[Now UPDATED at bottom of article.]

Hilarious. For some odd reason, the latest super-secret Koch Brothers Winter Seminar for millionaires, billionaires and elected Republicans and judges, once again near Palm Springs this year, decided to up its already tight security big time. They were forced to buy out an entire resort (using an alias) for several days in Indian Wells, closing down its restaurants and golf courses to the public and sending home many of its workers for the duration. Not that any of that kept ace reporter Lee Fang from finding out about it and heading out there, as detailed in his new exclusive today:

Heheh...Sounds like that must have cost a lot of additional money! Sorry if we caused you any problems, Mr. and Mr. Koch!

By the way, the exclusive by Fang --- formerly of ThinkProgress --- kicks off the new Republic Report blog ("Investigating how money corrupts democracy") with a bang today. The new muckraking project of the similarly new United Republic ("Democracy is not for sale") organization, includes the work of Fang, a number of other great and (mostly) progressive muckrakers and trouble makers, but also includes...wait for it...Jack Abramoff!

Yes, that Jack Abramoff --- the former, now-disgraced, previously-imprisoned, but now-finally-free and supposedly-reformed GOP uber-lobbyist! Steve Clemons at The Atlantic explains in his profile of the noteworthy new project today.

Fang's contributions (follow him on Twitter at @LHFang) alone would be reason enough to keep an eye on Republic Report. Everything else is more than enough icing on a tantalizing new cake to demand the site be bookmarked immediately...in our always humble opinion, of course.

UPDATE 3:50pm PT: Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim at Huffington Post report a source inside the Koch's democracy-hating meeting near Palm Springs this year says the group "pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections" during the course of the retreat, and offered another interesting thought as well...

I'm still largely off the grid for another day or so (as I have been for the last 24 hours+), but delighted to check in to see so much great conversation on D.C. Douglas' #OccupyWallStreet video we posted in the previous item. Also delighted to check in to see that the worldwide #OWS movement is today's top story across all the major corporate media outlets!

Incredibly, I'm here in Las Vegas (for a conference) and find huge signs advertising CNN's next GOP debate here on Tuesday being held at The Venetian. The embarrassing perfection and irony of the next Presidential debate being held at a CASINO is something I don't have time enough or perhaps even skills enough, to adequately elucidate upon at the moment.

All as some 20 #OccupyWallStreet protesters were reported arrested just minutes ago attempting to close their accounts at Citibank near Washington Sq. Park in Manhattan! More irony there than you can shake a GOP debate in a casino at.

In the meantime, cursorily related --- on both the irony scale and several others --- I was interviewed by Bob Jimenez on LA Business Today, about two weeks ago on our local LA Cityview 35 channel as the uprising was just begin to force its way onto the national corporate mediascape.

The segment, seen below, aired earlier this week. We discussed blogging, journalism, capitalism, the "occupation," e-voting and more in the very quick 12-minute segment...

Back soon! Viva La Occupation!

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

The Malloys are heading out for a week of Progressive Cruising next week (no, that's not some sort of sexual metaphor, it's an actual cruise in the Caribbean with a bunch of progressives, including a bunch of our pals!), so we'll be sitting in for the next week as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show beginning tonight!

As usual, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so please come on by and say hey 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.)

Tonight:

• EGYPT Latest news from the continuing uprising, and a look at recent U.S. history of cooperating with and supporting the country's decades-old torture regime --- with STEPHEN ZUNES, University of San Franciso professor of Middle Eastern Studies and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.
• ERIC BOEHLERT, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, on why Fox "News" is virtually unable to cover the goings-on in Egypt, and much more related!
• SKIPPY THE BUSH KANGAROO Yup. You heard me right. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo on this year's "Blog Amnesty Day"
• PLUS: The disgusting Rush Limbaugh and whatever else comes up along the way, including your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates acros 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.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Great show tonight (at least in my opinion). Audio archives are now posted below, along with the archives of tonight's chat room! Happy listening and tune in all next week too!...

If you're anywhere near the L.A. area, I'd be delighted if you came by to say hello this Sunday at the 9th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair.

I'll be on a panel discussing "The Death & Life of American Journalism," along with fellow journalists Jason Leopold, Marc Cooper, Bill Carter, and Kathleen Sharp. I'm told I'll be able to sign DVDs of Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story afterward.

It should be an interesting and lively discussion, as moderated by Jason, and as described this way on the WHBF's website:

Our panel is 2:00pm - 3:00pm at the fair's "Current Events & Hot Topics Pavilion" in West Hollywood Park, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. The event is FREE, there's lots of other stuff going on there as well, and you can get more info here...

Hope you can make it by!

New York's WBAI Evening News tracked me down while I was on the road in the sweltering wilds of SE Texas yesterday to discuss the story of the Rightwing cabal which had been revealed as having secretly and systematically worked to kill/bury/down-vote links to stories from The BRAD BLOG and other non-wingnut news sites before they could reach the front pages of major social aggregator networks like DIGG. See our coverage of this from Thursday.

One point I was able to make during the WBAI interview, which I didn't in the quick Thursday article, is that this episode illustrates, yet again, that even these Rightwingers recognize their own ideas are so weak they can't stand up to legitimate scrutiny on their own. The system must be gamed in hopes of giving them an edge in the public arena.

Moreover, if the Right is willing to sabotage social networking sites and willing to publish faked videos (see their ACORN "Pimp" Hoax videos, Shirley Sherrod video, etc.) in dishonest hopes of scoring political points, then why wouldn't they be similarly willing to steal elections whenever/however possible? That is, after all, the greatest prize and it's all for a greater purpose, right?

My interview on WBAI Evening News follows below. (My thanks to WBAI political reporter Rebecca Myles for sending me the audio while I was otherwise on the road and largely off the grid all day yesterday.)

MP3 Download or listen online below [appx. 8.5 mins]...

P.S. In a related note, Dave Johnson at "Seeing the Forest" reminds me that he pointed out last year how the same concerted Rightwing effort seems to go into gaming material at Wikipedia. I can also attest to that first-hand, as I've seen the "Brad Friedman" article over there defanged, tagged and even targeted for deletion by the same Right-leaning Wiki-administrator over and again throughout the years.

P.P.S. Billy Dennis, the "Peoria Pundit," picked up on our Thursday article, and offers some additional thoughts, along with this one at the end which I think is meant as a compliment :

As usual, when Rightwingers can't win outright, they cheat. Such is the case on the very popular social aggregator website DIGG, as documented today at Alternet.

We've suspected for quite some time that links to The BRAD BLOG's articles as posted on DIGG have been quickly "buried" by Rightwingers hoping to keep our stories from reaching the front page --- or even the "upcoming" page, where others might see the story rising in DIGG "votes," so that it might then be propelled to the front page, where millions more would then see the link to the article.

The AlterNet piece details a "massive" Rightwing cabal which has been doing exactly that, and we weren't particularly surprised when we found The BRAD BLOG named in the piece as one of several non-wingnut websites that have been targeted for "burial" by a Rightwing group of Internet hacks calling themselves "Digg Patriots"...

- Guest Blogged by Mike Stark of StarkReports.com

I recently attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in D.C., with video camera in hand, to report on the attendees. I was particularly interested in interviewing James O'Keefe, the miscreant (and accused felon) responsible for the ACORN video media hoax that The BRAD BLOG has been meticulously detailing for several weeks, including the important focus on how the mainstream corporate media (the old-media) have been had by the scam.

O'Keefe's phony "pimp" story has been debunked, but, as Brad Friedman has shown, the old-media remain remarkably reticent to admit their errors, and the publisher of the videos, O'Keefe's employer and promoter Andrew Breitbart, has been unwilling to help them off the hook. Witness the outrageous email responses from the NYTimes' Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock and then from their Public Editor Clark Hoyt, when it was shown to them that "the paper of record" had been had --- that O'Keefe had never "visited Acorn offices...dressed so outlandishly" in the now-infamous "pimp" costume as the paper had reported, as O'Keefe had represented, and as Breitbart himself had claimed in his own column, to the public.

While I didn't get the chance to speak with O'Keefe, I did catch up with his partner in fraud, Hannah Giles. Alas, she was surrounded by a protective coterie and fled without answering any questions when one of her entourage recognized me.

But then my luck turned. I trekked to the basement to cover the "XPAC" party and found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with Breitbart, O'Keefe's promoter, publisher, and employer, and owner of the website which launched the infamously damaging, misleading, deceptive, and highly doctored video tapes. I had previously questioned Breitbart at a press conference at the National Press Club press last October. He's had a pretty easy ride of it since then, facing questioning only from a largely adulatory press.

Though old-media, as Brad has shown, have been remarkably reluctant to demand answers to hard questions from Breitbart --- or any of the players involved in the ACORN secret video scheme --- I felt it important to do so for a number of reasons. The results were revealing, both in Breitbart's insanely manic demeanor, and in the substantive content of his answers to my questions.

Ultimately, as I believe you'll find in the video, he reveals a lot about his own editorial judgment, professionalism, and reliability --- none of it is good...

The Breitbart/O'Keefe media fraud has been wildly successful for the pair, helping to launch Breitbart's BigGovernment.com site late last year. But, unfortunately, it's hurt a great number of innocents.

Lost in the outrage against the New York Times for having fallen for the scam without bothering to fact-check, as The BRAD BLOG has been detailing for the past several weeks, is the fact that Breitbart and his ward O'Keefe have accomplished a despicable goal: They've all but destroyed an organization committed to helping those Americans most in need. Real people --- thousands of children amongst them --- will suffer hardship as a direct consequence of Breitbart's and O'Keefe's mendacious and malicious hoax, and singularly partisan political agenda. When will the media get around to telling that story?

And what of the damage that disreputable propagandists like Breitbart and O'Keefe bring to the real citizen journalists in the new media --- those of us striving not to sell a political agenda under false pretenses, but, rather, hoping to document facts, truth, and on-the-record positions of those who would corrupt our system through disingenuousness, self-enrichment, and lies?...

Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Shortly after my original piece, “Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization,” I received a form of constructive criticism. A friend suggested that while I provided a coherent explanation of Prof. Zimbardo’s basic concepts regarding the process of dehumanization as it relates Nazi atrocities and the Jim Crow South, my application of Zimbardo to the more contemporary question of Muslims and Arabs failed to do justice to Prof. Shaheen’s academic study of American films.

While the criticism is valid, that certainly had not been my intent.

The problem entails issues of length in the blog format --- the risk that length will reduce the size of the audience one hopes to educate.

For those who feel they’ve read enough, please stop here.

For everyone else, there is Prof. Shaheen’s Oct. 19, 2007 appearance on Democracy Now, and the following….

Not sure whether to laugh deliriously or cry here. The 'death of media,' and the ensuing plummet in ad sales, don't help or please folks like us either...even if some believe we're somehow partially responsible for it all...

(Hat-tip Coleen Rowley.)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): "My hope is that our Democratic colleagues - if you start listening to the bloggers - if we're going to let the bloggers run the country, then the country's best days are behind us."

Out of touch much, Senator? We suspect if the bloggers actually did run the country, we'd be much better off (if only because you'd be out of office.)

But perhaps Graham is confusing responsible, educated "bloggers" with the right-wingnut "bloggers" he's likely more familiar with. For example, here's the very popular (on the Right) Dijon deranged wingnut "Gateway Pundit," Jim Hoft, with his insightful perspective on the important news of the day yesterday:

If that's who you meant by "bloggers," Senator --- and we're ashamed that Hoft represents our former hometown of St. Louis, MO --- we might agree with you.

Over the last few months, it looks like the wingnuts have undertaken a specific and systematic effort to try and downrate items that don't reflect well on them at places like REDDIT and DIGG.

Of course, lots of recommendations on those two sites result in thousands --- if not hundreds of thousands --- of more eyeballs to the various stories we run here at The BRAD BLOG --- stories which are often not seen anywhere else in the media, even in the Progressive Blogosphere for that matter!

So your REDDITs and DIGGs actually do matter quite a bit, particular now since the wingnuts seem to have begun their downrating campaign. Click here to see the amazing number of DOWN votes at REDDIT, for example, for last night's "Franken Isn't 'Leading'; He Won and Coleman Lost" story. Without all that downrating, the story would easily have made it to the front page of REDDIT for a long while, and therefore been propagated across dozens of other key sites on the net as well.

It takes about 30 seconds to sign up for REDDIT and/or DIGG the first time, and then you can remain logged on forever. It then takes less than 2 seconds to vote for and/or uprate our stories here at The BRAD BLOG without even leaving this page by hitting the REDDIT and DIGG vote icons for stories that you believe are important to get out there.

Your 2 seconds of a mouse clicking matters. Really. And, as ever, your help is much appreciated! (And thanks to those regular DIGGers and REDDITers who already help out!)

And speaking of Phoenix, there's this from Carlos Miller:

Read the rest of the story for details. It's pretty amazing. Journalist/Blogger Pataky is our most recent new hero. And Journalist/Blogger Miller, who covers the story, is no slouch either given what he's had to go through in a similar vein to Pataky.