Daily Kos

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir Leading Off:

• CT-Sen: Just as you'd have suspected, Linda McMahon has a commanding lead in the GOP primary over Chris Shays, in the follow-on section to the general election poll PPP released last week. The wrestling mogul leads the ex-congressman by a crushing 60-27 margin, with Vernon Mayor Jason McCoy at 3. In a test with ex-Rep. Rob Simmons in the mix as well, things barely change: McMahon is still dominant at 54, with Shays at 19 and Simmons at 15. This is good news for Team Blue, since Shays is the most electable Republican option.

Meanwhile, the Democratic primary looks a lot more interesting, with Rep. Chris Murphy leading ex-SoS Susan Bysiewicz by 39-33 margin, while state Rep. William Tong is back at 8. That's an improvement for Murphy from PPP's March numbers (in a poll conducted on behalf of Daily Kos), which had him up just 40-38. (Tong hadn't yet entered the race.) Murphy has by far the best profile among Democrats, who view him favorably at a 49-19 clip. That's down a bit from the 51-14 mark he posted in the earlier survey, but Bysiewicz dropped further, to 38-30 from 45-27. Tong is at just 6-25.

Senate:

• MA-Sen: The second poll in a row, this one by Princeton Survey Research, shows an extremely tight race in Massachusetts in the general election — and another blowout by Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary. Click the link for our full post at Daily Kos Elections. Meanwhile, Rep. Niki Tsongas became the first member of the state's congressional delegation to endorse Elizabeth Warren's Senate bid. I'll be curious to see how the rest of the gang proceeds from here.

• MO-Sen: Three's company: Businessman John Brunner, who first mooted a run all the way back in April (sheesh), finally decided to get into the race to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill. But first he'll have to get past Rep. Todd Akin and ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman in the Republican primary — no small task, even if he is capable of at least some self-funding.

Gubernatorial:

• FL-Gov: Sayeth Tom: Rick Scott "no longer holds the dubious distinction as the most unpopular Governor PPP has polled on in 2011 — Ohio's John Kasich edges him out for that with a 53% disapproval rating." That's because Scott has soared from a 33-59 job approval rating to 36-52.

• KY-Gov: Dem Gov. Steve Beshear's already improbably lead has managed to grow improbably larger in SurveyUSA's newest poll. Click the link for the full details at Daily Kos Elections.

• MS-Gov: Using next month's gubernatorial race as a hook, where Democrats have nominated African-American Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, this interesting New York Times piece delves into the extremely racially polarized voting that has become the norm in Mississippi. Thanks to the state's black population (proportionally the largest of any in the union), Dems these days generally start out with a floor of about 40%... and a ceiling not much higher. The article also suggests that the few remaining strongholds of white Democrats (mostly in northeast Miss.) are soon to disappear, with Republicans making persistent appeals to conservative local officeholders to switch sides.

• WV-Gov: Yow. In case you missed it, PPP's final poll of today's special gubernatorial election shows Republican Bill Maloney catching up on Dem Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and turning the race into a last-minute tossup. Click the link for the full numbers at Daily Kos Elections.

House:

• CA-30, CA-26: Rep. Henry Waxman is trying to head off the looming primary battle in the 30th CD between fellow Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman. Waxman wants Sherman to run in the incumbentless 26th District instead, but it doesn't sound like a winning move. The seat is much redder than the 30th and would mostly be new faces for Sherman. He'd wind up facing either GOP Rep. Elton Gallegly or if Gallegly retires (a very good possibility), another strong Republican. While an intra-party duel with Berman isn't a pleasant prospect either, Sherman needs to win that fight just once; even if he won the 26th next year, he'd always have to worry about GOP challenges in the future.

• GA-10: Former Republican Rep. Mac Collins, who used to represent the 8th CD, says he's thinking about a comeback — in the form of a primary challenge to Paul Broun in the redrawn 10th. The 10th now includes Collins' home, and according to the linked article, about half of it is new to Broun. I also think the outsider Broun, who doesn't seem to have cultivated strong establishment ties, is a pretty good target for this kind of venture. Collins left Congress in 2004 after losing the GOP Senate primary that year; he attempted to return in 2006, narrowly losing to then-Rep. Jim Marshall. Interestingly, Collins beat Broun once before, in the Republican primary for what was then the 3rd CD in 1992.

• IL-08: Tammy Duckworth just announced that she raised $386K in the third quarter of the year, though no word on her cash-on-hand. I'll be really curious to see what Raja Krishnamoorthi, her rival for the Democratic nomination, pulls in.

• IL-17: Former state Rep. Mike Boland, who has been running for the redrawn 17th District, has also picked up petitions for a state Senate bid. Boland apparently isn't circulating these petitions, and has been weirdly cagey about what he's even doing with them, but given how crowded the congressional field is, dropping down would make sense. The problem is that the Senate seat he'd run for (the 36th District) is already occupied by fellow Democrat Mike Jacobs. But that may not be an obstacle, since Boland and Jacobs are described as "political rivals."

• IN-08: Patrick Scates, a one-time staffer for Brad Ellsworth who had been considering the race, says he will indeed join what is becoming a fairly crowded Democratic field. In addition to Scates, Warrick County Democratic Chairman Terry White and former state Rep. Dave Crooks are all looking to take on GOP freshman Larry Buchson, who succeeded Ellsworth last year.

• NY-13: According to Jon Lentz at City Hall News, national Democrats are pushing would-be challengers to GOP freshman Mike Grimm to get in the race now, and not to wait for redistricting. That makes sense, since the election is only thirteen months away, and only the Lord of Maps knows when we might see new congressional lines for New York state. It sounds like the DCCC in particular wants to see some warm bodies in time for the candidate training session it's apparently conducing in DC later this month.

Also, in addition to the names known to be weighing a run, Lentz adds that Assemblyman Michael Cusick is considering the race, even though he said earlier this year that he wasn't interested. Cusick looked at this seat back in 2008, after Vito Fossella announced he'd retire, but declined to make a bid.

• OR-01: Republican Rob Cornilles said he raised upwards of $500K over the last two months, since entering the special election to replace ex-Rep. David Wu. No word on his cash-on-hand, or any totals from any of the three Democrats seeking the seat. Reminder: The primary is on Nov. 8 and the general election is Jan. 31 of next year.

• PA-04: Rep. Jason Altmire just announced that he raised $375K in the third quarter and has about $700K cash-on-hand. It'll be very interesting to see what fellow Dem Rep. Mark Critz raises, since the two men are widely expected to get thrown together in redistricting.

Redistricting Roundup:

• NY Redistricting: I always like seeing the work of DKos Electioneers recognized in other outlets, especially when it comes to redistricting. So it's cool that our own twohundertseventy (aka Rasmus Pianowski) got some column inches in the New York Daily News for his vision of what a court-drawn state Senate map might look like. You can check out his proposal here. Nicely done.

• OH Redistricting: Ohio Democrats filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court last week, asking for a determination as to whether they can seek to have the new congressional redistricting map placed on the ballot for a referendum. If you've been following this whole saga, you'll recall that Republicans attached a budgetary appropriation to the bill, in an attempt to immunize it from going before voters. At least one legal expert thinks that these GOP shenanigans won't succeed, pointing to a 2009 high court ruling which said that in the case of "mixed" bills like this one, only the appropriations parts are safe from repeal.

• UT Redistricting: Even though Gov. Gary Herbert is reportedly unhappy with the congressional plan his fellow Republicans in the legislature have settled on, state Senate President Michael Waddoups says: "I think’s there’s about a 98 percent chance that what you see now will be the near to the final maps." Meanwhile, the chair of Utah's Democratic Party is pledging a lawsuit over the maps for an interesting reasons. Jim Dabakis says that Waddoups has argued that the last set of redistricting plans from a decade ago must have been fair because no one ever sued — so Dabakis wants to make sure he can rob Waddoups of that talking point in the future. As to the merits, it sounds like there's nothing beyond a hopeless partisan gerrymander claim.

Recapping yesterday's action:

The House hit no snags in its calendar full of suspension bills, and even managed to get all their voting done, with nothing postponed for the first time in recent memory.

The Senate got through its expected votes as well, confirming the nomination of Henry F. Floyd to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to consideration of S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act. The floor wrap-up doesn't reflect the confirmation by unanimous consent of the other judges listed in yesterday's schedule as among those expected to be considered, but the ever-vigilant Wikipedia editors assure me that four of the other five nominations were indeed confirmed by unanimous consent. For some reason, the profile of Marina Garcia Marmolejo was not yet updated, but Teh Google tells me she's been confirmed as well.

Looking ahead to today:

The House first moves to set up what appears to be tomorrow's work, by adopting a rule for the consideration of this week's regulatory ritual sacrifice bills, the "Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act" (who knew cement was its own sector?) and the "EPA Regulatory Relief Act." But before knocking off for the day, the House will have to dispose of H.R. 2608, the slightly longer-term continuing appropriations bill approved by the Senate last Monday, which would continue government operations through November 18th. Yeah, you didn't know that we're technically on the brink of yet another shutdown, did you? The fact is, we're operating under an extremely short-term, emergency continuing appropriations bill designed just to get us from last week to this week—specifically, through today. No one anticipates any serious problems getting this through the House today. But then again, no one expected the Spanish Inquisition, either.

The Senate has a blockbuster lineup today: they'll debate their having voted yesterday to close debate on whether or not to begin debate on the currency manipulation bill, then break for lunch. But the good news is that they've agreed not to debate their vote to end debate on beginning debate for the entire 30 hours they're entitled to. Instead, after lunch, they'll yield back the remaining time and vote on whether or not to start debating the bill. Or at least they'll consider that question, and maybe just dispose of it by unanimous consent now that they're done voting on ending debate to start debate, and have agreed unanimously to stop debating the vote on whether they should vote to start debating the bill.

I remind you of what the Senate is actually doing here only to illustrate for those of you frustrated by the decision-making process adopted by the Occupy Wall Street movement that, well, we've seen worse. And the fact that the Senate wears suits and ties doesn't appear to help them make their decisions any more quickly or understandably.

At any rate, once things sort themselves out after lunch, then the Senate is expected to move on to the actual currency bill. Whether they'll get to any additional votes, though, is an open question.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Republican Sideliners Debate: Liveblog

Will they or won't they? This should be exciting.

8:01 PM ET: First question: "How ajar is your door right now?" Giuliani: 9.11 inches. Palin: I need more donations to Sarah PAC before I can reveal how open-doory I am. A few million should do it. Trump: My door is solid gold and I'll tell you how wide open it is on the season finale of Celebrity Apprentice. Christie: I don’t know how else to say it---for the millionth time, my door is absolutely, completely frfflfrflfrfl. Huckabee: Have you seen the GOP field lately? I am unhinged!

8:03 PM ET: Huckabee walks back unhinged comment.

8:04 PM ET: What do you bring to the table that the other non-candidates here don't? Palin passes on answer due to palm sweat making her response illegible. Trump: Razzamataz, baby! Giuliani: I can think of 911 things. Christie: Last weekend I held hands with Nancy Reagan, who held hands with Ronald Reagan on numerous occasions. Bam, nailed it! Huckabee: pulls out bass guitar and asks if any other candidates can do this---Bumpitta bumpitta bow bow bumpitta bow bow…

8:10 PM ET: Closing statements: Christie: I am not running…to the car to drive to my kid's baseball game because that's what my state-owned helicopters are for.

Palin: I don’t want to be a signpost or a cymbal, er, symbol. I am not a dead fish, I am a rogue maverick just statin' what needs to be stated in the bright muzzle flash of the now. Right now what needs to be stated also is let's get diggin' in those wallets and pocketbooks for some more donations to Sarah PAC, you gullible losers…er, you 1776 patriot mama grizzlies-in-training in the several states! And papas, too. Keep ringin' them warnin' bells and such for our freedom.

Huckabee: This is for my buddy Ted Nugent---Bow bompitybompity bomp bomp bow bow bomp… Cat scratch fevuh! Yowwwwl!

Giuliani: I promise to not just be "Mr. Noun-Verb-911." I'll start tossing in some adjectives.

Trump: First I just wanna say I enjoy seeing all the heaving bosoms in this auditorium. It's the dolls what make this country great. As for the run: I'll either announce it one syllable at a time over the entire season of Celebrity Apprentice, or I'll just move into the White House whenever I feel like it.

8:15 PM ET: Rick Perry runs on stage unannounced: "Don't do it! Them tea party people is crazy! They'll eat you for lunch and add your bleached bones to their Reagan shrine. Somebody hide me!"

8:17 PM ET Debate ends. Nielsen reports ratings 3x higher than declared-candidate debates. Frank Luntz preemptively calls to congratulate Obama on his re-election.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Visual source: Newseum

Dan Balz and Jon Cohen detail Rick Perry's Trump-esque collapse in the polls:

After a quick rise in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has experienced an almost equally dramatic decline, losing about half of his support over the past month, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Perry’s slide, which comes after several uneven performances in candidate debates, has allowed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to resurface atop the GOP field. But the most direct beneficiary of the disenchantment with Perry is businessman Herman Cain, who is now tied for second place.

Perry also faces opposition to one of his signature immigration policies in Texas, the survey shows.

Stephen Shepard digs deeper into the numbers:

Perry has clearly been damaged over the last month by revelations about his record and uneven debate performances: 44 percent of all Republicans (including non-voters) say that the more they hear about Perry, the less they like him. Just 30 percent say the more they hear, the more they like the Texan.

More Republicans now trust Romney than Perry on issues like Social Security and immigration -- two areas on which Republican candidates have focused their criticism of Perry. And by a 20-point margin, more Republicans think Romney has the better chance to defeat President Obama in November 2012.[...]

The Cain Train has picked up significant momentum over the past month. Cain's support has more than doubled from last month, and 47 percent of Republicans say the more they hear about the former Godfather's Pizza CEO, the more they like him, higher than any of the five candidates or potential candidates tested. Only 18 percent say they like him less.

Gary Stein:

The Republicans would have you believe that President Obama is there for the picking in 2012 and they may be right. Problem is, they have nobody to do the picking.

The GOP needs a face of the party, somebody that can get the support of the base, along with independents and maybe even some Democrats. Right now, that face seems to change every week, which doesn't bode well for the party's chances of winning the White House in 2012.

Beth Reinhard explains why frontrunner status is the GOP is so fleeting:

While the mounting interest in Christie reflects an unusually unsettled Republican field, it also reveals something about voters' predilections in the 2012 race. More than anything else this election cycle, perhaps more than ideological purity or outsider status, Republicans seem to be looking for someone who can throw a punch.
In other words, someone who can really knock President Obama out of the White House. [...]

Enter the brash governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who once shot a coyote dead while out for a jog. He catapulted to the top of the presidential primary polls, at least in part, on the promise of his swagger. But his feeble performances in three back-to-back nationally televised debates raised questions about his potential mettle in a general-election campaign against a sitting president.

Michael Hiltzik takes on Rick Perry's false attacks on the New Deal:

Perry’s book draws heavily from several libertarian denunciations of the Roosevelt administration — chief among them Burton Folsom’s book “New Deal or Raw Deal?” and Jim Powell’s “FDR’s Folly” — to paint the New Deal as the foundation stone of an “abuse of federal power” by Democratic administrations and Congresses, abetted by the Supreme Court, that has persisted for generations.

All this from a Depression-era program that “failed.” Although Perry repeatedly pins that label on the New Deal, he never quite specifies what he means. That’s unsurprising, given that the U.S. economy grew at a blistering 8 percent a year through most of the New Deal period and that its most important component, Social Security, today provides benefits to 54 million Americans, at rock-bottom administrative cost and without a whiff of scandal.[...]

The GOP primary is putting immigration back in the spotlight, and today The New York Times takes on Alabama's draconian immigration law:

School superintendents and principals across the state confirm that attendance of Hispanic children has dropped noticeably since the word went out that school officials are now required to check the immigration status of newly enrolled students and their parents.

That rule is part of the law’s sweeping attempt to curtail the rights and complicate the lives of people without papers, making them unable to enter contracts, find jobs, rent homes or access government services. In other words, to be isolated, unemployable, poor, defenseless and uneducated. The education crackdown is particularly senseless and unconstitutional

Meanwhile, Joe Nocera adds logic and facts to the discussion about the administration's Solyndra loan gaurantees:

In this country, it is relatively easy to get venture capital for a good idea — and alternative energy has attracted billions in the past few years. What is hard to come by is money to fund the far more expensive process of commercializing the innovation. [...]

The Republicans know all this, surely. In 2005, when the Energy Policy Act was first proposed by the Bush administration, they made some of these same arguments in support of the loan guarantee program, which was part of the bill. The bill passed the House with overwhelming Republican support. Most Democrats voted no.

Today, the Republican-led Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating Solyndra, forcing its executives to take the Fifth Amendment, and releasing embarrassing White House e-mails. I looked it up: every single Republican on that committee who was in office in 2005 voted for the loan guarantee program that they are now so gleefully condemning.

I wonder why.

Ezra Klein on the influence on the European debt crisis on the 2012 race:

We’re only about 13 months from November 2012, so predictably, depressingly, Washington has turned its attention toward the election. This week, all eyes are on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is deciding whether to join the race. That’s the wrong place to look. If you’re worried about the 2012 election — or, more quaintly, just worried about the economy — the politician to watch is Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Merkel isn’t entering the Republican primary, or mounting a challenge to President Obama. But what she and a handful of European leaders do over the next few weeks could well decide whether the American economy tips back into recession this year, and thus, quite inadvertently, decide who wins the U.S. presidency in 2012.

Top comments for today are here.

You know how conservatives just love to say the government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers? Well:

As Texas governor, Rick Perry spent tens of millions in taxpayer money to lure some of the nation's leading mortgage companies to expand their business in his state, calling it a national model for creating jobs. But the plan backfired.

Just as the largest banks began receiving public cash, they aggressively ramped up risky lending. Within four years, the banks were out of business and homeowners across Texas faced foreclosure. In the end, the state paid $35 million to subsidize it.

An Associated Press review of federal mortgage data, court filings and public statements found that Perry downplayed early warnings of an impending mortgage crisis as alarmist. That's even as Perry's own attorney general would later investigate whether Countrywide Financial Corp. encouraged homeowners to borrow more than they could afford.

As Perry offered $20 million in grants to Countrywide and $15 million to Washington Mutual Inc. — each blamed for having a major role in one of the country's most serious recessions — he took in tens of thousands of their dollars for his gubernatorial campaign.

Contrary to conservative dogma, there actually are examples where the market needs a helping hand from the government—examples like supporting the development of new technologies or preventing pollution come to mind. But I'm pretty sure there's no good reason governments at any level should have subsidized individual subprime lenders, especially ones involved in widespread fraud. Nonetheless, you probably won't hear a peep about this from anyone on the Republican side of the aisle, because it's okay if you're a Republican—especially if the "it" in question is crony capitalism.

CNN:

It's a ubiquitous Republican talking point: Congress must keep the top two rates at 33% and 35% -- instead of 36% and 39.6% as President Obama wants.

The argument: Many small businesses file taxes under the individual tax code.

But:

"The Republican claim that this is a tax increase on a large fraction of employers is just not true," said Howard Gleckman, a resident fellow at the Urban Institute.

In sharp contrast to the rhetoric, current data suggests small businesses don't create an outsized number of jobs, very few small business owners fall into the top two tax brackets, and tax cuts for small businesses are ineffective stimulus measures.

The article goes on to point out that only a tiny amount of "small businesses" make enough money to even fall in those tax brackets, and that 80 percent of small businesses don't have employees at all (other than the owners). So any Republican saying we can't return tax rates on the wealthy to historically more reasonable levels because blah-blah-small-businesses-blah is not being honest about the numbers.

That said, I haven't heard the "small businesses" talking point very much lately; it seems to be falling into relative disuse, likely because pretending to give a damn about small businesses is too taxing a job.

The way I understand it, Republicans are simply claiming that rich people are "job creators," merely by them being rich. Their money trickles down to the rest of us when they buy yachts or whatever it is they do, and so we should all just shut up and try to get yacht-building jobs. The fact that the rich are getting increasingly richer, and the poor increasingly poorer, would seem to discount that notion handily, but none of it is really meant as serious economic policy. There is only one rule: People and companies who can afford to give large political contributions need to be shielded from taxes. Any taxes, apparently. Everyone else is to shoulder that burden instead.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Innovation Ohio has put together some fun facts on the governor and legislators who have made such a huge issue over how overpaid public workers like firefighters and teachers are and have fought to strip those workers of collective bargaining rights. Gov. John Kasich, for instance, earns $148,165 per year, "is exempt from the 'performance pay' provisions of SB 5, and is still eligible to receive automatic annual 3% 'step increases' that SB 5 would terminate for other public workers." Also:

• All Members of the Ohio General Assembly earn a base salary of $60,584 for working a part-time job (the average annual salary for all Ohio workers is just over $40,000).  But among the 70 Representatives and Senators who voted for SB 5, just 8 earn that 'minimum.'  The other 62 receive 'leadership bonuses' ranging from nearly $34,000 per year to $5,000 annually, with the average bonus being over $8,600.  Sen. Bill Seitz of Cincinnati —the only current member of the Senate who does not receive a bonus and was in the Senate when the SB 5 vote took place —had his bonus taken away when he refused to support the legislation
• Though fiercely critical of 'double dipping' by other public workers, 12 House and Senate members who support SB 5 are themselves double-dippers (one is a triple-dipper), and collect legislative salaries in addition to state pensions.   Perhaps the biggest single double-dipper in Ohio is House Speaker Bill Batchelder, who receives over $100,000 in a PERS pension, on top of his $94,500 annual legislative salary[.]

Kasich's senior staff average over $110,000, and the Senate President recently gave several of his top staff substantial retroactive pay increases.

The American Independent puts it in context:

In fact, the 70 part-time state lawmakers that voted in favor of [SB 5] receive an average annual salary of $67,737, not including all the other perks that come with the job.

By comparison, the teachers, firefighters and police officers they voted to strip of collective bargaining rights make annually about $50,000, $46,000 and $45,000, respect[ive]ly.

Republicans in Ohio are, once again, depending on a massive disinformation campaign to persuade voters to uphold SB 5. Make sure your friends and family in Ohio know the facts and vote NO on Issue 2.

Some of the most recent noteworthy happenings:

• Individual posters have been writing about and taking pictures of their own experiences during the protests. A first-person account of being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge is here; an interview with Fox News that Fox won't be running anytime soon is here.
• After three busses were commandeered Saturday to transport arrested protestors on the Blooklyn Bridge, the Transport Workers Union is going to court to prevent their members from being forced to transport arrested protestors in the future.
• 1199 SEIU is providing food and medical training to the protestors. The protests continue to attract union support in general.
• Chris Bowers is helping to start a resource page for "Occupy" events around the country. If you know of an event not listed, let him know in the comments there; if you're looking for local events, that's a good place to start.
• The White House weighs in, sort of:

  CARNEY: I haven’t discussed [the protests] with him. I’m sure he’s aware of it because he follows the news. I would simply say that, to the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation, we understand. And that’s why we’re so urgently trying to focus Congress’s attention on the need to take action on the economy and job creation.

• Some unexpected help from a large public relations firm.
• From BBC News:
  

  Billionaire investor George Soros says he can sympathise with the ongoing protests on Wall Street, which have spread to other US cities.

  He said he understood the anger at the use of taxpayers' cash to prop up stricken banks, allowing them to earn huge profits. [...]

  Answering questions during a news conference at UN headquarters on Monday, Mr Soros said: "The decision not to inject capital into the banks, but to effectively relieve them of their bad assets and then allow them to earn their way out of a hole leaves the banks bumper profits and then allows them to pay bumper bonuses."

• Greg Mitchell has been liveblogging Occupy-related events here.
• The next Occupy Wall Street march is planned for Wednesday afternoon.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson One of the stories former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has told about her brief stint as a teacher is that one day, to control her students, she put tape (sometimes reported as masking tape, sometimes as duct tape) over their mouths. By her own claim, this resulted in some of the children bleeding after pulling the tape off. It's totally plausible that, like so many of the stories Rhee tells about her record, this is wildly exaggerated. But let's take her at her word for a minute.

In Rhee's telling, the story is about creativity, passion and learning from mistakes—all things she wants from teachers. But do most teachers who tape their students' mouths shut wind up, years later, in a position of power over other teachers and telling the story as a motivational tale? Not so much. In fact, Rhee First has found more than 20 cases in recent years of teachers, substitute teachers, teacher's aides, and other school employees who taped students' mouths and were fired, suspended without pay, placed on administrative leave or resigned. Some even faced criminal charges, though several of those had taped students' hands as well as their mouths. For example:

• A Denver school secretary who taped the mouth of a six year old was fired, and sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor child abuse, in February of 2010
• In March of 2009, a Rison, AR elementary teacher was fired and charged with false imprisonment and tampering, for taping student’s mouths and taping them to chairs.
• A substitute teacher who taped the mouths of two students and restrained them by taping them into their chairs was given two years of probation and eighty hours of community service in July of 2008.  The incident took place at Harvard Elementary in McHenry County, IL.
• In January of 2009, a Lafayette, Indiana school teacher was fired for taping the mouth of a special needs student.

Quick, someone find all those fired teachers, make them chancellors of major school districts, and put them on the cover of Time!

Or, and here's a thought, start applying the standards to Rhee that are applied to teachers. It doesn't even have to be the punitive standards Rhee herself has made a career out of calling for. Just the normal standards that say you don't tape kids' mouths and then brag about it later.

Oh Mitt. We all know how utterly unprincipled you are, how you'll say absolutely anything if you think it might help you to secure the Republican nomination, even if it's the exact opposite of what you've said before. And it's not as if you haven't spent the past several years trying to pretend that you never gave full-throated support to protecting women's reproductive rights.

So the endorsement-fishing expedition with Mike Huckabee this weekend is really just more of the same:

HUCKABEE: Would you have supported a constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception?

ROMNEY: Absolutely.

Wanting an amendment to the state's Constitution to ban women's reproductive rights is a pretty far cry from the Mitt Romney of 1994:

"I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. [...] I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it and I sustain and support that law and the right of the woman to make that choice. [...] And you will not see me wavering on that."

Of course, there's no way that 1994 Pro-choice Romney could have known just how much he'd need to "waver" on women's rights in order to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the uber-crazy vote known as his party's base. And as Jed Lewison pointed out last week, Romney has a perfectly valid reason for completely reversing himself on his supposed principled positions:

"In the private sector," he said, "if you don't change your view when the facts change, well you'll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Winston Churchill said, 'When the facts change I change too, Madam." What do you do?"

It's hard to argue with that kind of infallible logic. Oh, except for the part where that wasn't Winston Churchill; that was John Maynard Keynes.

But other than that, it's perfectly obvious that Romney has simply changed his position based on the facts. See, in 1994, Romney supported women's reproductive rights because Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for 20 years. But, see, that's no longer true. Now that Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 30 years, that fact has changed. His whole reason for supporting women's rights in the first place is invalid. And what kind of principled leader would Romney be if he continued to support women's rights on the faulty basis that Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 20 years when that quite obviously is no longer true?

Would Churchill Keynes continue to support a principled position based on 20 years of precedent even when that precedent extended beyond 20 years? Of course not! And neither will Mitt Romney. Because he's unwavering that way.

New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice released a new study Monday detailing how widespread voter suppression has become as Republicans took over statehouses across the nation.

Here's the breakdown of those five million potentially disenfranchised citizens (from the report overview [PDF]).

1. 3.2 million voters affected by new photo ID laws. New photo ID laws for voting will be in effect for the 2012 election in five states (Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin), which have a combined citizen voting age population of just under 29 million. 3.2 million (11 percent) of those potential voters do not have state-issued photo ID. Rhode Island voters are excluded from this count, because Rhode Island’s new law’s requirements are significantly less onerous than those in the other states.
2. 240,000 additional citizens and potential voters affected by new proof of citizenship laws. New proof of citizenship laws will be in effect in three states (Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee), two of which will also have new photo ID laws. Assuming conservatively that those without proof of citizenship overlap substantially with those without state-issued photo ID, we excluded those two states. The citizen voting age population in the remaining state (Alabama) is 3.43 million; 240,000 (7 percent) of those potential voters do not have documentary proof of citizenship.
3. 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws. Two states (Florida and Texas) passed laws restricting voter registration drives, causing all or most of those drives to stop. In 2008, 2.13 million voters registered in Florida and, very conservatively, at least 8.24 percent or 176,000 of them did so through drives. At least 501,000 voters registered in Texas, and at least 5.13 percent or 26,000 of them did so via drives.
4. 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed. Maine abolished Election Day registration. In 2008, 60,000 Maine citizens registered and voted on Election Day.
5. One to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting. The early voting period was cut by half or more in three states (Florida, Georgia and Ohio). In 2008, nearly 8 million Americans voted early in these states. An estimated 1 to 2 million voted on days eliminated by these new laws.
6. At least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012. Two states (Florida and Iowa) made it substantially more difficult or impossible for people with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored. Up to one million people in Florida could have benefited from the prior practice; based on the rates of restoration in Florida under the prior policy, 100,000 citizens likely would have gotten their rights restored by 2012. Other voting restrictions passed this year that are not included in this estimate.

These are just the laws passed so far. As many as 34 states have introduced legislation in the last 2 years to require government-issued photo identification to vote. At least 12 have introduced legislation requiring proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to register to vote. As many as 13 states have introduced legislation ending same-day registration and limiting voter registration drives like those traditionally done by the League of Women Voters. At least nine states have introduced legislation to shorten early voting periods and four have tried to limit absentee voting.

The potential outcome of taking five million votes out of the mix in 2012? It could be the presidency, according to the Brennan Center.

• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

And you know, of course, who is being disenfranchised: "young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities." In other words, people who generally vote Democratic. Which means it's a no-brainer that much of the legislation introduced and passed around the country is the work of ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch brother's toy for taking over the country.