The Journal-Sentinel goes on to report that the Republican who amended the law claimed the change was needed "because some municipalities emailed out ballots while others did not, and she thought all communities should handle it the same way." And her even weaker reasoning was that "what voters returned by traditional mail had to be transferred by clerks onto ballots, which she said could be time-consuming for staff on election day."

While this development doesn't seem, in and of itself, to be an issue nefariously targeted at undermining the Scott Walker recall election specifically (as it had appeared in some of the more vague reportage I'd seen elsewhere this morning), it's certainly troubling for those folks leaving town this week who will not receive ballots in time to vote, and who will have no recourse to receive them while overseas. Those folks are most likely disenfranchised, whether that was the plan or not, thanks to the short-sighted amendment to state law written by state Sen. Mary Lazich, Republican of New Berlin.

I'll be surprised, however, if we don't see more very specific dirty tricks in the days ahead, meant to undermine the recall elections specifically, akin to the coordinated hoaxes we saw during the group of WI state Senate recall elections that took place last Summer. During those, for example, deceptive absentee ballot request mailers were sent out by the Koch Brothers-funded Americans For Prosperity and a number of other Rightwing groups.

The mailers, which offered incorrect dates and deadlines, and instructed voters to send back the forms to the PO Box of a "Right to Life" group in Wisconsin, were sent out not only by the Kochs' AFP, but almost identical misleading mailers were sent out by a mysterious "group" calling itself "United Sportsmen of Wisconsin". As The BRAD BLOG subsequently reported, to the surprise of almost nobody, the front man for that purported WI gun organization, John W. Connors, turns out to have been a longtime AFP affiliate and National Director, with a history of running deceptive campaigns.

Watch for these same insidious democracy haters and their ugly dirty tricks tactics to appear very soon now in advance of the historic June 5th recall elections of Walker, his Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state Senators whose seats --- along with the political balance of the state Senate --- are all now up for grabs.

We covered the subject of wealth acquisition by the likes of Charles Koch and Mitt Romney in "Wealth vs. Democracy and the 2012 Presidential Campaign" --- "outsourcing, manipulations of the financial markets, of government and our laws" --- not as character flaws but as variants of the behaviors one can anticipate from their class.

As we approach the Fall campaign, we can anticipate a propaganda blitz that is based on variations of a line from the song "If I Were a Rich Man" of Fiddler on the Roof --- "When you're rich, they think you really know."

No doubt we will hear, time and again, that Mitt "Gordon Gekko" Romney's wealth acquisition is a testament to his business savvy that will equate to jobs creation. Against that backdrop is this short video (below) in which Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, provides a succinct rebuttal to the jobs scam canard...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Ominous start to summer fire season; Watch out for hot air in a newly uncovered anti-wind propaganda campaign; The Saudi Arabia of Oil wants to become the Saudi Arabia of Solar; PLUS: House Republicans working to block advanced biofuels for the U.S. military ... 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' (see links below): Public willing to pay for more green energy, but not nuclear; Why utilities are afraid of solar (hint: the competition); Arctic Ocean itself yet another global warming feedback loop; New GA nuclear reactors now $900m over-bduget; Germany 's rooftop solar strategy reduces electric bills 40% nationwide; Heartland Institute grows isolated as donors exit; NREL scientist: we must phase out natural gas; Arguing with deniers like Monty Python 'Argument' sketch: scientist ... PLUS: Death on Earth: how the world's wildlife is vanishing ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• Schizophrenic Fox News WANTS You to Suffer From High Gas Prices:
• VIDEO: Fox Legal Analyst: "I'm Hoping Gasoline's Going To Stay Close To Five Dollars In November ... No Joke" (Media Matters)
• VIDEO: Fox Now Asking: Is The Drop In Gas Prices A Bad Thing? (Media Matters)
• VIDEO: Fox Business News: Falling Gas Prices A Bad Thing? (Media Matters)
• GOP senator: Falling pump prices ‘one less arrow’ against Obama (The Hill's E2 Wire)
• CBO Report: Boosting Oil Production Won’t Protect Americans From Gasoline Price Shocks (Climate Progress)
• 5 AZ Wildfires: Ominous Start to Summer Fire Season:
• Arizona wildfires: early start to season stokes fears across south-western US (Guardian UK):
  
  After especially destructive 2011, fire experts warn extreme droughts and warm temperatures may make 2012 just as bad

  Authorities across the south-western United States were braced for a summer season of wildfire destruction on Monday after an outbreak of five serious blazes in Arizona.

• VIDEO: Arizona wildfires: Five fires mark start of 2012 wildfire season (CS Monitor)
• A Tour of Drought as it Unfolds Across the U.S. (Climate Central)
• U.S. Experiences Warmest 12-Month Period On Record And Most Extreme January to April (Climate Progress)
• 12-month stretch ending in April is warmest on record, NOAA says (MSNBC)
• The fire next time — Slave Lake disaster a harbinger of things to come (Edmonton Journal)
• Hot Air: Anti-Wind Propaganda Campaign Uncovered:
• Clean energy as culture war (David Roberts, Grist.org):
  
  [O]ne of the best expressions I’ve ever seen of the cultural and psychological aspects of the conflict. Witness:

  "Opposing Obama’s energy policies was a natural fit for conservatives, said Marita Noon, a conservative activist from New Mexico who was at the meeting. “The American way, what made CostCo and Walmart a success, is to use more and pay less. That’s the American way.” The president’s green policies however were the reverse, she said. “President Obama wants us to pay more and use less.”

• Anti-Wind Strategy Memo Envisions News Corp. Ally (Media Matters):
  
  A confidential memo distributed at the meeting outlined a PR strategy that would, among other things, use media outlets including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to disseminate anti-wind messaging. The goal of the media campaign is to provide "cover" for elected officials to vote against wind power.
• Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy (Guardian UK):
  
  A confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
  ...
  A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
• Anti-wind activists want to create fake grassroots campaign against industry (Grist)
• Confidential Memo Outlines Right-Wing Coordinated Propaganda Campaign To Crush Wind Power Energy (FireDogLake) [emphasis added]
  
  Additionally, they plan on using Youth Outreach (a tax-exempt Christian group whose goal is to bring students and young people into the Church), to help coordinate an anti-wind-power program in public schools and on college campuses. Here is the sneaky way they envision Youth Outreach helping to convince young people that wind power is not a viable energy source:

  "This will include community activity and participation with sponsorships for science fairs, school activity etc. with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from wind because they discover it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up (poster contest, essays etc)."

• Google-Backed Offshore-Wind Grid Gets Environmental Review (Bloomberg News)
• Saudi Arabia of Oil Wants to Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar:
• Saudi Arabia Unveils $100 Billion Plan To Make Solar ‘A Driver For Domestic Energy For Years To Come’ (Climate Progress):
  
  Al-Naimi explained the need to support new energy industries that can create more jobs than the oil sector: “We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”
• Saudi Arabia targets 41 GW of solar by 2032 (PV Magazine):
  
  The program, said to be worth tens of millions of dollars, aims to "catapult Saudi Arabia into the group of global leaders in renewable-energy development."
  ...
  In a statement released, Apricum said, "The main objectives of the program are a reduction in oil burned for power production as well as the establishment of a local solar industry and the creation of jobs."
• Picking Winners & Losers?: House GOP Tries to Kill Off Pentagon's Biofuel Development:
• Republicans Order Navy to Quit Buying Biofuels (Wired Danger Room):
  
  In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.” It’s a standard that may be almost impossible to meet, energy experts believe; there’s almost no way the tiny, experimental biofuel industry can hope to compete on price with the massive, century-old fossil fuels business.
  ..
  But if the measure becomes law, it would make it all-but-inconceivable for the Pentagon to buy the renewable fuels. It would likely scuttle one of the top priorities of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. And it might very well suffocate the gasping biofuel industry, which was looking to the Pentagon to help it survive.
• The Great Green Fleet (US Dept. of Defense)
• House Republicans Work To Scuttle Navy’s ‘Great Green Fleet’ (Think Progress):
  
  In a February hearing, the Viriginia Republican attacked Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus:

  "I understand that alternative fuels may help our guys in the field, but wouldn’t you agree that the thing they’d be more concerned about is having more ships, more planes, more prepositioned stocks. Shouldn’t we refocus our priorities and make those things our priorities instead of advancing a biofuels market?"

  Before letting Mabus answer, Forbes, whose homestate houses the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, shot back, “You’re not the secretary of the energy. You’re the secretary of the Navy.”

• Navy to demonstrate Great Green Fleet this summer (CNN)
• Rep. Forbes Slams 'Green' Navy; Political Argument Falls Flat On Hill (AOL Defense blog)
• Panetta: Environment Emerges as National Security Concern (American Forces Press Service)
• Transcript: Sec. Panetta Remarks at Environmental Defense Fund Reception
  As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta (Dept. of Defense)
• Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: ‘Climate Change Has A Dramatic Impact On National Security’ (Climate Progress)
• Defeated By Tea-Party, Sen. Lugar Warns: ‘Republicans Cannot Admit To Any Nuance In Policy On Climate Change’ (Climate Progress)
• Clean-Energy Requirements Targeted by ALEC, Norquist (Bloomberg News):
  
  Small-government groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose advocacy for Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law and other measures have drawn calls to revoke its tax-exempt status, are taking aim at state mandates requiring renewable energy use.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• Study: Public willing to pay for more green energy (The Hill's E2 Wire) [emphasis added]:
  
  The survey found that the public is willing to tolerate electricity bill increases of up to $199 per year for a CES that includes renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. But the public has less tolerance when natural gas and nuclear power are added into the mix.
• NASA Discovers Yet Another Terrifying Global Warming Feedback Loop (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  
  Researchers have known for years that large amounts of methane are frozen in Arctic tundra soils and in marine sediments ... But now a multi-institutional study led by Eric Kort of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of methane: the Arctic Ocean itself.
• A Higher Price Tag for a Nuclear Project (NYT Green) [emphasis added]:
  
  The flagship project of a hoped-for but not-yet-realized “nuclear renaissance,” the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors under construction near Augusta, Ga., may cost about $900 million more than had been estimated, the Southern Company said in a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• U.S. Coal Generation Drops 19 Percent In One Year, Leaving Coal With 36 Percent Share Of Electricity (Climate Progress):
  
  According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 — down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
• Florida School Sets World Record For Recycling (Treehugger):
  
  For the last four years, students and faculty at Sugg have celebrated Earth Day by hosting the Recycling Round-Up, an event aimed at collecting as many plastic bottles as possible from throughout the school district over an eight hour period. But what started as a lesson on the possibilities of mass recycling soon turned into a heated competition on an international scale.
• GERMANY: Lots of Solar Power Reduces Electricity Prices (Renewable Energy World):
  
  a story making rounds this week, "why power generators are terrified of solar," presents a powerful image that may flip this conventional wisdom on its head. Building lots of solar power can actually reduce electricity prices, to the dismay of utilities.
• Why power generators are terrified of solar (Crikey blog) [emphasis added]:
  
  Here is a pair of graphs that demonstrate most vividly the merit order effect and the impact that solar is having on electricity prices in Germany; and why utilities there and elsewhere are desperate to try to rein in the growth of solar PV in Europe. It may also explain why Australian generators are fighting so hard against the extension of feed-in tariffs in this country.
  ..
  Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators — as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV — it is in fact eating their entire cake.
• Heartland Institute grows isolated as three more donors disassociate: Ultra-conservative climate sceptic thinktank continues to lose mainstream support, damaging its prospects of expansion (Guardian UK)
• Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson arrested for ramming boat 10 years ago (Independent UK)
• Google's Offshore Transmission Line Takes a Step Forward (NYT Green)
• Death on Earth: how the world's wildlife vanished (Independent UK):
  
  The world's wildlife has declined by nearly a third over the past 40 years, a new estimate of the health of the planet suggests.
• Changing the Cultural Climate … on Climate Culture (Yale Climate Forum):
  
  Having spoken at two Heartland Institute International Climate Change Conferences, in 2010 and again in 2011, I’ve often felt that I stumbled into a classic Monty Python comedy sketch from my youth.
• Disaaster losses set to outpace economic growth - study (Alertnet)
• Natural gas has limited role in energy future, says NREL lab director (Denver Post):
  
  Even as utilities — such as Xcel Energy in Colorado — move to build new gas-fired power plants, fossil fuels should be phased out by 2040 to blunt man-made climate change. That was the message Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewal Energy Laboratory, delivered today at the opening session of the World Renewal Energy Forum in Denver.
• The Inertial Seawave Energy Generator Rocks (Treehugger)
• A Cloudy Day for Climate Skeptics: Mainstream Research Discredits Lindzen Theory of Low Climate Sensitivity (Climate Progress)
• Is Natural Gas Just as Polluting as Coal? (Pacific Standard Magazine):
  
  Researchers find that harmful methane leaks into the air at twice the amounts estimated by the EPA.
• Distorting science: Makers of flame retardants manipulate research findings to back their products, downplay health risks (Chicago Tribune):
  
  Manufacturers of flame retardants would repeatedly point to this government study as key proof that these toxic chemicals — embedded in many common household items — prevented residential fires and saved lives. But the study's lead author, Vytenis Babrauskas, told the Tribune that industry officials have "grossly distorted" the findings of his research, which was not based on real-world conditions. The small amounts of flame retardants in typical home furnishings, he said, offer little to no fire protection.

  "Industry has used this study in ways that are improper and untruthful," he said.

• American Enterprise Institute And Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem' (Climate Progress):
  
  Two leading political scholars - representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution - have published a must-read article, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Must-Read: Economist William Nordhaus Slams Global Warming Deniers, Explains Cost of Delay is $4 Trillion (Climate Progress):
  
  Nordhaus's blunt piece - "Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong" - is worth reading because he is no climate hawk.
  ...
  "The skeptics' summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results."
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

  It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.

• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like 'Dentists Practicing Cardiology' (Think Progress Green)
• Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern" (Climate Progress):
  
  "We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties."
• VIDEO: Behold: The World's First 24/7 Solar Plant is Up and Running (Treehugger)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
  ...
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• READ the IPCC Report: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)
• No, global warming hasn't stopped (New Scientist)
• Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize "This Is Their Future They're Compromising" (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on "A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future" (TEDx, YouTube)
• Earth's Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds (NYT Green)
• Heads in the Sand: Warning: "Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment," reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
  (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
  ...
  Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

The votes of more than ten million voters could be affected by a newly revealed failure in the voting systems set for use in those four states in this year's Presidential election, and in more than 50 different jurisdictions in Wisconsin during next month's historic recall elections.

Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), the largest e-voting machine company in the U.S. and the maker of the paper ballot op-scan tally systems in question, have confirmed that their systems may overheat when used over several hours (for example, during an election!), and that they then may mistally and/or incorrectly discard anywhere from 30% to 70% of votes scanned by the machines.

The only way to know that a hand-marked paper ballot had been mistallied by the system would be to examine the ballots by hand to assure that the computer had read and recorded the voters' selections correctly.

The New York Daily News editorial board --- which has been persistently forcing the issue on state Election Officials who initially ignored massive mistallies discovered in the South Bronx during the state's 2010 election --- reports on ES&S' confirmation of the latest failure in a story headlined "We told you so: Newfangled voting machine screwed up". Their article today begins this way...

Earlier this year, the newspaper discovered --- through public records requests for the paper ballots in a single precinct in the South Bronx --- that the ES&S model DS200 op-scan system had failed to count some 70% of paper ballots correctly in the 2010 primary election. In that November's general election, some 54% of the ballots were mistallied at the same precinct.

The result, as confirmed by ES&S, tens of thousands of perfectly valid votes may have gone uncounted, while thousands of "phantom votes" in races that voters hadn't intended to vote in at all were counted as valid votes.

The Daily News characterizes the initial response by election officials in NY, after the paper had discovered the massive failures, as "a statement of severe psychological denial."

All of the above likely sounds very familiar to long-time readers of The BRAD BLOG, where we are considering changing the name of our news site to "We Told You So: Newfangled Voting Machines Screw Up," as a tip of the hat to the NY Daily News, and to better reflect a great deal of our nearly 10 years worth of content here.

Unfortunately, the latest example of secret vote-tallying computers made by private companies failing to accurate tally our once-public elections, is not only affecting New York. Moreover, the failure isn't isolated to the ES&S model DS200 paper ballot optical-scan system. As we've reported here for years, and on a number of recent occasions over just the past few months, similar failures have been discovered in other states and on other similarly designed paper ballot optical-scan systems.

If you think that simply because you are not forced to vote on a 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machine that your ballot will be counted and counted accurately this year, think again...

ES&S Confirms Latest DS200 Failure

New York's public radio station, WNYC has also been reporting the problem discovered in the Empire State. They describe, (rather conservatively, based on the numbers reported via the Daily News' study of actual ballots in the South Bronx) that "overheating" of the op-scan computers "may have caused upwards of 30 percent of the votes in a South Bronx voting precinct to go uncounted.

That amounts to "tens of thousands of votes in the 2010 elections...uncounted because electronic voting machines counted more than one vote in a race," says WNYC.

ES&S has now confirmed that the failure occurred, and has been able to replicate the "overheating" problem when the systems have been on for several hours in a row. According to the company's report, "After lunch almost every ballot was read incorrectly, in all orientations, even ballots that had read correctly just before lunch."

The "overheating" failure led to thousands of properly cast votes being tallied as "overvotes". An overvote occurs when a voter selects more than one candidate in a particular race, where only a single candidate can be selected. If more than one candidate is chosen in such races, the vote is ignored entirely as "invalid."

In the case of the overheating ES&S DS200 machines, non-existent "phantom" votes (or more than one "phantom" vote) were added by the op-scanner to races on the ballot, resulting in the initial correct vote being disregarded as "invalid." In other cases, where a voter had chosen to not vote in a particular race on purpose, the machine added a phantom selection, and then tallied it as if the voter had voted in that race after all.

So, for example, in New York's 2010 election, if a voter had properly voted for Democrat Andrew Cuomo in the gubernatorial contest, the machine might have seen another non-existent, or "phantom" mark for Republican Carl Palladino on that ballot in the same race. If so, it would have been seen as an overvote, and neither selection would be tallied. The voter would have been disenfranchised and never even knew it.

In other cases, a voter might have chosen to vote for nobody at all in that race, but the DS200 added a vote for Palladino or Cuomo or one of the other five long-shot candidates in the contest and then counted the vote as valid in a race the voter had specifically chosen not to vote in.

Again, these failures would only be discovered by a hand-count of the paper ballots otherwise tallied by the machines. In this case, it was nearly two years following the 2010 election, after a public records request to hand-count the paper ballots, before the tens of thousands of incorrectly tallied votes came to light.

The failure had not been discovered during pre-election testing of the new op-scan computers in New York City, because the machines, reportedly, had not yet heated up enough to lead to the failure.

The Daily News reports the initial attempts by election officials to determine the cause of the massive failures this way:

That ES&S suggests the problem is related to a system "not cleaned correctly," seems to strain credulity. New York was the last state in the union to "upgrade" to electronic voting systems in 2010 in response to the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. They had just started using their new op-scan systems for the first time in 2010, when they failed.

Previously-known ES&S DS200 Failures

The massive failure is not the only one to affect the company's DS200 paper ballot optical-scanners, even though the systems are currently set for use this November (and on June 5th in Wisconsin's recall elections), by more than 12 million registered voters, according to VerifiedVoting.org's database.

Over 4 million registered voters in FL, more than 6.5 million in NY, over 1 million in OH, and voters in more than 50 WI municipalities (Verified Voting's database does not include registered voter numbers for WI) are set to have their votes tallied --- accurately or otherwise --- by the failed ES&S DS200 this year.

But the "overheating" problem is not the only known flaw to plague this particular failed system.

As we reported last December, in a first-of-its-kind report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the federal agency tasked with certification testing for electronic voting systems at the federal level issued a warning that the DS200 may freeze up during elections; fail to log system events correctly; and either misread ballots or lose votes entirely.

It was the first time that the EAC --- the wholly compromised and frequently-failed federal agency formed by 2002's HAVA --- bothered to issue a "Formal Investigation Report" for any system that it had previously certified for federal use. Naturally, they stopped short of decertifying the systems, as they agency has largely become a tool of the e-voting industry.

The EAC's investigation came about after yet another newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer in that case, reported that some 10% of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)'s ES&S precinct based optical-scan systems had failed during pre-election tests in 2010.

The failed (but, at the time, new) paper ballot op-scan systems had been purchased as a replacement for the 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen systems used previously in Ohio's largest county, after a massive analysis of all of the state's e-voting systems, overseen by former Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner (D), revealed serious security issues and other major flaws in the touch-screen voting machines used there and in many other states.

In USA Today's report on the EAC's confirmation of DS200 failures last December, the paper quoted Cleveland-Marshall College of Law professor and e-voting expert Candice Hoke explaining her concerns about the disturbing system logging failures.

"If someone were to hack into the machine," Hoke warned, "if the logging is not secure and doesn't protect it from rollbacks, that would allow someone to tamper with it and leave no trace."

In short, these machines may fail on their own, or someone can cause them to fail and then hide the evidence of the manipulation.

As DeForest Soaries, the George W. Bush-appointed first chair of the U.S. EAC said when he resigned in 2005 after determining that White House and Congressional efforts to reform elections in the wake of the 2000 Presidential debacle were "a charade" and "a travesty", the electoral system in use in this nation is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud."

That was true in 2005, and it remains equally so as we barrel towards the 2012 Presidential election.

Not Just the DS200 --- and Not Just ES&S' Systems

The DS200 is one of ES&S' newer paper ballot op-scan systems. Their older systems, such as the M-100, used in dozens of states, are similarly flawed.

Back in 2008, for example, The BRAD BLOG wrote about the M-100s when Oakland County, MI was trying to get help from the EAC concerning that particular precinct-based op-scanner after pre-election testing had "yielded different results each time" the "same ballots were run through the same machines."

According to the letter [PDF] sent to the EAC by Oakland County election officials at the time...

The ES&S M-100s, according to VerifiedVoting.org, are set for use this year by more than 31 million registered voters in more than 700 counties in 32 different states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming.

And, of course, it's not only optical-scan system made by ES&S that produce flawed results and tallies that are not confirmed as accurate by anyone before they are announced to the world.

After the discovery in 2008 that Diebold's op-scan machines, like ES&S', were failing to tally ballots properly --- they were found to have actually been dropping entire decks of ballots fed into the machines without notice to the system operator --- an investigation by California Sec. of State Debra Bowen (D) led to the admission by Diebold that their systems also failed to log events properly, allowing activity log files to be deleted entirely, without a trace of the system manipulation being left behind. That disastrous failure was found to have affected all of Diebold's voting systems, both touch-screen and optical-scan.

Many of those flawed systems, with gaping security holes, are still in use today. Diebold-manufactured electronic voting and tabulation systems are used in almost 1,500 voting jurisdictions in dozens of states by almost 50 million registered voters.

And, while many voters believe a paper ballot is all they need to assure that results will be accurately tabulated and reported --- versus touch-screen systems which are, indeed, 100% unverifiable --- they couldn't be more wrong. Need further proof? Keep in mind what happened earlier this year in Palm Beach County, FL.

As we initially reported in March, paper ballot optical-scan systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems produced inaccurate results in a number of races during a municipal election there.

The Sequoia computer tabulators named losing candidates as "winners" in several different races.

Fortunately, the failure was noticed by the local Supervisor of Elections when a state-mandated post-election spot-check of 2% of the paper ballots (which is not done at all in many states) revealed that the races had been reported inaccurately by the Sequoia central tabulator system known as WinEDS.

A subsequent 100% hand-count of paper ballots was needed to accurately determine the actual winning candidates in those contests.

Dominion Voting, which now sells, services and programs Sequoia Voting Systems e-voting computers, admitted that the programming flaw that caused the mistallied races exists in every version of their WinEDS software, though the company's President subsequently attempted to tell a differing story to state officials.

The Sequoia WinEDS system is currently in use in 285 jurisdictions in 17 states, where it's set to tally the votes --- either accurately or inaccurately --- for some 25 million registered voters this year in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

After the Sequoia system failures came to light in Palm Beach County --- along with Dominion/Sequoia's attempts at covering them up --- Susan Bucher, their Supervisor of Elections, told The BRAD BLOG that she'd be delighted to switch to a different system made by a different manufacturer, "but they all have similar problems, as I've come to understand it."

Bucher understands it correctly.

All computer voting systems have similar flaws that are often only revealed, if ever, via a hand-count of paper ballots. Unfortunately, very few jurisdictions in the U.S. are smart enough (and respectful of their voters enough) to count any of their ballots by hand at all.

If that's how the U.S. counted votes in the first place --- publicly hand-counting hand-marked paper ballots on Election Night, at the precinct, with results reported then and there, before ballots are moved anywhere, as per "Democracy's Gold Standard" --- confidence in reported election results might not continue to wane as it has over recent years. And, perhaps, in the bargain, the U.S. might one day become the "world's greatest democracy" as it has long pretended to be.

He maintained as much, even long after the public unions in question had agreed, as they did almost immediately, to concessions in pensions and benefits that would have closed the budget gap Walker pretended to be concerned about.

Opponents, in turn, had long charged that Walker's divisive legislation --- in the birthplace of public sector unions, nonetheless --- was about breaking the back of the unions on behalf of his corporate benefactors.

On Thursday night, video-taped evidence was made public supporting his opponents' contentions that the "Budget Repair" bill was about little more than breaking the unions. In the video, the Governor is seen, just before introducing the legislation in January of last year, speaking with local billionaire Diane Hendricks --- who eventually gave more money to Walker than any politician has ever received from one person in the state.

He is seen discussing his plan to "divide and conquer" public employee unions as part of his budget bill, in response to her direct questions about whether Wisconsin would ever be "completely red" and become a so-called "Right to Work" state. He went on to discuss his admiration for Indiana's Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels who, he said, was able to do away with unions "through executive order."

Walker laments that he is forced to do it legislatively in the Badger State, "So I need lawmakers to vote on it. But the key is by tying it to the budget," he says.

The conversation is seen in a new film by documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein whose film, As Goes Janesville, is set to be released later this year on HBO. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker's opponent in next month's recall election, has already used part of the bombshell video in the following campaign ad...

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's report on the full video clip, Barrett had long been using the phrase "divide and conquer" in campaign speeches to explain Walker's attack on unions, though Barrett said he knew nothing about the video clip until it was released on Thursday night.

In the video [watch a longer trailer for Lichtenstein's film here], Hendricks greets Walker at an event in January of 2011, just prior to his introduction of the controversial anti-union legislation. She goes on to ask whether he might be able to help make Wisconsin into "a completely red state and work on these unions."

Walker breaks in to reply: "Oh, yeah."

"...And become a right-to-work?," Hendricks continues. "What can we do to help you?"

The conversation continues [emphasis added]:

Following the release of Lichenstein's video, Walker's office has insisted that he has no plans to introduce "Right to Work" (sometimes referred to as "Right to Work for Less", by union supporters) legislation. In 1993, however, as a freshman member of the state Assembly, Walker co-sponsored such legislation.

Today, when asked about the new revelations at a campaign stop, amidst a massive backlash in the form of a popular uprising last year and a recall election next month, Walker said, "I don’t have an interest in pursuing right-to-work."

He insisted he doesn't "remember the particulars of that discussion" with Hendricks --- who has since donated more than $500,000 to Walker, the largest single amount ever given to a politician in state history --- and that he preferred to discuss other issues entirely.

"It’s interesting to me that our opponents want to rehash, replay the debate," Walker said today. "I think the vast majority, myself included, want to move on, move forward."

We suspect he does. His chance to "move on" will come --- one way or another --- after June 5th, when the state will vote on whether to remove him from office in response to that legislation last year. Also up for recall will be his Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state Senators, all of whom strongly supported Walker's anti-union legislation.

At the same time, Walker is also the apparent target of a criminal "John Doe investigation" concerning campaign improprieties during his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive before becoming Governor. Last March, The BRAD BLOG's Ernest Canning detailed the prosecutors' tightening noose in that probe, as revealed by legal documents and court filings related to the case. The investigation has already resulted in charges against a number of Walker's top lieutenants and has led to his creation of a Criminal Defense Fund where he has reportedly diverted tens of thousands of dollars from his recall campaign in order to fend of what many see as pending criminal charges against the Governor himself.

Good news for democracy. Bad news for the GOP deceivers and the billionaire sociopaths, like the Koch brothers, who fund them. Missouri's courts have shown that their state's nickname, "The Show-Me State," is apropos.

In Weinschenk v. State (2006), the MO Supreme Court struck down a GOP-enacted polling place photo ID law because it violated the Equal Protection clause of the MO Constitution which treats voting as a "fundamental right." It recognized a compelling governmental interest in preventing voter fraud, but observed that "the Photo-ID Requirement is intended to prevent only impersonation of a registered voter and will not affect absentee ballot or registration fraud."

As the GOP could not muster evidence of in-person impersonation, they failed to establish that their 2006 Photo ID law was narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. The Court, in Weinschenk, based on the facts presented, also determined that the 2006 GOP Photo ID law operated as an unconstitutional poll tax, thereby violating the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But since when have Republicans hell-bent on undermining our system of electoral democracy let a few negative court rulings or fundamental Constitutional rights stand in their way?...

'Tricking voters into giving up their rights'

Undaunted, in 2011 Missouri's GOP legislators, many of whom are members of the infamous right-wing billionaire-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), sought to re-enact Photo ID legislation (SB3). But, this time the effort failed when SB3 was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon (D). The Governor, like the MO Supreme Court, was not taken in by the GOP "voter fraud" canard. "Disenfranchising certain classes of persons," Nixon said, "is not acceptable."

The MO GOP then not only sought to by-pass both the governor and the Supreme Court, but to deceive the citizens of the Show-Me State via SJR2 --- a Photo ID ballot initiative that would amend the state's constitution. Where the true goal of Photo ID laws is the disparate disenfranchisement of otherwise eligible citizens who tend to vote against the GOP, SJR2 included an Orwellian ballot summary label: "the Voter Protection Act."

SJR2 was promptly challenged in Aziz v. Mayer [PDF], a lawsuit filed by the Advancement Project, the Fair Elections Legal Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Denise Lieberman, a senior attorney with the Advancement Project, described SJR2 as a "cynical and shameful [effort to use] the voting process itself to trick voters into giving up their rights."

On March 27, 2012 Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce agreed. The proposed constitutional amendment requiring Photo ID for all voters at the polling place is not designed to "protect" voters. To the contrary, she found, it is simply a ploy designed to strip a minority of voters of a fundamental right.

Unfortunately, this latest ruling only prevents the GOP from placing the measure on the ballot under its deceptive "Voter Protection Act" label. Judge Joyce's decision, which permits the MO legislature to come up with a new ballot summary by May 18, does not prevent the hard right, in MO, MN and elsewhere from using mass media propaganda campaigns, paid for via the infamous Citizens United decision, in order to carry out their cynical, democracy-destroying plot.

Relentless revolutionary power

The MO Supreme Court's Weinshenk decision touched upon the vital distinction between a "voter ID law" and a "photo ID law." In 2002, MO adopted a "voter ID law" in order to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Under the 2002 law, identification could be established not only by the limited forms acceptable by way of a Photo ID, but by "a utility bill, bank statement, expired passport, out-of-state driver's license, or other commonly available documents of identification."

The Court stated [emphasis added]:

The record before the MO Supreme Court in Weinschenk was compelling. The Court found, and the proponents of the 2006 MO Photo ID law conceded, that there had not been a single case of in person voter impersonation in MO since the adoption of the 2002 voter ID law and that "voter impersonation fraud is not a problem in Missouri."

Yet, after Gov. Nixon vetoed the 2011 Photo ID law [SB3], Sen. Bill Stouffer (R), the majority caucus leader and author of SB3, complained that "it's a shame the governor doesn't understand the necessity of this bill to fight voter fraud."

It would be a mistake of major proportions to assume that Stouffer, or any other member of the American hard right, actually believes that Photo ID laws are necessary to prevent "voter fraud."

As Paul Krugman recognized in The Great Unraveling, the 21st Century American hard right fits the definition of a "revolutionary power" as that term was described by Dr. Henry Kissinger in A World Restored --- "a movement that does not accept the legitimacy of our current political system."

Krugman observed:

"[I]t is the essence of a revolutionary power," Dr. Kissinger wrote in A World Restored, "that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion."

That voter suppression, as opposed to "voter protection," is the true purpose of Photo ID laws is reflected by the chilling 1980 remarks made by right wing demigod and ALEC co-founder Paul Weyrich to a right-wing Christian audience.

"I don't want everybody to vote," Weyrich admitted (see haunting video at right). "Our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down," he added after denigrating those who seek "good government" through maximum, informed voter participation, as people who suffer from what he described as "goo goo syndrome."

It should come as no surprise that ALEC's effort to stave off the loss of corporate members through the announcement that it had disbanded its Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which had been responsible for the ALEC model Photo ID legislation, was promptly followed by the announcement by the National Center for Public Policy (NCPP) to create a "Voter Identification Task Force." After all, many of the same billionaire foundations which fund NCPP also fund ALEC.

It should also come as no surprise that, in the wake of Judge Joyce's decision, Missouri state Rep. Shane Schoeller (R), a public member of ALEC, introduced a Resolution designed to keep their Photo ID measure on the Nov. 2012 ballot, sans the Orwellian "Voter Protection Act" label.

They may not have succeeded in fooling the courts, but there's still the possibility that their deceptions will succeed in the court of public opinion.

Vigilance in defense of democracy

"A Republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin

While, as will be discussed below, Weinschenk contains significant factual and legal findings that will assist legal challenges to Photo ID laws throughout the nation, in states like MO and MN, where the hard right has adopted the cynical tactic of seeking to persuade citizens to vote to dismantle democracy under the guise of protecting against "voter fraud," the defenders of democracy face a daunting task.

It is a task made all the more difficult given the miserable performance of the mainstream corporate-owned media --- a point underscored by the series of articles published by Brad Friedman documenting how The New York Times, no less, (America's so-called "paper of record") repeatedly, and at times, willfully misreported a right-wing scam designed to destroy a benevolent organization --- ACORN --- dedicated to registering the same underprivileged class of Americans whom the right wing seeks to illicitly exclude from our voter rolls.

As we reported on March 10, 2010 in "The Real Targets of the ACORN Smear Campaigns: Verifiable Truth, American Democracy", per a report from the Congressional Research Service [PDF], as of October 2009, there had been 46 reported federal, state, and local investigations concerning ACORN; 11 still pending. Those 46 investigations failed to establish a single instance in which an individual, improperly registered by ACORN or its employees, attempted "to vote at the polls." The study revealed that ACORN was often the initiator of official complaints against employees who defraud them, when they turn in fraudulent registrations.

But that reality, as well as the fact that Photo ID laws have nothing to do with combating registration fraud, fails to pierce the cacophony of disinformation that our citizenry is subjected to 24/7 by the corporate MSM as well as the right wing echo chamber.

One problem in overcoming the push for polling place Photo ID restrictions is that we are a culture in which, for those who already possess such ID, showing them has become a matter of course. It is difficult for many citizens who possess a driver's license to appreciate that which the MO Supreme Court, in Weinschenk, expressly found --- that for between 3% & 4% of MO citizens, obtaining a Photo ID can prove a significant, cumbersome, expensive and, at times, impossible burden.

Photo ID as unconstitutional poll tax

Although Weinschenk was decided before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Crawford vs. Marion County Board of Elections (2008), the MO Supreme Court decision should still be cited by attorneys seeking to challenge Photo ID laws on the basis of the U.S. Constitution.

"This case," the MO Supreme Court stated in Weinschenk, "stands in stark contrast to the Georgia and Indiana cases, for their decisions were largely based on those courts' findings that the parties had simply presented theoretical arguments and had failed to offer specific evidence of voters who were required to bear these costs in order to exercise their right to vote."

In Crawford, the U.S. Supreme Court's plurality opinion, upholding Indiana's Photo ID law, stressed that evidence of an undue burden could produce a different result in a future challenge.

In Harper vs. Virginia Bd. of Elections (1966), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a $1.50 poll tax was unconstitutional. Applying that concept, the MO Supreme Court observed:

84-year old, home born Ruthelle Frank would learn just how much more expensive the right to vote could have become under Wisconsin's photo ID law when she faced the prospect of expending a $200 fee to obtain a record of her birth from the Badger State's Register of deeds.

So, even if the MO GOP succeeds in its cynical effort to deceive voters in The Show-Me State into adopting Photo ID as an amendment to the MO Constitution --- into fooling the majority of voters into denying fundamental rights to a minority --- the prospect of a legal challenge under the U.S. Constitution remains.

That possibility holds true --- and holds hope --- for voters in states such as Pennsylvania, Kansas, Alabama, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arizona and the others where Republicans continue to work to keep legal voters from voting in hopes of electoral gain this November. The question is: Will such a legal challenge come soon enough to preserve what's left of our democratic Republic?

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). Follow him on Twitter: @Cann4ing.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The deepest well ever dug; Cyber-attacks on the US natgas pipeline industry; Romney makes big promises to Big Oil; RFK Jr. fights Big Coal in Portland; Schizo Fox 'News' now says lower gas prices are a bad thing; PLUS: It's official: the last 12 months were the hottest on record in the US .... 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' (see links below): Oil spill in Antarctica; VT poised to be first state to outlaw fracking; CBO: Boosting Oil Production Won’t Protect From Gasoline Price Shocks; Clean-Energy Requirements Targeted by ALEC, Norquist; Innovation: Inertial Seawave Energy Generator; Asian carp electric barrier loses power; Makers of flame retardants manipulate research findings; Anti-Wind Group Colludes on Fake Grassroots 'Subversion' Campaign ... PLUS: Flipping the Switch: First Solar Plant on Public Lands Now Delivering Power... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• VIDEO: Rachel Maddow on NEW Deep Sea Oil Drilling: (MSNBC)



• Schizophrenic Fox News Now Says Lower Gas Prices Are Now a BAD Thing:
• VIDEO: Fox Now Asking: Is The Drop In Gas Prices A Bad Thing? (Media Matters)
• VIDEO: Fox Business News: Falling Gas Prices A Bad Thing? (Media Matters)
• GOP: ‘You Think We’re Going To Have A Press Conference Now To Congratulate The Administration For Decreasing Gas Prices?’ (Climate Progress)
• Cyberattack on US Natural Gas Pipeline Industry:
• Alert: Major cyber attack aimed at natural gas pipeline companies (CS Monitor):
  
  A major cyber attack is currently under way aimed squarely at computer networks belonging to US natural gas pipeline companies, according to alerts issued by the US Department of Homeland Security.
• U.S. warns of cyberattacks on gas pipeline companies (CNET):
  
  The Department of Homeland Security wants the gas sector to monitor malware planted via cyberattacks as part of an investigation.
• Threat of Power-Grid Cyber Attack Seen Leaving Millions in Dark for Months (Bloomberg News):
  
  Electric utilities fail to recognize the risk because, unlike banks and telecommunications companies, they aren’t prime targets for Internet theft or espionage, said James Lewis, technology program director at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. Yet “if there was a cyber attack, the electrical grid would be target number one” for terrorists, he said.
• Panetta: Environment Emerges as National Security Concern (American Forces Press Service)
• Transcript: Sec. Panetta Remarks at Environmental Defense Fund Reception
  As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta (Dept. of Defense)
• Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: ‘Climate Change Has A Dramatic Impact On National Security’ (Climate Progress)
• Mitt Romney Makes Big Promises to Big Oil:
• VIDEO: Mitt Romney in Colorado talking about energy and jobs (Denver Post)
• Mitt Romney calls Obama's energy policies outdated at Weld County rally (Longmont, CO Times-Call)
• Defeated By Tea-Party, Sen. Lugar Warns: ‘Republicans Cannot Admit To Any Nuance In Policy On Climate Change’ (Climate Progress)
• Fighting Big Coal Export Terminals in Portland:
• VIDEO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Calls Coal 'Corrupting' At Portland Rally (Huffington Post Green)
• Coal dependent: Pacific Northwest activists fight new export terminals (Grist)
• Why Fighting Coal Export Terminals Matters (Climate Progress):
  
  Moral of the story: The health of the U.S. coal industry hinges on its ability to increase exports to China and India.
• Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber calls for sweeping review of planned coal exports from Northwest ports (Oregon Live)
• The only good coal is coal left in the ground (David Roberts, Grist)
• How the U.S. could influence China’s coal habits — with exports (Washington Post)
• Rising Coal Exports Have Montana Rail Communities Braced for Worst (Daily Climate)
• Coal's Future Is Rocky at Best (BusinessWeek):
  
  Coal is in a struggle with a perfect adversary: ultracheap natural gas.
• It's Official: Past 12 Months the Hottest on Record in US:
• U.S. Experiences Warmest 12-Month Period On Record And Most Extreme January to April (Climate Progress)
• 12-month stretch ending in April is warmest on record, NOAA says (MSNBC)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• Special Report: Chesapeake Energy's deepest well: Wall Street (Reuters):
  
  Far from the drilling rigs of Oklahoma, America's second-largest natural gas producer is having to dig ever deeper into the well that really fueled its growth: Wall Street.
• Vermont poised to be first state to outlaw fracking (Reuters)
• CBO Report: Boosting Oil Production Won’t Protect Americans From Gasoline Price Shocks (Climate Progress)
• Around the world on solar rays (and Kiwi ingenuity) (New Zealand Herald):
  
  Auckland-based LOMOcean Design has thrust into the forefront of the global clean energy movement with the innovative design that enabled the MS Turanor PlanetSolar to be the first vehicle to complete a circumnavigation without using wind or fossil fuels.

  The catamaran finished the 60,019km journey in Monaco last week after 584 days of travel.

• Clean-Energy Requirements Targeted by ALEC, Norquist (Bloomberg News):
  
  Small-government groups including the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose advocacy for Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law and other measures have drawn calls to revoke its tax-exempt status, are taking aim at state mandates requiring renewable energy use.
• The Inertial Seawave Energy Generator Rocks (Treehugger)
• A Cloudy Day for Climate Skeptics: Mainstream Research Discredits Lindzen Theory of Low Climate Sensitivity (Climate Progress)
• Barrier Broken? Asian carp electric barrier loses juice and exposes folly of the faux fence (NRDC Switchboard):
  
  That's the problem with an electric fence; the electricity…[W]e see outages during the violent storms that have become more commonplace in recent years. The Corps needs to get serious about the hard work of figuring out how to install a permanent physical barrier into the system that addresses legitimate commercial concerns while finally stopping the movement of all invasive species between the Mississippi River system and Great Lakes; not just the big, bad Asian carp.
• Flipping the Switch: First Solar Plant on Public Lands Now Delivering Power: (SF Gate):
  
  The first commercial solar array approved and built on federal public land began producing electricity Monday from a sun-baked site in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas near the Nevada-California state line.
• Is Natural Gas Just as Polluting as Coal? (Pacific Standard Magazine):
  
  Researchers find that harmful methane leaks into the air at twice the amounts estimated by the EPA.
• Distorting science: Makers of flame retardants manipulate research findings to back their products, downplay health risks (Chicago Tribune):
  
  Manufacturers of flame retardants would repeatedly point to this government study as key proof that these toxic chemicals — embedded in many common household items — prevented residential fires and saved lives. But the study's lead author, Vytenis Babrauskas, told the Tribune that industry officials have "grossly distorted" the findings of his research, which was not based on real-world conditions. The small amounts of flame retardants in typical home furnishings, he said, offer little to no fire protection.

  "Industry has used this study in ways that are improper and untruthful," he said.

• Antarctica Oil Spill: Endless Sea, Wrecked Brazilian Ship, Leaking And Trapped In Ice (Huffington Post Green):
  
  A wrecked Brazilian ship is trapped in ice and spilling fuel in Antarctica, with no hopes of containing the damage until the long South Pole winter eases next October.
• Memo: Group Wants To Create Fake Grassroots 'Subversion' Campaign To Kill Wind (Climate Progress)
• Anti-Wind Strategy Memo Envisions News Corp. Ally (Media Matters):
  
  A confidential memo distributed at the meeting outlined a PR strategy that would, among other things, use media outlets including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to disseminate anti-wind messaging. The goal of the media campaign is to provide "cover" for elected officials to vote against wind power.
• American Enterprise Institute And Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem' (Climate Progress):
  
  Two leading political scholars - representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution - have published a must-read article, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."
• The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb (Brad Jacobson, Alternet):
  
  Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.
• Climate Change Has Intensified the Global Water Cycle (Climate Central):
  
  Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it's happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.
• Warm Ocean Currents Eroding Antarctic Ice Shelves (Environment News Service):
  
  Warm ocean currents flowing beneath ice shelves are the main cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, concludes a study by an international research team published today. The finding brings scientists closer to providing reliable projections of future sea level rise. Using measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, ICESat, in combination with computer models, the researchers were able to distinguish between warm ocean currents thawing the ice sheets from below and warm air melting them from above.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Must-Read: Economist William Nordhaus Slams Global Warming Deniers, Explains Cost of Delay is $4 Trillion (Climate Progress):
  
  Nordhaus's blunt piece - "Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong" - is worth reading because he is no climate hawk.
  ...
  "The skeptics' summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results."
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

  It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.

• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like 'Dentists Practicing Cardiology' (Think Progress Green)
• Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern" (Climate Progress):
  
  "We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties."
• VIDEO: Behold: The World's First 24/7 Solar Plant is Up and Running (Treehugger)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
  ...
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• READ the IPCC Report: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)
• No, global warming hasn't stopped (New Scientist)
• Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize "This Is Their Future They're Compromising" (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on "A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future" (TEDx, YouTube)
• Earth's Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds (NYT Green)
• Heads in the Sand: Warning: "Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment," reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
  (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
  ...
  Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

They covered a bunch of green issues, as expected, plus everything from Nazis in Florida, to the DoD and The Avengers, and even a move to stop "Praying the Gay Away" out here in California.

A few of the video clips from today's show --- the ones The Turks have posted online so far tonight --- are now posted follow below the fold. Enjoy!...

We led off with the breaking news of Obama finally seeing the light on marriage equality.

Then I was joined by Sacramento, CA Registrar of Voters Jill Lavine to discuss the thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by the GOP-hired firmed Momentum Political Services, as we detailed late last week. Lavine tells me that she's confident that in her nine years as Registrar, there has been no in-person impersonation at the polling place, despite the continuing pattern of GOP voter registration fraud in the state and the Republican push to disenfranchise (largely Democratic) voters by claiming, disingenuously, that polling place Photo ID restrictions have anything to do with "voter fraud".

We then enjoyed a quick visit with the lovely Desi Doyen from the Green News Report, fresh off her guest-hosting gig this afternoon on The Young Turks (I'll try to post that video soon!)

Finally, since it's called The BradCast, I was joined by Brad Jacobson to discuss his terrifying new report at Alternet on the "ticking time-bomb" that is the precarious Spent Fuel Pool --- now fully exposed, 100 feet off the ground in a listing building --- at Fukushima Daiichi's reactor #4. His report should scare the hell out of you. It certainly does me. And the scariest part: It's being covered by virtually nobody in the mainstream corporate media. I guess that's what The BradCast is for.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...
[See post to listen to audio]

Regular friendly reminder: I don't post ALL of my KPFK shows here, but you can subscribe to the RSS feed to get 'em all, or stop by the KPFK BradCast archives anytime.

Getting ready for my KPFK/Pacifica Show today, so no time for more commentary at the moment. Here's ABC, who broke the news within the hour. Here's TPM's take. And here's the video clip of the President this afternoon acknowledging: "I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married"...

The key section from ABC's transcript...

Rights will always win. It takes time. But they will always, eventually win.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Billionaire codger cage match: T. Boone Pickens picks on the Billionaire Koch Brothers; U.S. military prepares for climate change; Japan: nuke-free, but not worry free; Dino-Farts! PLUS: Billboard blowback - funders flee from Heartland Institute's Unabomber billboard blunder .... 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' (see links below): Flipping the Switch on Solar Plant on Public Lands; Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children; Data Shows Spring Advancing Faster Than Experiments Suggest; Keystone pipeline is baaack; Carmakers standardize 15-min faster charging system for electric vehicles ... PLUS: What is going on with Peru's dolphins and pelicans?... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• SBDs: Dinosaur Farts Influenced Global Warming:
• Inherit the wind: dinosaurs blamed for changing climate (Sydney Morning Herald):
  
  Huge plant-eating dinosaurs may have produced enough greenhouse gas by breaking wind to alter the Earth's climate, new research suggests. Like leviathan cows, the mighty sauropods would have generated enormous quantities of methane.
• The U.S. does not have [MIUCH OF] an alternative fueling infrastructure [YET] (LA Times):
  
  To get a sense of how many alternative fueling stations the U.S. might need some day, consider the number of locations around the nation that have gasoline pumps. The Energy Department says that there are 160,000 gasoline stations around the U.S. but just 10,000 alternative fuel stations across the 48 contiguous states.
• US Military Prepares for Climate Change with Energy Innovation:
• VIDEO: Sec. Panetta Remarks on Climate Change, Energy (Pentagon Channel)

">VIDEO: Sec. Panetta Remarks on Climate Change, Energy (Pentagon Channel)

• Panetta: Environment Emerges as National Security Concern (American Forces Press Service)
• Transcript: Sec. Panetta Remarks at Environmental Defense Fund Reception
  As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta (Dept. of Defense)
• Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: ‘Climate Change Has A Dramatic Impact On National Security’ (Climate Progress)
• Panetta links environment, energy and national security in groundbreaking speech (E & E News):
  
  In remarks made at a Washington, D.C., reception held by the Environmental Defense Fund, Panetta became the highest-level official to draw a clear line between environmental, energy and security issues since their relationship was formally established in Pentagon strategy two years ago
  ...
  Last night, he said that rising seas, extended droughts and more frequent and severe natural disasters stand to raise demand for humanitarian assistance from the U.S. military.

  Noting that melting polar ice caps are prompting competing claims in the mineral-rich Arctic, Panetta issued a clarion call for the United States to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

• Big Idea: A Green Energy Offensive From the Department of Defense (GOOD Magazine)
• Billionaire Codger Cage Match: Pickens Slams Kochs' Avarice, Obstruction:
• VIDEO: T. Boone Pickens: 'The Biggest Deterrent To An Energy Plan In America Is Koch Industries' (Climate Progress):
• OP-ED: Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. (Washington Post):
  
  We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
• JAPAN: Now Nuke-Free, But Not Worry-Free:
• VIDEO: Protestors celebrate as Japan turns off last nuclear reactor (BBC)
• The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb: Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S. (Alternet)
• Anxious Japan prepares for life without nuclear power (Guardian UK):
  
  Japan has 54 nuclear reactors, but as of Saturday, not one of them will be in operation - how will the country cope?
• Nuclear-free Japan braces for severe power shortages (Reuters)
• The eye-watering expense of nuclear power (Guardian UK):
  
  The coalition wants us to depend more and more on nuclear power, but quite simply, it is too expensive to be able to deliver
• BILLBOARD BLOWBACK: Heartland Institute's Unabomber Billboard Bombs, Even with Deniers:
• Heartland Pulls Billboard on Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Heartland Institute Losing Major Corporate Sponsors (MongaBay),/li>
• Even denialist Rep. Sensenbrenner recoiled at loathsome Heartland Institute Unabomber global warming billboard (Climate Science Watch)
• Insurers Pull Support For Heartland Institute After Campaign Likens Climate Change Supporters To Terrorists, Murderers (Hartford Courant)
• Diageo to end funding of Heartland Institute after climate change outburst: Firm has 'no plans' to work with thinktank following campaign comparing people concerned about climate to mass murderers
• As Supporters Jump Ship, Heartland Institute Stands By Its Widely Condemned Anti-Science Hate Speech (Climate Progress)
• Heartland Institute Compares Climate Science Believers And Reporters To Mass 'Murderers And Madmen' (Climate Progress)
• The Heartland Billboard Embarrassment and the Dangers of Ideological Ignorance (Huffington Post Green)
• Heartland climate conference keeps sponsors despite billboard controversy (The Hill's E2 Wire)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• Flipping the Switch: First Solar Plant on Public Lands Now Delivering Power: (SF Gate):
  
  The first commercial solar array approved and built on federal public land began producing electricity Monday from a sun-baked site in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas near the Nevada-California state line.
• Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children (Scientific American):
  
  Banned for indoor use since 2001, the effects of the common insecticide known as chlorpyrifos can still be found in the brains of young children now approaching puberty.
• Decades Of Data Show Spring Advancing Faster Than Experiments Suggest (Climate Progress):
  
  "This suggests that predicted ecosystem changes - including continuing advances in the start of spring across much of the globe - may be far greater than current estimates based on data from warming experiments."
• Arabic Records Allow Past Climate to Be Reconstructed (Science Daily):
  
  Corals, trees and marine sediments, among others, are direct evidence of the climate of the past, but they are not the only indicators. A team led by Spanish scientists has interpreted records written in Iraq by Arabic historians for the first time and has made a chronology of climatic events from the year 816 to 1009, when cold waves and snow were normal.
• How the U.S. could influence China’s coal habits — with exports (Washington Post)
• Increasing speed of Greenland glaciers gives new insight for rising sea level (PhysOrg):
  
  Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland's contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows.
• Environmental group sues to halt killing practices of federal wildlife agency (Sacramento Bee):
  
  The federal government's wildlife damage control program is based on outdated science and indiscriminate tools that kill many non-target animals, including protected species, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by WildEarth Guardians, a Colorado-based environmental group.
• Clean Energy At Airports Could Find Space Around Runways, Study Says (Huffington Post Green)
• It's Baaack: Keystone pipeline in focus as highway talks begin (The Hill's E2 Wire)
• Lights Out for Research Satellites? (NY Times):
  
  Earth-observing systems operated by the United States have entered a steep decline, imperiling the nation's monitoring of weather, natural disasters and climate change, a report from the National Research Council warned on Wednesday.
• Carmakers standardize 15-min faster charging system for electric vehicles: (Environment News Service):
  
  Eight U.S. and German automakers have agreed to utilize a fast-charging technology that recharges EV batteries in just
  15 to 20 minutes. Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen have agreed to support a harmonized single-port fast charging approach - called DC Fast Charging with a Combined Charging System - for use on electric vehicles in Europe and the United States.
• What is going on with Peru's dolphins and pelicans? (Mother Jones):
  
  Something awful is happening in the waters off Peru's northern coast, where some 3,000 dolphins have died and washed ashore since January."
  Necropsies of dead animals by veterinarians point tentatively to the possibility of ear injuries (which might be caused by seismic testing by oil and gas companies) and infectious outbreaks for the dolphins, and possible starvation caused by lack of anchovies (a result of changing ocean conditions) for the birds. No clear conclusions have been drawn.
• Studies Raise Questions About Pavement Sealers (Environmental Health News):
  
  Airborne emissions and stray dust from coal tar-based sealers, one of the two main types of products used to coat certain asphalt pavements, may be a more significant human health threat than previously thought, according to three new studies and a review published by U.S. government and university researchers.
• EPA Moves To Regulate Logging-Road Runoff as Supreme Court Eyes Case (Greenwire):
  
  At issue, EPA said, is a controversial 2010 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that tossed out the agency's 35-year-old policy of allowing loggers to use best management practices instead of pollution-discharge permits. Trying to soothe its critics, EPA said in a statement that it is considering "flexible" options --- including some that would require no permit --- in recognition of some land-management practices in use to minimize the water pollution from forest roads.
• Midwest Generation To Close 2 Chicago Coal Plants Early (Chicago Tribune):
  
  Chicago is the only major U.S. city with coal plants operating within its borders. For years, environmental and community groups have blamed Fisk and Crawford for high asthma rates and other health problems in their predominantly Latino, low-income neighborhoods. A 2010 report by the National Research Council estimated that pollution from the coal plants costs surrounding areas $127 million a year in hidden health costs.
• Rising Coal Exports Have Montana Rail Communities Braced for Worst (Daily Climate)
• American Enterprise Institute And Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem' (Climate Progress):
  
  Two leading political scholars - representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution - have published a must-read article, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."
• Plant Study Flags Dangers Of Warming World (Reuters):
  
  "Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behavior.
• Well, MEOW: VIDEO: T. Boone Pickens: 'The Biggest Deterrent To An Energy Plan In America Is Koch Industries' (Climate Progress):
  
  The biggest deterrent to an energy plan in America is Koch Industries," the BP Capital founder tells Yahoo's Aaron Task. "They do not want an energy plan for America because they have the cheapest natural gas price they've ever had, and they're in the fertilizer business and they're in the chemical business. So their margins are huge. And they do not want you to have an energy plan, because if you had a plan, then natural gas prices would come up.
• US solar subsidies consistent with coal, oil: report (Reuters):
  
  U.S. government support for solar energy is no different from its support for traditional energy sources, despite critics' complaints that the renewable energy source has gotten special incentives, a new solar-industry backed report found.
• Coal business update: 'Severe weakness' cited in U.S. markets (Coal Tattoo)
• Coal's Future Is Rocky at Best (BusinessWeek):
  
  Coal is in a struggle with a perfect adversary: ultracheap natural gas.
• Analysis: Dow's new GMO corn: "time bomb" or farmers' dream? (Reuters):
  
  Opponents include some specialty crop farmers who fear 2,4-D herbicide use could cause widespread damage to crops that are not engineered with a tolerance to it. It is so potent that its use is tightly restricted in some areas and at certain times of the year in some U.S. states.
• Nuclear Safety Advocates Accuse Industry And Regulators Of Foot-Dragging On Basic Safety Measures (Huffington Post Green):
  
  [W]hat if the Pilgrim plant experienced a meltdown like the one that unfolded just over a year ago in Fukushima, Japan?

  "I live just six miles from that plant across open water," says Lampert, a staunch advocate for tougher oversight of the nuclear power industry. "It always comes down to public safety versus the cost to industry of implementing something."

• Climate Change Has Intensified the Global Water Cycle (Climate Central):
  
  Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it's happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.
• IBM R&D Working to Give Electric Cars 500 Miles of Range With Lithium-Air Batteries (Treehugger)
• Plastic pollution in ocean likely underestimated, researchers say (California Watch):
  
  [R]esearchers from the Universities of Washington and Delaware and the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass., say the [Pacific Garbage Patch] is much bigger, and scarier, than that. They say scientists have only skimmed the surface on the devastating pollution caused by plastic debris in the ocean, and the research community is likely underestimating the amount of plastic in the ocean.
• LA opens rooftops for solar energy installations (Gimag):
  
  The recent approval of a Feed-in-Tarriff (FiT) rooftop solar program known as CLEAN LA Solar by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power opens up over 12,000 acres of potential rooftop space for solar development.
• Shocker: The Killing Agency: USDA's Wildlife Services' Brutal Methods Leave A Trail of Death (Sacramento Bee):
  
  [A] Bee investigation has found the agency's practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.
• Clouds' Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters (NY Times):
  
  His idea has drawn withering criticism from other scientists, who cite errors in his papers and say proof is lacking. Enough evidence is already in hand, they say, to rule out the powerful cooling effect from clouds that would be needed to offset the increase of greenhouse gases.
• Warm Ocean Currents Eroding Antarctic Ice Shelves (Environment News Service):
  
  Warm ocean currents flowing beneath ice shelves are the main cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, concludes a study by an international research team published today. The finding brings scientists closer to providing reliable projections of future sea level rise. Using measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, ICESat, in combination with computer models, the researchers were able to distinguish between warm ocean currents thawing the ice sheets from below and warm air melting them from above.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Must-Read: Economist William Nordhaus Slams Global Warming Deniers, Explains Cost of Delay is $4 Trillion (Climate Progress):
  
  Nordhaus's blunt piece - "Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong" - is worth reading because he is no climate hawk.
  ...
  "The skeptics' summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results."
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

  It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.

• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like 'Dentists Practicing Cardiology' (Think Progress Green)
• Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern" (Climate Progress):
  
  "We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties."
• VIDEO: Behold: The World's First 24/7 Solar Plant is Up and Running (Treehugger)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
  ...
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• READ the IPCC Report: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)
• No, global warming hasn't stopped (New Scientist)
• Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize "This Is Their Future They're Compromising" (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on "A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future" (TEDx, YouTube)
• Earth's Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds (NYT Green)
• Heads in the Sand: Warning: "Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment," reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
  (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
  ...
  Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

Maurice Sendak, 1928 - 2012

While Sendak is best known for Where the Wild Things Are, a seminal book, at least for my childhood, his wicked sense of humor does not appear to have dimmed over his 83 years, as evidenced in this recent, laugh-out-loud two-part conversation with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report...

For the record, Colbert's I am a Pole (and So Can You!) has now actually been published! Sendak will be missed, but never forgotten.

The law, unless it's blocked, is set to make it much harder, if not impossible for many previously-legal student, elderly, minority and urban dwelling voters to cast their vote this November.

Canning predicts, however, that, like a similar GOP law in Wisconsin this year, and one in Missouri back in 2006, the new attempt to remove voting rights will be found in violation of the fundamental right to vote guaranteed under Pennsylvania's state Constitution. We'll see if he's correct.

In the meantime, the lawsuit, Applewhite vs Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [PDF] names 11 plaintiffs, the majority of whom have tried to get a birth certificate in order to then obtain their so-called "free" ID to vote from the state under the new law --- only to be told there is no record of their births. Several of those plaintiffs, not surprisingly, were born in the Jim Crow south and are now facing the forces of disenfranchisement again under the GOP law this year even up in the Keystone State in 2012.

We interviewed one of the plaintiffs in the case recently, 90-year old Joyce Block, on our KPFK/Pacifica Radio show. That interview is here.

Last week, MSNBC's Al Sharpton interviewed the lead plaintiff in the complaint, 92-year old Viviette Applewhite who marched for civil rights alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia, and who has been voting in Presidential elections without a problem for more than 50 years. She has never had a driver's license and, though she says she paid a fee for a birth certificate from the state, she has never received it.

Despite the fact that state officials have been unable to produce evidence of in-person, polling place impersonation --- the only type of voter fraud that could possibly be deterred by polling place Photo ID laws --- Republicans seem more than happy to disenfranchise long-time voters like Applewhite and potentially tens of thousands of others this year.

Applewhite says she believes it's all little more than an effort to stop President Obama from being re-elected, and she fears there are far more people than many realize who will be disenfranchised this year unless the law is overturned.

"Looks like most of the people in my building, they're senior citizens, but they don't have the proper thing to vote with," she says near the end of the interview, "and it's going to be a whole lotta people that's not going to be able to vote"...

Judith Browne Dianis, civil rights litigator at the Advancement Project also appears in the interview above and correctly notes: "This is not about preventing fraud, it's about preventing voting."

She is supported in that contention, ironically enough, by PA's Republican Governor Tom Corbett, seen in a clip above exhorting his supporters to help him keep turnout below 50% during his recent election. Moreoever, just after Corbett signed the GOP's voter suppression bill in March, he lied to the media by claiming that it was needed since Pennsylvanis had seen 112% voter turnout in some precincts. Longtime election watchdog Marybeth Kuznick of VotePA, however, told us the Governor's claim was "ludicrous."

For more on the plaintiffs in the PA complaint who are facing disenfranchisement for the first time in their lives --- folks like 59-year old Wilola Shinholster Lee, 72-year old Grover Freeland, 86-year old Dorothy Barksdale and 93-year old Bea Booker --- and why Ernie Canning predicts the new legal challenge will be successful in the Keystone State, see his report from last week right here.

And then there's the other irony here that Fox usually tells us that human beings can't cause global warming. But, whatevs. As usual, they've got some messaging confusion over there in Crazy Land.

So, how long will it be before Fox reports the following hilarious Onion report, as if it's factual?

[Hat-tip to Peter Sinclair of Climate Denial Crock of the Week.]

According to a report today from Sacramento ABC affiliate News10 [see video posted below], a private, for-profit firm calling itself Momentum Political Services, hired by the local Republican Party "to boost GOP registration ranks in key battleground communities" has turned in more than 3,100 invalid voter registration cards during their recent drive.

[UPDATE 5/7/12: According to Sacramento Bee's 5/5/12 report, the number of bad registration forms is much higher than 3,100. The paper reports that since September, out of some 31,000 cards turned in by Momentum Political Services, "at least one-fourth of them have been thrown out because of inaccuracies," according to the Sacramento Registrar of Voters. That puts the questionable registrations from the GOP's company at more than 7,500.]

Voter registration forms have allegedly been turned in with fake addresses, voter names that don't exist, duplicate Social Security numbers, and party affiliations that seem to have been changed "by someone" to Republican. The head of the firm has admitted she has hired workers with criminal backgrounds, as found via Craigslist.

The charges of serial voter registration fraud sound very similar to those leveled in 2008 against another outfit hired by the California State GOP to register Republican voters before that year's Presidential election. In that case, the head of the firm was arrested, and eventually pleaded guilty to voter registration charges himself.

In 2006, another firm hired by the CA Republican Party turned in thousands of registration forms with fake names and an error rate as high as 60 percent. And in 2004, a firm hired by the GOP was investigated in a number of states for shredding Democratic voter registrations and tossing them into dumpsters. Despite those allegations, the same folks were later hired by the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008 to run voter registration drives before the Presidential election.

Of course, you probably haven't heard of any of those stories, even while you've heard plenty about a handful of ACORN workers --- no actual ACORN officials, mind you, and they were never hired by the Democratic Party, and never led to a fraudulent vote --- turning in fraudulent registration forms in past years.

But nobody who ever worked for the non-profit ACORN has ever been accused of what these Republican firms continue to do on behalf of the Republican officials who hire them, paying them per Republican registration, year after year, as is once again apparent in the allegations surfacing today against Momentum Political Services...

Thousands of Fraudulent Applications

News10 reports that Sacramento County election officials began noticing "invalid voter registration cards at much higher rates than previous for-profit registration drives." Once election officials began tracking the cards coming in from Momentum Political Services, they found that "44 percent of all invalid voter registration cards in the county came from just one company."

A number of the invalid registration forms have reportedly been turned over to the CA Sec. of State's election fraud division, though a spokesperson there has declined to comment, as per their usual procedure, about whether an official investigation is currently under way.

The owner of Momentum Political Services, Monica Harris has admitted only that "some of her contractors had been 'sloppy'" according to News10, and that she has now fired 16 of them.

Contrast that with the non-partisan ACORN which actually developed a system to try and confirm the legitimacy of each and every voter registration form they collected, flag the ones they could not be confirmed as "potentially fraudulent," before turning them in (as required by law), along with the names of workers who had defrauded them to election officials and law enforcement agencies.

Nonetheless, ACORN was described hyperbolically by John McCain himself during the GOP's 2008 version of the "ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Hoax" as "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country" which, he said, was "destroying the fabric of democracy."

Never mind that the rates of fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by firms hired by Republicans are far greater than any of those turned in (and flagged as fraudulent!) by ACORN --- 60% versus less than 1% --- or the fact that McCain was the keynote speaker at an ACORN rally in 2006 --- before he became the GOP Presidential nominee --- when he lauded the four-decade old community organization by telling them that they were "what makes America special."

Meanwhile, in California, where the GOP has long paid "bounties" for Republican-only registrations, Momentum Political Services appears to have actually signed voters up as Republicans whether they wished to be affiliated with the party or not, according to News10:

Moreover, Harris says that she finds workers via advertisements on Craigslist and that some of them have criminal records. ACORN has been criticized, over the years, for doing the same thing, even though part of their mission had been to help those with difficult pasts get back on their feet and become productive members of society.

News10 reports that "Harris said she asks if any contractor has a conviction for breaking state election laws, but conceded that she does not do any formal background check."

"It's just not the standard in the industry," she claimed.

GOP Voter Registration Fraud in CA

Fraud by voter registration firms hired by the Republican Party in California seems to be a serial problem, occurring in very similar patterns election year after election year.

In 2008, just before I left for the studio for an appearance on Fox "News" with legendary GOP voter fraud fraudster John Fund, I received an emailed press release from the CA Secretary of State's office about the arrest of Mark Anthony Jacoby, the head of an outfit calling itself Young Political Majors (YPM), a firm which had been hired to register voters by the state GOP.

It was in the midst of that Presidential year's Fox "News"-promoted propaganda campaign against ACORN whose 13,000+ registration workers had managed to legally register about 1.3 million voters across the country in the run-up to the 2008 election. While Fox had been lying about ACORN around the clock (there is no evidence that any fraudulent vote has ever been cast via an improper registration by an ACORN worker in any election), it gave me the opportunity to deliver a "Fox 'News' Alert" about the arrest of the head of the CA GOP's registration firm for actual fraud. [See the video of that appearance below.]

The charges against Jacoby and YPM echo those made today against Momentum Political Services. As the LA Times reported at the time:

Jacoby, who had previously gotten into similar hot water in both Florida and Arizona in 2004, was nonetheless hired again by the CA GOP in 2008 before he would eventually be forced to plead guilty to voter registration fraud in 2009.

At the time of his arrest, a man claiming to be a former friend and colleague of Jacoby's, posted video of him threatening one of his workers in Arizona, before describing YPM's scheme for hoaxing citizens into registering as Republican voters:

The YPM scheme sounds very similar to the scheme that has been alleged against Momentum Political Services. But wasn't even a new scheme when YPM did it in 2008.

A Republican firm named Sproul & Associaties, headed up by a long-time GOP donor named Nathan Sproul was charged with "tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms" back in 2004. The firm was paid more than $8 million dollars for the effort by the RNC and the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign, who subsequently attempted to hide those expenditures from the public.

In 2008, Sproul was, nonetheless, hired once again by the McCain campaign to register voters in California, according to Sam Stein at Huffington Post, who reported at the time:

As well, in 2006, GOP voter registration firms in California were reported by the LA Times to have turned in thousands of invalid registration forms, as well as signatures on petitions, in San Bernardino County. In once instance, "About 4,800 of more than 5,600 signatures submitted [by John Burkett Petition Management] were found to be invalid and were tossed out by election officials," the paper reported.

'Mistake' or GOP Election Strategy?

All-in-all, the rates of invalid and/or fraudulent registration forms and signatures by these firms, often as high as 60%, have proven far in excess of the "greatest frauds in voter history," as the disingenuous McCain had described ACORN. For the record, after being pressed on that fraudulent claim in the days just prior to the Presidential Election in 2008, a member of what McCain had laughably called his "McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee" was forced to concede that he was unable to cite a single instance in which a fraudulent ACORN registration had led to an illegal vote.

"Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can't cite one," said the former election official turned member of McCain's committee.

It's a time-tested Republican scam. Claim Democrats are committing voter fraud, even while you're doing it yourself, use the false claims to deny Democrats their right to vote (via disenfranchising polling place Photo ID laws or voter caging) and then, if someone in the media actually bothers to press you on it, admit you can't cite any actual examples of any of it.

After the late Rightwing con-man Andrew Breibart had paid hoaxster James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles to create faked hit videos on ACORN, which eventually brought down the four-decade old advocacy group for low and middle-income Americans, then former Speaker of the House, now former Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich feigned outrage in a 2009 op-ed.

"ACORN has a long history of engaging in voter fraud," Gingrich lied at the time, failing to distinguish between actual voter fraud and the voter registration fraud carried out by a tiny portion of its tens of thousands of registration workers over the years.

Move the clock forward to 2012 and Gingrich himself, after his campaign had submitted thousands of admittedly fraudulent signatures to the state of Virginia in his unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the GOP Presidential Primary in his home state last March, referred to those 1,500 fraudulent signatures as little more than a "mistake".

"We turned in 11,100 --- we needed 10,000 --- 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud," Gingrich is seen and heard saying in video originally aired by CNN.

Gingrich's rate of fraud was far higher, once again, than anything ACORN was ever accused of, even though they were forced to shut their doors after the phony Breitbart/O'Keefe videos which Gingrich had lauded.

As The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively in January, the Virginia state Attorney General is now investigating the Gingrich campaign's petition signature fraud.

It was all "just a mistake," Gingrich is heard saying on video to his supporter after, he claims, his campaign had "hired somebody who turned in false signatures."

At what point, after how many years of the Republicans hiring firms who turn in false signatures, again and again and again, is it no longer seen as "just a mistake," but rather, a key campaign strategy for the Republican Party?

Sacramento ABC affiliate News10's 5/4/12 report on thousands of invalid voter registrations turned in by the GOP-hired voter registration firm Momentum Political Services...

My 10/19/08 appearance on Fox "News" with John Fund, offering my "Fox 'News' Alert" on the arrest of Mark Anthony Jacoby, the head of the GOP-hired voter registration firm Young Political Majors...

Yes, the sociopathic liars and serial propagandists at the rightwing Heartland Institute are comparing those who believe in science to sociopathic terrorists and serial killers. And they aren't just doing it in off-the-radar fundraising emails to supporters, they're doing it in an expensive and public billboard campaign on the streets of Chicago which the UK's Guardian describes today as "possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns"...

But it's not "ill-judged" at all. This is what Heartland does. And that's why it's so remarkable that while corporations such as AT&T and GM have ceased funding the extremist Rightwing "think thank" recently, after internal documents revealed they were attempting to force climate denial misinformation into school textbooks, companies such as Microsoft and State Farm and (much less surprisingly) the Koch brothers and the rest of the fossil fuel industry continue to fund their efforts.

But it's not just scientists who this group condemns as mass murderers, journalists and "liberal politicians" are, apparently, also right up there with Charlie Manson, in the eyes --- and words --- of the Heartland Institute...

Joe Romm at Climate Progress reports that "This is not some 'oops' moment by an individual overzealous Heartland employee with catastrophically poor judgment. Quite the reverse. This is a collective act by the Institute expressing its core worldview."

Romm goes on to quote how Heartland, in a "robust defense" of their expensive billboard campaign, launched in conjunction with their upcoming hoax anti-climate change conference in Chicago (they deceptively call it their "7th International Conference on Climate Change"), justifies their latest appalling scheme:

But, as Romm points out, Heartland isn't all bad, since they note: "Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants."

They then add:

See Romm's coverage for more on the discredited reasons that Heartland uses to justify these kind of attacks.

We suppose it'll take the murder of a climate scientist or environmental journalist or two --- after all, who wouldn't be justified in taking the life of a "mass murderer", right? --- before this bullshit ends. Actually, that wouldn't likely end it either, but it might result in otherwise mainstream corporations finally becoming embarrassed enough to stop partnering with and giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to twisted, dangerous, propaganda organizations such as the shameful Heartland Institute.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: It's WAR!; New rules on fracking to protect drinking water --- same old objections from Republicans; The state's rights versus federal regulations canard; UK: Climate protesters clash with police; Smoke-bomb dropped on French nuke plant; PLUS: Connecting the Dots: Blocking Warren Buffet's coal trains on 5/5... 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' (see links below): Environmental group sues to halt killing practices of federal wildlife agency; Court Urged to Order Decision on Nuclear Waste Site; Dept. Of Energy Investigating Harvesting Energy From Methane Hydrates; Pollution from Pavement Sealers?; Rising Coal Exports Have Montana Rail Communities Braced for Worst; AEI& Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem'... PLUS: Plant Study Flags Dangers Of Warming World ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• VIDEO: No Higher Power Than Exxon (The Rachel Maddow Show):


• FRACKING: Interior Dept. To Issue New Rules For Frackers:
• Industry official: Interior to release 'fracking' rules by Friday (The Hill's E2 Wire):
  
  The proposal would regulate the oil-and-gas development method known as fracking, in which water, chemicals and sand are injected at high pressure into rock formations to open up seams that enable trapped oil and natural gas to flow.

  The rules are expected to include the required disclosure of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process, along with regulations on well integrity and wastewater management.

• Gas industry presses White House on 'fracking' rules (The Hill's E2 Wire)
• VIDEO: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) Bashes Fracking Regulations (Media Matters)
• Drillers May Frack First, Disclose Later Under Draft Plan (Bloomberg):
  
  Natural-gas companies drilling on U.S. land would be permitted to wait until after hydraulic fracturing is completed to disclose what chemicals they used, under a draft rule being considered by the Interior Department.
• Fracking Sand Threatens Gas Well Workers, Researcher Says (BusinessWeek):
  
  Sand dust created from the hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from rock is one of the most dangerous threats to workers at wells blossoming across the U.S., a government safety researcher said.
• CO: House Field Hearing On Federal Fracking Regulations:
• Fracking the Focus of Congressional Hearing at Colorado Capitol [Updated] (KUNC, Univ. of Northern Colorado)
• Congressional hearing in Denver tackles fracking (AP) [emphasis added]:
  
  "Do Coloradans react differently to water pollution?" asked a skeptical Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who attended the field hearing and questioned the state officials who argued against national safety regulation. After Clarke testified that Utah saw no water contamination in 50 years, Holt said that perhaps that was because the state wasn't looking.
  ...
  The question of who sets drilling rules is especially prickly in Colorado. Later in the day, many of the witnesses who appeared before the congressional panel testified at a state legislative panel where the chairman has proposed punishing local governments that seek to rein in drilling.
• Independent Analysis Confirms That Hydraulic Fracturing Caused Drinking Water Contamination In Wyoming (Climate Progress):
  
  In December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency found official evidence that poisonous chemicals from fracking had contaminated water near drill rigs in Pavillion, Wyoming. That study has now been backed up by an independent expert. ,
• Fracking dominates the debate at Capitol: Federal vs. state oversight focus of hearing in Denver (Durango Herald)
• Congressional subcommittee urged not to duplicate state frac regulations (Oil & Gas Journal)
• Fracking Fluid Can Migrate Into Aquifers: Study
• New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years (Pro Publica):
  
  A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.
• UK: Climate Activists Clash With UK Police at Big 6 Energy Summit:
• VIDEO: Police and protesters clash at energy summit - video (Guardian UK):
  
  Environmental protesters from the Climate Justice Collective attempt to force their way into the UK Energy Summit taking place in London. Police were injured and protesters claim two people were knocked unconscious after being hit on the head by batons in the clashes near St Paul's
• Energy conference protesters accuse police of heavy-handed tactics: Protesters say 'wildly disproportionate' response at Big Six Energy Bash led to injuries among participants (Guardian UK)
• Two arrested as protesters target energy conference: Two people have been arrested as protesters tried to break their way into a five-star hotel where an energy industry summit was taking place. (Telegraph UK)
• France: Greenpeace 'Smoke-Bombs' French Nuke Plant:
• VIDEO: French activist drops a smoke bomb on nuclear plant (CBS News)
• Aerial Greenpeace protester strikes at French nuclear site, dropping smoke bomb on reactor (AP)
• CANADA: Hansen To Block Buffet's Coal Trains:
• Climate Activists Tell Warren Buffett Why They Are Blocking His Coal Trains, Via James Hansen (Climate Progress)
• Protest Against Northwest Coal Export (Earth Justice)
• Fighting coal export terminals: It matters (Grist):
  
  Moral of the story: The health of the U.S. coal industry hinges on its ability to increase exports to China and India.
• Coal business update: 'Severe weakness' cited in U.S. markets (Coal Tattoo)
• Coal's Future Is Rocky at Best (BusinessWeek):
  
  Coal is in a struggle with a perfect adversary: ultracheap natural gas.
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• 5/5/2012: CONNECT THE DOTS International Day of Climate Action:: TAKE ACTION

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• EXCLUSIVE: Environmental group sues to halt killing practices of federal wildlife agency (Sacramento Bee):
  
  The federal government's wildlife damage control program is based on outdated science and indiscriminate tools that kill many non-target animals, including protected species, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by WildEarth Guardians, a Colorado-based environmental group.
• YUCCA MTN: Court Urged to Order Decision on Nuclear Waste Site (NY Times):
  
  Two states with large amounts of military and civilian nuclear waste told a federal court panel on Wednesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was flouting the law by declining to decide whether the Nevada desert is a suitable burial spot - even if the Obama administration says the storage plan is dead.
• Dept. Of Energy Invesgating Harvesting Energy From Methane Hydrates: (Reuters):
  
  The Energy Department on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in research into tapping a possibly vast fuel resource that could eventually bolster already massive natural gas reserves.
• Lights Out for Research Satellites? (NY Times):
  
  Earth-observing systems operated by the United States have entered a steep decline, imperiling the nation's monitoring of weather, natural disasters and climate change, a report from the National Research Council warned on Wednesday.
• Studies Raise Questions About Pavement Sealers (Environmental Health News):
  
  Airborne emissions and stray dust from coal tar–based sealers, one of the two main types of products used to coat certain asphalt pavements, may be a more significant human health threat than previously thought, according to three new studies and a review published by U.S. government and university researchers.
• EPA Moves To Regulate Logging-Road Runoff as Supreme Court Eyes Case (Greenwire):
  
  At issue, EPA said, is a controversial 2010 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that tossed out the agency's 35-year-old policy of allowing loggers to use best management practices instead of pollution-discharge permits. Trying to soothe its critics, EPA said in a statement that it is considering "flexible" options --- including some that would require no permit --- in recognition of some land-management practices in use to minimize the water pollution from forest roads.
• Midwest Generation To Close 2 Chicago Coal Plants Early (Chicago Tribune):
  
  Chicago is the only major U.S. city with coal plants operating within its borders. For years, environmental and community groups have blamed Fisk and Crawford for high asthma rates and other health problems in their predominantly Latino, low-income neighborhoods. A 2010 report by the National Research Council estimated that pollution from the coal plants costs surrounding areas $127 million a year in hidden health costs.
• Rising Coal Exports Have Montana Rail Communities Braced for Worst (Daily Climate)
• American Enterprise Institute And Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem' (Climate Progress):
  
  Two leading political scholars - representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution - have published a must-read article, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."
• Plant Study Flags Dangers Of Warming World (Reuters):
  
  "Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behavior.
• Well, MEOW: VIDEO: T. Boone Pickens: ‘The Biggest Deterrent To An Energy Plan In America Is Koch Industries’ (Climate Progress):
  
  The biggest deterrent to an energy plan in America is Koch Industries,” the BP Capital founder tells Yahoo’s Aaron Task. “They do not want an energy plan for America because they have the cheapest natural gas price they’ve ever had, and they’re in the fertilizer business and they’re in the chemical business. So their margins are huge. And they do not want you to have an energy plan, because if you had a plan, then natural gas prices would come up.
• US solar subsidies consistent with coal, oil: report (Reuters):
  
  U.S. government support for solar energy is no different from its support for traditional energy sources, despite critics' complaints that the renewable energy source has gotten special incentives, a new solar-industry backed report found.
• Analysis: Dow's new GMO corn: "time bomb" or farmers' dream? (Reuters):
  
  Opponents include some specialty crop farmers who fear 2,4-D herbicide use could cause widespread damage to crops that are not engineered with a tolerance to it. It is so potent that its use is tightly restricted in some areas and at certain times of the year in some U.S. states.
• Nuclear Safety Advocates Accuse Industry And Regulators Of Foot-Dragging On Basic Safety Measures (Huffington Post Green):
  
  [W]hat if the Pilgrim plant experienced a meltdown like the one that unfolded just over a year ago in Fukushima, Japan?

  "I live just six miles from that plant across open water," says Lampert, a staunch advocate for tougher oversight of the nuclear power industry. "It always comes down to public safety versus the cost to industry of implementing something."

• Climate Change Has Intensified the Global Water Cycle (Climate Central):
  
  Based on measurements gathered around the world from 1950-2000, a team of researchers from Australia and the U.S. has concluded that the hydrologic cycle is indeed changing. Wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier. But it's happening about twice as fast as anyone thought, and that could mean big trouble for places like Australia, which has already been experiencing crushing drought in recent years.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Must-Read: Economist William Nordhaus Slams Global Warming Deniers, Explains Cost of Delay is $4 Trillion (Climate Progress):
  
  Nordhaus's blunt piece - "Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong" - is worth reading because he is no climate hawk.
  ...
  "The skeptics' summary is based on poor analysis and on an incorrect reading of the results."
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

  It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.

• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like 'Dentists Practicing Cardiology' (Think Progress Green)
• Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern" (Climate Progress):
  
  "We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties."
• VIDEO: Behold: The World's First 24/7 Solar Plant is Up and Running (Treehugger)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  
  The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
  ...
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• READ the IPCC Report: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)
• No, global warming hasn't stopped (New Scientist)
• Top UN Climate Official Blasts U.S. Climate Policy: Americans Must Realize "This Is Their Future They're Compromising" (Think Progress Green)
• VIDEO: Climate Scientists Michael Mann on "A Look Into Our Climate: Past To Present To Future" (TEDx, YouTube)
• Earth's Plant Growth Fell Because of Climate Change, Study Finds (NYT Green)
• Heads in the Sand: Warning: "Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment," reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?
  (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
  ...
  Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

92-year old Viviette Applewhite, 59-year old Wilola Shinholster Lee, 72-year old Grover Freeland, 86-year old Dorothy Barksdale and 93-year old Bea Booker are just a few of the Pennsylvania residents and long-time legal voters now fighting to retain their right to vote under the state GOP's new polling place Photo ID restrictions, according to a new lawsuit filed this week in the Keystone State.

The complaint goes on to argue that "there are countless other Pennsylvanians like them [some 80-90,000 according to the state's own data], who will lose the most cherished of all rights, the right to vote, unless the Photo ID Law is declared unconstitutional."

There is now, indeed, a very good chance that the law will, in fact, be declared unconstitutional according to The BRAD BLOG's analysis of the complaint, the state constitution and prior rulings in similar cases.

PA is just the latest of more than a dozen states over the past year where Republican-controlled legislatures and executive mansions have instituted voter disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions. Governor Tom Corbett signed his state's bill into law in March, and promptly lied about his reasons for supporting the removal of voting rights for those lacking Photo ID on Election Day, claiming, without evidence, that some precincts in the state had 112% voter turnout in recent elections. As we reported at the time, that charge was dismissed as "ludicrous" and without evidence by a longtime state election integrity expert.

Nonetheless, "Act 18" has become the law of the land in Pennsylvania, for now, and, unless successfully challenged, will require that voters present a state-issued Photo ID when voting at the polling place in this year's November Presidential election for the very first time.

For the identical reasons that The BRAD BLOG accurately predicted that the League of Women Voters' legal challenge to a polling place Photo ID restriction law under similar provisions of the Wisconsin's Constitution would prevail (absent a political intervention from the Badger State's extraordinarily partisan Supreme Court), we also predict that new legal challenge filed this week in PA, attempting to block the state's draconian polling place Photo ID law, will similarly succeed...

'Fundamental Right'

This week, three organizations --- the Pennsylvania branches of the League of Women Voters and the NAACP together with the Homeless Advocacy Project --- have stepped up to file a suit in hopes of blocking the new law, charging that it violates the PA state Constitution's declaration of the right to vote as "fundamental."

The lawsuit, Applewhite vs Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [PDF] names 11 individual petitioners who are registered voters likely to be disenfranchised by the photo ID law, including 90-year old Joyce Block, a voter who has not missed an election for 70 years, but who is now fighting for the right to vote under the new law. [Listen to Brad Friedman's recent interview with Block here.] The legal complaint seeks both a preliminary and permanent injunction on "Act 18".

Citing the PA Supreme Court decision in In re Nomination Papers of Ralph Nader (2004), the petitioners in Applewhite allege that the right to vote under the PA Constitution is "fundamental."

This, along with the fact that Applewhite raises an "as applied" challenge --- that is, a case which contains specific examples of citizens whose right to vote has been or will be denied or significantly impaired by the new Photo ID restriction --- greatly enhances the likelihood that the PA courts will sustain an Equal Protection challenge pursuant to the Keystone State's Constitution.

As we explained last August in relation to the WI League of Women Voters' constitutional challenge to that state's Photo ID law, the U.S. Supreme Court, in upholding Indiana's Photo ID law in Crawford vs. Marion County Elections Board (2008), did not accord "fundamental right" status to voting under the U.S. Constitution. It subjected the Indiana law only to "minimum scrutiny" --- an Equal Protection standard which presumes that a statute is constitutional and requires only that the statute be rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

(The plaintiffs in Crawford also limited their challenge to a theoretical argument that Indiana's Photo ID law was unconstitutional "on its face." They failed to present evidence that anyone had actually been disenfranchised as a result of the Indiana law.)

In cases under the WI, MO and PA state constitutions, however, voting is regarded as a "fundamental" right, so an Equal Protection challenge to a law affecting that fundamental right triggers what our courts describe as "strict scrutiny."

That was the critical factor that not only led Dane County, WI Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan to temporarily enjoin [PDF] Wisconsin's Photo ID law, but also led the MO Supreme Court, in Weinschenk v. State (2006) to find that Missouri's 2006 GOP Photo ID law violated the Show Me State's Constitution.

'Phantom' voter fraud menace vs. real life disenfranchisement

Three critical features led to success in the Equal Protection challenges to Photo ID laws in WI earlier this year and in MO in 2006:

• First, both entailed challenges to a right that was regarded as "fundamental" under their respective state constitutions.
• Second, the proponents of Photo ID laws could not muster so much as a single case of in person, polling place impersonation in either state. (In Weinschenck, the GOP conceded "the only type of voter fraud that the Photo-ID Requirement prevents is in-person voter impersonation fraud at the polling place. It does not address absentee voting fraud or fraud in registration.")
• Third, in each case the opponents of Photo ID laws presented direct evidence of individuals for whom obtaining the state approved Photo ID was either impossible, unduly burdensome and, in some cases, quite expensive.

Here, the Applewhite petition now filed in PA alleges:

The petition lays out a detailed story for each of the eleven named petitioners.

Applewhite, a widow, for example, is 92 years old. She worked as a welder during WWII; voted in nearly every election since 1960. She's never driven a car; never had a driver's license. Despite multiple attempts and the payment of a fee, she has not been able to secure a birth certificate from PA's Division of Vital Statistics. Without it, she can't obtain the required photo ID.

Lee, a 59 year old African-American woman, worked for many years in the Philadelphia Public School system and previously served as a poll worker. She has an employee photo ID, Social Security and voter registration cards, but cannot obtain an ID that is acceptable under the new photo ID law because Georgia has no record of her birth.

Freeland is a 72 year old African-American male U.S. Army veteran and retired art teacher, who worked for the Philadelphia School District. He has not had a driver's license since the 1980s. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to obtain a birth certificate from New York, and, despite the fact that he maintains a photo ID in the form of a "veterans card" issued by the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs, he cannot vote as the new PA photo ID law does not recognize a "veterans card" as acceptable for exercising the right to vote.

86-year old African-American Dorothy Barksdale was delivered by a midwife in rural VA in 1926. "After Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Ms. Barksdale worked as a poll official in Philadelphia...She has never driven and thus has not needed a driver's license." As VA has no record of her birth, she cannot obtain a birth certificate, and, without that certificate, she cannot obtain the requisite photo ID.

93-year old Bea Booker is a Caucasian widow who was born in Philadelphia in 1918. She "has voted in almost every election since casting her ballot for Franklin Roosevelt in 1940," the Applewhite petition proclaims. "She has now grown frail with age. Going to the polls to vote twice a year is extremely difficult...but it is so important that these are two of only a handful of excursions away from her assisted-living facility that she has mustered the energy to take in recent years."

"Mrs. Bookler," the Applewhite petition continues, "does not presently have a photo ID acceptable under Pennsylvania's Photo ID Law. Both her passport and driver's license have expired. In order to get that ID, she would first have to obtain a certified copy of her birth certificate and then would have to go to the nearest PennDOT Driver's License Center about ten miles from her home." This would be extraordinarily difficult as Mrs. Bookler requires assistance even "to use her walker to go next door to her polling place, and doing so is one of the remaining joys in her life."

"For each of the individual Petitioners who would be disenfranchised by the Photo ID Law," the Applewhite petition alleges, "there are countless other Pennsylvanians like them, who will lose the most cherished of all rights, the right to vote, unless the Photo ID Law is declared unconstitutional."

Per the Applewhite petition, PA concedes between "80,000-90,000 Pennsylvanians do not have acceptable photo IDs to vote. Other academic estimates place this figure at ten times that number."

Religious discrimination?

The Applewhite petition touches upon an issue that may be somewhat unique to the Keystone state. As recently reported by the Huffington Post, the Amish and some Mennonite groups object to being photographed.

The PA Department of Transportation offers ID cards for these groups but only upon an application that requires answering some "18 questions that delve deeply into their faiths and other personal information."

The prospect that these religious groups would refrain from answering the questions triggered a rather curious admission about the impact of the PA Photo ID restriction from one of its proponents, state Sen. Mike Folmer (R): "They are going to be keeping them from the polls, keeping American citizens from the polls," Folmer said. "That's what I'm concerned about."

If only Folmer had the same concerns about the disproportionate numbers of minorities, elderly, students (student IDs issued by most of PA's largest colleges and universities do not meet the new voting requirements), etc., who would be kept from the polls under the law he supports, as he does for religious objectors.

Photo ID as an unconstitutional poll tax

The MO Supreme Court, in Weinschenk, citing Harper vs. Virginia Bd. of Elections (1966), the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that a $1.50 poll tax was unconstitutional, suggested that even though the state purportedly made Photo ID available free of charge, the cost of obtaining necessary documentation was "not de minimus."

Amongst the documents that one might need to obtain a Photo ID in PA, according to the Applewhite petition, are a certificate of U.S. citizenship or of naturalization at a cost as high as $345 or a U.S. passport ($135). The bill not only requires a Social Security card but either a birth certificate, certificate of U.S. citizenship or naturalization, two proofs of residency, and, if one's name differs from the birth certification, a Marriage Certificate, Divorce Decree or other Court Order. And, of course, for many, travel to obtain the ID can be cumbersome --- particularly for those who don't have a drivers license already --and, for the destitute, an impossible expense.

Of course, the PA courts need not reach the poll tax issue since they will likely strike down the PA photo ID law under their state constitution.

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). Follow him on Twitter: @Cann4ing.

On today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters joined me to discuss that remarkable news, his sobering column yesterday on "Murdoch's Nixonian Demise", what it all means for NewsCorp properties here in the U.S. (like Fox "News", the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal) and how the story is being covered by the media in this country both on the Right and non-Right.

As usual, we're also joined by Desi Doyen for some Green News Report and a few listener phone calls round out the hour.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...
[See post to listen to audio]

Reminder: I don't post ALL of my KPFK shows here, but you can subscribe to the RSS feed to get 'em all, or stop by the KPFK BradCast archives anytime.

[Ed Note: The BRAD BLOG has been reporting on the remarkable story of Sibel Edmonds since the darkest days of 2005 and in nearly 100 articles since then. Once described by the ACLU as the "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America", the Iranian-born former FBI translator fought to blow the whistle on traitorous deception and cover-up inside the FBI, blackmail inside the U.S. Congress and startling allegations of espionage and nuclear secrets sold to U.S. enemies on the foreign black market by some of our nation's highest ranking officials.

In 2007, after the Supreme Court had refused to hear her case thanks to the Bush Administration's persistent use of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege," legendary "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg told The BRAD BLOG her allegations were "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers" on the heels of her exclusive announcement on these pages that she would break her gag order to tell all to any major U.S. media outlet who would allow her a platform to do so.

Even though CBS' 60 Minutes had covered her story in 2002 when she was not allowed to speak, they showed no interest once she promised to do so anyway, leading Ellsberg to guest blog here decrying the American media as "complicit in cover-up". It took the UK's Sunday Times (a Rupert Murdoch property!) to finally break some of her most explosive allegations publicly in 2008, which outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson would describe as "stunning".

Now, after waiting more than 340 days for the FBI's pre-clearance review of her memoir --- they are supposed to do so within 30 days --- Edmonds has decided to release her own story, in full, without their prior approval or redactions. We've now got our own copy of her new book, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, but our colleague, author and activist David Swanson has happily beaten us to reading it in full and has generously offered us his own review which follows below. - BF]

Sibel Edmonds' new book, Classified Woman, is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now...

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell. This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11. She considered it her duty. Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks. That's where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically. It's rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security. The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves. The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to "say something if you see something" is the rarest commodity. Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

Reams of documents and audio files from before 9-11 had never been translated. Many more had never been competently or honestly translated. One afternoon in October 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate verbatim an audio file from July 2001 that had only been translated in summary form. She discovered that it contained a discussion of skyscraper construction, and in a section from September 12th a celebration of a successful mission. There was also discussion of possible future attacks. Edmonds was eager to inform the agents involved, but her supervisor Mike Feghali immediately put a halt to the project.

Two other translators, Behrooz Sarshar and Amin (no last name given), told Edmonds this was typical. They told her about an Iranian informant, a former head of SAVAK, the Iranian "intelligence" agency, who had been hired by the FBI in the early 1990s. He had warned these two interpreters in person in April 2001 of Osama bin Laden planning attacks on U.S. cities with airplanes, and had warned that some of the plotters were already in the United States. Sarshar and Amin had submitted a report marked VERY URGENT to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Frields, to no apparent effect. In the end of June they'd again met with the same informant and interpreted for FBI agents meeting with him. He'd emphatically warned that the attack would come within the next two months and urged them to tell the White House and the CIA. But the FBI agents, when pressed on this, told their interpreters that Frields was obliged to report everything, so the White House and other agencies no doubt already knew.

One has to wonder what U.S. public opinion would make of an Iranian having tried to prevent 9-11.

Next, a French translator named Mariana informed Edmonds that in late June 2001, French intelligence had contacted the FBI with a warning of the upcoming attacks by airplanes. The French even provided names of suspects. The translator had been sent to France, and believed her report had made it to both FBI headquarters and the White House.

Edmonds translated other materials that involved the selling of U.S. nuclear information to foreigners and spotted a connection to a previous case involving the purchase of such information. The FBI, under pressure from the State Department, Edmonds writes, prevented her from notifying the FBI field offices involved. Edmonds has testified in a court deposition, naming as part of a broad criminal conspiracy Representatives Dennis Hastert, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Bob Livingston, Stephen Solarz, and Tom Lantos, and the following high-ranking U.S. government officials: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Marc Grossman.

When Edmonds was hired, she was the only fully qualified Turkish translator, and this remained the case. In November 2001, a woman named Melek Can Dickerson (referred to as "Jan") was hired. She did not score well on the English proficiency test, and so was not qualified to sign off on translations, as Edmonds was. Melek's husband Doug Dickerson worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency under the procurement logistics division at the Pentagon dealing with Turkey and Central Asia, and for the Office of Special Plans overseeing Central Asian policy. This couple attempted to recruit Edmonds and her husband into the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, offering large financial benefits. But these were organizations that the FBI was monitoring. Edmonds reported the Dickersons' proposal to Feghali, who dismissed it.

Then Edmonds discovered that Jan Dickerson had been forging her (Edmonds') signature on translations, with Feghali's approval. Then Edmonds' colleagues told her about Jan taking files out of other translators' desks and carrying them out of the building. Dickerson attempted to control the translation of all material from particular individuals. Dennis Saccher, who was above Feghali, discovered that Jan was marking every communication from one important person as being not important for translation. Saccher attempted to address the matter but was shut down by Feghali, by another supervisor named Stephanie Bryan, and by the head of "counterintelligence" for the FBI who said that the Pentagon, White House, State Department, and Congress would not allow an investigation.

Had Edmonds understood the truth of that statement, it might have saved her years of frustration and stress, but it would have denied us the bulk of the revelations in her book. Dickerson threatened Edmonds' life and those of her family. Edmonds lost her job, her reputation, her friends, and contact with most of her family members. She watched Congress cave in to the President. She watched the government protect the Dickersons by allowing them to flee the country. She listened to Congressman Henry Waxman and others in 2005 and 2006 promise a full investigation if the Democrats won a majority, a promise that was immediately broken when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. Edmonds was smeared in the media, and her story widely ignored when media outlets got parts of it right. The Justice Department claimed "States Secrets" and maneuvered for a cooperative judge (Reggie Walton) to have cases filed by Edmonds dismissed. The government classified as secret all materials related to Edmonds' case including what was already public. The Justice Department issued a gag order to the entire Congress.

And Congress bent over and shouted "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

As less confrontational approaches failed, Edmonds became increasingly an activist and an independent media participant and creator. Her story and others she was familiar with were rejected and avoided by the 9-11 Commission. She worked with angry 9-11 widows and with other whistleblowers to expose the failures of that commission. Disgusted with whistleblower support groups that only offered to help her when she was in the news and never when she needed help most desperately, Edmonds started her own group, made up of whistleblowers, called the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. She started her own website called Boiling Frogs Post.

When an unclassified version of a report on Edmonds' case by the Justice Department's Inspector General was finally released, it vindicated her.

Edmonds has received awards and recognition. Her story has been supported (with rhetoric, not action) by Congress members and backed up by journalists. It appears in this forthcoming film.

Coleen Rowley, another FBI whistleblower, one who was honored as a Time magazine person of the year along with two others, told me: "What I find so remarkable is Sibel's persistence in trying every avenue and possible outlet in trying to get the truth out. When going up the chain of command in the executive branch and Inspector General internal mechanisms for investigating fraud, waste, and abuse went nowhere, she sought judicial remedy by filing lawsuits only to be improperly gagged by 'state secrecy privilege'. Along the way she also sought congressional assistance, testified to the 9-11 Commission, and engaged with various media and other non-governmental organizations. It's somewhat ironic that Sibel herself demonstrated such enormous energy and passion throughout this decade quite the opposite of the 'boiling frog' idiom she uses for her website as a warning to others. If her book can inspire readers to summon even 1/100th of the determination and resolve she has modeled, there's hope for us!"

Yet, thus far, no branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, which Edmonds argues has grown far worse under President Obama. That's why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary. This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C. Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all --- not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.

Let's have their back.

David Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.