(On deadline for a number of feature articles, but haven't been able to pull my eyes away from the mine rescue! Well, that and the silly Coons/O'Donnell debate. Too many shiny objects! But at least this one finally had a happy ending! --- The mine disaster, not necessarily the Coons/O'Donnell debate.)

If American politics and political discourse is going to devolve into little more than a bad Disney cartoon --- and it has, as this election season demonstrates in spades --- why not just cut out the middle man and cut straight to the cartoon chase?

Our thanks to Stephen C. Webster at RAW STORY for drawing our attention to the latest escalation in the Glen Beck Toon Wars (so far, a one-sided war, in truth).

The first volley was the "duckin' brilliant" remix of Donald Duck cartoons by Jonathan McIntosh of Rebellious Pixels --- wherein our hero is driven daffy by the paranoid tea bagger rantings of the Fox "News" superstar.

In response, Fox' finest fantasist has seemingly become convinced the whole thing is a Big Government conspiracy out to get him. "Some of these remix videos, I believe, get federal funding," declared Beck on his radio show last week. "We're looking into the funding of this gentleman, and the incredible propaganda against me," he said. "We'll find out if it's been federally funded, ya know, as part of the stimulus package."

Well, apparently Mickey Mouse isn't taking Beck's latest goofy conspiracy theory lying down, as YouTube poster "ikat381" helped us to learn over the weekend...

Keep it comin', Glenn! We're lovin' these toons! So, we'd be outraged if we were you!

If you missed McIntosh's brilliant original, here it is again. It's as smart a take on (and reflection of) today's political environment as anything else we're likely to see, at least until the elections are far behind us. So sit back and enjoy it...

Just in. Yet another in the recent string of victories for (real) conservative values and the U.S. Constitution...

More details in the full AP story.

The order follows a successful lawsuit by the Log Cabin Republicans in which Judge Phillips found the military's policy --- which President Obama has chosen not to end with an executive order as he could have --- to be unconstitutional on First Amendment free speech grounds and a violation of the due process rights of gay and lesbian service members.

The decision also follows a string of other recent victories in federal courts for real conservative values, as confirmed by Republican-appointed judges, such as the U.S. District Court judge's finding this past August that California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection clause.

As we noted recently, while it often takes far too long in this nation, the good news is that, eventually, Constitutional rights win and the haters lose. Today's ruling underscores that hopeful point --- in an otherwise dark period in this nation's history --- once again.

UPDATE 4:08pm PT: 21 Democratic U.S. Senators have sent a letter to the Obama Administration asking them to not appeal Judge Phillips' order. There are no GOP Senators signed on to the letter despite the fact that it was a GOP group who won the decision in court. While, to be fair, we also don't know if the Dem Senators asked the Republicans to sign or not, the fact that all of them voted against a repeal of DADT (if it were to be approved by the U.S. military) in the recent Defense Authorization bill suggests that it's likely none of the Republican Senators would have done so anyway. The letter from the Democratic Senators is now posted here....

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Supreme Court EPA ruling; China and U.S. Replay ‘You First’ Climate Skit; Poll finds voters prefer new energy sources to conservation; "No Regrets" ... two critical words for climate change and energy policy; History of offshore drilling in the Gulf; DOE: Offshore wind could generate all U.S. electricity; Tech tools for cutting home energy costs; Kentucky Groups Sue for Clean Water Act Enforcement; 50k trees planted in 30 minutes by Indian volunteers on 10/10/10 ...PLUS: SunChips and Supercapitalism: Is building a quieter chip bag really the best use of our time and research money? ...

A University of Michigan computer scientist and his team were not the only ones attempting to hack the Internet Vote scheme that Washington D.C. had planned to roll out for actual use with military and overseas voters in this November's mid-term election.

According to testimony given to a D.C. City Council committee last Friday by J. Alex Halderman, asst. professor of electrical engineering and computer science at University of Michigan, hackers from Iran and China were also attempting to access the very same network infrastructure, even as his own team of students had successfully done so, taking over the entirety of the Internet Voting system which had been opened for a first-of-its-kind live test.

[See our report last week on details of what had already been disclosed about Halderman's startling hack prior to last Friday's hearing.]

"While we were in control of these systems we observed other attack attempts originating from computers in Iran and China," Halderman testified. "These attackers were attempting to guess the same master password that we did. And since it was only four letters long, they would likely have soon succeeded."

In his stunning public testimony --- before a single member of the D.C. Board of Ethics and Elections (BoEE), and a nearly empty chamber --- Halderman explained how the team had, by the time they discovered their fellow intruders, already gained complete control of the system, it's encryption key and its passwords. The system was developed as part of an Internet Voting pilot program with the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.

As The BRAD BLOG reported last week, Halderman's team was able to take over the system within 36 hours after it had gone live for testing. After having "found and exploited a vulnerability that gave [them] almost total control of the server software," his team was able to steal the encryption key needed to decode "secret" ballots; overwrite every single ballot cast on the test system; change the votes on those ballots to write-in candidates; discover who had already been voted for and the identities of the voters; install a script that would automatically change all votes cast in the future on the same system; install a backdoor to allow them to come back later; and then leave a "calling card" --- the University of Michigan fight song --- which was programmed to play in the voter's browser 15 seconds after each Internet ballot had been cast.

But the new disclosures offered before the committee on Friday, including the hack attempts by computers in China and Iran, may have been as explosive, if not more so, than the previous revelations. They certainly illustrate and underscore a grave national security threat present in electronic voting systems such as the one D.C. had planned to use, as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories computer scientist and cyber-security expert Dr. David Jefferson told me during an interview last Friday night on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show which I was guest hosting last week.

The hack of the system forced the D.C. election administrators to shut down their plans for the pilot program which was to have gone live in days, as encouraged and partially funded by the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which allocated millions of dollars for such Internet Voting pilot programs.

The revelations of the intrusion attempts from China and Iran, however, would not be the only new, previously unreported bombshells Halderman offered during his Friday testimony...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives...]

We're back tonight to close out the week, filling in as guest-host on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show, and it will be a helluva show (see details below!)

We'll be BradCasting LIVE, as usual, from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please you'll join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! The LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• LIZZ WINSTEAD, Comedy Central's The Daily Show co-creator and former Air America host joins us to dish dirt on the upcoming 10/30/10 Stewart/Colbert D.C. Rallies, backstage at 'The Daily,' our insane election season, and maybe even "what happened in Vegas"...
• DR. DAVID JEFFERSON, Livermore National Laboratories computer scientist and cyber security expert and VerifiedVoting.org's Internet Voting expert with NEW UNREPORTED BOMBSHELLS on the already breath-taking D.C. Internet Vote Hack that we learned about earlier this week. Seriously. NEW BOMBSHELLS. Ds, Rs and everyone else should tune in for this. For rils.
• JOHN WELLINGTON ENNIS on his new documentary, Pay 2 Play: Democracy's High Stakes covering the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United ruling and it's effect on "democracy."
• PLUS: News on Ann Coulter's voter fraud, how you think I should vote in November, and whatever else we all feel like covering from today's news with your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: The audio archives are all now posted below (and the chat room archives are posted below that, if your interested.) If you listen to nothing else, listen to the first hour, cuz it should rock the world of every American. Big time. (But the other hours were pretty good too, for completely different reasons). Enjoy!...

[Hat-tip to longtime BRAD BLOG toon sherpa Pokey Anderson]

Related... If you didn't hear my interview on last night's Mike Malloy Show with 70-year old Laird Monahan who, with his 67-year old brother are currently walking across the U.S. in order to highlight the Supreme Court's horrific Citizens United decision, unleashing unfettered, undisclosed (and often, even un-American) corporate money into U.S. elections, I'd highly recommend giving it a listen.

The Monahan Brothers, both Vietnam vets coincidentally, are American Heroes in my estimation, and their story should be told on not just every progressive media outlet in the nation, but more importantly, on the corporate mainstream media outlets who don't seem to want to offer much coverage to this story for some reason, as Laird and I discussed last night.

Click here to listen to listen to the interview with Laird. It's in the "HOUR 2" audio archive.

[Now UPDATED with audio archives...]

I'll be guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show tonight (and again tomorrow), and again we'll be BradCasting LIVE from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room, as ever, will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

• VAN JONES, Former White House adviser on green jobs initiatives, award-winning environmentalist and human rights advocate and now American Progress Senior Fellow, on where those WH initiatives and Congressional climate and clean energy legislation now stand (or don't) in D.C.
• LAIRD MONAHAN, who walked across the U.S. with his brother and fellow Vietnam vet Robin to spotlight concerns about the Supreme Court's horrific Citizens United ruling allowing unregulated (and undisclosed) corporate campaign dollars in U.S. elections.
• ALLEN ST. PIERRE, Executive Director of NORML, on California's Prop 19 which, if passed in November, would regulate and largely legalize the sale and possession of marijuana in the state.
• PLUS: The D.C. Internet Vote hack, Ann Coulter's voter fraud, James O'Keefe's latest con and whatever else we all feel like covering from today's news with your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Lots of good stuff on the show tonight, I think. You'll let me know, as usual. The audio archives are all now posted below (and the chat room archives are posted below that, if your interested.) Enjoy! I know I did!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hungarian sludge spill reaches Europe's 2nd largest river; 'Poo Power' in the UK; Possible answer to the mysterious honeybee deaths; Global Work Party on 10-10-10; PLUS: The Clean Air Act, cheaper than advertised ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Expert: Texas is getting hotter due to global warming; Scathing report on BP Oil Disaster from presidential commission; Safety systems worker testifies she did not immediately sound alarms on Macondo rig despite dire warnings; FTC Proposes Revised "Green Guides"; What is "corn plastic"?; Stolen restaurant grease symptom of biofuel craze; Climate talks struggle as China, U.S. face off; Sun's role in warming the planet may be overstated: study ...PLUS: Court rules rBGH-free milk *is* better than the kind produced with artificial hormones ...

Will Ann Coulter finally be held accountable for having committed voter fraud? We may find out on October 14th when the matter will come up at a public hearing by Connecticut's State Elections Commission after an extraordinarily long two-year delay since the complaints about her allegedly illegal absentee votes in 2002 and 2004 were filed.

As The BRAD BLOG spent years documenting beyond a shadow of a doubt concerning her voter registration fraud and voter fraud in a different state, Florida, Ann Coulter committed third degree felony voter registration fraud, along with a first degree voter fraud misdemeanor, when she lied about her residency and then knowingly voted at the wrong polling place in Palm Beach County, FL, in 2005.

Years of lying to the media, as well as election and law enforcement officials, and a last-minute, inappropriate intervention by a former boyfriend in the FBI, helped run out the clock on those charges. Her offenses in the Sunshine State were eventually found to be beyond the statute of limitations by the Florida State Election Commission (FSEC). The stalling by other friendly Florida agencies took so long that the FSEC didn't receive the case until years after it had been originally reported to law enforcement by the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections. So she got off the hook and was never held accountable for easily documented crimes in Florida. [After years of reporting that part of the story in pieces as it developed, we told the entire sordid tale in one fell swoop in Hustler magazine. That April 2008 exposé can be read in full here.]

However, in Connecticut, where official complaints were filed in 2009 --- by a conservative activist --- that she also committed absentee voter fraud in the years prior to moving to Florida, when she allegedly voted illegally from her residence in New York, there is no such statute of limitations for voter fraud. [See UPDATE at bottom of story for someone who disagrees with that point.]

After a 20-month delay, Coulter's case is finally coming up for a vote at a public hearing before CT's State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) on October 14th at 9:00am, 20 Trinity St. in Hartford CT, according to an email from the commission's MaryAnn Stratton and confirmation from the commission's director of communication...

As we posited in our coverage yesterday of D.C.'s Internet Voting scheme which was hacked with the University of Michigan fight song just days after experts had warned against the entire scheme, J. Alex Halderman, asst. professor of electronic engineering and computer science at the university, was, indeed, at the heart of the hack.

He details tonight that he and a small team of students were happy to participate in the test that D.C. election officials had announced, with just three days notice, inviting hackers to try and penetrate the system they planned to use this November, as developed with the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.

Halderman writes in his explanation of how they did it:

And if you think that's chilling, Halderman goes on to note that all cast ballots on the system were modified and overwritten with write-in votes, all passwords taken --- including the encryption key, which e-voting supporters constantly suggest will keep such systems safe --- before they went on to install a back door to let them view any votes cast later, after their attack, along with the names of voters and whom they voted for...

It took nearly a week of The BRAD BLOG bitching, moaning, emailing, complaining, and tweeting to the Washington Post, its ombudsman, and, of course, the author of the story, Alexandra Petri, who had blatantly misreported, twice in the same article at Dana Milbank's "Rough Sketch" blog, the long-ago debunked myth that Rightwing con-man and dirty trickster James O'Keefe had "dressed up as a pimp to interview members of ACORN" in his scam video tapes that shamefully took down the four-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy organization based on his hateful hoax.

As we detailed in our original report on Petri's inaccuracy last week, O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp and never even represented himself as a pimp in the offices of ACORN. The truth about all of that had been publicly available to know for almost a year before Petri misreported on it in the pages of the Washington Post last week.

Given that the Washington Post published another related story over a year ago with a number of similarly misleading inaccuracies in it, which they have yet to correct even after all this time, perhaps we should be happy it took less than a week this time around for the right thing to be done at the paper.

Petri has finally, nearly a week later, corrected her article, as she notes in the following email sent to us this morning...