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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Disturbing updates on the Exxon tar sands oil pipeline spill in AR; Majority of Republicans believe global warming a 'hoax'; 'Tsunami of rain' in Argentina; China cheating on fish catches?; Golf in the Arctic? PLUS: 'Monsanto Protection Act' - Sneaky legislation exempts GMOs from the law... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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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): Climate science denier calls for "alarmists" to face death penalty courts; Amazon tribe threatens to declare war amid row over Brazilian dam; NV Energy to decommission coal plants; Ogalalla Sioux: Resounding NO to Keystone XL Pipeline; Bill Gates, investors, back sodium battery startup; Canada may abandon expensive mine cleanup; Green pols get billionaire ally, money; climate researchers discover 1,800-year-old 'Rosetta stone' ice cores; PLUS: Obama on climate change: ‘The politics of this are tough’ ... and much, MUCH more!...

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

• Poll: Majority of Republicans Believe Climate Change a 'Hoax' (The Hill's e2 Wire) [emphasis added]:
  58% of Republicans believe that global warming is a “hoax,” compared to 11% of Democrats, according to new polling that underscores political divides over climate change among U.S. residents.
  ...
  The scientific consensus is that the planet is warming and human activities are a key driver, but a very small minority of scientists holds other views.
• Monsanto Protection Act: Exempt From Judicial Review:
• VIDEO: You Stuck What Where Now? - The Monsanto Protection Act: The Monsanto Protection Act shows that the laws of the most powerful nation on Earth are written with the same level of accountability as Internet comments. (The Daily Show)
• Monsanto Provision Tucked in Spending Bill Draws Critics (Bloomberg):
  Why has Obama approved a law giving immunity to the production and sale of genetically modified food in the US?
• Chinese fishing fleet in African waters reports 9% of catch to UN (Guardian UK):
  Researchers say a new way to estimate the size and value of catches shows the extent of looting of Africa

  Just 9% of the millions of tonnes of fish caught by China's giant fishing fleet in African and other international waters is officially reported to the UN, say researchers using a new way to estimate the size and value of catches. Fisheries experts have long considered that the catches reported by China to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) are low but the scale of the possible deception shocked the authors.

• 'Tsunami of Rain' Kills 54 in Buenos Aires Flooding:
• Federal study: Global warming means stronger ‘extreme’ rains (The Hill's e2 Wire)
• 'Tsunami of Rain' Leaves At Least 54 Dead in Argentina (Latin American Herald Tribune):
  “It was a deluge without historical precedent. So, the people have been surprised in the worst way and some did not have time to be able to escape this fatal trap,” [Governor Daniel] Scioli said.

• Argentina floods 'catastrophe' for La Plata, Buenos Aires (BBC)
• UPDATE: Exxon Tar Sands Pipeline EXEMPT From Oil Spill Tax:
• Amazing Aerial Footage of Arkansas Tar Sands Oil Spill (via Comedian Lee Camp's Youtube Channel)





• VIDEO: Shocking aerial video shows magnitude of Arkansas oil spill, as cleanup continues and frustration at Exxon grows (Treehugger)
• Exxon’s Duck-Killing Pipeline Won’t Pay Taxes To Oil Spill Cleanup Fund (Climate Progress):
  A 1980 law ensures that diluted bitumen is not classified as oil, and companies transporting it in pipelines do not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Other conventional crude producers pay 8 cents a barrel to ensure the fund has resources to help clean up some of the 54,000 barrels of pipeline oil that spilled 364 times last year.
• At Oil Spill Cleanup in Arkansas, Exxon Running the Show, Not Federal Agencies (InsideClimate News):
  Jay Carney, White House spokesperson, said the EPA is the federal on-scene coordinator, but the reality on the ground is a different story.
• Exxon's Unfriendly Skies: Why Does Exxon Control the No-Fly Zone Over Arkansas Tar Sands Spill? (DeSmogBlog)
• Exxon Replacing Oiled Arkansas Lawns, Ruptured Pipeline Still Shut (Reuters)
• Arkansas AG: Oil Spill Shows Need For Inspections: (AP)
• New spill reveals how horrible Keystone could be: Unsure what to think of Keystone pipeline? Check out this video of a shorter pipeline leaking oil all over a street
• Exxon oil spill cleanup ongoing in Arkansas, pipeline shut (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  Exxon...was fined in 2010 for not inspecting another portion of the Pegasus line with sufficient frequency.
• Arkansas, Minnesota Tar Sands Oil Spills: Slipping on Keystone XL Pipeline Reality (The BRAD BLOG)
• Koch Brothers Positioned To Be Big Winners If Keystone XL Pipeline Is Approved (InsideClimate News)
• Keystone Komics: The incredible, illustrated history of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (Grist)
• Teeing Off at Edge of the Arctic? A Chinese Plan Baffles Iceland (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Prodded by diplomats from the United States and other countries to take a hard look at Mr. Huang's intentions, Mr. Jonasson questioned what might lie behind China's curious interest in Grimsstadir. "One has to look at this from a geopolitical perspective and ask about motivations," Mr. Jonasson said.

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

• Obama on climate change: ‘The politics of this are tough’ (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  "The politics of this are tough. [T]he thing that I’m going to have to try to work to persuade the American people a little more convincingly on is this notion that there’s a contradiction between our economy and our environment — it's just a false choice,” Obama said at a San Francisco fundraiser.
• Obama Talks Up Climate Agenda at Keystone Foe’s Home (Bloomberg News)
• OP-ED: "Keystone XL: The Pipeline To Disaster" (Dr. James Hansen, Los Angeles Times)
• Hanford Nuclear Site: Treatment Plant for Waste in Nuclear Cleanup Has Design Flaws, Panel Says (NY Times)
• Climate Science Denier James Delingpole Calls For "Alarmists" To Face Court With Death Penalty Powers (DeSmogBlog):
  "The climate alarmist industry has some very tough questions to answer: preferably in the defendant's dock in a court of law, before a judge wearing a black cap." To those not au fait with the traditions of the English courts, black caps were only worn by judges when handing out death sentences.
• Brazil: Amazon tribe threatens to declare war amid row over Brazilian dam project: Munduruku leaders hit out at 'betrayal' after government pushes on with dam construction without community's consent (Guardian UK)
• NV Energy to decommission coal plants, shift to gas and renewables (Las Vegas Sun):
  “This does three things: it retires coal from Nevada, builds renewables, and it creates jobs,” said Tony Sanchez, NV Energy senior vice president.
• Oglala Sioux Tribe: Resounding NO to Keystone XL Pipeline - Cite Water Concerns (Native News Network)
• Bill Gates, investors, back sodium battery startup Aquion Energy (Giga Om):
  Bill Gates is continuing to fund next-generation battery startups. On Tuesday, battery startup Aquion Energy announced that it is working on raising another round of $35 million, with a first close on that round from Bill Gates, as well Bright Capital, Gentry Venture Partners, and existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Foundation Capital.
• Ottawa reconsiders toxic site priorities after Giant cleanup costs balloon (The Vancouver Sun):
  Cleanup costs at a single northern mine next to Great Slave Lake are ballooning so high they are forcing Ottawa to rethink plans for thousands of contaminated sites across the country.
• Greens get billionaire ally, money (The Hill's e2 Wire) [emphasis added]:
  Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform.
• OSU climate researchers discover 1,800-year-old 'Rosetta stone' ice cores (Columbus Dispatch)
• New Insight Into Photosynthesis (Science Daily) [emphasis added]:
  Pigments [carotenoids, the same pigments which give orange color to carrots] found in plants and purple bacteria employed to provide protection from sun damage do more than just that. Researchers from the University of Toronto and University of Glasgow have found that they also help to harvest light energy during photosynthesis.
• Why Abundant Oil Hasn't Cut Gasoline Prices (BusinessWeek)
• National Review heralds the ‘wonderland’ of tar sands with a photo of a blighted hellscape (Grist)
• Innovation: A Building Not Just Green, but Practically Self-Sustaining (NY Times)
• You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice. (Climate Crocks):
• U.S. Energy Shift: Life After Oil and Gas (NY Times):
  [Increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really "need" fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?
• NOAA: 'Robust, Unambiguous' Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• 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)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• 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. ...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)
• 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 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

After watching Shadows of Liberty: The Media Monopoly in American Journalism over the weekend, I didn't expect I'd be surprised by much during my interview with the documentary's filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay on The BradCast today on KPFK/Pacifica Radio. But I was.

It's a beautiful and maddening film, featuring many voices --- such as Julian Assange, John Nichols, Dan Rather, Amy Goodman, Robert Parry, Robert McChesney, Dan Ellsberg, Sibel Edmonds and many more, including even yours truly --- who will be familiar to readers of The BRAD BLOG. While aspects of a number of the stories told in the film may be familiar, there were elements that even I hadn't heard about it, in just about every one of them.

I had planned to ask Tremblay about his struggles finding commercial theatrical distribution for the film in the U.S. I'd presumed that, at least, would be next to impossible, given the subject matter of the film (the corporate takeover/merger of the near-entirety of our mainstream media in collusion with the highest levels of the U.S. government.) What I hadn't counted on --- what caught me completely off-guard --- was that Tremblay said that, while the film has been featured at prestigious film festivals around the world, the bulk of the major festivals in the U.S. had turned the film down. Yes, those supposedly "independent" film festivals are, apparently, not quite as independent as they used to be, it seems.

Our conversation, today, was the first, as I understand it, that Tremblay has been able to have in the U.S. media about this important film which has been several years in the making. (I was interviewed for the film about three years ago as I recall.)

The good news: We were able to talk about all of that today, unencumbered by any corporate filter and over our public airwaves on Pacifica Radio in L.A. (and over 110,000 blazing FM watts across much of Southern and Central California!)

The even better news: You can watch the film, in its entirety, streaming on the Internet as of tomorrow, Thursday, April 4 at Shadows.KCETlink.org. (You can watch a number of clips from the film there already.)

And, the even better news still: Shadows of Liberty will air on actual television, beginning Friday, April 5th at 8pm ET and PT on independent KCET in Los Angeles and nationwide on Link TV (DISH Channel 9410, DIRECTTV Channel 375).

Until then, you can listen to my conversation with Tremblay from today's BradCast, which includes a number of clips from the film --- along with a few more items of note in the news week (such as concerns about the 100% unverifiable voting systems set for use in the race of Stephen Colbert's sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, in her run for the U.S. House in S. Carolina against former Gov. Mark Sanford; the Virginia GOP voter registration worker who was caught tossing registration forms into a dumpster just before the Presidential Election last year, but who seems to now be getting off the hook, and, of course, a visit from our own Desi Doyen, as usual, with the latest Green News Report) --- all right now here.

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

P.S. Please be the media and spread the word. Thanks.
P.P.S. If I haven't "sold" you enough on the film here and in the radio show above, see the official trailer embedded below. Those of you who know my voice will recognize it a few times...

[This article was cross-published by Salon...]

Given the professed concerns about election fraud among Virginia Republicans, it seems somewhat astonishing that the man at the center of the Commonwealth's most notorious fraud scandal last year seems to be getting off the hook after initially being charged with 13 criminal counts including eight felony charges.

Colin Small, a Republican Party Voter Registration Supervisor who secretly tossed filled-out voter registration forms into a dumpster last year, had all of his felony charges dropped by the local Republican Commonwealth Attorney prosecuting the case yesterday.

Small was arrested and charged with 13 counts --- including destruction and disclosure of voter registrations, as well as obstruction of justice --- in Harrisonburg, VA in the run-up to the Presidential election last year, after he was seen by a local shopkeeper throwing away a bag of registration forms behind his store. Small's felony charges were all dropped on Tuesday, according to local Fox-affiliate WHSV.

The case had garnered a great deal of national attention last fall --- almost everywhere but on Fox "News" --- as it emerged at the pinnacle of an embarrassing nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal which plagued the Republican Party in the weeks just prior to the November general election.

The prosecutor on the Small case is Republican Marsha Garst. Unlike other Commonwealth Attorneys, observed a local Democratic-leaning political muckraker yesterday, Garst failed to recuse herself from the prosecution despite what would appear to be very clear conflicts of interests in the case.

The newly dropped charges appear in stark contrast to Garst's declarations last year, when told the Washington Post on the Friday before the Tuesday Presidential election that the matter was "a very important investigation to the state, and we intend to prosecute Mr. Small to the fullest extent"...

Passing 'the laugh test'

Last year, in the run-up to the November Presidential Election, a widespread voter-registration fraud scandal hit the Republican Party after hundreds of fraudulent forms were first discovered in Palm Beach County, Florida. They had been turned in to the county by the Republican Party after being collected by a firm they had hired to carry out voter registration across the state.

When other apparently fraudulent forms were discovered soon thereafter in nearly a dozen other FL counties, and then in other key swing states around the country where the same company had been hired to work, the Republican National Committee fired the firm they had hired for voter registration and outreach in those states.

The firm, Strategic Allied Consulting (SAC), is said to have been created at the request of the RNC by Nathan Sproul, a long-time GOP operative with a long and checkered history with the party. Employees of his companies have been accused of various registration fraud schemes on behalf of Republicans in a number of states, during elections going back as far as 2004. Yet, despite those incidents --- and the years during which Republicans were pretending that the progressive community organization ACORN was committing voter fraud (they never were) --- Sproul was hired once again by the Mitt Romney campaign as a consultant in 2012, and later by the RNC itself. The RNC, however, reportedly asked Sproul to create the company without his name attached to it, due to his history. Sproul confirmed that point directly to The BRAD BLOG last year.

Small, who had initially been hired by Strategic, continued working for the Republicans in the City of Harrisonburg, VA (in Rockingham County), even after Sproul's firm was supposedly fired by the RNC in the wake of the registration fraud scandal.

After Small's arrest, when Virginia's Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced his office would be investigating the matter, The BRAD BLOG detailed some of the AG's own conflicts of interest in the matter, as he was seen in photographs with Small at the Harrisonburg GOP's "victory office" just days earlier.

That apparent conflict of interest seems to have continued into the local prosecution of Small, according to Ben Tribbet of the "Not Larry Sabato" blog, who reports that Garst "chose not to hand the case to a prosecutor from a neighboring jurisdiction of a different party - something often done in Virginia when a case involves local political figures as this one does."

"Notice the charges were dropped - not dismissed by a judge," observes Tribbet, "so that decision came from Garst and her office." Other media accounts, based largely on commentary from Small's attorney, report that the charges were dismissed by the judge. Still, Tribbet offers a compelling case for his allegations that Garst's office has conflicts of interest that may have affected their prosecution of the case.

[Garst has not immediately responded to The BRAD BLOG's request for comment on the matter. We will update this post when/if she does.]

Tribbet, citing the WHSV report, notes that "Small's defense was he thought the people who filled out these forms were 'already registered'. So he drove to a random dumpster to throw them out instead of just putting them in the trash at his office? This doesn't pass the laugh test."

The political blogger goes on to detail another recent case --- involving an apparent attempt by an employee of a Republican state Senator to steal data from a rival GOP operative's cell phone --- in which Garst also failed to pass the case on to a neighboring prosecutor. She ended up not prosecuting the employee, "despite federal guidelines on the value of political data that would clearly indicate that stealing a phone to access that data would be a felony under Virginia law."

That's not the way prosecutions are supposed to work in VA, writes Tribbet, offering a quick summary of recent cases in which other Republican and Democratic prosecutors have recused themselves from cases where they had similar apparent conflicts:

In recent cases in Albermarle County involving Supervisor Chris Dumler the local Democratic prosecutor sent them to neighboring GOP prosecutors in Fluvanna and Lynchburg. When Michael Gardner, a former Democratic Chair in Falls Church was charged with sex crimes last year, his case was sent from the Democratic Commonwealth's Attorney office in Arlington to a GOP one in Loudoun. When Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio was put under investigation, the GOP prosecutor in Loudoun sent the case over to Arlington's Democratic office. What exactly does Marsha Garst not understand about these types of conflicts and the need to recuse herself?

Tribbet also points out that "One of Garst's chief deputies is also a member of the Virginia legislature and head of the conservative caucus," which is, he says, "Yet another reason why Garst should be sending these cases to another office to handle."

Party prosecutor

Garst, who is an elected Republican with a four-year term as the Rockingham County Commonwealth Attorney, "has established jurisdiction throughout both Rockingham County and the City of Harrisonburg," according to the Rockhingham County government website.

She is also an active member of the local Republican party --- on whose behalf Small had been working for at the time of his arrest --- as highlighted in an article by The Virginia Conservative blog.

Garst is cited in the piece as one of a number of high-ranking Republicans who attended a fundraiser BBQ for the Harrisonburg GOP and the Rockingham County GOP in the run-up to the 2012 election cycle. According to The Virginia Conservative, "The audience brimmed with elected representatives and Republican hopefuls, a virtual who’s who role call in local politics."

Indeed, many of the attendees at the BBQ were on the same 2012 ballot that Harrisonburg GOP registration worker Colin Small was working to sign voters up to vote for. U.S. Senate candidate George Allen, U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, and a host of other local politicians and candidates, including Garst, are named as having been present at the event which "featured delicious local BBQ and a wide range of tempting desserts prepared by the Republican Women" and "an auction to raise additional funds."

Given that Small's case was among the most notorious and widely reported during the national GOP registration fraud scandal last year, it seems remarkable that Garst wouldn't pass the case over to another prosecutor without the same apparent conflicts of interest on both the local and partisan political levels.

Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times, however, describes the charges as "dismissed" by the judge, and cites a predictably down-played version of events from Small's defense attorney John Holloran.

"He’s closing his office for the day and says, 'What do I do with these?'" Holloran explained to Tanfani about why Small found a dumpster behind a strip mall to dispose of the registration forms after the registration deadline in the state had closed. "'It would look bad if someone found them in the trash can outside Republican headquarters.'"

Small will appear in court once again on April 16th to face his remaining misdemeanor charges.

Pretending to care about election fraud

There is no small irony --- or, perhaps, more appropriately, hypocrisy --- in the timing of the dropping of Small's felony fraud charges. It comes just days after VA's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell signed a newly restrictive polling place Photo ID law under the guise of cracking down on voter fraud. That bill is the second such law to be signed by the same Governor within the past year. Last year, the Republican state legislature passed another polling place photo ID law. The new one signed last week replaces last year's law, making many of the IDs issued to meet last year's restrictions now invalid for upcoming elections.

All of that, even as a recent, exhaustive nationwide study by a non-partisan news consortium found just ten (10) instances of in-person voter fraud in all fifty states since 2000 --- out of hundreds of millions of votes cast during the same period. In-person polling place fraud, incredibly rare as it is, is the only type of voter fraud that might be deterred by such laws.

VA's new polling place Photo ID restriction, which opponents charge could result in tens of thousands of disproportionately poor and elderly (read: Democratic-leaning) voters becoming disenfranchised, was signed by McDonnell last week. His spokesman called it, according to The Nation's Ari Berman, "a reasonable effort to protect the sanctity of our democratic process."

The state's Republican AG Ken Cuccinelli, who was seen giving a pep talk to GOP registration and outreach workers --- including Small, just prior to his arrest --- at the Harrisonburg, VA "Victory Office" last year, is now hoping to become the next Governor of the Commonwealth. His election against likely Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe will take place this November. The new draconian polling place Photo ID restriction law, however, will not go into affect in the state until the 2014 Congressional midterms.

Thanks in no small part to the local Republican prosecutor in Rockingham County, however, it seems that Colin Small will apparently be more than available to work for Republicans during both of those upcoming elections.

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

The eagle-eyed Jeff Poor, who describes himself as a "Christian, media reporter" for Tucker Carlson's pretend (and long-ago and repeatedly discredited) Rightwing "news" site, The Daily Caller, notices that our twitter feed is doing its part to help promote the Fox "News" Special Report with Bret Baier...

Chronic Fox News basher @thebradblog featured in FNC "Special Report" TV promo, sort of... twitpic.com/cgiqp5

— Jeff Poor (@jeff_poor) April 2, 2013

Of course, describing us as a "chronic Fox basher" isn't completely fair. After all, we're always more than happy to appear in person on Fox, and even on Special Report, for that matter. It's just that they don't call very frequently, for some reason.

Either way, thanks, Jeff! And you're welcome, Fox "News"! Hope it helps!

 

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Will major tar sands pipeline spill in AR doom Keystone XL?; How about the spills in WI, MN, UT?; NASA's Dr. James Hansen steps down to step up activism; SCOTUS smacks down Big Oil lawsuit; PLUS: Score one for breathers: EPA's new rules cut deadly air pollution - but Republicans are against it ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link: Embed:

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): How U.S. could blow the energy boom; Air pollution kills 1.2m Chinese, 3.2m worldwide; China's losing battle against state-backed polluters; Japan: Nuclear plant operator cites 'poor preparation'; Lake Erie doomed to future of massive toxic algae blooms?; US drought season off to a bad start; Dominion Energy: $14m fine for air pollution violations; Invention of the day: A bladeless wind turbine; Booming oil supplies haven't lowered price at the pump; Sugar industry adopts tobacco industry tactics; What is the 'Monsanto Protection Bill'? ... PLUS: Germany's solar-power success: Too much of a good thing? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• NASA Scientist Dr. James Hansen To Focus On Climate Activism:
• Climate Maverick to Quit NASA (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  “As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he said in an interview.





• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks) [emphasis added]:
  How did I get dragged deeper and deeper into an attempt to communicate, giving talks in 10 countries, getting arrested, burning up the vacation time that I had accumulated over 30 years? More grandchildren helped me along. Jake is a super-positive, enthusiastic boy. Here at age two and a half years, he thinks he can protect his two and a half-day-old little sister. It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling out of control. Now the tragedy about climate change is that we can solve it with a simple, honest approach...
• AR: Major Tar Sands Pipeline Oil Spill:
• Exxon Confirms Ruptured Pipeline in Ark. Carried Canadian Dilbit: The pipeline, called the Pegasus, leaked for about 45 minutes, according to local sources. Exxon has recovered 185,000 gallons of oil and water at site. (InsideClimate News)
• New spill reveals how horrible Keystone could be: Unsure what to think of Keystone pipeline? Check out this video of a shorter pipeline leaking oil all over a street
• Exxon Developing Excavation Plan for Pegasus Oil Pipeline Spill (Bloomberg)
• Minnesota Oil Spill: Canadian Train Derails, Spilling 30,000 Gallons Of Crude In U.S. (Huffington Post Green)
• Will Exxon's AR Pipeline Spill Doom Keystone XL? [Not likely]:
• Exxon oil spill cleanup ongoing in Arkansas, pipeline shut (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  Exxon...was fined in 2010 for not inspecting another portion of the Pegasus line with sufficient frequency...
• Arkansas, Minnesota Tar Sands Oil Spills: Slipping on Keystone XL Pipeline Reality (The BRAD BLOG)
• VIDEO: Arkansas oil pipeline rupture foreshadows devastating environmental impact (Chris Hayes' All In)
• VIDEO: Keystone pipeline leaves politics, environment muddied (Chris Hayes' All In)
• Keystone Komics: The incredible, illustrated history of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (Grist)
• GOP Slams EPA's New Fuel Standards to Cut Air Pollution, Save Lives:
• Obama pitches big anti-smog effort in environmental push (Reuters):
  Reducing sulfur in fuel helps car engines burn cleaner and reduces emissions of tiny particles, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides that can cause lung and heart illnesses.
• Opponents attack EPA proposal requiring cleaner fuel, cars in the U.S. (Washington Post):
  But oil industry officials and their congressional allies said it would hurt American fuel refiners and could cause gas prices to rise by an average of 2 cents a gallon, or as much as 9 cents a gallon in some areas.
  ...
  By 2030, the agency estimates, they will deliver up to $23 billion in health benefits, helping avoid up to 2,400 premature deaths per year and 23,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children.
• VIDEO: A History Lesson On Cries Of Overregulation: EPA Regularly Overestimates Regulatory Costs: Like other clean air rules, the proposed sulfur rule will have more benefits than costs. (Media Matters)
• US Supreme Court Smacks Down Big Oil's EPA Lawsuit:
• Supreme Court Rejects API's Challenge To EPA Air Pollution Rules, Everyone Benefits (Climate Progress)
• Justices reject challenge to EPA air pollution rule (Reuters):
  Various industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, originally challenged the 2010 regulation, which set a tighter Clean Air Act standard for short-term spikes in nitrogen dioxide pollution near roads... The agency said the new rule was justified due to scientific data that showed the health risks, particularly to those suffering from asthma.
• Deadly Pollution Is Subsidized by YOU:
• IMF: Want to fight climate change? Get rid of $1.9 trillion in energy subsidies. (Washington Post)
• POLL: Over 70% of Americans Support Renewables Over Fossil Fuels: (The Hill's e2 Wire)

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

• Germany's solar-power success: Too much of a good thing? (Grist):
  [T]he energy surplus has driven prices for traditional coal and nuclear power down, even as renewables are still guaranteed more-than-competitive rates. As power companies try to pass the costs to consumers in the form of higher bills, that just encourages more people to put solar panels on their roofs.
• Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  What the researchers called "ambient particulate matter pollution" was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China in 2010, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking. Air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to 3.2 million deaths in 2010.
• DUH: Japan: Nuclear Plant’s Operator Cites Poor Preparation (NY Times)
• Drought Season Off to Bad Starts: Scientists Predict Another Bleak Year (InsideClimate News):
  Current climate-induced drought is slipping into a trend that scientists say resembles some of the worst droughts in U.S. history, like the Dust Bowl.
• Dominion Energy Must Pay $14m For Air Pollution: (Environment News Servcie):
  Dominion Energy has agreed to pay a $3.4 million civil penalty and spend $9.75 million on environmental mitigation projects to resolve Clean Air Act violations at coal-fired power plants in three states.
• Invention of the day: A bladeless wind turbine (Grist):
  The technology, developed by the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science faculty at Delft, uses the movement of electrically charged water droplets to generate power. How does this work? A handy video explains...
• Lake Erie’s Record-Breaking Algae Bloom May Become the Norm (Discover News) [emphasis added]:
  At its peak in October, the mat of green scum on the lake’s surface was nearly four inches thick and covered an area of almost 2,000 square miles. That’s three times larger than any other bloom in the lake, ever. Plus it was toxic. Now research shows that such an event may become increasingly common.
• China's losing battle against state-backed polluters (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  "The problem is that they still chase profit," said one resident outside a store near Zijin's Shanghang headquarters who did not want to give his name. "Protecting the environment is like taking medicine, and they don't want that."
• Monsanto Provision Tucked in Spending Bill Draws Critics (Bloomberg):
  Why has Obama approved a law giving immunity to the production and sale of genetically modified food in the US?
• Sugar industry's secret documents echo tobacco tactics: Sugar Association's intent to use science to defeat critics uncovered by dentist (Canadian Broadcasting Co.)
• Fighting global warming with nanotechnology (GMA News)
• How We Could Blow the Energy Boom (Washinton Monthly):
  America’s vast new surplus of natural gas could lead to great prosperity and a cleaner environment. But if we don’t fix our decrepit, blackout -prone electric grid, we could wind up sitting in the dark.
• Poll: Nearly half say government too lax on environment (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  Nearly half of Americans believe the government is too lax when it comes to protecting the environment, according to a new poll.
• Pesticide makers propose plan to help bees: Syngenta and Bayer have proposed a plan to support bee health to try to forestall a European Union ban on the products (Guardian UK)
• Why Abundant Oil Hasn't Cut Gasoline Prices (BusinessWeek)
• Photos of Home: The Home Planet Seen from 100 Million Miles Away (Discover Magazine)
• You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice.: Part 1. (Climate Crocks):
• Manufacturer of d-CON rat poison fights EPA ban (McClatchy DC):
  The manufacturer of d-CON, a widely sold and popular brand of rat poison, is taking the rare step of challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to prohibit the over-the-counter sale of one of the nastiest and most effective of the poisons sold to consumers. Most of the 30 manufactures that make such products agreed to the ban...
• In Hot Water: Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the 'missing heat' Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• 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)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• 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. ...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)
• 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 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

What do Minnesota, Wisconsin, Utah, and Arkansas all have in common? If you said "None of those teams are in the 2013 NCAA Men's Final Four," you wouldn't be wrong this year, though you also wouldn't be correct - at least within the boundaries of our topic for today.

If your answer was, "All four states have experienced massive oil spills within the last year - and three within the last two weeks," you'd be correct, unfortunately.

The latest disaster this weekend saw thousands of barrels of thick tar sands oil spewing from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline into a residential neighborhood in central Arkansas. Twenty-two homes had to be evacuated, in a spill that literally saw oil running down residential streets and between houses. Take a look...

Of course, since it was a holiday weekend, smack-dab in the middle of Congress' latest two-week vacation, it was nearly impossible to find a politician of any kind with something serious to say about the latest disaster. That doesn't surprise us, since politicians of all kinds have been slipping and dancing around the issues of oil and environmental safety for far too many years now.

For all the work the Obama Administration has done on environmental issues --- like requiring much better fuel standards for cars and trucks, or clamping down on emissions --- the fact of the matter is, none of that will matter if President Obama and other politicians don't stop the Keystone XL pipeline route through Nebraska and all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

No matter what the decision is on the Keystone pipeline, the most important liquid flowing through Nebraska over the next hundred years won't be oil --- something a task force in the Nebraska Legislature made very clear last week...

As reporter JoAnne Young noted, Nebraska state Sen. Tom Carlson, in a meeting of the Legislature's Natural Resources Committee last week, talked about what could happen if America ever runs out of affordable gas, coal, or oil. "We will survive," he said.

However, if Nebraskans ever lose access to our amazing surplus of clean, drinkable, useable water? "We will die," said Carlson.

For all the bluster already flooding the media from the oil companies about how many trucks they sent to Arkansas to suck up the tar sands sludge from the neighborhood, or how well the cleanup is going from the recent spill in Minnesota, the facts remain the same. No matter how much cleanup is done in either location, the raw, sludgy tar sands oil has now damaged both areas where the spills have occurred, in ways that neither area will fully recover from for many years to come.

No matter how many short-term temporary jobs the Keystone XL pipeline will generate, all it takes is one spill, once, in any area over the Ogallala Aquifer, and ALL the jobs in a county or a region could be lost, because the water may no longer be suitable for irrigating crops or slaking the thirst of Nebraska residents.

Just one spill could do exactly what state Sen. Carlson fears, and kill off a large area of Nebraska, Kansas, or anywhere else along the long path of the pipeline, as water is turned from a lifeline into worthless poison.

If you don't think the price is too high for that kind of oil --- oil Americans will never see, as it will be shipped to foreign ports and sold abroad --- ask yourself these questions:

If you lived in the neighborhood of an oil spill, how safe would you feel drinking the water from your well? How safe would you feel letting your kids play outside? What price would you pay to never have to see crude oil flooding the streets of your neighborhood?

These are kinds of questions our politicians from both parties are slipping on right now.

From our perspective, the right answers don't really seem that slick. Then again, we're not financed by oil company lobbyists.

* * *

UPDATE:

[Hat-tip Chris Tackett at TreeHugger.]

* * *

Cross-published at The Daily Felltoon...

Shawn "Smith" Peirce is a nationally syndicated radio producer, writer, editor, and journalist, currently working with Randi Rhodes. He also works with nationally syndicated political cartoonist Paul Fell on The Daily Felltoon. Follow him on Twitter: @_silversmith.

[UPDATED at bottom of article following GOP primary run-off.]

When Stephen Colbert's older sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D), faces her likely opponent, former Gov. Mark Sanford (R), in the May 7th U.S. House special election in South Carolina, it will all take place, once again, on the state's oft-failed, easily-hacked, always 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. [NOTE: Unfortunately, despite today's date, this post is not an April Fools joke.]

The candidate announced as the "winner" of that election, based on those unverifiable voting systems, will either be the one who received the most votes from SC voters in the 1st Congressional District --- or the one who didn't. There will never be any way for anybody to know for sure one way or the other.

For that matter, after Sanford faces off with Curtis Bostic in Tuesday's Republican primary run-off election for the nomination, neither candidate will be able to know for certain whether they've actually won or lost that election either. This is South Carolina "democracy" in 2013 (and in at least one third of the country elsewhere.)

To make matters still worse, the state's Legislative Audit Council (LAC) has just released a new official report on those failed voting systems. Unfortunately, the report includes a enormous flaw which, when I pointed it out to Perry K. Simpson, Director of the LAC on Friday, his response was: "I see your point"...

Like a bad rerun

You may remember those SC voting systems as the ones used to 100% unverifiably record and announce that Alvin Greene --- an unemployed, unheard of candidate, who didn't campaign and had no website or even cell phone --- had "defeated" the four-term state legislator and circuit court judge Vic Rawl to win the 2010 Democratic primary nomination for U.S. Senate. The virtually illiterate Greene would go on to run against, and reportedly lose to, the incumbent Republican Senator Jim DeMint. It is DeMint's subsequent early retirement at the end of 2012 which led to the open House seat in SC's 1st district, after its former occupant, Rep. Tim Scott (R), was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to DeMint's old U.S. Senate seat.

Shamefully, South Carolina still uses those 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic voting systems for every election run across the Palmetto State. And now, a new report on the state's voting machines issued by the South Carolina LAC recommends, among other options, spending at least $17 million to either retrofit or replace those machines with similarly 100% unverifiable ones. The LAC suggests replacing the 100% unverifiable paperless touch-screen systems with 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems that produce a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" or VVPAT.

Unfortunately, there is also no way to know after an election that any VVPAT has ever actually been verified by any voter, nor that it actually reflects any voter's actual intent.

Even more unfortunately, the LAC doesn't even refer to those VVPATs as "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails" in their report. They incorrectly describe them as "Voter VeriFIED Paper Audit Trails," which is a blatant misnomer. I'll explain why in a moment.

Thankfully, the report also details the option of moving to an actual paper ballot system in SC. Hand-marked paper ballots are voter-verified by definition. When the voter fills in the oval next to a candidates name, or connects an arrow on the paper, we can reasonably know what their intent was (unless they misread the ballot, but that's their fault, not the voting system's.) How the vote on that paper ballot is then tallied --- publicly and reliable by hand, or by oft-failed, easily-manipulated optical-scan systems --- is a separate issue. But at least we can know who the voter intended to vote for, if anybody ever bothers to actually count the paper ballots that voters took time and care in casting.

While it's good news that SC's LAC has highlighted some new options for the state, it's a shame that they've chosen "truthiness", as Stephen Colbert might say, over the actual truth in attempting to inform state lawmakers of their options. In the very first sentence of the report, and throughout the rest of it, they completely misidentify what a VVPAT is by referring to it as a "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail", which nobody can ever know if it actually is or isn't.

So the report ends up recommending, among other options, that the State Election Commission "upgrade" to equally 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems --- and then misdescribes that "upgrade" option, failing to advise lawmakers that the systems would still be 100% unverifiable even after that "upgrade".

'VerifIABLE' does not mean 'verifIED'

The SC LAC is not the first to make this seemingly small, but very important, mistake. But as the report they produced was in response to the former President Pro Tempore of the South Carolina Senate's request for had "a review of the voting machines used in South Carolina" because "He was concerned about the reliability of the machines and the lack of paper trail to confirm voting results," this is a point that the LAC should have taken very special care to get right.

Instead, they refer in the very first sentence of the 46-page report [PDF] to VVPATs --- the little piece of paper printed off by some touch-screen voting machines (though not the ones currently used across SC) --- as a "voter-verified paper audit trail". The third sentence of the report also refers, inaccurately, to it, in recommending that law makers might wish to "add a voter-verified paper audit trail" printer to their existing touch-screen machines.

Even the Executive Summary [PDF] for the document refers inaccurately to a "voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT)".

A VVPAT, however, is a voter-verifIABLE paper audit trail. There is no way to know after an election whether it has actually been verifIED by any voter. Using incorrect terminology to suggest to lawmakers that election results can be known to be any more accurate with the addition of this flawed technology is the opposite of helpful to them.

As we've explained many times over the years, studies by institutions such as CalTech and MIT have found that very few voters actually bother to check their printed VVPATs at the end of the voting process to make sure their vote has been printed on them accurately. Other studies, such as one done at Rice University, have found that even those very few who do bother to check the computer-created summary at the end of the voting process don't notice when the computer has flipped one or more of their votes.

A 2006 PBS News Hour report on voting machines some years ago showed voters not bothering to check their printed VVPATs after casting votes on similar machines in California (where most such systems were long ago banned for use in elections by all but disabled voters who may choose to use them.) There's even a moment in that report when a poll worker is seen specifically telling voters to not look at the VVPAT to verify their vote, that the paper trails are meant for administrative purposes only.

There is absolutely no way to guarantee that the results printed on a VVPAT produced by such machines --- even if anybody bothers to examine them after an election, and almost no jurisdiction in the nation ever does --- accurately reflect the intent of any voter.

Describing such records as "voter-verified", therefore, is a terrible misnomer. VVPATs are "voter-verifiable" at very best. So, during a post-election spot-check or "recount" of those VVPATs, should one ever happen, it is impossible to know if any voter has actually done so.

"I see your point," the LAC's Director Simpson told me after I explained the issue to him on Friday during a phone conversation. "That paper audit trail wouldn't necessarily reflect the way the voter voted if the machine messed up somehow and hadn't recorded the vote correctly on it."

"It might be helpful if I talk with the staff in a little more detail about this," he said, adding that he'd try to get back to me once he'd had the chance to "touch base with the manager who worked on the audit".

'Truthiness' still rules in South Carolina elections

When the CA Sec. of State carried out a landmark "Top-to-Bottom Review" of all electronic voting systems used in the state in 2007, one of their expert reviewers, the Computer Security Group at the University of California/Santa Barbara, created a video demonstrating how an election on a touch-screen system with a VVPAT could be gamed in such a way that even if anybody bothered to examine the paper trails produced by it during a post-election examination, they would still not be able to tell that the election had been gamed.

Simpson told me that his LAC report may have overlooked or misunderstood these points since the bigger issue, as far as they were concerned, was that SC's voting machines "have no paper trail at all". That is true, of course, but adding a VVPAT --- rather than moving to a system of hand-marked paper ballots --- wouldn't actually lead to voters knowing if their election results were any more accurate in SC than they are today.

South Carolina's LAC, whose motto is "Independence, Reliability, Integrity", has not produced a particularly reliable report. Given that "the purpose" of the LAC, as defined on the front page of their web site, is "to provide information which will assist the General Assembly and the public," the misleading information from their report is no small matter.

For example, in an article on the LAC report last week in South Carolina's The State, the paper quotes a number of legislators, both Democratic and Republican, calling for millions to be spent to add VVPATs to the existing voting systems, as recommended in the report.

"House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said the state should spend the money now to upgrade the existing machines," The State's Adam Beam reports.

"We want them so we will know our vote actually counts," a misled Rutherford is quoted telling the paper. "Knowing that people’s votes count is worth $17 million in an era when we have seen people’s votes not count."

Unfortunately for Rutherford, even if the state spends $17 million to add VVPATs to their currently unverifiable system, it will still be 100% unverifiable. The LAC report, unfortunately, doesn't make that clear and, in fact, misleads legislators to believe otherwise.

Frank Heindel, a tireless Republican Election Integrity advocate in South Carolina, tells me he finds the report's recommendations for "upgrading" the state's DREs to be absurd. "It would be like a doctor suggesting a 90-year old man have a facelift. It's a waste of money on cosmetics and would do nothing to improve his health."

Even after the national embarrassment of the Alvin Greene election in 2010 --- and even after other similar embarrassments in the state, such as the 2008 Republican Primary train-wreck in Horry County when the iVotronic touch-screens wouldn't boot up at all across the entire county, leaving people unable to vote and/or scrambling to find pieces of paper, and even paper towels, to try and use to cast a vote --- the state of South Carolina doesn't seem to "get it". The new report on their voting machines, as written, five years after Horry County and three years after Alvin Greene, is unlikely to be of much help.

[There are several other problems with the LAC's report that I may get to on another day, as well as some good things about it, such as noting that Gov. Nikki Haley has failed to remove or replace county election commissioners and voter registration board members "when they fail to comply with certification and training requirements" as per state law.]

Either way, even if a corrected report is issued by the LAC --- and, someday, South Carolina finally moves to "Democracy's Gold Standard", which includes hand-marked and publicly hand-counted paper ballots --- none of it will be done in time for the upcoming Colbert Busch contest against Sanford (or Bostic) which, according to a recent poll, is predicted to be a very close contest.

Stephen Colbert will take little comfort in knowing that, if his sister Elizabeth ends up being declared the "loser" on May 7th, she may or may not have been the one to have received fewer votes than her opponent. The results won't necessarily reflect the truth, as much as the "truthiness" unreliably reported by the 100% unverifiable voting machines still shamefully used in the great state of South Carolina.

* * *

UPDATE 4/2/13: Curtis Bostic just conceded to Mark Sanford in the GOP primary election run-off. So Elizabeth Colbert Busch will, indeed, face off with Sanford, who once held the 1st district seat, on May 7th. A new poll by Lake Research Partners [PDF], posted by the Colbert Busch campaign yesterday, shows her with a 47% to 44% lead over the formerly disgraced former Governor. That's almost almost the same as the 47% to 45% figure reported in a PPP survey in late March. With the run-off now over, we'll see if there is a "Colbert bump", or the opposite, in the days ahead, as the campaign for the seat --- held by the GOP since 1981 --- heats up.

Either way, as Vic Rawl --- who was inexplicably named the loser to Alvin Greene in 2010 for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination --- reiterated to me in a discussion we had yesterday after I first published the article above, whatever the 100% unverifiable voting machines say on May 7th, and whether they are in line with pre-election polling or not, "the fact is, there's not a darn thing that anybody can do about it."

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

On paper, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., who was appointed by President Barack Obama to replace now Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan as the U.S. Solicitor General, appears to be an experienced litigator with a distinguished background.

It is a background that includes having served as a law clerk for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr. and having participated in over 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Verrilli's participation in Supreme Court oral arguments --- earlier with respect to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or "ObamaCare") and, recently, in the challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as U.S. v. Windsor, with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and in Hollingsworth v. Perry pertaining to California's Proposition 8 --- raises some disturbing questions.

Either Verrilli lacks the professional competence to assume primary responsibility for supervising and conducting litigation on behalf of the U.S. Government before the Supreme Court, or Verrilli, and the Obama administration, are so politically fearful of staking out principled positions that they have opted for a muddled middle ground. Perhaps it's a little of both.

Regardless, if the Windsor and Hollingsworth cases should establish a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, as urged by attorneys Ted Olson (R) and David Boies (D) in their Prop 8 Supreme Court brief [PDF], it will be despite the half-baked arguments presented by the Solicitor General, not because of them...

Previous Criticism

The Supreme Court, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012) upheld the constitutionality of almost all of the ACA, courtesy of a careful legal analysis of the Congressional power to tax that was set forth in the tightly crafted opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts.

It was a ruling that may have surprised many who had tuned into the Solicitor General's oral arguments, which CNN's legal analyst Jeffery Toobin described as "a train wreck for the Obama administration" and which Adam Serwer of Mother Jones labeled as "one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court."

Where the Republican National Committee (RNC) unfairly seized upon Verrilli's nervous and awkward delivery to produce a heavily doctored audio ad to make the case that the ACA was "a tough sell," Jeff Rosen of The New Republic appropriately pointed to Verrilli's substantive deficiencies not only in his oral presentation but in his brief concerning the scope of Congressional power, even though those arguments had been presented by Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal (Rosen's brother-in-law) during the earlier Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal proceedings and by states and several law professors before the Supreme Court.

His arguments meant to defend the crucial Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act recently were no better received, as highlighted in this Washington Post account of a reportedly exceedingly awkward exchange between the NAACP's President Benjamin Jealous and Verrilli himself not long after the hearing.

Muddled Middle Ground

One of the hallmarks of the Barack "lousy negotiator" Obama administration has been its proclivity to initiate negotiations by seeking out the most narrow position in the middle. When the tactic is employed in negotiations with Republicans, the only point to be determined is the extent to which the President will cave to right wing demands. When it occurs by way of legal arguments presented in a court of law, as occurred once again last week in both cases related to marriage equality, it simultaneously undercuts the government's core legal argument while suggesting that the administration lacks the courage of its convictions.

The differences between the principled position staked out by two of this nation's ablest appellate attorneys, Boies and Olson (the latter, formerly the Solicitor General for George W. Bush), in their Hollingsworth Supreme Court brief and the chiseling positions offered up in contrast by the Solicitor General were striking.

Relying primarily upon Loving v. Virginia (1967) the Supreme Court case which struck down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, Boies and Olson forcefully argued in their Hollingsworth Supreme Court brief that "the right to marry [is] one of the most fundamental rights --- if not the most fundamental right --- of an individual." It entails "the constitutional liberty to select the partner of one's choice," they argued persuasively, one that has never been conditioned upon the ability to procreate.

In urging the Court to extend the same strict scrutiny Equal Protection standards that it has historically applied to suspect classes, such as race, Boies and Olson pointed both to a solid factual record and the trial court's findings of fact that establish that "sexual orientation is 'immutable' or beyond the group members control;" that "gays and lesbians are 'a minority' that is 'politically powerless' to prevent discrimination by the majority," and that they have "been subjected to a history of pervasive and intolerable discrimination." The brief goes on to add that "it is equally clear...that an individual's sexual orientation bears no relationship to his or her ability to perform or contribute to society."

They not only argue that laws barring the right of same-sex marriage cannot withstand strict scrutiny --- which permits discriminatory legislation only where it is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest --- but argue that laws banning same-sex marriage do not meet even the far more permissive rational basis test.

Thus, Boies and Olson presented a broad, principled argument as to why same-sex marriage, like interracial marriage, should be regarded as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution --- a position that need not be abandoned in order to advance a middle ground, as underscored by Olson during oral arguments...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Is there any way to decide this case in a principled manner that is limited to California only?

MR. OLSON: Yes, the Ninth Circuit did that. You can decide the standing case that limits it to the decision of the district court here. You could decide it as the Ninth Circuit did.

Olson did not have to abandon principle by conceding the point because it was consistent with the basic legal principle, applied by the 9th Circuit in this case, that a court need not reach the broader issue, one which might apply to all states, "because California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of 'marriage,' and Proposition 8's only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation, while leaving in place all of its incidents."

Verrilli, who joined with Olson and Boies in arguing for heightened scrutiny, undercut the efficacy and consistency of that argument by taking a middle ground approach in asserting that the government was arguing that an Equal Protection violation arises only in those states that already permit civil unions --- a muddled, middle ground that was scoffed at by both liberal and right-leaning Supreme Court Justices.

His argument suggested that states which currently allow "civil unions" for homosexuals might have to allow for same-sex marriage in order to meet the requirements of Equal Protection. But states that extend no recognition of gay couples at all would actually be rewarded by not needing to change anything, in the event that the court sides in favor of Equal Protection in both the Prop 8 and DOMA cases.

The liberal Justice Stephen Breyer seemed amazed in response to Verrilli's argument.

"Look, a State that does nothing for gay couples hurts them much more than a State that does something," Breyer said. "I mean, take a State that really does nothing whatsoever. They have no benefits, no nothing, no nothing. Okay? ... So a State that does nothing hurts them much more, and yet your brief seems to say it's more likely to be justified under the Constitution."

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was equally dumbfounded by the line of reasoning that Equal Protection only need be applied to states where civil unions already existed by law.

"General Verrilli, I could understand your argument if you were talking about the entire United States, but you — your brief says it's only eight or nine States, the States that permit civil unions," Ginsberg responded. "So a State that has made considerable progress has to go all the way, but at least the Government's position is, if it has done --- the State has done absolutely nothing at all, then it's --- it can do --- do as it will."

As if baiting a hook, right wing Justice Antonin Scalia returned to the issue.

"You are asking us to impose this on the whole country, not just California," he said to Verrilli, who subsequently took the bait.

"No, respectfully Justice Scalia, we are not. Our position is narrower than that. Our position --- the position we have taken, is about States, it applies to States that have, like California and perhaps other States, that have granted these rights short of marriage."

He then continued the same line in respones to Justice Roberts: "We are not --- we are not taking the position that it is required throughout the country. We think that that ought to be left open for a future adjudication in other States that don't have the situation California has."

In the DOMA case, the following day, the Solicitor General made a similarly weak case.

"What Section 3 [of DOMA] does," Verrilli argued in Windsor, "is exclude an array of Federal benefits to lawfully married couples. That means that the spouse of a soldier killed in the line of duty cannot receive the dignity and solace of an official notification of next of kin."

The example triggered this colloquy, this time with the right wing Justice Samuel Alito and then Scalia again:

JUSTICE ALITO: Can I take you back to the example that you began with, where a member of the military is injured. So let's say three soldiers are injured and they are all in same-sex relationships, and in each instance the other partner in this relationship wants to visit the soldier in a hospital. First is a spouse in a State that allows same-sex marriage, the second is a domestic partner in a State that allows that but not same-sex marriage, the third is in an equally committed loving relationship in a State that doesn't involve either. Now, your argument is that under Federal law the first would be admitted, should be admitted, but the other two would be kept out?

GENERAL VERRILLI: The question in the case, Justice Alito, is whether Congress has a sufficiently persuasive justification for the exclusion that it has imposed...

JUSTICE ALITO:...Your...position seems to me, yes, one gets in, two stay out, even though your legal arguments would lead to the conclusion that they all should be treated the same.

GENERAL VERRILLI:...This is a different kind of a situation because the discrimination here is being visited on a group that has historically been subject to terrible discrimination on the basis of personal -­-

JUSTICE SCALIA: But that's — that's the same in the example that we just gave you, that discrimination would have been visited on the same group, and you say there it's okay.

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, I didn't say that. I said it would be subject to equal protection analysis certainly, and there might be a problem.

It boggles the mind how any experienced attorney --- much less the Solictor General of the United States --- would go to such lengths to evade the logical conclusion of his heightened scrutiny position as applied to all members of the LGBT community. It would have been an easy matter for Verrilli, in Windsor, to present the same basic position that Olson so consistently presented in Hollingsworth, to wit: Yes, Your Honor, the government takes the position that there would be an Equal Protection violation in all instances, but this Court need not reach that issue as this case entails a denial of benefits to someone who had taken part in a state-sanctioned, same-sex marriage.

Flip-Flopping on Federalism

In this instance, it would be charitable to describe the Solicitor General's performance during oral arguments on the DOMA case in Windsor as dismal!

Before I explain why, let's take a look at what was said.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Suppose your — you agree that Congress could go the other way, right? Congress could pass a new law today that says, We will give Federal benefits. When we say "marriage" in Federal law, we mean committed same-sex couples as well, and that could apply across the board. Or do you think that they couldn't do that?

GENERAL VERRILLI: We think that wouldn't raise an equal protection problem like this statute does, Mr. Chief Justice.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, no, my point is: It wouldn't — you don't think it would raise a federalism problem either, do you?

GENERAL VERRILLI: I don't think it would raise a federalism problem.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: You think Congress can use its powers to supersede the traditional authority and prerogative of the States to regulate marriage in all respects? Congress could have a uniform definition of marriage that includes age, consanguinity, etc., etc.?

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, I'm not saying that, Your Honor. I think if Congress passed such a statute, then we would have to consider how to defend it. But that's not --

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, but then there is a federalism interest at stake here, and I thought you told the Chief Justice there was not.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, with respect to Section 3 of DOMA, the problem is an equal protection problem from the point of view of the United States.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Yes, but, General, surely the question of what the Federal interests are and whether those Federal interests should take account of the historic State prerogatives in this area is relevant to the equal protection inquiry?

GENERAL VERRILLI: It's central to the inquiry, Justice Kagan. I completely agree with that point.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Oh, so it would be central to the inquiry if Congress went the other way, too?

It should be kept in mind that, prior to the Solicitor General's participation in the Windsor oral arguments, there was every indication that five of the Court's nine Justices were leaning towards the conclusion that, in confining the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman, Congress had unlawfully intruded upon the Federalism rights of those states which had recognized the validity of same-sex marriage.

For example, where attorney Paul D. Clement --- who was essentially representing the House GOP leadership --- argued that DOMA merely provided consistency with respect to who receives federal benefits, Justice Kennedy observed that DOMA applies to more than 1,100 Federal laws. That "means," Justice Kennedy added, "that the Federal Government is intertwined with the citizens' day-to-day life, you are at --- at real risk of running conflict with what has always been thought to be the essence of state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody." To that, Justice Ginsberg added that, in passing DOMA, Congress "was really diminishing what the State said is marriage." DOMA creates "two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage," she memorably offered.

Perhaps if Verrilli were not so singularly focused on his Equal Protection argument, he would have understood that federalism provided an alternative means for obtaining the result the Obama administration was seeking --- a Supreme Court determination that DOMA was unconstitutional. Instead, when Chief Justice Roberts baited his hook with a benevolent form of DOMA that included a federal recognition of same-sex marriage, the Solicitor General bit down so hard and then flipped back-and-forth over the federalism question so swiftly that he took on the appearance of a newly caught fish out-of-water.

The correct answer to the Chief Justice's question was that Congress could lawfully mandate that federal benefits be provided to all couples who are recognized as lawfully married under state law, including same-sex married couples, but Congress cannot dictate to any state whether or not they recognize same-sex marriage as lawful. States could only be compelled to recognize same-sex marriage as lawful if the Court ruled on the basis of the Constitutional Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment, as it did in Loving with respect to interracial marriage, that no state may deny the right to marry on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Solicitor General's initial concession that there would be "no federalism problem" was astoundingly stupid. Given the high level of official duties of the office of U.S. Solicitor General, the President would do well to ask Verrilli to step down. He should be replaced by someone of the same legal stature as his predecessor, Justice Elana Kagan.

If the Administration receives favorable rulings in either or both of these two cases, it will be, as was the case with "ObamaCare", despite the arguments presented by its own Solicitor General, not because of them.

* * *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 2004, in one of our earliest posts on this site (our 15th, in fact) we declared "gay marriage" to be a "done deal".

Six years later, in late 2010, after a number of good court decisions in the week or two prior, largely in regard the military's now-defunct discriminatory "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, we wrote:

The good news is: the haters have lost. The question which played such an enormous --- if entirely trumped up --- role in our Presidential elections just 6 years ago has been all but finally settled.

Well before the end of this decade (and likely far sooner than that, perhaps even before the end of Obama's first term in office), marriage equality for gays and lesbians will be recognized in every state in the union, and homosexuals will be as welcome in our nation's military as African-Americans.

It's over. The good guys have won. In these quiet victories of rights over wrongs, we can all take some quiet comfort, even in these maddening, ugly days.

The bad guys may not have come to terms with it yet, they may not have even noticed yet, but they have lost.

Well, as of this week, it looks like "the bad guys" finally have noticed and are in the process of coming to terms with it...

On Tuesday, Bill O'Reilly, long a foe of marriage equality, finally admitted on his own show that "The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That's where the compelling argument is. 'We're Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.'"

"That’s a compelling argument.," he reiterated. "And to deny that, you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible."

Without reminding his viewers about his previous position, he declared, "The gay marriage thing, I don’t feel that strongly about it one way or the other. I think the states should do it. ... New York has it now. I live in New York, New York has it, I'm fine with it. I want all Americans to be happy, I do."

Well, good for him for finally being right, even if he has too outsized of an ego to admit how long he's been wrong.

But the deal was finally done on Thursday, when Rush Limbaugh, the national arbiter of Republicanism, finally saw the writing on the wall...

Right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh threw up the white flag on Thursday, conceding that no matter how the Supreme Court rules on Proposition 8 or the Defense of Marriage Act, both of which it considered this week, gay marriage "is now inevitable."

"This issue is lost," he proclaimed. "I don't care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable."

Limbaugh went on to say that the inevitability of marriage equality was only "because we lost the language on this." So he's still got a bit of denial to deal with. But, nonetheless, even El Rushbo now concedes that rights --- and the Constitution --- have won, and he has lost in his fight against both, yet again.

 

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Scotland has a message for Donald Trump's hot air on wind farms; The IMF has a message for the oil industry (and they're not gonna like it); PLUS: A whole lotta frackin' going on --- from PA to CA, new revelations --- and earthquakes --- crack the fracking industry's facade ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iceland baffled by Chinese tycoon's Arctic golf resort; How US can shift from oil & gas; Iraqi oil now mostly China’s; Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya; Republican mayor leads CA city to nation's first solar energy mandate; Water wars: NM farmers vs. fossil fuel industry; Another bleak drought season for U.S.; Red states use more energy than blue states; UK's record weather extremes linked to Arctic sea ice loss; White House supports relaxing nuke rules; Rat poison manufacturer fights EPA ban ... PLUS: "You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice." ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• Scotland Defies Donald Trump Over Offshore Wind Farm:
• Scotland to Donald Trump: Drop dead. Offshore wind farm green-lit (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  Mr. Trump claimed that it would ruin the view from one of his golf course projects, and that (and I quote): "the reckless installation of these monsters [...] will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history" and that the wind farm would cause the "destruction of Scotland's coastline". No hyperbole there...
• VIDEO: Furious Trump Vows to Halt Offshore Wind Farm (STVNews)
• Scotland v. Trump: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump: Billionaire property magnate attacks decision to build experimental offshore windfarm near his golf course as 'purely political' (Guardian UK)
• Wind Power In The UK And Ireland: Growing, Reliable And Making Donald Trump’s Hair Stand Up (Climate Progress)
• IMF Calls On Govt's to End 'Distorting' Fossil Fuel Subsidies:
• IMF: Want to fight climate change? Get rid of $1.9 trillion in energy subsidies. (Washington Post)
• VIDEO: Energy Subsidy Reform--Lesson and Implications (IMF.org)
• Report: IMF Policy Advice - Reforming Energy Subsidies (IMF.org):
  Subsidies are expensive for governments—and therefore taxpayers—to finance and can hinder governments’ efforts to reduce budget deficits. They also compete with other priority public spending on roads, schools, and healthcare.... Subsidies encourage excessive energy consumption, which accelerates the depletion of natural resources. They also reduce the incentive for investment in other forms of cleaner energy.
• POLL: Over 70% of Americans Support Renewables Over Fossil Fuels: (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  Roughly three-quarters of U.S. residents want the country to boost emphasis on wind and solar power production, making the fuels much more popular than coal, nuclear and oil, a new poll shows.
• Whole Lotta Fracking Goin' On:
• PA: A Clash in Pennsylvania Over Fracking and Water Tests (NYT Green)
• Range Resources Paid $750,000 in Fracking Contamination Settlement (Businessweek)
• Former Pa. Gov. Rendell pressed EPA in Range pollution case, emails show (E & E News)
• Ed Rendell (D) Intervened For Oil Company to Stop EPA Contamination Case Against Range Resources (DeSmogBlog)
• Ed Rendell’s Plea for Fracking Fails to Disclose Industry Ties (Pro Publica)
• PA: In the fracking fields, a fight over who regulates (APM Marketplace)
• EPA to Range Resources: Drill Away (State Impact Texas)
• Judge Sides with Wyoming in Fracking Chemical Suit (TIME Eco-centric blog):
  A judge in Casper has sided with the state of Wyoming and ruled against environmentalists who sought to make public the lists of ingredients that go into hydraulic fracturing fluids.
• Range Resources accused of bully tactics against fracking foes (Delaware Online)
• Fracking Caused OK Earthquake, But Regulators Ignore Data:
• Different Kind Of Boom: Replacing Extracted Oil And Gas With Toxic Wastewater Causes Earthquakes (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  It’s becoming increasingly clear that oil and gas extraction processes are actually weakening the structural integrity of the Earth’s crust just enough to cause more frequent earthquakes, in places not used to them.
• 2011 Oklahoma Temblor: Wastewater Injection Spurred Biggest Earthquake Yet, Study Says (Science Daily) [emphasis added]:
  A new study in the journal Geology is the latest to tie a string of unusual earthquakes... to the injection of wastewater deep underground. Researchers now say that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake near Prague, Okla., on Nov. 6, 2011... the biggest ever recorded in Oklahoma--destroyed 14 homes, buckled a federal highway and left two people injured. Small earthquakes continue to be recorded in the area.
• States deciding not to look at seismic risks of drilling (E & E News):
  Nine months after a National Academy of Sciences panel said oil and gas regulators should take steps to prevent man-made earthquakes, officials in key states are ignoring quake potential as they rewrite their drilling rules.
• ANALYSIS: To frack or not to frack? The shale gas development controversy (SkepticalScience.com)

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

• You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice.: Part 1. (Climate Crocks):





• U.S. Energy Shift: Life After Oil and Gas (NY Times):
  [Increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really “need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?
• Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s (McClatchy DC)
• Red States Are Less Energy-Efficient Than Blue Ones: Another Partisan Divide? (Green Tech Media)
• Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya (AlertNet):
  Solar power, increasingly available in this part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, made it considerably easier for many Kenyans to exercise their democratic rights this election season. Clean energy lit polling stations open late into the evening in some places; in others it lit community centres used to provide civil education programmes in the lead-up to the elections or ran biometric voter registration centres.
• Republican Mayor Leads City To First-Ever Solar Energy Mandate: Lancaster, CA becomes first in nation to mandate solar panels on all new construction (Climate Progress)
• Water Wars: New Mexico Farmers Seek ‘Priority Call’ [Against Fossil Fuel Industry] as Drought Persists (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  “They’re not going to cut out the dairy industry,” he added. “They’re not going to cut off the oil and gas industry, because that’s economic development. So we’re left with a dilemma — the New Mexico water dilemma.”
• White House Supports Rollback of Cleanup Standards for Nuclear Incidents (Global Security Newswire):
  The White House has endorsed a plan to relax long-held standards for cleaning up radioactive material released by a nuclear power plant disaster or act of terrorism, a group of federal officials say in a new draft report.
• With Drought Season Off to a Bad Start, Scientists Forecast Another Bleak Year (Inside Climate News):
  Current climate-induced drought is slipping into a trend that scientists say resembles some of the worst droughts in U.S. history, like the Dust Bowl
• Manufacturer of d-CON rat poison fights EPA ban (McClatchy DC):
  The manufacturer of d-CON, a widely sold and popular brand of rat poison, is taking the rare step of challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to prohibit the over-the-counter sale of one of the nastiest and most effective of the poisons sold to consumers. Most of the 30 manufactures that make such products agreed to the ban...
• Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss: Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold (Guardian UK)
• Teeing Off at Edge of the Arctic? A Chinese Plan Baffles Iceland (NY Times):
  Prodded by diplomats from the United States and other countries to take a hard look at Mr. Huang’s intentions, Mr. Jonasson questioned what might lie behind China’s curious interest in Grimsstadir. “One has to look at this from a geopolitical perspective and ask about motivations,” Mr. Jonasson said.
• In Hot Water: Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the ‘missing heat’ Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.
• Chris Christie Has 'No Sympathy' For Beach Dune Opposition In Wake Of Superstorm Sandy (Huffington Post Green) [emphasis added]:
  "I'm not going to put up with people who say their view of the Atlantic Ocean is more important than the lives and the property of their neighbors," the governor told residents of Middlesex, N.J., according to The Star-Ledger.
• How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  [I]f the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
• NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• 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)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• 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. ...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)
• 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 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

It's been a big gay week at the U.S. Supreme Court! So it seemed time to call on my friend Mike Rogers of RawStory.com to join me on the KPFK BradCast to talk about it all.

Rogers has joined me over the years for various 'Big Gay Hours' on the radio --- going all the way back to the darkest anti-gay years of 2004 and 2005 when the campaign against marriage equality had first been weaponized by the Republican Party. So it is with some joy that we were able to mark the extraordinary victories, and speed with which they have happened, for the gay community, as well as for those of us in the constitutional conservative community who believe in things like Equal Protection under the Law, etc.

We discussed both the CA Prop 8 and DOMA hearings this week at SCOTUS, how we all got here, and what has become of some of those closeted gay politicians who fought against gay rights and inspired Rogers to become an investigative blogger, open his old BlogActive.com site and begin reporting (and outing) the hypocrites standing in the way of equality for all. His work, outing folks such as Sen. Larry Craig and others, eventually helped to inspire Kirby Dick's 2009 documentary Outrage (in which he is featured).

We played and discussed some of the clips from this week's hearings, including some of the shameful performances from Justice Antonin "Just Makin' Shit Up Again" Scalia, Prop 8 proponent attorney Charles Cooper and the Obama Administration's horrible Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

I also covered a bit of the mysterious Florida Election cyberhack story out of Miami-Dade (and a new clue to the mystery), and Desi Doyen joined me to have a laugh at the Tennessee "conservatives" who've suddenly found an amusing reason to finally give a damn about mountaintop removal mining, and for the latest Green News Report...

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

A week or two ago, after seeing Attorney General Eric Holder, in Senate testimony, pretend that he was "concerned" about a lack of prosecution of big banks due to their being too large, I described his claims, in a bit of a rant here as "complete bullshit".

Over the weekend, I spoke (via a very bad web cam) to Mike Papantonio on Ring of Fire about that very issue...

 

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Water wars in the U.S.; Bad year for butterflies; ExxonMobil fined (barely) for Yellowstone River pipeline spill; Russia stockpiles snow for the 2014 Winter Olympics; PLUS: Apple computers goes renewable ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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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): World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find Oil Super Fast; Ocean warming has accelerated in past 15 years; Scientists work to create fuel from CO2; Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss; Fracking companies win WY disclosure suit; IG: DOE mismanaged stimulus-backed climate program; Peru declares environmental state of emergency; Canada must leave tar sands in the ground: study ... PLUS: Trump trumped: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

• Limbaugh Lies: Scientists Who Accept Global Warming Consensus Are "Political Advocates" Spreading "Misinformation" (Media Matters)
• Water Wars in the US: Georgia Annexes Tennessee?!?:
• Georgia Senate Passes Measure To Move State Line, Claim Tennessee Water (TPM)
• Senate Adds Threat to Tennessee River Bill (Atlanta Journal-Constitution):
  The state Senate added a threat Monday to a measure trying to settle Georgia’s dispute over its boundary with Tennessee: It would take the Volunteer State to court if it did not agree to give Georgia a sliver of land on the Tennessee River... Georgia’s disputed claim to the river dates to 1818.
• Georgia Senate passes resolution to move state line, claim Tennessee River water (Times Free-Press)
• High court grants Georgia water-wars victory (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/25/2012)
• Bad News for Butterflies:
• Monarch Butterflies Hit New Low; "Worrisome" Trend: The insects found in only about three acres of habitat, report says. (National Geographic)
• VIDEO: Flight of the Butterflies PSA (Monarch Watch, Univ. of Kansas)
• Butterflies suffer devastating year after UK's record wet summer: Scientists say it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans (Guardian UK)
• ExxonMobil Fined $1.7m for Yellowstone River Spill:
• Yellowstone Oil Spill: Regulators Propose Penalty For Exxon Pipeline Rupture In Montana River (Huffington Post Green):
  U.S. Department of Transportation regulators alleged a chain of bad decisions by Exxon leading up to the spill and in its immediate aftermath. That included Exxon employees' failure to close an upstream safety valve, which could have significantly reduced the size of the spill after it was first detected. As a result, the agency said, oil continued gushing into the flooding river for almost an hour after the break was noticed by pipeline controllers in Houston. The agency also faulted the company for not addressing flood risks and not taking adequate measures to prevent a spill.
• Canada: Ontario municipalities raise oil spill concerns on Enbridge pipeline reversal (Ottawa Citzen):
• Good News: Apple Computers Achieve 75% Renewable Energy Worldwide:
  • Apple Says Data Centers Now Use 100% Renewable Energy (Bloomberg News):
    The company’s data centers now run on energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal, instead of coal or other fossil fuels, Apple said on its website. The centers house server computers that store and distribute songs, applications and other content from services such as iTunes, iMessage and iCloud.
  • Apple Adapts Quickly to a Coal-Free Future (Triple Pundit)
  • Apple defends green credentials of cloud computing services: Greenpeace report named Apple among worst offenders for using highly polluting coal to power their data centres (Guardian UK, 4/17/2012)

• Sochi Stockpiles Snow for Winter Olympics:
• Sochi Organizers Are Stockpiling Snow, Just in Case (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Up to half of the saved snow may melt by next winter, but the site managers said they could conduct the Olympics even in the unlikely event that no natural snow falls next winter. The stockpiled snow can be shoved down the mountain with Sno-Cats or guided onto steep slides — pipes, a meter in diameter, cut in half — aimed at where the snow is most needed.

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

• World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find Oil Super Fast (Climate Progress)
• Scotland v. Trump: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump: Billionaire property magnate attacks decision to build experimental offshore windfarm near his golf course as 'purely political' (Guardian UK)
• In Hot Water: Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the ‘missing heat’ Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.
• Discovery May Allow Scientists to Make Fuel from Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere (Science Daily):
  "Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do-absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
• Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss: Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold (Guardian UK)
• A thousand soldiers sent to protect elephants after marauding elephant poachers [warning: graphic photos] (Monga Bay)
• Judge Sides with Wyoming in Fracking Chemical Suit (TIME Eco-centric blog):
  A judge in Casper has sided with the state of Wyoming and ruled against environmentalists who sought to make public the lists of ingredients that go into hydraulic fracturing fluids.
• President Obama Designates Five New National Monuments (White House.gov)
• Analysis: Obama's climate agenda may face setbacks in federal court (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  President Barack Obama's plan to use federal agencies, and the Environmental Protection Agency in particular, to drive his second-term climate change agenda might be in peril if he cannot fill vacant seats on the federal court that has jurisdiction over major national regulations, legal experts say.
• DOE IG Report: Energy Dept. mismanaged stimulus-backed climate program (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  The audit notes three project recipients together received $90 million even though reviews of the proposals “identified significant financial and/or technical issues.”
• Peru declares environmental state of emergency in its rainforest: Peru's government reports high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petroleum-related compounds in region that is home to oil field (Guardian UK)
• Chris Christie Has 'No Sympathy' For Beach Dune Opposition In Wake Of Superstorm Sandy (Huffington Post Green) [emphasis added]:
  "I'm not going to put up with people who say their view of the Atlantic Ocean is more important than the lives and the property of their neighbors," the governor told residents of Middlesex, N.J., according to The Star-Ledger.
• Green groups, billionaire threaten primaries against pro-Keystone Dems (The Hill's e2 Wire)
• Canada: Fossil fuel divestment necessary in order to avoid "carbon bubble": study (Canada Newswire) [emphasis added]:
  Canada's economy is experiencing a "carbon bubble" that could have significant consequences for Canada's financial markets and pension funds, according to a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.... Between 2/3rds and 4/5ths of known fossil fuel reserves have been deemed to be "unburnable carbon" that cannot safely be combusted without leading to catastrophic climate change.
• Texas Retailer Says “No” to Genetically Engineered Salmon (Prevention Magazine)
• Guatemalan Mayan Community Seeks International Help for Protection (Indian Country Today):
  The Maya Q’eqchi Agua Caliente community of Guatemala, some of whose members have been killed, threatened and tortured while trying to defend their territory from a mining company, sent a delegation to Washington D.C. in early March looking for allies and further protections in their ongoing struggle.
• Cities Weigh Taking Over From Private Utilities (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Roughly 70 percent of the nation’s homes are powered through private, investor-owned utilities, which are allowed to earn a set profit on their investments, normally through the rates they charge customers.
  ...
  According to data from the federal Energy Information Administration, municipal utilities over all offer cheaper residential electricity than private ones — not including electric cooperatives, federal utilities or power marketers — a difference that holds true in 32 of the 48 states where both exist.
• How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  [I]f the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
• NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• 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)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• 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. ...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)
• 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 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)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

One month ago, The Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei unleashed an excellent investigative report on an attempted series of online cyberhacks of absentee ballot requests prior to last August's primary election in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Mazzei's article describes the mysterious attempt by someone to request more than 2,500 absentee ballots for elections in three different Miami-Dade districts using anonymous proxy Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from foreign countries to hide the real identity of the requester. A grand jury looked into the matter [PDF] of the "phantom" requests, but was hamstrung by the fact that they were not told --- the article says it was due to administrative confusion --- that the initial IP addresses used to make the absentee ballot requests were actually not from overseas, but local to Miami-Dade. Had prosecutors had that information, they might have been able to zero in on the culprits, rather than close the investigation late last year without identifying a suspect.

The case has now reportedly been reopened, but the length of time since the initial event may have allowed the trail run cold. Hopefully we will find out soon.

Last week, the story suddenly received a lot of fresh attention after it was picked up by NBC News' Gil Aegerter who describes what happened as the "first known case" of such a cyberattack on a U.S. election.

Setting aside, for now, the point as to whether this is the first such attack --- I've reported quite a bit of evidence of several others over the years (the NBC report links to a number of stories I've broken on these matters, including one of my stories at ComputerWorld in 2007 describing a malicious virus that struck Sarasota's contested 2006 Special Election for the U.S. House where some 18,000 votes ultimately disappeared from the touch-screen voting machines) --- there are a few key points and lessons from this story which I'd like to underscore, despite the fact that the mainstream corporate coverage has been pretty decent here for a change.

Additionally, one of several key remaining mysteries in the story --- one that I've been trying to make sense over the past several weeks, since learning of the story --- may now have an answer, or at least a new and troubling clue...

Potential Clue to One of the Story's Central Mysteries

Aside from the identity of the failed "bad guy(s)" here, and why the prosecutors weren't originally notified about the Miami-Dade IP addresses in the first place, there has been another major "unknown" in the story originally headlined by The Miami Herald as "The case of the phantom ballots: an electoral whodunit".

That "unknown" has been how the scheme was supposed to have affected the elections in question, had it not been discovered and stopped. Since the absentee ballot requests were made on behalf of "infrequent voters" (who would otherwise be unlikely to show up to vote in person), and scheduled to be sent to their normal address where they are registered, how would anybody then be able to use those ballots to game the elections with fraudulent votes?

"It doesn’t make any sense to me why someone would do that, because you’d still need the person to [vote for you]," said one of the NJ-based consultants for two of the candidates (brothers) involved in two of the races.

"Had the requests been filled," Miami Herad's Mazzei goes on to suggest, "short of stealing the ballots from mailboxes, the campaigns would have been able to flood the targeted voters with phone calls, fliers and home visits to try to sway their vote."

"Persuade enough of them," she suggests, "and you might flip the race."

But that seems a fairly sloggy way to try and have an effect on election results. On Friday, BlackBoxVoting.org's Bev Harris offers up a more reasonable (and disturbing) scheme which could have been planned here, had the operation not been interrupted before it fully played out.

She points out that the printing and mailing of absentee ballots is generally jobbed out to third-party contractors by elections officials. The third-parties are given the database of voters who have requested absentee ballots and then they take care of the job from there. Often, the company hired for this job is publicly known and vetted, but that contractor sometimes then hires yet another outfit to do the actual work of printing ballot envelopes and mailing them out to voters.

"If you have a few thousand strategically targeted extra ballots that you know are bogus, and you reroute the database to an off-the-public-record consultant during the print & mail phase, you can deliver those ballots anywhere you want," Harris writes. "They can all be sent to the same address; no one would know."

"I'm not sure what vendor Miami-Dade County is using to print and mail ballots; some Florida counties use Runbeck, out of Arizona by way of Tampa. But regardless of who they use, it isn't the Miami-Dade elections people who actually do the mailing. Whoever does the print & mail phase has both the absentee request database and total control over where absentee ballots go."

The scheme, as Harris envisions it then, would require a "bad guy" to make the absentee ballot requests and an accomplice either at the final print and mail outfit --- or somewhere else along the chain of custody of the absentee ballot database --- to change the addresses where those illegitimately requested ballots were to be sent. As prosecutors are said to be looking into this case again, they may want to ask some questions to whoever might have receive access to that absentee ballot request database.

See the BBV article for a bit more background on some of the shady players who can be found in the absentee ballot print and mailing business, as well as a few more details on potential suspects in the FL case revealed by common threads between the three elections in question.

The several other points that I wanted to flag here are as follows:

Vote-by-Mail is a Terrible Idea

• We have long decried the many perils of absentee balloting and Vote-by-Mail (VBM) elections. This latest FL hack points out just another reason why VBM is always troubling and, far and away, the most frequent place where ballot fraud is known to occur. Republicans love to suggest that (Democratic) voters are committing fraud by misrepresenting themselves at the polling place --- thus, draconian, disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions are needed, they pretend. But they know they are lying. That type of fraud is incredibly rare. They know that most of this type of chicanery, where it exists, is done via absentee balloting, which polling place Photo ID restrictions that Republicans are pushing in state after state, does absolutely nothing to deter.

Adding in the points raised by Harris about how absentee ballot databases are often processed outside of public oversight, and you've got another reason to be concerned. Such ballots, she notes, "need never be mailed at all," if a bad operator decides to game an election in this way.

You Call That a 'Safeguard'?!

• The Miami Herald story offered one disturbing revelation that I haven't seen commented upon elsewhere. Moreover, it's reported as a "feature", as opposed to a "bug" in the Miami-Dade online absentee ballot request system.

"There are other safeguards, too," Mazzei notes in describing how the attack was stymied when the software flagged the suspicious activity as coming from several single IP addresses. "When a voter submits an absentee request online, Miami-Dade doesn’t automatically send a ballot. The request is reviewed by an elections department staffer, who must manually sign off on sending it."

That is considered a "safeguard"?! I'd consider that very troubling, frankly. It means that one election official can determine whether or not any number of voters actually receive the absentee ballot they've requested. It sounds like a great way for a "bad guy" election insider to suppress the votes of just about anybody they may choose.

The Most Disturbing Aspect: The Menace of Internet Voting

• The real message in this story is not about the perils of online registration and absentee ballot requests systems, even though that has, understandably, been at the center of most of the coverage. The real message here is about the dangers of using the Internet for voting! The push for online voting has, insanely, been increasing over the past year or so. We've taken to describing it as the Internet Voting Virus as it spreads to places like California, where even Democrats are ignoring virtually every world-class computer science and security expert in order to push for this horrible idea.

In the NBC report, a number of the experts we've turned to over the years in our own stories and interviews here are quoted trying to offer those same warnings again, in the wake of what happened in the case of the failed online absentee ballot requests.

J. Alex Halderman, the University of MI computer science professor behind the successful remote hack of a mock Internet Voting system, which had been set to be used in a real election in Washington D.C. the following month in 2010, and the hack of a touch-screen voting machine that turned it, literally, into a game of Pac Man, tries to warn that the failed cyberattack in Florida was just the tip of the iceberg.

He explained to NBC's Aegerter that "an attack somewhat more sophisticated than the one in Florida, completely within the norm for computer fraud these days, would likely be able to circumvent the checks."

David Jefferson of Livermore National Laboratory, and a member of the Board of Directors at Verified Voting, once again warns, as he has many times here in the past, that the security of electronic voting and registration systems currently in use, as well as the insane schemes currently being used and planned for Internet Voting, are serious threats to national security. "The legitimacy of government depends on it being impossible for single parties to change the results of elections," he told Aegerter.

"Whoever did this is clearly capable of engaging in online registration fraud (in states such as Maryland and Washington with weak authentication)," Jefferson told me via email some weeks ago, "or online vote fraud."

Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, warns about the perils of Internet Voting in the NBC story as well. "The overwhelming consensus of the computer science community is don’t do it, it’s a bad idea,"

And, finally, Cleveland State University's Election Integrity expert and law professor Candice Hoke cut right to the chase, warning that while politicians may see Internet Voting as a way to increase turnout for their voters and election officials may see such schemes as a way to save money on polling sites, ballot printing costs and manual labor, the real costs to democracy ultimately outweigh everything else.

"It’s cheap," she said, "if you don’t care whether elections are stolen."

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

Looking at this article here will show you the NRA Grades for senators all over the United States.

Huffington Post- March 22, 2013

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association came under fire late Thursday from members of a gun-control advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., after reports surfaced of Newtown residents receiving robocalls and pro-gun postcards from the NRA.

The advocacy group, the Newtown Action Alliance, posted a Facebook message Thursday about the calls, prompting responses from people who said they’d received communications from the NRA and were upset by them.

“I received one of these,” Newtown resident Christopher Wenis wrote on Facebook Thursday afternoon. “I was insulted and offended.” Wenis told The Huffington Post in an interview Friday night that in the 36 hours since he first posted his response, he received two more robocalls from the NRA, one later on Thursday night and one on Friday evening.

“I’ve got a 5-year-old son who went to preschool on the Sandy Hook Elementary School campus,” Wenis explained. “And this was a really hard week for me on a lot of levels. These calls were the very last thing I needed.”

More-

NBC News- March 23, 2013

By Becky Bratu

A $12 million television ad campaign paid for by Mayors Against Illegal Guns hopes to push gun control efforts including comprehensive background checks.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the group’s co-chair, announced the ad buy Saturday. The New York Times reported Bloomberg is financing the campaign.

“I don’t think there’s ever been an issue where the public has spoken so clearly, where Congress hasn’t eventually understood and done the right thing,” Bloomberg told NBC News’ David Gregory in an interview that will be broadcast Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

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New Orleans Times-Picayune- March 21, 2013

By Claire Galofaro

An Orleans Parish judge on Thursday ruled that the state statute forbidding certain felons from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, in the wake of a constitutional amendment passed last year that made the right to bear arms a fundamental one in Louisiana. The issue will now go straight to the state Supreme Court, which must decide whether the statute infringes on Louisiana citizens’ now-enhanced right to gun possession. 

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Darryl Derbigny on Thursday dismissed the charge against one felon, but took his decision a step further than another judge faced with a similar decision earlier this month.

Derbigny ruled that the entire statute — RS 14:95.1 — was unconstitutional after voters last year approved by a sweeping majority a constitutional amendment backed by the National Rifle Association. That bill made gun ownership a “fundamental right,” on the same level as freedom of speech or religion.

A court interpreting any law restricting a fundamental right — as gun ownership is now considered — must approach it with “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

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Public Policy Polling- January 30, 2013

Texas voters don’t like Barack Obama. 47% of voters approve of him to 51% who disapprove. 39% of them, including 67% of Republicans, would like to see him impeached from office.

Texas voters do like the NRA. 46% view it favorably to 40% with an unfavorable opinion. 47% of voters support its proposal to put armed police officers in every school in the country, to 39% who oppose it. Even 41% of Democrats support that initiative.

Overall on the issue of guns Texans say they trust the NRA over President Obama by a 47/43 margin.

And despite all of that 49% of Texas voters support an assault weapons ban to just 41% opposed to it. Most Democrats support it, independents favor it by a 53/34 margin, and even among Republicans 23% support it. We’ve found support for the assault weapons ban everywhere we’ve polled it, but it’s particularly striking to see that voters favor it in a pro-gun, anti-Obama state like Texas.

10 years into his time in the US Senate, John Cornyn is still a blank slate to a surprisingly large percentage of Texas voters. They’re closely divided on his job performance with 34% of voters approving of him and 36% disapproving, with 30% not having an opinion either way.

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NBC News-

By Matthew DeLuca

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed landmark new gun laws on Wednesday expanding background checks on gun purchases and limiting the size of ammunition magazines, placing the traditionally firearm-friendly state among the handful to pass new restrictions in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The Democratic governor defended the legislation in a press conference on Wednesday. Hickenlooper said he had found widespread support among state residents for broadening background checks, and dismissed the idea that politicians had been pressured from outside the state.

“This didn’t come from the White House,” Hickenlooper said.

Hickenlooper’s signature came the day after the head of Colorado’s Department of Corrections, Tom Clements, was shot and killed in his home, apparently after he answered a ring at his front door, authorities said.

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