After the Municipal Council elections in Provo, Utah on November 8, residents had been told that Gary Winterton had narrowly defeated Bonnie Morrow for the District 1 seat --- by just 9 votes.

The margin was close enough that Morrow was allowed to ask for a recount of the paper ballots which were tallied on Election Night by the city's optical scan systems made by Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (Following years of failure of Diebold's voting systems, the company changed their name to Premier, only to see the assets of the failing company finally purchased last year by Dominion Voting, a Canadian firm which now services the machines.) The same optical scan systems are used all over the country, and are set once again for use in the New Hampshire's "first in the nation" GOP Presidential primary to be held in January.

The first "recount" of Provo's Municipal Council District 1 ballots --- carried out on the same op-scan systems that tallied them in the first place --- was held yesterday, only to be abruptly called off when the results were found to be "extremely in favor of the opposite candidate."

As reported by the Daily Herald this morning...

Yesterday's tally, the paper reports, were "coming out overwhelmingly in [Morrow's] favor," so officials planned to begin a hand-count --- as per "Democracy's Gold Standard" --- for today...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Last September The BRAD BLOG, unlike the corporate-owned media, offered detailed coverage of a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing on the spate of GOP voter suppression laws (PART 1 and PART 2).

Now, Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films has produced a powerful video that exposes the Koch-funded assault on your democracy, along with a petition that you can sign demanding that the Eric Holder-led Department of Justice live up to its name...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

Our week guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show continues tonight and tomorrow!

As usual tonight, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun 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.)

Scheduled tonight:

• REP. TED DEUTCH (D-FL-19), on his newly introduced "Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy (OCCUPIED) Amendment", which would overturn the Citizens United decision, by re-establishing the right of Congress and the states to regulate campaign finance laws, and to effectively outlaw the ability of for-profit corporations to contribute to campaign spending.
• JEANNIE DEAN, activist, Election Integrity champ and OccupyLA rep (watch her sing the gospel of OWS recently on Russian TV here) on the LA City Council's new offer to OccupyLA to "decamp" from City Hall to a 10,000 sq. foot office building and even their own farm.
• PLUS! Occupy Wall Street's first fatality?; Obama gets "Mic Checked"; Tonight's GOP debate (if it matters) and much more as the Occupy Wall Street uprising continues, along with your calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or at WhiteRose Society or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Well, this show was just loony toons! If you don't believe me, give it a listen! The audio archives are now posted below (along with the chat room archives)...

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport
VIA SMART PHONE: Stitcher Radio!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Meet the world's newest oil spill, now in Brazil and starring Chevron!; Supercommittee FAIL a big win for Big Oil; Confirmed again: Extreme weather is the New Normal; Bye-bye oysters; PLUS: Surprise! Fox News deceives its viewers on climate change, or the more you watch Fox, the less you know ... 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): Not-so-fresh round of hacked climate science emails leaked online; TX towns will run out of water in 2 weeks; Hackers target US water utility; Future cancers from Fukushima plant may be hidden; Solyndra accounts for less than 2% of the DOE's loan program; Scientists slam BLM’s coal-friendly slant on climate change; Obama Says Climate Threat ‘Cannot Be Denied’... PLUS: The art of talking about climate science ... and much, MUCH more! ...

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi "apologized" for last Friday's pepper spray incident during remarks to thousands of students who had gathered on the campus quad for a General Assembly this afternoon.

Here's Lee Fang's video of Katehi's teary remarks within the past hour, which began with, "I am here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened on Friday"...

[Note: Fang, now reporting at The Second Alarm will join me on tonight's Mike Malloy Show, which I am guest hosting this week.]...

...What Katehi didn't do, once again, was either resign, as faculty and students alike have called for, or condemn the behavior of her police force for their outrageous behavior in pepper spraying nearly 20 students who had peacefully locked arms while staging an "Occupy" sit-in late last week.

Videos of the shocking incident showing UC Davis Police Department's Lt. John Pike casually torturing the students, went viral over the weekend, sparking outrage and calls for the immediate resignation of the UC Davis Chancellor. She has said she will not resign, telling ABC's Good Morning America this morning that she is "really feel confident at this point the university needs me."

She didn't mention, however, whether the university needs any holes in the head or not...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives from tonight's show below.]

We're back guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show every night through this Wednesday! Hope you can tune in! Promise it'll be some lively radio!

As usual, we're BradCasting this week LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun 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.)

Scheduled tonight:

• LEE FANG, until very recently of ThinkProgress and currently blogging at The Second Alarm on the latest from on the ground at UC Davis in the wake of last Friday's pepper spray torture and the Chancellor's remarkable "Walk of Shame".
• PLUS! Much more, as the Occupy Wall Street uprising continues, and everything else worth covering today, along with your calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or at WhiteRose Society or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: This violence by police against peaceful demonstrators across the country is making me angry. As it turns out, that's a good place to be while guest hosting the Malloy Show. Enjoy tonight's commercial-free audio archives below and see if you agree...

Several opponents of WI's Gov. Scott Walker have been receiving middle-of-the-night death threats, as they've been circulating petitions to gather signatures in an effort to recall the state's controversial anti-union Republican Governor.

According to WISC-TV/Channel 3000 in Madison...

The news outlet also reports that yard signs supporting the Recall Walker effort have repeatedly been stolen off the property of several home owners.

Last week, we reported on the plans to sabotage the signature gathering effort being discussed openly on a number of Facebook pages. Walker supporters on those pages had been seen talking about their plans to gather signatures in liberal areas of the state and then burn or shred the petitions, rather than turn them in. One person had claimed he'd "be able to destroy 15-20k signatures" or, if granted access to even more petitions, he'd "be able to destroy upwards of 15-20% of the entire collected ballots in the state of Wisconsin."

Reid Magney, the Public Information Officer for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state's top election authority, told The BRAD BLOG via email late last week that defrauding petitions is a felony crime, and that his agency has been in touch with law enforcement about the purported sabotage schemes...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

The photo at right may well provide a pivotal moment in a new American revolution. It exposes a crack in the façade of the corporate security state that could grow to the point that rule by and for the 1% may some time soon internally collapse.

The real story lies not in the fact that retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis was arrested by the NYPD during an Occupy Wall Street confrontation. (Video of arrest posted below). It's the potential that Lewis' recognition of immense betrayal will spread throughout the rank and file of the security apparatus even as the clueless and increasingly desperate power elites seek to effectuate a coordinated crackdown on Occupy Wall Street encampments...

The Twilight Zone-like video above, shot and posted by Lee Fang, was taped this evening as UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi walked to her car while students lined the sidewalk and roadway, sitting and locking arms in complete silence. Their demonstration came on the heels of Katehi's support of the hyper-militarized UC Davis Police Department's outrageous and brutal use of pepper spray on dozens of compliant, peaceful Occupy demonstrators who were sitting in a circle, locking arms, on the campus quad yesterday.

We covered the shocking pepper spray incident, including the remarkable photographs and videos of the event, along with the calls for Katehi's resignation, earlier today here.

Fang's describes what happened leading to the haunting moment seen in the video above this way:

The blatant torture of peaceful demonstrators on the UC Davis campus yesterday was just the latest in a string of similarly appalling incidents of violence orchestrated by highly militarized "law enforcement" officials over the last several weeks across the nation in response to the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. We detailed a number of the most disturbing recent incidents, many of them caught on video tape and photographs, in this report yesterday.

UPDATE 11/20/11: Several quick updates following the events of last night depicted above, including explanations of how it came about (one of the pepper sprayed students organized it), interviews with some of the pepper sprayed students, an interview with a Baltimore cop who supports the use of force at UC Davis, and news that two of the UC Davis cops have now been placed on "Administrative Leave". Details follow below...

On Friday, Lt. John Pike [and a number of other officers --- see UPDATE below] of the UC Davis police force lead a group of lawless cops in lining up demonstrators who had been peaceably assembled on the University of California, Davis quad and then covered them with with pepper spray. His fellow cops did nothing to stop him, and actually stood by in support. [Complete appalling video posted at the end of this article.]

We're at a loss to describe this type of outrageous, unprovoked and unnecessary behavior as anything less than torture, to be frank.

Yesterday, we shared the photo of a cop at OccupyPortland similarly pepper spraying a young demonstrator directly in the face. And the day before, we detailed the story of 84-year old Dorli Rainey who met a similar fate at OccupySeattle.

Our report yesterday detailed a rapidly growing partial list of other atrocious incidents of blatant, lawless, unprovoked violence carried out by "law enforcement" officials across the nation since the Occupy Wall Street movement began two months ago. The incidents, almost all documented on video by citizen journalists, demonstrate the unrestrained, and almost always illegal, use of brutal force, aggression, violence and often torture by Big Government against peaceful American citizens exercising what were once known as their Constitutional rights --- the very behavior which supporters of the Tea Party once pretended to be concerned about.

As we averred in that article --- as supported by the included linked incidents --- and as we feel even more certain of today after viewing the video of the casually brutal and tortuous behavior of Pike and his band of UC Davis stormtrooper thugs who stood by in support (see full video below), the U.S. has not become merely a Police State in the ten years following 9/11, but a fully weaponized Military State.

Though video evidence of what happened was widely available on Friday, rather than condemning the outrageous violence by a member of her own Police force --- as she almost certainly would have had the situation been reversed and a student used pepper spray against peaceful cops --- UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi chose to issue a statement yesterday which seemed to excuse the police brutality as necessary "to protect the health and safety of our campus community"...

Our own Jeannie Dean --- longtime reader, supporter and commenter at The BRAD BLOG, years-long Election Integrity champion, and now OccupyLA rep --- brings the gospel of the Occupation to RT (formerly Russia Today)...

Says Jeannie to the whole wide world via RT: "We have already changed the narrative from deficit spending to jobs and to the economic disparities and the social injustice as we are seeing through our banking system, and the hijacking and corruption inherent in our banking and political system."

Way to sing it, JD! You do us proud! Great job! And keep making noise!

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below!]

We're back! We're guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show every weeknight tonight through next Wednesday!

As usual, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the uprising globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun 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.)

Scheduled tonight:

• JOSH HARKINSON, of Mother Jones from Occupy Wall Street in NYC where he's been bringing us some remarkable live reporting on the scene, including this harrowing description of an NYPD cop threatening his life during the eviction at Zuccotti Park last Monday night/Tuesday morning.
• DENISE LOCKWOOD, of the Caledonia Patch, on the alleged plans by supporters of WI Gov. Scott Walker to sabotage the recently launched RECALL WALKER effort. We'll discuss her recent reports of a source who claims there are some 1,000 folks working on the effort to game the effort, and some of the journalistic questions surrounding her reporting.
• PLUS! Has Occupy Wall Street now revealed this nation to be a full blown Military State? We'll have plenty to say on that, along with your calls, more news on "Occupation Nation" and anything else you might want to use your public airwaves for at 877-520-1150 and with your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or at WhiteRose Society or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Great show tonight, I think. Nice to be back. Very lively, great guests, great callers...just fun (and infuriating) all around! Don't believe me? Listen to the commercial-free audio archives now posted below (along with chat room archives). Enjoy!...