the formerly-'censored' story of the mysterous death of GOP IT guru Mike Connell, as detailed in our recent exclusive preview.

Who knew the stories reported almost exclusively by The BRAD BLOG and a handful of others in the independent progressive media were so darn sexy?! Sorry, gals. If Playgirl wants a story, I'll be happy to write one for them next time.

Gosh, and sure is unfair to paint any of these Tea Baggers as racist, isn't it?

Among the questions on one of those old Alabama literacy tests [PDF], as highlighted in Byrne coverage, are these questions which we wonder if Tancredo himself would be able to answer (not that it would matter, because he's white):

After it was revealed that the sponsor of the "National Tea Party Convention" in Nashville, TN, was a for-profit corporation charging some $500 for admission, previously confirmed Tea Bag speakers Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dropped out.

None of that was a problem for Tancredo, apparently. Nor for Sarah Palin (R-FOX), who is still scheduled to be the weekend's keynoter for a reported speaking fee of $100,000. Perhaps she'll up Tancredo's racist ante and call for a repeal of that pesky 13th Amendment.

And speaking of literacy, below the fold is a photo of TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson, taken at a Tea Bagger event in February of 2009. Plenty of literacy, no racism there...

Well, there's a reason it fell flat, as noted by Gawker today, O'Reilly cut out most of the best stuff...

Gawker's selection of some of the best video that never made air --- along with descriptions of how some of them were cleverly gutted before making it onto air --- is posted right here.

Now they've got the "must watch" stuff. Really. And all of it, far more entertaining and interesting and challenging than what actually made it onto O'Reilly's air. Go figure.

Frank says, "It's a lie, it's a myth." But, he says, the "totally fictional allegation by John Fund with no basis whatsoever" was then picked up and reported as fact by the Washington Times, and naturally then repeated over the public's airwaves by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and on and on throughout the wingnut echosphere, as hoped. When Frank called Fund on it, he says, in a letter [PDF] and then by phone, Fund admitted he was in error, said he "told a few people" that he was wrong, but hadn't published any actual retraction.

"He's not only a liar, he's a coward," Frank accurately noted in his comments this week on the House floor. And here we had recently thought Fund was out of fresh lies.

But what Frank doesn't note in his comments above, is that the tactic described, as oft used by Fund and so many others on the Right, actually works very, very well...

It was the same tactic they employed after the 2008 election concerning Democratic plans to restore the Fairness Doctrine. Though there was never any notable Democratic effort or interest in actually restoring it (unfortunately), what little interest there was was pushed back after the wingnut echosphere told everyone "Democrats have declared war on 'conservative' radio!"

They never did, I wish they had --- the rightwing corporate takeover of the public airwaves should be an outrage enough to get every Constitution-loving American (including every real conservative, as opposed to the phony ones, like those mentioned above) into the streets to demand the return of real competition to our own public airwaves --- but they didn't.

In fact, the Righwing's declared war on the non-existent "War on 'Conservative' Radio" was so effective that it helped force the cowardly Obama Administration to remove, as I detailed at Alternet last year, the one tiny paragraph from their White House website announcing a hope to "Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum."

The GOP echosphere lie was enough to cut off any such real efforts for media reform at the knees, much as I suspect any effort to ensure every American citizen of age gets to vote, as they should, is also likely dead in the water following Fund's recent, brilliant, democracy-hating lie.

The lie works. And the Democratic Party's plan to do something about it? John Fund tells me that Frank and Schumer will be introducing legislation for that very soon.

O'Keefe, of course, is the guy who was recently arrested with three other GOP operatives (one, the son of the acting U.S. Attorney) in Louisiana for attempting to commit felonies in Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's office, and who did not dress up as a pimp in his secretly taped, heavily-edited and over-dubbed ACORN hit videos, despite continuing false claims to the contrary by Breitbart (and the mainstream media that felt for it --- but more on that part soon.)

A few lowlights from Breitbart's hilarious rant last night were reposted at Sadly No under "Breitbart Twitter Meltdown Enters Fifth Frantic Hour." Yes, Andy actually went on that long, longer in fact, desperate sad tweet after desperate sad tweet, essentially shouting out any racist-like comment he could find by any Democrat as a way to say, I guess, that some Democrats have made racist comments, so he's happy to employ someone whose a real racist. Or something. Who knows?

The entire meltdown was colorfully characterized by @KevinKross: "lonely man, hotel room, curtains drawn, on floor, stained underwear, empty bottles, frantically twittering away on his phone."

But it's Andy's employment and support of O'Keefe which he needs to answer for at this point, as today Blumenthal followed up his article from yesterday with more on O'Keefe's disturbing pattern of racism and race-baiting. At the end he asks Breitbart directly: "Why are you paying and defending a racist?"

Good question. I'm sure he'll answer that one, right after he answers these. Which is to say, um, never. While he has time to attack me incoherently on Twitter, he apparently doesn't have time to answer to those questions which I emailed him directly many days ago...

Amusingly, as Breitbart and his acolytes (at least the ones who haven't opened their eyes yet to the continuing Breitbart/O'Keefe scam) have been desperately pounding out their Breitbart-suggested/paid "outrage," demanding that O'Keefe is "innocent until proven guilty" --- a standard never applied to their ACORN scams or anybody else they don't care for, naturally.

The latest laffer came with a straight face, much self-righteous indignation, and apparently no sense of irony at all from Breitbart's BigJournalism.com paid (ed note: see correction note below) staffer Larry O'Connor (who Twitters as Stage_Right). He concludes his piece today, challenging whatever pieces he can find to quibble with in Blumenthal's reportage, with: "I am questioning this use of McCarthyite tactics using guilt by association, intimidation and outright lies."

Wondering where Larry's condemnation is of Glenn Beck and Andy et al for their brilliant years-long use of such tactics against any Democrat, Barack Obama, everyone in his administration, and those who were (pathetically) fired from his administration, such as Van Jones who was forced to leave after the entire crew "used McCarthyite tactics, guilt by association, intimidation and outright lies" to assault him in their journalistic blatantly partisan, rightwing, lie-filled, hit-scheme against him.

I'm now scheduled to appear on Larry's Internet radio show next Tuesday night @ 9:15pm PT, so perhaps he'll be able to share links to his past articles of outrage condemning the alleged tactics he now suddenly decries, when they were so effectively used by Breitbart and fellow members of the lockstep rightwing rat pack media.

And yes, while it all seems rather childish, it actually all matters. Breitbart's very powerful operation is at the very heart of the Republican attempt to game elections any way they possibly can. These are the GOP dirty tricksters who are still gunning for ACORN for little more than having the temerity to register millions of low and middle-income voters who tend to vote Democratic, to legally participate in their own democracy. So, naturally, they must be destroyed.

That's what Breitbart's after, for a start --- though it's questionable how many in his goon squad actually understand that, or have just been conned into believing they are fighting the great fight for freedom, or democracy, or the Constitution, or against big government, or whatever it is they've been fooled into going on about, even as they've spent years doing precisely the opposite whether it's registered in their little tea-bagging brains or not...

Speaking of media, I've been appearing on quite a few shows of late to discuss all of this. A few of the appearances I was able to capture or procure are posted below for you and posterity:

• Monday 2/1 on The Peter B. Collins Show:
NOTE: Since PBC's show is now podcast only, broadcast language restrictions are off. So, given the subject matter here, a few comments in regard to the old Nixon-era nickname used to describe the type of operatives that O'Keefe and Breitbart are, will not be safe for work...
Download MP3 or listen below [appx 35 mins]..
[See post to listen to audio]

• Monday 2/1 on The Nicole Sandler Show:
Download MP3 or listen below [appx 26 mins]..
[See post to listen to audio]

• Wednesday 2/3 on WMNF's RadioActivity in Tampa:
Download MP3 or listen below [appx 30 mins]..
[See post to listen to audio]

• Wednesday 2/3 on AM1490's Nick and Paul Show in Santa Barbara:
Download MP3 or listen below [appx 18 mins]..
[See post to listen to audio]

CORRECTION 2/5/10, 12:46pm PT: Larry "Stage_Right" O'Connor tells me via email that, unlike O'Keefe, he is not currently paid for the contributions he makes as a contributor to the various Breitbart websites. Taking him at his word, I've corrected the article above to reflect that and regret the original error.

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: "ClimateGate" climate scientist cleared of wrongdoing; Hope for Bluefin Tuna; Big Oil and Coal fight to keep subsidies; PLUS: Obama's mixed signals on cap-and-trade legislation... 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': Pentagon says climate change a national security issue; Studies find faster tree growth as climate changes; Bangladesh risks becoming failed state; Hawaii may impose oil tax; Packaged salads may contain E. coli bacteria; Oil, trucking industries sue CA over fuel rule; Rep. Joe Barton's (R-TX) gets $100K from gas well stake; Utah gov gets $10K from coal co. seeking permit ... PLUS: A must-Listen NPR Report: Mining Giant Must Clean Up Mess....

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

• Climate Scientist Cleared in 'ClimateGate':
• Researcher on Climate Is Cleared in Inquiry (NY Times)
• Penn State investigates researcher over "Climate-gate" (Washington Post)
• Climate change researchers must be more open, says chief scientist (Guardian UK)
• Inquiry Report: Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann (Penn State University)
• Hope for Bluefin Tuna on the Brink of Extinction:
• France to support bluefin tuna trade ban (Reuters)
• Mixed signals on fate of Cap-N-Trade:
• Sen. Graham Slams Push for a 'Half-Assed Energy Bill' (Greenwire)
• Administration Presses On for a 'Cap' on Carbon Emissions (Greenwire):
  
  According to Browner, the president simply was making an observation about the current Senate process, before saying "this is what I want to do." In his speech, Obama later emphasized that there was going to be a price on pollution and referred to the acid rain program, which used a cap-and-trade system to successfully curb sulfur dioxide emissions in the 1990s.
• Obama, Graham Warn Dems Not to Settle For "Half-Assed" Climate Bill (Mother Jones)
• Graham Calls Energy-Only Idea "Half-Assed" (The New Republic)
• Obama Pushes Energy Plan That GOP May Support (NY Times)
• Negative Energy: A key bloc of Democrats has a climate Plan B: Ditch cap and trade for an energy bill filled with industry giveaways. (Mother Jones)
• Obama Acknowledges Senate Unlikely To Adopt Pollution Limits (Talking Points Memo)
• TRANSCRIPT: Sen. Lindsey Graham on the importance of passing climate legislation (Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  If the lesson from health care is let’s not do anything hard, then why don’t we all go home, which might be good for the country by the way. But if we go home, China won’t.
  ...
  I’ve become convinced that carbon pollution is a bad thing, not a good thing, and it can be dealt with, and we can create jobs.

  This is the time, this is the Congress, and this is the moment. So if we retreat and try to just go to the energy-only approach—which will never yield the legislative results that I want on energy independence—then we just made the problem worse.

  What Congress is going to come up here and do all these hard things? Who are these people in the future? Because we constantly count on them. I don’t know who they are. I’ve yet to find them.

  So I guess it falls to me and you. So let’s do it.

• Meanwhile, China Pulls Ahead in Wind Energy:
• China doubles wind power in 1 year (Business Week)
• China’s Labor Edge Overpowers Obama’s ‘Green’ Jobs Initiatives (Bloomberg)
• Big Oil & Big Coal Fight to Keep Handouts:
• Oil Industry: We Like Our Handouts! (Mother Jones)
• Kentucky legislators criticize plan to cut coal subsidies (McClatchy DC)
• Obama Budget Erases Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Ramps Up Nuclear Spending; Clean Energy Comes Out a Winner (SolveClimate.org)
• Oil and gas interests set spending record in 2009 (Greenwire)
• Big Oil's Big Year (Mother Jones)
• Who’s Afraid of a Clean-Energy Future? (Wall St. Journal)
• REPORT: Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008 (Environmental Law Institute)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': More green news not covered in today's audio report...

• Pentagon: ‘Climate Change, Energy Security, And Economic Stability Are Inextricably Linked’ (Think Progress)
• Studies Find Faster Tree Growth as Climate Changes, Potential to Drive Further Warming (Solve Climate.org)
• Oil, Trucking Industries Sue Calif. Over Fuel Rule (NY Times)
• Bangladesh risks becoming failed state, retired general says (Reuters)
• Hawaii considers taxing oil to pay for renewables (Business Week)
• ICK!: Packaged Salad Can Contain High Levels of Bacteria (Civil Eats)
• U.S. Rep. Joe Barton's gas well stake raises ethical questions (Dallas Morning News)
• Utah gov given $10,000 by coal co. seeking permit (Business Week)
• NPR: A Toxic Century --- Mining Giant Must Clean Up Mess: In December, the Justice Department announced a settlement in one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in U.S. history. The American Smelting and Refining Company, known as Asarco, will pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution at 80 sites in as many as 20 states. (NPR)

If the Republican Gubernatorial primary candidate Carly Fiorina is willing to put out a web ad like this, against her Republican opponent Tom Campell in the race for the GOP nomination to run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer this year, do the Democrats have any idea of the crazy train they're about to be barreling into?...

[Hat-tip TPM who tweets it as "Possibly the best web ad ever". We might have to agree.]

While I've always had the utmost respect for Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger,, I must admit that the first time I watched his video, "Obama is a corporate marketing creation," I thought that, in implying that the President was some type of CIA-connected Manchurian Candidate, Pilger was a bit over the top.

In 1983 Obama went to work for "Business International Corporation," which, according to Pilger, had "a long history of providing cover for the CIA and infiltrating unions on the left." Though Pilger conceded that there "might be nothing sinister" in that, he cited Obama's failure to identify Business International by name or what he did there in Dreams of My Father. The President simply said he worked at “a consulting house to multinational corporations.” Coupling this with a litany of examples which place Obama on the wrong side of Empire and the corporate divide, Pilger implied the connection was not coincidental, then concluded his remarks by quoting Chris Hedges:

Perhaps it's an accumulation of all that has transpired this past year; perhaps it's the striking revelations that emerged during an extraordinary Feb. 2, 2010, broadcast of Democracy Now, especially as it pertains to torture (video below), but I now can't help feeling like Claire Kubik, the sharp attorney played by Ashley Judd in High Crimes who starts out vigorously defending her husband Tom (Jim Cazviel) against charges he murdered innocent civilians in a covert military operation. She's convinced the man she married has been wrongfully accused; convinced of his innocence until, almost when it's too late, she learns the man she thought she knew so well was a murderous sociopath.

Who is this guy whose election so many so happily celebrated on a brisk November evening that now seems so long ago?...

A troubling litany

One could easily follow up Pilger's analysis with a litany of even more troubling facts: The immediate alignment of President-Elect Obama with a bevy of former Wall Street/Goldman Sachs insiders (e.g., Tim Geithner, Larry Summers), the retention of the CIA-connected Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, the renomination of Ben Bernacke, the "too big to fail" excuse that essentially handed Wall Street the keys to the National Treasury, even as Goldman Sachs/AIG executives gorged on seven and even eight figure bonuses, the betrayal of the single-payer cause former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama once championed, not to mention the abandonment of the more modest "public option," in favor of back-room deals with the rapacious health insurance cartel and the pharmaceutical industry, and the deceptive, and at times Orwellian justifications for not merely continuing but expanding an irrational "global war on terror," complete with retention of murderous mercenaries, like those supplied by Blackwater/Xe at enormous taxpayer expense.

A failure to faithfully execute the laws against torture

But for me, as an attorney, who like all attorneys has taken a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and laws of these United States, and as the son of a man who was tortured --- waterboarded --- by the Japanese during World War II, it is the question of torture which has led me to join with Pilger in asking, again, who is this man?

Early in this new administration, even before I published a five part series on "The History of CIA Torture" (Part I, II, III, IV & V), in which I traced the current torture scandal to a more than 50-year history of CIA torture transcending multiple administrations, I wrote in "Prosecute or Perish," warning that nothing less than the very survival of our Constitutional democracy and the rule of law hinged upon factually warranted criminal investigations and prosecutions of all who authorized or participated in torture inside the Bush/Cheney cabal.

In "Fixing the Facts and Legal Opinions Around the Torture Policy," I expressed dismay when the President told CIA employees, who tortured under the quasi-legal sophistries authored by the likes of John Yoo and Jay S. Bibee, they would not be prosecuted. The President said this was "a time for reflection, not retribution...nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb explained that the President insisted on "looking forward."

I pointed out that the remarks from a President, who was a Harvard Law School scholar and former Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, made no sense whatsoever; that it would be impossible to ever prosecute anyone without "looking back" at the crime already committed.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley blasted the effort to equate law enforcement with "retribution."

Yet, the Obama administration has done nothing to bring those who authorized torture or authored the quasi-legal sophistries, aka "torture memos," before the bar of justice. Where last May the Justice Department had prepared an initial draft of an ethics report that would recommend state bar proceedings against John Yoo and Jay Bibee, the latter a sitting judge on a federal appellate bench, on Jan. 30 of this year Newsweek reported that even this relatively minor semblance at accountability turned into a complete white-wash. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility struck the recommendations for state bar discipline --- this at the same time that a Spanish court "has opened formal criminal investigations into the suspected torture of a Spanish national held at Guantánamo," naming Yoo, Bibee, and Alberto Gonzales as the "intellectual authors" of that man's torture.

However, as noted by attorney Scott Horton, while the Justice Department has not sought state bar discipline, its memos may contain damning information describing "meetings inside the White House with [V.P. Cheney's] staff, in the course of which they are giving direct guidance to John Yoo and others exactly how this memo is to be written and what it is to provide, and everything they ask for and require John Yoo puts into the memo." This level of structured control over what went into the torture memos would be consistent with much of what Jane Mayer has to say about the dictatorial reign of Richard B. Cheney and David Addington in The Dark Side.

Was the latest Justice Department white-wash intended to shield Obama White House complicity in torture?

Had it stopped there; had the Feb. 2, 2010, news coverage on Democracy Now been limited to the President's decision to recklessly expand spending on the military-industrial complex, including the never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to $741 billion; which includes "a $7 billion increase in nuclear spending despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world," even as the Labor Department is to experience a 32% cut in unemployment and stimulus spending; had the Democracy Now broadcast simply reported the deaths of 123 more civilians in predator drone strikes; had it done no more than recount that CIA operatives have been allowed to work for private firms, or that Maher Ahrar's attorneys had to file a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking justice for the torture that innocent Canadian suffered as a direct result of Bush/Cheney's abominable "extraordinary rendition" practice; justice denied because it is opposed by Eric Holder's Department of Injustice, I probably would have refrained from writing this piece.

But the Democracy Now segment, "'America’s Secret Afghan Prisons': Investigation Unearths New U.S. Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan," (video below) and The Nation magazine's, "America's Secret Afghan Prisons," by Anand Gopal, are so truly disturbing that they have shaken me to the core.

In a nutshell, if accurate, they reveal, as claimed by Scott Horton, that President Obama's Jan. 22, 2009, "executive order" to shut down the "secret prisons" was very carefully tailored so that it was only CIA black sites that were closed." They left open the same type of black sites under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), according to Horton. "A major UN report on secret detention policies around the world concludes the practice could reach the threshold of a crime against humanity," according to Amy Goodman.

The Gopal article, if accurate, reflects an ongoing campaign of vicious night raids by U.S. special forces that would do the Gestapo proud. One entailed a raid on the home of "Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for Afghanistan's agriculture minister," whose cousins, a baker and a man who simply sells carrots at a local bizarre, were gunned down without provocation, as U.S. forces barged into Qarar's home, while "terrified children lay glued to their beds." They ransacked the house, located a man, Rahman, a young Afghan government employee whom the U.S. military "suspected" of having al Qaeda connections; carted him off to a helicopter and then the first of a series of prisons. Part of a growing number of Afghans who have joined the ranks of the disappeared, Rahman has not been seen or heard from since, despite Qarar's connections inside the Afghan government.

The stories, if accurate, suggest that the Obama administration is up to its eyeballs in the same brutal techniques for which the Bush/Cheney regime has been, at least outside the confines of the U.S., universally condemned --- a conclusion that is further bolstered by a claim made by five U.S. citizens in custody in Pakistan, one of whom handed a note to a reporter which read, "Since our arrest, the US, FBI and Pakistani police have tortured us. They are trying to set us up… Help us.” Per Amy Goodman, one of their lawyers claimed they were subjected to electric shock.

If true, one has to ask whether Obama had backed off his Constitutional duty to see that the laws be faithfully executed in order to shield himself from the same charges for torture he intended to carry out. If it turns out to be true --- and that is still a very big if --- the immediate legal course would be a Congressional investigation with an eye towards possible impeachment, to determine if the President was aware of these policies and condoned them in anyway, in violation of his oath of office and duty to the American people to uphold our laws and Constitution.

The 02/02/10 'Democracy Now! segment, "America’s Secret Afghan Prisons”: Investigation Unearths New U.S. Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan," follows below...

UPDATE 02/03/10:The U.S. military has now admitted that it is operating inside Pakistan as three U.S. soldiers were amongst ten people killed by a roadside bomb while the American soldiers were en route to a development project.

===

Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

The Daily Kos has enlisted the "non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000" to survey "over 2,000 self-identified Republicans." The results of which, I'll have to agree with Kos here, are "nothing short of startling."

Writes Kos: "Ultimately, these results explain why it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country. Their base are conspiracy mongers who don't believe Obama was born in the United States, that he is the second coming of Lenin, and that he is racist against white people."

Just one case in point likely to be of interest to readers of The BRAD BLOG (and there are many others, far more extreme), one in five (21%) of self-identified Republicans believe ACORN stole the 2008 election. Another 55% are "not sure" if they did or not. Still waiting for any one of them to present even a shred of evidence to suggest that even a single vote was cast fraudulently via ACORN in some way, of course. For the record, Obama reportedly won by about 10 million of them nationally. You think we'd have some kind of evidence by now from the "Fox 'News' Voter Fraud Unit."

Also, according to the poll, a majority of Republicans, 53%, believe "Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama." Sigh...

How many elected Democrats will have to lose their jobs in 2010 and 2012 before they figure out who/what they're dealing with in this once-Grand, now just utterly insane (actually, just successfully and expensively disinformed) Old Party?

Poll "high"lights are here...

So as long as the wingnut media --- and thus, virtually the entire corporate media --- insist on using the people's airwaves to lie to the people (eg., Rush Limbaugh continues to repeat every day what a "complete failure" the economic stimulus package has been), I guess we'll just have to keep countering that phony message by posting the truth in order to try to offer some balance to the unending stream of lies from the GOP and their extremely effective mouthpieces across the near-entirety of the corporate media.

Rachel Maddow did the same last week in her lead-up piece to Obama's first State of the Union address, in which she brutally attacked the Administration's call for a partial spending freeze, even as the economy, thanks in no small part to Government investment, struggles to come out of its tailspin.

Before her critique however (which I hope you'll watch in full --- it's embedded below), she also pointed out the salient, indisputable facts of how responsible actions taken by the Obama Administration, whether you liked them or not --- and as opposed by virtually every single Republican in Congress --- have, in fact, with all of their many failings, helped shore up, and even reverse for now, what had been a near-death spiral by the time Obama finally took office.

Here are two charts from her report which highlight that point quite simply, and help to counter the loud, GOP-spun political/partisan nonsense echoed, naturally, by the gullible tea baggers...

[NOTE: Since Maddow's report last week, the GDP figures for the 4th quarter of last year have now been announced and the up trend continues. As her original chart included data only through the 3rd quarter of last year, we've augmented that original chart below to reflect the recently announced 5.7% growth in GDP for the 4th quarter of '09]:

Love him or hate him, or anything in between, recognition of the overall effect of the broad points of Obama's emergency economic policies --- quickly passed at an historic moment of looming disaster --- is due. At least along with any honest appraisal of those policies.

Maddow's entire report, both praising and critiquing Obama and those policies --- something known as "fairness and balance" --- can be watched below...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: China takes the lead on clean energy, while the U.S. dithers; Obama gives out goodies for nuclear power ... PLUS: Coal protests in West Virginia ... 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': Solar energy’s dirty little secret; Obama orders government to cut greenhouse emissions by 28%; Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilizing force; Americans cool on global warming; Smart meters save money, energy and dollars ... PLUS: With help from Sweden, four Northern Virginia families are 'climate pilots' ....

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

• U.S. Officially Commits to Copenhagen Accord:
• US Makes Copenhagen Climate Pledge Official (Sort of) (Mother Jones)
• Where things stand on the Copenhagen Accord and international climate politics (Grist)
• Copenhagen Deadline Comes And Goes. Now What? (The New Republic)
• Davos 2010: China Takes Global Lead in Clean Energy:
• Davos 2010: Race Is on to Develop Green, Clean Technology (NY Times)
• China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy: China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. (NY Times)
• China powers the global green tech revolution (Grist)
• Obama Administration Budget: Boost for Nukes, Busts for Oil Tax Breaks:
• Budget Blueprint: Obama Unveils $3.8 T Budget (Greenwire)
• Obama's Budget Request Ups DOE Spending (Sustainable Business.com)
• Renewables in Vogue at Obama's DOE: Nuclear, solar and wind power are the popular kids in the Energy Department schoolyard this year, while oil, gas and coal have been sent to detention. (Greenwire)
• White House Goes After Oil And Gas Subsidies--Again (The New Republic)
• Obama’s nuclear error: $54 billion in loan guarantees make little policy or political sense (Climate Progress)
• MEANWHILE....
• Budget will eliminate Yucca: Reid (E&E News)
• BUDGET: Sky may be falling over Yucca: Funding cutoff, DOE plans may close door on project (Las Vegas Review Journal)
• The Administration Puts Its Own Stamp on a Possible Nuclear Revival (Climatewire)
• Nuclear Renaissance Dealt Blow by South Texas Project Troubles (Public Citizen)
• Vermont nuke plant leaks renew debate over aging plants (SF Gate)
• Leaks imperil nuclear industry: Leak of radioactive water at Vermont Yankee, along with similar incidents at more than 20 other US nuclear plants in recent years, has kindled doubts about the reliability, durability, and maintenance of the nation’s aging nuclear installations. (Boston Globe)
• Obama Budget Increases Hanford Nuclear Site Clean-up Spending (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
• Texas: Nuclear cost estimate rises by as much as $4 billion (San Antonio Express News)
• Activists Sit-In --- Literally --- to Block Mountaintop Removal:
• For eighth day, climate activists block bulldozers at WV’s Coal River Mountain. (Think Progress)
• Massey Sues Coal River Mountain Tree-Sitters in Federal Court (It's Getting Hot In Here)
• Judge bars protesters from Massey mines in W.Va. (West Virginia Gazette)
• Reminder: Spike Maynard on the Massey Aracoma Mine fire (Coal Tattoo)
• Tree Sits, Air Horns and Helicopters: The Fight to Save Coal River Mountain (It's Getting Hot In Here)
• The Activists: Climate Ground Zero

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': More green news not covered in today's audio report...

• Solar energy’s dirty little secret (Grist)
• U.S. government to cut greenhouse emissions by 28 percent (AFP)
• Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force: US defence review says military planners should factor climate change into long-term strategy (Guardian UK)
• American Opinion Cools on Global Warming (Science Daily)
• Smart Meters Save Money, Energy and Dollars (Grist)
• With help from Sweden, 4 Northern Virginia families are 'Climate Pilots' (Washington Post)

Compare and contrast that with the shameful, fawning 2,250 word Sunday New York Times article attempting to turn the accused federal felons into folk heroes.

And, again, as we have in our coverage to date, we'll ask the following simple questions, among others, which everyone should be asking --- loudly:

1) When will GOP operative/propagandist/con-man Andrew Breitbart tell his BigGovernment.com readers and Fox "News" dupes that he's been lying to them, and that his employee James O'Keefe never appeared as a pimp in the offices of ACORN?

2) When will snake-oil salesman Andy release O'Keefe's complete, unedited, illegally-obtained ACORN video tapes publicly?

3) Why hasn't he done so already?

4) Could it be because two independent investigations found they were heavily-edited, likely illegally-obtained, heavily over-dubbed, and showed [PDF] "no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers"?

5) When will "Orly Taitz" Andy share the existence of Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler's evisceration of his employee O'Keefe's failure of a cover story for the alleged Louisiana "TeaBugger" felonies with his own readers? He claims to be a "journalist" (ironically enough) decrying the "biased" "Liberal Media," who selectively report things, right?

6) Why does GOP operative Andy think his employee O'Keefe should be presumed "innocent until proven guilty" as he's tweeted time and again, when he's shown no such benefit of the doubt for ACORN, ACORN employees, or even Gitmo detainees who may face punishment of death?

7) Why is ACORN itself "guilty," according to Angry Andy, of something or other, based on what he believes their employees did, but faux "journalist" Andrew Breitbart, who admits accused felon O'Keefe is on his payroll, is somehow not "guilty" of anything?

There are, of course, many more such question that the cowardly and professionally-deceptive Mr. Breitbart won't be answering. But I thought it'd be nice to give Andy --- and perhaps the "Liberal MSM" --- a chance to start ignoring the above right away.

P.S. We have sent the above questions to Andy, with a promise to post his answers in full here, if he cares to offer them. Unlike his political hit-man "Big" sites, we have no interest in being unfair to anybody here, and have no fear of sharing all sides of any story.

Incredibly --- or perhaps not so much, given the various horrible news the week before last --- I completely lost track that last Sunday (1/24) was OUR SIXTH ANNIVERSARY here at The BRAD BLOG.

So, Happy Birthday to the "six or seven"* of us who are now six years old!!! If you're inclined to share your own thoughts, most or least favorite BRAD BLOG moments or stories, changes or improvements you'd like to see in the year ahead, or anything else you'd like to get off your birthday chest in comments, I hope you will.

If you're able to share more than just comments, please consider signing up for a much-needed monthly sustaining contribution as a birthday gift if you can afford to. Trust me, we really need it! (If you can help, use the light blue box in the right sidebar to sign up for an automatic monthly contribution of any amount you like --- it's very quick and easy!).

Even "six or seven"* dollars a month from a tiny fraction of those who read these pages each day would make an extraordinary difference here, and go a long way towards helping us to continue bringing you real, fearless, independent, progressive media! If you prefer, a one-time donation, we'll take that too! We receive no corporate or foundational funding here, nor do we get free links/money-galore from folks like Drudge like certain wingnut operatives do, so your support is all that keeps us alive.

Either way, my thanks to all "six or seven"* of you, for your generosity, perseverance, kindness, strength, wisdom, dedication, charity, good spirits, support for the underdog, combativeness and community for all of these years. All of which has made it an honor and privilege --- if sometimes an exhausting and occasionally dispiriting one --- to wake each morning to face each new day here with you all. On behalf of Ernie, 99, Desi, Frank, everyone else who tosses in when they can, and especially John Gideon in both heart and spirit, thank you all for helping to see us through yet another year. May the next one be much brighter...

_____________

* - If you've been around long enough to understand that reference, I'll let you explain it to anybody else in comments who might be mystified by it. And if you've really been around that long, you can probably find the link to the story from which it came too. I can't be expected to do everything ya know.

As one of two independent investigations of the incidents which clear ACORN of wrong-doing noted, this one by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger [PDF]:

Since Crazy Andy Breitbart, who released the phony video tapes on his propaganda website, didn't bother to man up and point that out before, during, or after posting them, or while appearing on Fox "News" and elswhere to promote both them and himself, or even after the reports came out, you may not have realized that salient fact.

You may also not have known that while both independent reports, the other one by the Congressional Research Service [PDF], found no criminal wrong doing by ACORN, they did find that O'Keefe likely the broke the law in at least two states by secretly recording the videos which had voice-overs deceptively edited into them later, "in some cases substantially," according to Harshbarger's report, so that it was "difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding."

In other words, the videos were a scam perpetrated by both Breitbart and his employee O'Keefe, who now faces felony charges that Breitbart has been tweeting his adorable angry little heart out over the last few days trying desperately to downplay. Who can blame him? Nothing less than whatever little credibility he ever had is on the line after all. No doubt P.T. Barnum faced similar circumstances as he plied his trade to the suckers born every minute. So do actual pimps. Like Andy.

But just imagine the years of outrage and endless repetition of the charges from the Rightwing media and their acolytes --- folks like Crazy Andy --- that would accompany four operatives allied with the Democratic Party, perpetrating a scheme to dress up as phony telephone company employees in order to access and manipulate the phone system in the office of a sitting Republican U.S. Senator.

Of course, it would be the Crime of the Century to the wingnuts, likely led by Breitbart, accompanied by cries of "What did Obama, Pelosi, Reid, ACORN, SEIU and Saul Alinsky know and when they did they know it?!" along with calls for resignations in disgrace because of it.

But when the "Liberal MSM" report on a very serious federal felony offense allegedly committed by four Republicans disguising themselves and attempting to interfere with the the phone system of a sitting Democratic U.S. Senator, well, that's just another example of the outrageously "Liberal MSM," at least according to Breitbart and O'Keefe's latest attempted gambit.

That's the embarrassing meme that the Rightwing propagandist and GOP operative Breitbart is busy Twittering himself to death in hopes of selling, as he desperately tries to reclaim any credibility that he or his GOP "news" outlets might have ever had.

Crazy Andy is angrily and frantically using the tried and true tactics of Republican Reframing Magic® in the wake of the felony arrest of his own employee O'Keefe, the dirty trickster, and junior propagandist-cum-failed-superspy. And given the rubes and dopes in the Not-Liberal-At-All MSM, it's likely they'll fall for it as hard as they fell for Breitbart/O'Keefe's ACORN video scheme. Case in point: The "liberal" New York Times is already running a fawning 2,250-word feature story on Breitbart and his gang of desperados in Sunday's paper. Can you imagine any such coverage of accused Democratic Party criminals like that?! And the GOP outrage that would accompany it if it did?!

But now that Breitbart and O'Keefe, as of Friday, have decided on a cover story (posted in full below), and seem prepared to stick to it and sell it, let's give it a look before it all falls completely apart, as it largely already has, even before I had time to finish this story which I got distracted from after beginning to write it yesterday...

Breitbart's recent Twittered attempts at spinning wingnut gold out of his employee's federally felonious straw comes in conjunction with his release on Friday of O'Keefe's first full statement since Monday's arrest along with three others Republican dirty trickster co-conspirators --- one, the son of Lousiana's acting U.S. Attorney William J. Flanagan --- during the alleged attempt to illegally interfere with the phones of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

As posted on Crazy Andy's BigGovernment.com site Friday, O'Keefe's statement explains that his arrest according to an FBI affidavit, for having "aided and abetted ... in the execution of the plan" to manipulate the Democratic Senator's phone system after gaining access to it "by falsely and fraudulently representing that the [sic] were employees of a telephone company," was all just one great patriotic "investigation", O'Keefe informs us, for which, now that he's been arrested, he's learned he "could have used a different approach".

His thin explanation for the incident --- absurd on its face, but well promoted by Breitbart, naturally --- hangs on the notion that the Repub tricksters weren't trying to bug Landrieu's office, they were just there to "ask the staff if their phones were working" after some complained in December they were unable to get through to the office during the health care vote, when busy signals were the rule of the day.

It's unclear why they'd need a scheme at all --- which included dressing up as phone company employees, "manipulating" the phone the at the reception desk, seeking access to the main phone closet, and keeping one man outside in the car with a listening device --- to simply "ask the staff if their phones were working", but reasonable explanations aren't really required for this bunch of con-men, or the one who employs at least one of them.

Neither does O'Keefe explain in his statement what he had hoped to discover regarding Landrieu's phone system at the end of January, in regard to apparent complaints that some had trouble reaching her office in Mid-December.

His lame explanation for it all --- both before and after blaming the MSM for his own troubles, rather than taking personal responsibility for it, as an actual conservative might have done --- hangs in this attempted sleight-of-hand from his statement:

Uh, yeah. But Landrieu's representative never actually said "her phones were broken". The representative said they were "jammed for weeks". So O'Keefe's explanation is a complete FAIL in that regard, for a start, not that the tea baggers who've come to idolize Breitbart and O'Keefe, or the "liberal MSM" (who do so as well) will bother to notice.

There is much more that can be taken apart in O'Keefe/Breitbart's statement --- for example the hypocrisy of calling for the release of the video tapes he made during the incident, even while both he and Breitbart still refuse to release the full and unedited ACORN tapes months after that scam was pulled --- and I had hoped to do so over the weekend. But happily, Marcy Wheeler over at emptywheel beat me to it today.

Her analysis utterly destroys O'Keefe's ridiculously desperate excuse for violating federal law. It's short, sweet, and a must read, so please do so!

Breitbart has still failed to offer an explanation as to how it is that he should be let off the hook for what his employees do (he now enjoys Twittering that O'Keefe, who he's admitted he has on salary, isn't actually an employee, or some such falderal) and that O'Keefe is "innocent until proven guilty" (twittered disingenuously by Crazy Andy here, here, here and here) even while extending no such benefit of the doubt to anybody employed by ACORN, naturally.

ACORN, of course, deserves no such benefit of the doubt because, after all, they have the temerity to actually help millions of low and middle-income Americans legally participate in their own democracy, and other such GOP crimes.

J. Garrison Jordan, the attorney for Robert Flanagan --- the accused perp who is also the son of the acting U.S. Attorney in Louisiana --- downplayed all of it on Friday as little more than a youthful prank, telling the AP "You're dealing with kids."

A "kid", of course, whose father is an acting U.S. Attorney. And another "kid" who is, apparently well-connected and/or wealthy enough to afford a Superstar Republican Attorney. O'Keefe, who is 25 years old (the others are 24) has now lawyered up with Superstar Republican Watergate Attorney, Michael Madigan. Ironically, Madigan served as the attorney to Republican Howard Baker who famously asked, as the ranking member of the Senate committee investigating Watergate: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

But, ya know, we're just "dealing with kids" here, right? Nothing to see. Move along. ACORN may be plotting right now to steal another election after all!!!

O'Keefe's statement follows in full below, but don't bother looking for Wheeler's devastating analysis of it over at Breitbart's site as he's apparently too cowardly to share it with the very readers he's conned into believing they are receiving "fair and balanced" coverage of "news" and stuff.

Pimps like Andy, whether they're wearing the threads are not, turn lots of tricks --- and make lots of dirty money in the bargain.

The "Statement from James O'Keefe" follows in full below. Marcy Wheeler's analysis shredding it, is here...

...And again, here's Marcy Wheeler's response to the above at emptywheel...

UPDATE 2/1/10: Our 7 questions for Andy, as AP investigates...

It is my great honor to be part of a Tuesday, Feb 2 press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour. (Press released posted below.) Why am I doing this? Because the secretive group "The Family" and/or "C-Street" organizations of the far loony Right is the sponsor of the current annual Prayer Breakfast.

"The Family" are closely associated with the American and Ugandan evangelical "Christians" who have been trying to impose the death penalty on gay men and women.

This is my chance as a straight, fifty-seven year old practicing Christian, father of three and grandfather of three to step up and show my solidarity with my gay brothers and sisters. It's also a chance to try and begin to restore the reputation of Christianity that has for far too long been violated by the Religious Right.

And since in years past (in the 1970s and 80s) my family and I played such a leading role in the formation of the Religious Right this is the least I can do to try and correct the horrible hate and polarization we (my late father Francis Schaeffer and I) personally helped set in motion...

Please read our press release below and do all you can to help us pry a national prayer event from the grip of the half-crazed C-Street gang. It is a scandal that so many "respectable" religious groups from the Right to the Left of the religion spectrum have allowed their good names to be linked to the Family and their nefarious "Reconstructionist" ambitions for America and the world that seeks to impose "biblical law" on our pluralistic society...

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism).

His previous articles at The BRAD BLOG can be read here...

Via Olbermann this afternoon at dKos:

The event this afternoon, where Obama spent an hour and a half taking any and all questions from GOP House Members was, indeed, remarkable. As I tweeted at the time, "Can u imagine Bush ever doing anything like that? Ever?!"

If you missed it, we'll try to get video, or links to it, posted here shortly. Apparently, tweets emptywheel, "so many people want to see Obama's GOP talk that they've crashed CSPAN's servers. Has that ever happened before?"

It was sober, reasonable, helpful and historic and Obama came across as extraordinarily reasonable and Presidential. It was little surprise then that Fox "News," I read, cut away from the historic moment to...do something else.

[Update: Video of all 85 minutes of Obama's "Question Time" is now posted here with transcript, and embedded in full at the end of this article.]

A few clips follow below, courtesy of TPM's excellent coverage, along with an extended segment from their report. In one of the clips, for example, Obama tells the Republicans to portraying the "pretty centrist" health care bill as "some sort of Bolshevik plot"...

UPDATE: All 85 minutes of Obama's "Question Time" is now posted at the White House website. The text transcript is here. It's now embedded below in full...

Though during the trial the domestic terrorist Roeder told the court he'd decided as long ago as 1993 to try and kill Tiller, it wasn't until after months of increasing demonization by the rightwing media that Roeder finally found the courage to shoot Tiller in the head during a Sunday church service in Wichita last year.

Before his murder, Tiller, who for years had performed perfectly legal abortion procedures, had been villainized in an ongoing media campaign, led most notably by Bill O'Reilly of Fox "News." O'Reilly, who, despite his own false claims to the contrary had described him on air, time and again, as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and repeatedly told viewers on the most popular program on cable "news" that "This guy will kill your baby for $5,000, any reason. Any reason."

Roeder testified during the trial that he "did what I thought was needed to be done to protect the children. ... If I didn’t do it, the babies were going to die the next day."

Other related statements, for which O'Reilly has never been held accountable, include:

• "In the state of Kansas, there is a doctor, George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000."
• "For $5,000, 'Tiller the Baby Killer' --- as some call him --- will perform a late-term abortion for just about any reason."
• "Tiller has killed thousands, thousands of late-term fetuses without explanation."
• "No question, Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands."
• " 'Tiller the Baby Killer' out in Kansas, acquitted, acquitted today of murdering babies."
• "This guy will kill your baby for $5,000, any reason. Any reason."
• "If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue, we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody."
• "If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation."

O'Reilly also said of Tiller:

• He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
• He's guilty of "Nazi stuff,"
• a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida
• "This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"
• "operating a death mill"
• "has blood on his hands"
• "executing babies about to be born"

...Among many other similar statements.

While legal abortion providers have been forced to further defend themselves against continuing terror threats such as that carried out by Roeder, O'Reilly, who arguably helped foment the rage expressed by the murder of Tiller, remains on Rupert Murdoch's cable channel where he continues to "report" in similarly irresponsible fashion to millions of Americans each night.

VelvetRevolution.us has called on the U.S. Dept. of Justice to take the threat of domestic rightwing terrorism such as Roeder's, and the use of public and government-subsidized broadcast media to help foment it, seriously, via its StopDomesticTerror.com campaign. Please sign on to that campaign in you haven't already. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR.]

Today's insane interview with David Shuster on MSNBC, discussing the felony arrest of his employee/operative James O'Keefe for allegedly attempting to manipulate the telephones of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) earlier this week, goes a long way towards that goal. Lookin' good, Andy! Keep up the brilliant "journalism"!

Josh Marshall notes about the interview that it was "truly the most unhinged performance I've seen since Shuster made a laughing stock of and pretty much put an end to the fifteen minutes of fame of [Queen of the Obama 'Birthers'] Orly Taitz."

"At some level I admire Breitbart's insistence on turning any question about anything into an attack based on why the federal government hasn't turned itself over entirely to investigating ACORN," Marshall adds, "But this performance was definitely in shark-jumping territory. For the ages."

Indeed. Though despite Crazy Andy's seething rage about a lack of criminal convictions against ACORN, even as two recent independent investigations found no criminal wrong-doing by the pro-voter, pro-American Dream community group in the highly-doctored, and apparently illegally-obtained video tapes that Breitbart and O'Keefe posted for the U.S. media to broadcast widely, he's adamant that the rest of the world needs to retract, um, everything, while his continued, unsubstantiated allegations against, um, everybody else are just fine.

Unfortunately, Shuster didn't ask Andy about the admissions that he'd made on the night of O'Keefe's arrest, when he concurred that "Lots of people work for lots of corporations, and do dumb and sometimes illegal things that are not within the scope of their employment."

The wingnut that he was concurring with, Hugh Hewitt, was talking about Crazy Andy's employment of the accused felon O'Keefe. But the irony that they'd both just explained why ACORN isn't necessarily responsible for an employee of theirs who defrauds ACORN itself --- who is turned in by ACORN themselves to officials for prosecution --- apparently escaped both geniuses as they panicked to try and save Breitbart's quickly crumbling propaganda empire.

Anyway, here's the video of Shuster with Crazy Andy "jumping the shark" on MSNBC today...

BTW, for those who wonder why we should bother with this guy and his freak show at all, it's because, like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, etc., he serves, pathetically enough, as the "assignment desk" for the U.S. Media --- not just the Rightwing media, but the entire U.S. Media --- and he needs to be discredited and revealed for the ticking time-bomb lunatic of a wingnut operative that he is.

He is anything but a legitimate "journalist," no matter how much he enjoys tricking his gullible tea baggers into believing just the opposite. He is the master of projection and deception, and where, in one sense, he shouldn't even be allowed anywhere near a legitimate TV interview, like his fellow GOP propagandist and deceptionist Ann Coulter, he needs to be outed for the lying little scam artist that he is.

Today, he went a long way towards doing that to himself. Again. And everyone needs to know about what a deranged whackjob he is. Not that that will keep otherwise "legitimate" corporate news organizations from giving him air time to peddle his various scams.

But we can only do as much as we can here. And, as Andy is currently one of the leading media scam artists in the years-long assault against ACORN for having the temerity to help register millions of legal low and middle-income voters, the least we can do is point out who these scam artists actually are, and how phony their well-funded campaign actually is.

UPDATE 4:18pm PT: Media Matters details, in reply to Breitbart's false claim that his apparently illegally obtained and highly-doctored ACORN videos "clearly show in every --- in almost every single office, the employees at ACORN helping aid and abet the establishment of an underage prostitution brothel."...

No doubt "journalist" Crazy Andy will be demanding a retraction from himself immediately!

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: The State of the Union: Obama does not back off the push for clean energy --- but will the Senate listen?; Big new funding for high speed rail ... PLUS: How much will it all cost? ... 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': SEC calls for climate risks to be disclosed to investors; Budget freeze turns focus to Big Ag subsidies; California firsts: solar water heater subsidies and first-in-the-nation mandatory 'green' building codes; Ford CEO on the future of green cars; Honda tests Solar Hydrogen Fuel Pump ... PLUS: Even Plants May Not Like a Warmer World....

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

• STATE OF THE UNION: Obama Pushes for Clean Energy:
• In State of the Union, Obama panders to conservatives on “clean energy” (Grist)
• READ IT: Transcript of President Obama's State of the Union speech, Jan. 28, 2010 (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  
  Next, we need to encourage American innovation.
  ...
  But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country... making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development... continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. (Applause.) And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America. (Applause.)
  ...
  I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing --- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation. (Applause.)
  ...
  But at a time of record deficits, we will not continue tax cuts for oil companies, for investment fund managers, and for those making over $250,000 a year. We just can't afford it. (Applause.)
• READ THIS, TOO: Text of GOP Response: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) (Boston Globe)
• Sen. Kerry to Enviros: Be More Like Tea Partiers (Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones)
• WATCH: How Republicans in Congress Really Feel About Science (Video): Obama noted the "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change"--and Republicans in Congress responded by laughing out loud. (Treehugger)
• Obama State Of The Union: Addresses Clean Energy Jobs, Support For Climate Bill (Huffington Post Green)
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “The idea of not pricing carbon, in my view, means you’re not serious about energy independence. : "The odd thing is you’ll never have energy independence until you clean up the air, and you’ll never clean up the air until you price carbon.”
• Cap-and-trade death knell, revisited and revised (Dave Roberts, Grist)
• Adviser: White House Committed to Climate Bill (Politico)
• Obama eager to help advance climate bill: President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he wants to advance a climate bill that has been stalled in the U.S. Senate, but he did not say it had to include a cap-and-trade market for emissions blamed for warming the planet. (Reuters)
• Obama Announces Funding for High-Speed Rail:
• President Obama delivers on American High-Speed Rail (U.S. Dept. of Transportation)
• WITH MAPS!!: Obama Taps High-Speed Rail Winners: Florida, California, Illinois and More (Streets Blog NY)
• High Speed Rail’s Gator Aid (The Vine)
• MORE MAPS!!: Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S. (Wired)
• Fast Track to the Future: A High-Speed Rail Agenda for America (Progressive Fix)
• Rail Stimulus: Good Politics, But Don't Expect Bullet Trains (The New Republic's The Vine)
• Just Don't Call It A "Tax":
• Just Don't Call it a Carbon Tax: A new study in Psychological Science ["A dirty word or a dirty world?" pdf] shows that Republicans and Independents would approve a "carbon offset" identical in every way to a "carbon tax" as long as it isn't called a tax. (Mother Jones)
• You Say Offset, I Say Tax? Study Suggests Labels and Political Affiliation May Influence Preferences (Association for Psychological Science)
• Study: Carbon Price May Be Worth It On Health Grounds Alone (The New Republic's The Vine)
• Haiti still needs YOU to TAKE ACTION: Building a Better, Stronger Haiti (Planet Green):
  
  Donate to non-profit organizations who are working to:
  1. Help build Haiti's economy
  2. Microfinance
  3. Help reforest and replant
  4. Help the animals of Haiti
  5. Help rebuild and reconstruct a stronger Haiti
  6. Help bring renewable energy like solar lanterns to Haiti
  7. Help provide clean water

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': More green news not covered in today's audio report...

• SEC Issues Ground-Breaking Guidance Requiring Corporate Disclosure of Material Climate Change Risks and Opportunities (CERES)
• In 3-2 Vote, SEC requires companies to disclose climate risks to investors (Climate Progress)
• Budget Freeze Focus Turns to Farm Subsidies (Environmental Working Group)
• California Greening: State's New Green Building Codes Have Some Crying Foul: 'An Example of the Law of Unintended Consequences' (SolveClimate)
• California to Subsidize Solar Water Heaters (NY Times)
• Honda Tests Solar Hydrogen Fuel Pump (Detroit News)
• MNN exclusive: Bill Ford of Ford Motor Co. on the future of green cars:: Bill Ford carried the eco-flag when it wasn't popular, but the industry has now caught up with his namesake company. (Mother Nature Network)
• Even Plants May Not Like a Warmer World (Time Magazine)