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The Clean Water Act prohibits putting “waste” into moving water, but it does allow “fill.” In 2002, the Bush administration redefined mine waste as fill, and within a few years hundreds of mountains were leveled while thousands of miles of streams and rivers were filled with toxic acidic rubble. It takes only a tiny change in how a rule is interpreted to literally lay waste to the land.

When it comes to the Clean Air Act and its relation to President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the difference comes down to a single stroke of a pen—a stroke that failed to happen.

In 1990, when Congress passed the update to the Clean Air Act, it amended Section 111(d). A version of the amendment passed by the House said that if the E.P.A. was already regulating power plant pollution under a separate section of the law, it could not use Section 111(d) to create new regulations on the same plants. A version of the amendment passed by the Senate, however, did allow such overlapping regulation.

When the two bills were merged, lawmakers forgot to strike out one of the conflicting amendments in the bleary-eyed rush to push the bill through. So it was signed into law by President George Bush with both amendments.

Section 111(d) addresses pollutants that hadn’t been identified as harmful at the time of the law, such as CO₂. So the bill, as it currently stands, both does and does not allow the EPA to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. However, it’s not that simple. Another part of the law, section 112, allows regulation of toxic emissions, and the EPA has argued that this section also applies, as carbon emissions have effects that are certainly life-threatening.

In advance of Monday’s debate, Republicans have been pounding on the moment from 2012 when CNN anchor Candy Crowley corrected a false assertion by Mitt Romney. He said President Obama had not characterized the Benghazi attack as an "act of terror" the day following the assault on the U.S. consulate. As Crowley noted, "He did, in fact, sir."

But Republicans are so desperate to dissuade real time fact-checking of serial liar Donald Trump that they're actually lying about that great debate moment. Here's Mike Pence Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation:

“Well, I think we all had this experience a few years ago of Mitt Romney being interrupted and being challenged on an assertion he made,” Pence said.  “I believe it was about the tragedy in Benghazi, and it turned out the moderator was wrong.”

First off: he’s incorrect. Here's the transcript from Sept. 12, 2012, when Obama said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."

Second, journalists are now questioning whether debate moderators should or should not fact-check in real time. The idea is that, supposedly, moderators shouldn't become a part of the story. They should simply facilitate a conversation between the two candidates and fade into the background. 

That poses this simple question: Would you rather be Candy Crowley or Matt Lauer?

While America looks likely to elect Hillary Clinton as its first woman president, Democratic women are also positioned to make big gains in 2016’s races for the Senate and House. Women currently make up just one-fifth of Congress, and there are big disparities by party. Fourteen of the 46 senators in the Democratic caucus are women, or roughly 30 percent. That’s not great by any means, but by contrast, just six of 54 Republicans are women—a paltry 11 percent. The House is even starker: 62 of 186 Democrats are women, or 33 percent, while just 22 of the 246 Republicans are women, amounting to only 9 percent of the total.

Fortunately, the number of Democratic women in Congress could go up considerably in 2016, as you can see on the map at the top of this post. According to Daily Kos Elections’ race ratings, Democrats could add six women to the Senate if they won every competitive race. While Democrats may not run the table since some of these contests are longer shots, there’s at least an even chance that four new women senators will join the Democratic caucus next year.

Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth is currently favored to beat Republican Sen. Mark Kirk in Illinois, and three more races with Democratic women are rated as Tossups. Former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is seeking to replace retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid; New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan is running against Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte; and former Pennsylvania state cabinet official Katie McGinty is facing off against Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. However, even if all four win, retiring Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski will likely be replaced by a man (and fellow Democrat), Rep. Chris Van Hollen, so it would mean a net gain of three seats for Democratic women.

Another three races favor Republicans incumbents, but are somewhat competitive for the Democratic women challenging them. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick squares off against Sen. John McCain in Arizona; former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge is challenging Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley in Iowa; and former state Rep. Deborah Ross is running against Republican Sen. Richard Burr in North Carolina. All told, Senate Democrats are poised to add more women and possibly surpass their all-time high-water mark of 16, which they reached after the 2012 elections. But we’re still a long, long way from seeing equal representation of men and women. 

Can you chip in $1 to each of these 10 women candidates endorsed by Daily Kos?

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When future historians check our etched rock records for clues as to how civilization collapsed, let those records show that a decent percentage of blame could be traced personally to that most hackish of political hacks, Reince Preibus.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Priebus how Trump had prepared for Monday night’s face-off at Hofstra University in Long Island.

“Studying, preparing, going through hypotheticals and what scenarios might come up, but he's very comfortable,” the RNC chair replied. “He did a great job in our primary debates. He's also been through, what, 14 seasons, season finales. He will be prepared. He's always showed up for the big dance, and he will be prepared and he'll be ready to go tonight.”

He's been through 14 taped season finales of a ridiculous reality television show, says Reince, and he sure wiped the floor with all the incompetent not-racist-enoughs we propped up against him in the food fights that passed for our own ridiculous debate nights. That's good enough, right? He'll be fine.

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Back in 2007, Myron Ebell said:

“Every interview I do, when I'm asked about scientific issues, I say I'm not a climate scientist. I'm just giving you the informed layman's perspective.”

Too modest by far—then and now. Ebell certainly is not a climate scientist. He is instead a disinformation specialist on global warming, working out of the D.C. offices of the right-wing, Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute as chief of the Center for Energy and Environment. He is also chairman of Cooler Heads Coalition, a collection of propagandists that "question[s] global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies." And now he’s been picked to head Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Robin Bravender reports:

Ebell is a well-known and polarizing figure in the energy and environment realm. His participation in the EPA transition signals that the Trump team is looking to drastically reshape the climate policies the agency has pursued under the Obama administration. Ebell's role is likely to infuriate environmentalists and Democrats but buoy critics of Obama's climate rules. [...]

Ebell's views appear to square with Trump's when it comes to EPA's agenda. Trump has called global warming "bullshit" and he has said he would "cancel" the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama's executive actions on climate change. 

Infuriating? That’s putting it mildly. As President Obama has recently taken to describing the information passed along by his staff during briefings on climate change, the possible ascendance of Ebell and his ilk are “terrifying.” As with his other campaign appointments, Trump makes no secret of where he would go in drafting policy. If it’s not the most myopic, retrograde approach, then it’s not on the agenda.

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Donald Trump has a problem remembering the man he listed as a foreign policy adviser.

Donald Trump, a man who once boasted having “the world's greatest memory,” has suddenly forgotten the role that was to be played by a controversial businessman he named to help guide his foreign policy. ...

Back in March, in a recorded meeting with The Washington Post editorial board, Trump named Page as one of five members of his foreign policy team. …

In July he was spotted at a Moscow law school giving a speech, and Yahoo News reported Friday that during the same trip, Page may have also held private meetings with senior Russian officials. 

That speech that Page gave was one praising Putin while criticizing U.S. foreign policy, and the meetings with Russian officials apparently included offering up slices of Ukraine.

This is just the latest in a string of connections that include Trump’s call for Russia to interfere with the U.S. election, Trump’s frequent praise of Vladimir Putin, Trump’s business connections to Russian oligarchs, Trump’s altering the Republican platform to a position more favorable to Russia … and all that’s aside from Trump’s hiring of a campaign director who was previously directly employed to do Moscow’s bidding. 

You’d think it would be something of a media firestorm. But it’s barely a flicker.

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The Washington Post writes what we've all been saying for years, since Republicans began their blatant attempt to suppress the vote with new voting restriction laws: "New laws and rulings could cause Election Day confusion."

Fourteen states have new voting and registration rules in place for this election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. Legal challenges have led to a multitude of recent court rulings that have blocked or struck down some provisions and upheld or reinstated others, scrambling the picture further.

The new rules and the rapidly shifting landscape have already caused confusion, and some experts fear problems on Nov. 8.

“You would think that by 2016 we would have gotten our act together, but in fact it seems things are as litigious and confusing as ever,” said Rick Hasen, an expert on election law and professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Things are confusing and litigious because Republican legislatures and governors are still trying to keep people out of the polls. Here's the thing about that: that is also serving their purpose in suppressing the vote.

“In periods of change, it can often lead to a lot of confusion for voters as to what the rules are, and for election officials, too,” said Wendy Weiser with the Brennan Center, pointing to problems in 2012 in places like Pennsylvania, where the state’s voter ID law was put on hold and then struck down. “There were also voters in Ohio, New Jersey who mistakenly thought — hearing the news from Pennsylvania — that they had to show ID, too.”

And with just 43 days remain until the election, make sure you're registered to vote. And while you're at it, make sure your family and friends are registered too.

Who will win Monday night’s debate? That’s a question that doesn’t necessarily have only one answer, even in a debate with only two participants. As we’ve seen in past debates, the pundits and the viewers often disagree about who won—something important to remember when the debate ends and the talking heads begin confidently pronouncing a winner. The expectations game is particularly complicated in this debate because the bar is set so incredibly low for Donald Trump. But Hillary Clinton is prepared for a Trump who’s not an overtly blithering idiot or unhinged ranter:

“I imagine that the person who will show up is the same person who showed up the Commander-in-Chief Forum that NBC did a few weeks ago -- that person was relatively disciplined,” said Palmieri, a veteran Democratic aide and messaging manager who most recently served in Barack Obama’s White House and is in charge, more or less, of rendering Clinton just likeable enough to get elected president of the United States.

“He's sort of stabilized after, you know, he went through his little death spiral after our convention,” she added during a conversation for this week’s episode of POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast 48 hours before the verbal combat was to begin. “He seems to have been able to rein himself in a little more, but that shouldn't be the bar. Just because he's able to get through a debate without becoming unhinged doesn't mean, wow, Donald Trump had a great debate.”

For many in the media, though, a Donald Trump as composed and articulate as we expect of a high school debater (or for that matter, a waiter in a restaurant) will be seen as a win. And that judgment may well come in the first 30 minutes, with nothing that happens thereafter mattering very much. One rehearsed line delivered early on could outweigh a flurry of lies and erratic behavior.

Yeah, it’s hard. But take a look at the graph above that shows the margins in national presidential polls for the final year over the past three cycles. The spread between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is almost the same as the gap in both the 2008 and 2012 elections at this time!

In 2008, the margin improved after September. In 2012, it fell. But in both cases, the Democrat won.

Look closer. The line for 2016 has never gone below zero, whereas we did see that happen in both 2008 and 2012 (yes, there’s still time for this to happen). In fact, if forced to pick which line I’d rather be on, I’d pick 2016’s for sure.

That doesn’t mean Trump can’t win. He can, of course. But Clinton is still the favorite, and always has been.

But what about the primaries? They said Trump could never win! And he did! And what about Brexit? They said that wouldn’t happen either! The polls have been terrible this year, we just can’t trust them.

True. Let’s talk about all that.

Fact-checking Donald Trump was one of the big stories of the pre-debate weekend, but will it be one of the big stories of the debate itself? The Trump campaign is, unsurprisingly, agitating against any fact-checking by moderator Lester Holt. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on ABC’s This Week that:

“I really don’t appreciate the campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers and that these debate moderators should some how do their bidding.”

Yeah, media, enough with the fact-checking. Just report whatever Donald Trump says, as he says it, with no context or corrections. Literal stenography, that’s your job. And you, debate moderator Lester Holt. If Trump elects to claim during the debate that he has been campaigning as the pro-immigration candidate all along, you are not to do the bidding of the Clinton campaign by pointing out that this is a lie.

You have to wonder what effect it will have on Holt that Trump’s bluster in the lead-up to the debate has included the claim that he would be biased against Trump because he’s a Democrat—when Holt is in fact a Republican. But never fear. This wasn’t a lie, Conway explained, because Trump didn’t actually know Holt was a Republican when claiming he was a Democrat. If the Trump campaign is extending this logic—that you can say anything as long as you don’t definitively know it’s not true—to policy, that explains an awful lot. Willful ignorance is an affirmative defense!

For their part, the Clinton campaign is just hoping Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to spend the entire debate being a one-woman fact-checking team.

“We’re really focused on this opportunity that Hillary has to speak directly to the voters on the issues,” [campaign manager Robby] Mook said in an interview Monday morning. “But we are concerned that Donald Trump may lie, he may throw misinformation out there, and that Hillary will have to spend all of her time trying to correct the record rather than talking about the things she wants to accomplish.”

Among all the things we don’t know about this debate, one thing we do know is that if Trump realizes he won’t be fact-checked by the moderator, he will lie like a warehouse of rugs. It’s up to Lester Holt how that will go.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pursuing his favorite hobby this week: taking political hostages while racing toward a cliff. This case revolves around the September 30 deadline for passing a government funding bill. The fact that there's an election in just 43 days hasn't seemed to cause him any undue concern, other than to make him even more partisan. The funding bill he's put forward gives funding to flood-ravaged Louisiana, but ignores a long-suffering American community:

Flint—a majority African-American community—has become a living, breathing symbol of inequality in the country as residents there bathed in and drank lead-poisoned water for two years. Voting against Flint just six weeks ahead of the election would not only send a message to Flint, it could also send a message to African Americans that Congress doesn't care about them.

"It helps you understand some of the frustration in this country when the Republican-led Congress singles out the poisoned children of Flint for exclusion in its disaster aid proposal," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman and senior policy adviser for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), who represents Flint, was shocked and angered Thursday when he saw Flint had been left behind in the spending bill.

"It sends a pretty strong message," Kildee said. "What is it about Flint that distinguishes it from these other places that rightfully qualify for help? I support helping the people of Louisiana. I am all in. What I cannot accept is a bunch of excuses, a bunch of irrelevant excuses that again leave Flint behind. It is a poor community. It is a majority African American community. It is very difficult to believe that if the conditions in Flint had occurred in a much more affluent community. ... I have no doubt in my mind that the response would have been different."

Since racism is already running rampant this election season, McConnell must have felt emboldened to pick this particular fight and achieve new lows.