Workers march to protest for jobs legislation. (Rasdourian/Flickr) Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle (R), the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.” Image by: Matt Mahurin Share Rand Paul, a candidate for a Kentucky Senate seat, made similar statements, and politicians in Washington followed suit. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said on C-SPAN that extending unemployment would discourage “individuals that are out there to actually go out and go through the interviews.” But unlike most comments from politicians, these criticisms did not diffuse into the generic noise of political chatter. They began reverberating in what might be termed the unemployed netroots — a system of highly trafficked, influential blogs and sites connecting the jobless and updating them, often in minute detail, about ins and outs of Congress’ work on unemployment issues. When Jordan, a former programmer living in Nevada, lost his position with a local university, he began sending out resumes, but he also found himself following the eight-month battle for an unemployment extension closely — each failed Senate vote, each new House proposal. (He requested I withhold his last name to avoid impeding his job search.) Online, he started surfing list-servs, posting on message boards and using resources from the unemployed. A few times, he has worked up the courage to call his legislators’ offices. Jordan has searched hard for a job and is now considering moving away from his family for a few months, if it means he can send home a paycheck. “I have voted Republican my entire life,” he says. “I don’t want to vote for Harry Reid. But I don’t want to be told I’m lazy, and I’m dumb, and I’m living high on the hog, collecting [unemployment insurance] because I want to.” There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening. Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y.  Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators’ information. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall. “Even Republicans say they aren’t voting Republican anymore,” the soft-spoken former technical writer says. “You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election.” Paladinette — the online “zealot for the unemployed” also known as LaDona King — has taken the battle over the unemployment extension as more of a call to arms. She routinely publishes phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of lawmakers to target, rallying her thousands of online supporters to the cause. King personally calls 25 or 30 legislators’ offices a day. Sometimes, when she posts lawmakers’ numbers or picks out a particularly egregious example of a legislator blocking a vote or putting down the unemployed, her followers flood a Senate or House office with phone calls. The same goes for LayoffList. At one point, Thornton published the name and number of a House staffer working on unemployment legislation. Soon after, the staffer called and begged him to take it down, he says. “They’re all concerned about their re-election,” King says. “We’re making sure the Republicans get blasted for their obstructionist behavior. … We have tons of people calling, faxing, emailing.” “We’re lobbyists in training,” she laughs. “Without all that money!” During the eight month battle to extend unemployment insurance, with the unemployment rate peaking over 10 percent, huge online networks of the unemployed came into fruition. Now, coming into the fall and the midterms, King and other grassroots organizers for the unemployed are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add institutional oomph to the effort. They say they do not want to let the long battle for simple extensions go to waste. Already, a number of unions and other organizations have created dedicated working groups or online organizations for the jobless. Last year, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a labor union, founded the Ur Union of Unemployed, or U-Cubed, for jobless workers. Additionally, the AFL-CIO’s Working America affiliate has launched Unemployment Lifeline, an online site to rally and organize the unemployed. Working America is “the biggest organization for the unemployed,” according to spokesman Robert Fox. By the union’s own count, 500,000 of its 3.2 million members are currently jobless, and the group is going door-to-door, recruiting more members from the ranks of the unemployed. “We spend most of our time demanding the reform of banks, demanding good jobs, and trying to make sure that there’s investment being made in our communities,” says Fox. But come this fall, “We’re going to be engaging our members fully, making sure they’re aware of which candidates to support.” “We have the ability to make sure a lot of unemployed folks know where politicians stand, who is voting against making investments in jobs, who needs to hear from unemployed workers and who needs to hear from them twice,” he says. Likewise, U-Cubed is readying unemployed workers to call out politicians and candidates stumping in their home states during the August recess, planning to visit events in Wichita, Ks., and the west coast. The push from the unemployment netroots has already started. Upon hearing that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) might attempt to move legislation for unemployed workers who have exhausted their benefits this week, Paladinette urged her followers to start calling possible swing votes — Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), Scott Brown (Mass.) and Charles Grassley (Iowa). And she says she is gearing up to push her followers to attend rallies starting next week. “We don’t want to be like the Tea Partiers,” she says, noting their small-government views, “Just sort of.”

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The Unemployed, Organized Online, Look to the Midterms

Uncovered Politics Blinded by the Light: Looking for an Honest Man in Florida's US Senate Race Uncovered Politics … of the Backstreet Boys and other popular bands of the 1990s who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for running a $300 million investment scam . … and more

Rep. Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat from Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, is facing a tough re-election campaign. Not only does he hail from a conservative district — McCain won with 51 percent of the vote in 2008, and Bush won in 2004 and 2000 with healthy margins — but he has been an incredibly reliable Democrat, voting with his party 90.1 percent of the time , including votes for major bills like cap-and-trade and health care reform. In an effort to gain a head start over his Republican rival, state senator Robert Hurt, Perriello has fired his first serious shot in his re-election campaign, releasing a television spot that trumpets job creation while downplaying his party ID: There is a real question about whether Perriello can overcome his district’s conservatism, considering his liberal voting record. But if his remaining ads are as good as this one, he might not have too much trouble. This is pitch-perfect political messaging; Perriello pairs his message with humor and concrete images of job creation. Viewers will walk away from this ad knowing exactly what Perriello has done, without necessarily associating him with liberals or the Democratic Party. You can watch a longer version of the spot here , where he emphasizes his independence and distance from “federal lobbyists.”

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Rep. Tom Perriello Focuses on Job Creation in His First TV Spot

Providence Journal AG warns of senior, Medicare scams Newberg Graphic The scam artists are calling potential rebate check recipients and asking for personal information over the phone, according to a press release from … Aging director warns of Medicare scam Peabody Gazette Bulletin Medicare rebate checks come with scam caution Times Daily Medicare rebates lead to fraud alert OCRegister TriValley Central

Eppicard Scam Ohio Newsopi : Breaking News & Politics (blog) Then, when these individuals go to check the balance on their Eppicard, they notice that it has been drastically reduce. It is a part of a phishing scam . … and more

BBC News The Case Against Goldman Sachs TIME In the end, it was in fact all one big scam predicated on rising housing prices. Certainly, greedy consumers played a minor role in feeding the frenzy. … Goldman Dealmaking and Politics Election 2010 at Issue in SEC Lawsuit Before It’s News Goldman Sachs Deception and Profiteering Started With Childhood Spiked … Lying Dog News (satire) Instant View: Goldman Sachs earnings double, beat forecasts Reuters AlterNet (blog) all 1,180 news articles

Mitt Romney’s PAC is burning through money — the PAC reported a 78 percent overall burn rate as of Dec. 31 — but he has plenty of cash to spare. Romney’s PAC reported $1,125,375 cash on hand as of Dec. 31, beating out both Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s (R-Minn.) Freedom First PAC in cash available, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Romney has raised a total of $3,565,311 and spent $2,777,912, since he first formed his PAC months after exiting the presidential race in 2008. Pawlenty only formed his PAC in October 2009, so his totals were expected to be less robust than the those of Palin and Romney (who recently vied for vice president and president, respectively). Pawlenty’s burn rate was just about 31 percent overall and he reported $884,075 on hand. He raised $1,279,906 and spent $395,831 total through Dec. 31. Since SarahPAC was first formed in Jan. 2009, the committee has raised $2,132,119, spent $1,203,782 and reported $928,337 on hand as of Dec. 31. While most of SarahPAC’s money was spent on consulting, fundraising and other typical campaign expenditures, the committee reported spending tens of thousands on photographs, books and trinkets in the last half of the year. SarahPAC spent $13,668 on photos, $63,498 on books, $6,455 on t-shirt design and printing and nearly $3,000 on pens and rubber bracelets in the latter six months of 2009. These and other items contributed to SarahPAC’s overall burn rate of 56 percent. Julissa Treviño contributed research to this post.

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Romney PAC Has Highest Burn Rate, But Leads Palin and Pawlenty in Cash

Via The Hill , Rep. Steve Buyer will announce today that he won’t seek reelection this year. The nine-term Indiana Republican has been in hot water recently over allegations that his charity, the Frontier Foundation, has acted simply as a vehicle for siphoning campaign contributions from corporate leaders. Earlier this week, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Congress filed ethics complaints against both Buyer and the Frontier Foundation. Local news is reporting that he wants to spend more time with his family.

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GOP Rep. Buyer Calls It Quits

From The Associated Press : Scott Brown says he has already told Senate Republican leaders they won’t always be able to count on his vote. “I already told them, you know, ‘I got here with the help of a close group of friends and very little help from anyone down there, so there’ll be issues when I’ll be with you and there are issues when I won’t be with you,’” Brown said Thursday during the half-hour interview. “So, I just need to look at each vote and then make a proper analysis and then decide.” A radical idea in polarized Washington.

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Scott Brown to GOP Leaders: I’m No Rubber Stamp

Mixed messages coming today from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader who is spinning last week’s GOP Senate win in Massachusetts as a repudiation of the Democratic majority, while at the same time conceding that voters don’t really trust anyone in Congress at the moment. “I do think they’re angry,” Boehner said of voters on “Fox and Friends” this morning. “They’re angry about the economy and jobs. They don’t trust either party.” Boehner went on to claim that Republicans have offered clear alternatives to the Democrats’ stimulus bill, health care reform and “all of their nonsense.” (Remember, for example, this little gem outlining the GOP’s plans for health reform.) Still, his concession that Americans are across-the-board angry is indication that Republican leaders, for all their gloating over the last week, are also worried that the voters in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey were revolting, not merely against Democrats, but against incumbency. Also, if the Republicans are to make real gains, they’ll have to come up with a better message than that uttered by Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) last week. “The American people have fallen out of love with the current direction, but they haven’t fallen in love with Republicans,” Putnam told The Washington Post. ”Last year was about picking up ourselves and dusting ourselves off. Now we need a direction and vision.” Which begs the question: If you don’t already have direction or vision, what are you doing on Capitol Hill?

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Boehner: Voters ‘Don’t Trust Either Party’

Shira Toeplitz reports on the ego boost that Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts has given to Republican candidates and strategists. So far it’s been enough to nudge businessman Richard Hanna into a rematch with Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.); from there, it’s giving a second wind to recruiters who are trying to see whether they can put more Senate races on the map, and boosted the fortunes of Republicans like Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). I had a call and a text message from two significant donors of mine, who I never hear from other than when I’m calling them for money, say: ‘Wow, this is huge. Keep up the good work. Let me know how we can help. This pales before the effect that Brown’s win is having on congressional Democrats’ plans for their agenda. One dog that hasn’t barked: No vulnerable Democrats have bailed out of re-election this week.

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The Republican Surge, of Sorts

Josh Kraushaar , Mike Allen, and Jim Vandehei get the rumor mill churning with their report that Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), considered a dark horse 2012 candidate for president, is now looking at a 2010 run against Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). None of them have quotes from Pence that point more to 2010 than 2012 (”American people are telling Washington, DC enough is enough”), or more than this assertion: Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who now might draw a challenge from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said the party needs to rethink its entire approach to governing. Whether or not Pence runs, this is the sort of thing the GOP needs — credible threats against incumbent Democrats to scare them into voting down their party’s agenda. Bayh, who’s never lacking for a platform to trash his party for not governing in a “moderate” enough way, is a good target for this.

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Mike Pence for Senate?

For Democrats left dumbfounded over Republican Scott Brown’s shocking Senate win in Massachusetts yesterday, the short response statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) probably won’t offer much solace. “Regardless of the size of their minority caucus, Senate Republicans have always had an obligation to join us in governing our nation through these difficult times,” Reid said. “Today’s election doesn’t change that; in fact it is now more important than before for Republicans to work with us rather than against us if we are to find common ground that improves Americans’ lives.” Translation: “Republicans, please cooperate and help us pass our legislative agenda before the mid-terms.” To which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is already saying, “Think again!” There has, of course, been no indication that Senate Republicans are interested in anything at all outside of stalling the legislative process this Congress — to the point that it took weeks of procedural maneuvering last year for Democrats to pass even the most popular and uncontroversial measures (think: unemployment insurance ). And that was in a non-election year. Much of that was the Democrats fault for biting on claims that Republicans were ever interested in compromise. Remember that it was Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) who agreed to take the Finance Committee’s health care negotiations into the August recess, as if the Republicans’ idea of give-and-take was ever something other than to demand that Democrats accept a GOP bill. (It wasn’t.) “A president with an activist agenda met a Senate all but incapable of action,” Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson wrote today. The string of delays meant that Democrats couldn’t focus on the economy to the degree that the Great Recession demanded. Meanwhile, unemployment skyrocketed and foreclosures soared. Health reform might be vital, but the results of the months-long debate haven’t been tangible — a message screamed by the voters in Massachusetts Tuesday. For Democrats, the troubling thing about Reid’s statement is that it pretends that Republicans will now change their strategy for some reason — as if McConnell wasn’t rooting for Brown yesterday. For Republicans, this is a win-win situation. Not only have they been successful in blocking the Democrats’ legislative wish-list, but they’ve reaped the political rewards of the inaction they’ve caused. If Reid and the Democrats now think that GOP leadership will suddenly become cooperative in the run-up to the mid-terms, they should prepare for the worst.

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Did Reid Get the Message?

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who’s done plenty in recent months to alienate Democrats, won’t improve his standing with his comments today to Fox News. Asked by Neil Cavuto if he would switch to the Republican Party if the GOP somehow took over the Senate in this year’s elections, Lieberman declared that he has “no idea.” “That’s a big hypothetical a long away from now,” he said. “I was elected as an Independent but I remained a registered Democrat, so I’m with the Democratic Caucus.” Today’s tight Senate contest in Massachusetts, Lieberman added, is indication that Capitol Hill has grown too partisan — and voters are fed up. “The independents are speaking loudly around the country today and they’re telling us, one, to get together here in Washington,” he said. “The second thing really is to do something about the economy and move to the center and worry about things that [independents] are worried about.” That’s no music to the ears of liberals who were hoping that the pendulum swing away from the Bush administration might arc longer than just a year.

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Lieberman Calls for ‘Move to the Center,’ Doesn’t Rule Out Switch to GOP

Several last-minute donations in the Massachusetts Senate race caught my eye. While mining Martha Coakley’s and Scott Brown’s 48-hour filings with the Federal Election Commission, I turned up these interesting donors: -Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher, donated the maximum $2,400 to Brown. (And in case you’re wondering, this donation was made before Coakley called Schilling a Yankees fan .) – Hank Williams Jr. , country music star, donated $1,000 to Brown. -Keith Stoltz of Stoltz Management donated $2,400 to Brown. Stoltz and his family have longstanding ties to Vice President Joe Biden and Democrats. A Stoltz real estate transaction with Biden made national news . – Patricia Cornwell, bestselling crime writer, donated $2,400 to Coakley. -Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick donated $2,400 to Coakley on Jan. 9. Republicans have been linking Coakley to the unpopular Patrick in an attempt to drag Coakley down. -Democratic Congressman John W. Olver of the 1st District and his wife each gave $2,400 to Coakley. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and his wife also donated to Coakley. -Sens. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.), Bingaman’s and Blanche Lincoln’s (D-Ark.) PACs are among those that made recent donations to Coakley. -PACs related to Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) each donated money to Brown. -The CEO of Dish Network, Charles Ergen, donated $2,400 to Coakley. -The CEO and chairman of New Balance also both donated to Coakley. Hannah Dreier conducted research for this post.

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Celebs, Lawmakers and Others Donate Last-Minute Cash to Massachusetts

BOSTON — That, via Alex Isenstadt and Josh Kraushaar, is the number that defined the Massachusetts Senate race more than anything else. From the primary through last Sunday, Scott Brown held 66 events of varying size. Coakley held 19. Typically, a front-running campaign might hold fewer events to minimize the snafus that might occur and affect the race. The incredible thing about Coakley’s verbal and visual stumbles is that none occurred while stumping in Massachusetts. Her (perhaps unfairly mangled) “no terrorists in Afghanistan” malapropism happened during the final debate. Her gaffe about preferring to meet local politicians than to “stand outside of Fenway, shaking hands, in the cold” was made in a Boston Globe interview. When she left the trail last week for a Washington, D.C., fundraiser — one of the most baffling campaign decisions I’ve ever seen — she got negative storylines about lobbyist ties and the accidental knock-down of a conservative reporter. And her stumbles about whether “devout Catholics” could work in emergency rooms and who Curt Schilling was both happened in radio interviews. In retrospect, Coakley had plenty to gain by working the campaign trail. By avoiding it for weeks, she created a massive opening for Scott Brown.

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MA-Sen: 66 to 19

The anti-GOP activists who used to be called “Billionaires for Bush” showed up at Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown’s “People’s Rally” in Worcester, Mass., yesterday and chanted ironic slogans and staged loud, “funny” arguments for Brown — “I support Scott Brown because I can’t afford the payments on my yacht!” After a point, Brown’s staff had enough of them, and tried to block their signs. The video below the jump shows what happened next, as Brown supporters jeered and called for them to be left along because, hey, they were going to lose in three days anyway.

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MA-Sen Video: No Love for ‘Billionaires for Brown’

Organizations connected to the Service Employees International Union reported spending $759,000 in independent expenditures on the Massachusetts Senate race in the past seven days, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The SEIU’s Committee on Political Education spent $665,000 on a television ad supporting Democratic candidate Martha Coakley and $20,000 on Internet ads and a newsletter opposing Republican Scott Brown, according to independent expenditures reported to the FEC. The group’s political action fund spent $74,000 on robocalls on Tuesday. Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund dropped $10,000 today on get-out-the-vote phone calls for Coakley and The League of Conservation Voters Inc. spent $350,000 on an ad supporting Coakley in the past week. Brown has his own share of issue advocacy groups stepping in to aid his campaign during its final days. The National Rifle Association spent $19,800 on postcard mailers for Brown, while the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, connected to TeaPartyExpress.org, spent $146,000 to support Brown through media buys and online messaging in the past week. Candidates are prohibited from coordinating with groups that choose to make independent expenditures on federal races.

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SEIU, Tea Partiers Flood Massachusetts With Cash

The organizers of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville have announced which media outlets will get full access to the event. “Everyone from a small town newspaper in Iowa to Fox News has asked for press credentials,” say organizers in a press release. “We have had requests from Canada , England , France , Germany , Switzerland , Spain , Norway , Croatia and Japan .” But the lucky winners: Fox News Breitbart.com Townhall.com The Wall Street Journal World Net Daily WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah is also speaking at the convention; other reporters may get access to a “press room” if the venue “would be willing to provide” one. In the statement, organizers finally answer some of the attacks they’ve received from angry Tea Party activists and former sponsors. Between last February and the present, Tea Party Nation has seen members come and go.  We have tried to deal fairly with our present and former relationships, however, not without some criticism.  This criticism has been unfortunate and we believe, unwarranted.  However, it is the policy of Tea Party Nation not to focus on past challenges, but to stay focused on the task of advancing the conservative cause and defeating liberalism. With that in mind, we will not be making any comments regarding former members.

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Media Allowed to Cover National Tea Party Convention: Fox, WorldNetDaily, Breitbart

Josh Marshall is all over GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown’s strange statement to reporters that he was “unfamiliar” with the Tea Party movement. Whatever he meant, that’s not true — Brown, like many Republican officeholders, spoke at Tea Party events in 2009, and has counted on their support to raise money for his sleeper campaign. It’s the first time Brown has really failed to thread the needle between his support from a national conservative movement that’s not popular in Massachusetts and his promise to be an independent, “people’s” senator.

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A Strange Scott Brown Gaffe

Democratic strategists are champing at the bit for Republicans to go on the record for total repeal of health care reform — the strategists believe that once the furor dies down, provisions like the ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions will prove popular. Right on cue, the Club for Growth has launched the “Repeal It!” pledge. The pledge, for candidates: I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government. The first congressional candidate I’ve seen sign on is Republican Tim Huelskamp, who’s running in the first district of Kansas.

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Club for Growth Launches ‘Repeal Obamacare’ Pledge

Jonathan Martin’s smart report on Harold Ford Jr.’s baffling campaign for a Senate seat in New York includes a memorable swipe from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) If he thinks that its an appealing argument to position yourself as being somebody who will stand up to Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer , well I don’t think we need another Joe Lieberman , Is there any worse insult against a Democratic candidate, a month after Lieberman weakened the health care reform bill — in no small part because it pleased people like Weiner? I also liked this clueless boosterism from a “Ford friend.” Given its federal presence and place in world politics, it doesn’t hurt to be the senator from New York. New York kind of slightly rises above all the others. Harold Ford 2010: It Would Be Pretty Good for Him! Honestly, Ford’s Tennessee roots are less of an impediment to his campaign than his apparent belief that he can win the seat because New Yorkers want to help him get on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” more often. I’m keeping an eye on any signs of Republican support for Ford, as the battered state party has had no luck drafting its own challenger against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

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Harold Ford: ‘Another Joe Lieberman’?

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is hitting Massachusetts GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown over an ad launched yesterday by a 527 called Americans for Responsible Health Care. The problem? ARHC is a front for Bill Binnie , a wealthy New Hampshire businessman who’s running for Senate in that state. Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who’s now at Perkins Coie LLP, explains the problem: The law is clear: federal candidates cannot raise or spend soft money. By establishing a section 527 organization that does not report to the FEC while also running for Senate, Binnie is violating a central tenet of recent federal campaign finance reform. The full DSCC release (which is also notable for displaying how hard the committee is focusing on the bumbling Coakley campaign) is here: As a New Hampshire Republican runs illegal ads for Scott Brown in Massachusetts, will Brown stand by his friend or denounce the ad for being illegal? By forming a “527” issues advocacy group called Americans for Responsible Health Care to run ads for Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate is breaking the law. Senate candidates are, by law, not allowed to form a “527” Issues Advocacy Group and run television advertisements for other candidates. The illegality of the ads begs the question: What will Scott Brown do? Will he stand by his Republican buddy who is illegally spending over $200,000 or will he reject the ads? “We knew it was strange for a New Hampshire Republican to plaster himself on the Massachusetts airwaves for Scott Brown, but now we know it’s illegal,” said DSCC National Press Secretary Deirdre Murphy. “With friends like these, it’s no wonder the people of Massachusetts don’t trust Scott Brown. Will Scott Brown continue to let his Republican buddy run illegal ads for him on the air or will he denounce the ads and their message?” “The law is clear: federal candidates cannot raise or spend soft money,” said Marc Elias, chair of the Political Law Group at Perkins Coie LLP.  “By establishing a section 527 organization that does not report to the FEC while also running for Senate, Binnie is violating a central tenet of recent federal campaign finance reform.”

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An Illegal Ad for Brown?

California Republican Chuck DeVore’s aggressive strategy to be seen by conservative activists as a RINO-slaying hero seemed to get a boost today when former Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.), whose run for governor had been flagging, switched over to the Senate primary . It was certainly a vote of no-confidence in Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and GOP Senate candidate who announced this week that she had $2.7 million in the bank for her first-ever electoral bid. But I’d expect the Fiorina camp to try and box out both candidates by attacking the 2005 California budget. DeVore, a California assemblyman, voted for it . As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R-Calif.) finance director, Campbell helped muscle it through . So the events of today make Fiorina the only female candidate in the race, the best-funded, and the only one not tainted by GOP decisions of the past–probably a better position than she had on Monday.

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A Fiorina Opportunity in California?

Perhaps the strangest thing about the National Tea Party Convention’s quasi-blackout on media coverage is the innocuous nature of the stuff organizers don’t want covered. Here, for example, is the work-in-progress list of the breakout sessions that reporters won’t be allowed into. The Leadership Institute: “Grassroots on the Ground” FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform): “Operation Amnesty Shield” Philip Glass, National Precinct Alliance: “How to Change Elections – Becoming a Precinct Committee Chairperson” Young Americans for Freedom: “How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement” Dr. Rick Scarborough, Vision America, Author of “Enough is Enough”: “Why Christians Must Engage” Mark Skoda, Memphis Tea Party: “Collaboration in the Cloud-Applied Technology in the TEA Party Movement” David DeGerolamo, NC Freedom Tea Party: “How to Unite State Tea Party Groups” Lori Christenson, Evergreen/Conifer Tea Party: “How to Organize a Tea Party Group” Dr. B. Leland Baker, “Dr. B”, Professor of Management and Homeland Security, Researcher/Analyst, Author of “Conservatism and the Tea Party Movement” Walter Fitzgerald: “Emergency Preparedness” Smart Girl Politics: “How to Do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Votes” and “Women in Politics” I can sort of understand the worry that national media, coming into town to cover Palin, would flood these events and make attendees uncomfortable. But I’ve covered, and filmed, and watched other people cover and film, convention breakout sessions on pretty much all of these topics.

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Behold, the National Tea Party Convention’s Secret Breakout Sessions

Supporters of Massachusetts GOP Senate Candidate Scott Brown are holding a Ron Paul-style “moneybomb” today at the site RedInvadesBlue . The money, according to a video of Brown posted at the site, is for a final push and “getting ready in case any negative ads hit, which are already starting.” That’s a little much — Democratic candidate Martha Coakley hasn’t run any negative ads against Brown, and it’s one of the reasons why national Democrats are angry that her sleepy campaign has allowed the race to get close. But Coakley is bringing Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan to the state , which some hope is the start of a quick effort to bring down the favorable numbers of the pretty much unexamined Brown.

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A Scott Brown Moneybomb

Tucker Carlson (ZUMA Press) The offices of the Daily Caller evoke a long-ago era of journalism, circa 2005 or 2006, before The Los Angeles Times closed its big-city bureaus, The Washington Times fired 60 percent of its staff, and magazines from Gourmet to Portfolio shuttered for lack of revenue. A staff of 21 reporters and editors sit in blindingly white offices and a wide-open center space, cranking out content for the site’s January 11 launch. Other possible hires walk in and out of Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson’s office, past a lounge inhabited by liquor bottles and a sleeping dog, and decorated by clocks that tell the time in far-flung and random locations: Pyongyang, Jackson Hole, Washington, Honolulu. “I just thought it was funny,” said Carlson, chewing on a piece of Nicorette. (He quit smoking last year, on his 40th birthday.) “We dispatched some intern to go and get those signs made. Actually, it was $150–I never would have done it if I’d thought it would be so expensive. But something about it amused me. They’re on velcro. We swap ‘em out–we’ve got a whole drawer full of ‘em.” Image by: Matt Mahurin Last February, Carlson–the conservative former host or co-host of shows on CNN and MSNBC, and still a Fox News contributor– gave a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in which he urged activists on the right to “copy” the journalistic model of the New York Times. “They need to get out, find out what’s going on, and not just analyze things based on what the mainstream media has reported,” Carlson said. He was roundly booed. Four months later he officially announced plans to launch a news site “along the lines of the Huffington Post” with an ideology “not in sync with the current program.” When he talked with TWI on Wednesday, Carlson suggested that the desire for news like that, and the potential to break big stories, was greater than ever. “When was the last time you saw, on television, a straight explanation of what’s in the competing House and Senate health care bills?” Carlson asked. “What’s in them? People want to know that!” In the time between that announcement and next week’s debut, Carlson and his partner Neil Patel–a former aide to Dick Cheney–raised money, scouted out staff (”we didn’t ask about ideology,” said Carlson) and held poker games at their original, grimier office in Washington’s Dupont Circle. A June launch date was pushed into autumn, and then pushed back again. The reason, explained Patel, was that “our aspirations kept growing.” “The size of the staff is much bigger than we started with,” Patel said. “We were very lucky to get the amount of money we did based, basically, on a PowerPoint.” As they convinced funders and advertisers that the online journalism model was viable–”two years ago, who would have thought that the Huffington Post would get more traffic than the Washington Post?”–they expanded the scale of the enterprise. When they go live, it will be with more than $3 million in start-up capital, enough to run the site for at least a year. That site will bear as much of a resemblance to the Huffington Post–the juggernaut that now clocks around 17 million hits per month–as Carlson speculated that it would back last summer. According to Carlson, there will be at least one editor monitoring and posting stories “24 hours a day, around the clock, in the office.” The top story of the moment will run at the top of the page, with more content running beside it. Stories written by the magazine’s reporting team, which includes Washington Times veteran Jon Ward and Government Executive’s Gautham Nagesh, will be cycled in, marked as “DC Exclusives,” much the way that stories by Huffington Post reporters trade space with headlines that link to stories from other publications. A staff blog–possible names include “Caller ID” and “The Daily Trawler”–will indulge in more humor, some of it written by long-time conservative blogger Jim Treacher (real name Sean Medlock) who moved to Washington from Indianapolis after Carlson gave him a call. And an iPhone app is on the way. “Tucker is one of the most talented journalists I know,” said Ana Marie Cox, a host and reporter for Air America Radio who spars with Carlson in online chats hosted by the Washington Post. “Given free rein, he’ll definitely produce something interesting, compelling, and conversation-starting. Whether that thing can wind up being a financial success, I have no idea. If I could answer such questions I would not be a journalist.” Carlson and his staff are spending the final hours before the launch polishing off content that can break out of the gate–exclusive interviews, lists like the Top 15 Most Wasteful Stimulus Projects, and short features from think tankers and established politicos. Arianna Huffington will have one of the first pieces on the site. Carlson, who started his career as a magazine writer, is working on an investigative piece for later. When Carlson talked to TWI on Wednesday, he had a wallet full of business cards handed to him by excited political candidates, Tea Party activists and PR flacks who’d heard him speak at Grover Norquist’s weekly meetings of the conservative movement. It was the first time, said Carlson, that he’d ever gone to the meeting. He wanted as much news, and as many stories, as possible. Whether they came from ax-grinding researchers or established reporters didn’t much matter. “If there’s a story whose facts are verifiable, and it generates interest, and it comes from Satan himself, I will take it and I will pay him a reporting fee,” Carlson said. “But if we take a piece from Satan, that does not mean we’re on board with Satan’s agenda. It just means that the provenance of the piece, the origins of the piece, is not the most important thing. People don’t give you stuff because they love journalists. They give you that stuff because they’re pushing an agenda.” The New York Times-style investigative journalism that Carlson has told conservatives to cultivate will not largely come, as the Times’s investigations come, from inside the organization. The Daily Caller is taking one page from Andrew Breitbart, whose biggest story–a multi-city hidden-camera investigation of ACORN–came from two freelancing conservative conservative activists. The Daily Caller’s investigative pieces will come from outside; some will develop in-house, but most are being sought out from the ever-expanding population of journalists who need work. “Our view,” said Carlson, “is that there are enough seasoned freelance journalists out there that you can let them do it.” Veterans of other new media start-ups are sold on what they’ve heard about the “HuffPo of the Right.” Conor Friedersdorf, a freelance journalist who worked for the short-lived site Culture11, contrasted Carlson’s focus on journalism with the much-praised, quick-hitting tactics of Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Big Journalism. “I hope that The Daily Caller aspires to produce writing that is as well written and professionally edited as the stuff that the talented Tucker Carlson writes for Esquire,” said Friedersdorf. “The alternative — the Andrew Breitbart model — is to publish poorly reasoned, atrociously edited screeds on the cheap, on the assumption that ideologically friendly readers will keep clicking anyway.” Carlson’s full-time staff, still taking shape this week (Helen Rittelmeyer, slated to be a reporter, left Monday for a job at National Review), is skewed toward younger reporters who had, in his view, the “energy and temperament” for the job. They don’t have hard quotas for blog posts, articles, or pageviews. They seemed ready to work hard without that. “I keep reading all of these Nick Denton memos for Gawker,” said Carlson, “these ferocious memos to writers where it’s like ‘get a million pageviews this week or you’re fired!’ Maybe we’ll have to do that! But it’s not my personality at all.” Whenever he’s asked, Carlson will happily admit the lofty goals he’s set for the site. It’s got to fill the gap that the “pathetic” media has left in coverage of how government works. It’s got to generate buzz and drive the conversation, getting stories that other media have to chase and topping a million page-views a month, “although one word I’ll never use is ‘metric.’” It’s got to be fun. That’s the point of the foreign clocks and the random posters Carlson has placed around the office. But there’s the occasional strange found object that makes a greater point, like the photo of a joyful Korean businessman perched on top of his store during the L.A. riots, holding a rifle. “Because he’s taken the time to defend himself with a firearm,” explained Carlson, “he’s not going to be victimized by the racist mobs below. He is smiling. That’s a smile that reflects both his self-satisfaction and also the promise of America. The promise of America is ‘We’ll let you do what you want, as long as you defend yourself.’ I just love that. I’ve had that over every desk I’ve ever had as an adult.”

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Carlson Launches Right’s Answer to HuffPost

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) just announced his candidacy to replace outgoing Sen. Chris Dodd (D) — and already, a new poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, has him up by at least 30 points on his potential Republican challengers. Blumenthal leads Rob Simmons 59-28, Linda McMahon 60-28, and Peter Schiff 63-23. That’s quite a contrast from Dodd’s numbers in the same poll, which found him trailing Simmons 44-40, tied with McMahon at 43, and leading Schiff 44-37. 59% of voters in the state have a favorable opinion of Blumenthal to just 19% who view him unfavorably. He’s liked by 71% of Democrats and 60% of independents, and even a slight plurality of Republicans by a 37/35 margin. The outcome for Democrats in North Dakota, where Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) is vacating his seat at the end of the year, is hardly so rosy.

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In Connecticut, Blumenthal Up by 30 Points, Poll Says

Why’s that? Because Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s popular attorney general, has already announced that he’ll be entering the race for the seat soon to be vacated by retiring Sen. Chris Dodd (D). The Hill’s Aaron Blake explains that the shake-up might also spell good news for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), because Blumenthal was eyeing a shot at Lieberman’s seat in 2012. “Blumenthal’s decision leaves Lieberman some breathing room, for now, in 2012,” Blake writes.

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Dodd Retirement Could Help Dems, Lieberman

From CNN : Lincoln Chafee Monday will formally announce his bid for Rhode Island governor Monday. The former Republican senator-turned-independent will officially jump into the race at an event in Warwick, where he once served as mayor. The 56 year old Chafee lost his U.S. senate seat in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse after a bitter Republican primary battle against Stephen Laffey.  Chafee eventually left the GOP and is now an independent.

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Chafee to Announce Candidacy for Governor

After debating Pat Buchanan on “Morning Joe” earlier in the day about the efficacy of torturing terror suspects, TWI’s Spencer Ackerman returned to MSNBC last night to resume the conversation with Rachel Maddow. Video after the jump. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

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Spencer Ackerman and Rachel Maddow Discuss the ‘24′-ification of the National Security Debate

During the holiday season, we are reminded to remember the less fortunate among us. In that spirit of empathy, TWI has compiled a list of the ten least successful politicians of 2009 — those most in need of our thoughts. Click here to begin slideshow.

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Remember the Neediest

Rep. Parker Griffith (R-Ala.) On Tuesday morning, Politico broke the news that Rep. Parker Griffith (Ala.) was switching from the Democratic Party to the GOP. For Les Phillip — a Tea Party activist who’d been waging a Republican campaign for Griffith’s seat since August — it was “manna from heaven.” “This is why we do the things we do,” Phillip told TWI . “This gives us a chance to judge his entire record. If he wants to play on this side of the hall, our voters are very aware of the issues and we hold everyone accountable.” Image by: Matt Mahurin Before Griffith had even explained his decision in a brief mid-afternoon press conference, Phillip made it clear to TWI that the switch would do nothing to deter his bid. If anything, it gave his insurgent campaign — which has won the support of Mike Huckabee’s HuckPAC — a new argument against the first-term congressman. “This is an act of desperation to maintain power,” said Phillip. “It’s exactly what people in this district are sick of. When someone lied before, and now says he’s telling the truth, well, was he lying then, or is he lying now?” Griffith’s switch — the first time a Democratic congressman has made this jump since Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) did in 2004 — has been welcomed by the national GOP. In no time at all, party leaders made the connection between Griffith’s move and the progress of a health care bill that looks set to pass the Senate on partisan lines. (Griffith voted against the House’s version of the legislation.) “When a member of Congress decides to leave a 258-seat majority to join a deep minority,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, the party’s whip, in a statement, “it is a sure sign that the majority party has become completely disconnected from seniors, young workers and families in America.” At the same time, conservatives in Washington and in Griffith’s district told TWI that they had serious reservations about backing a man who’d spent only 11 months as a House Democrat. In that time, they argue, Griffith’s votes against cap-and-trade, the economic stimulus package and the Lily Ledbetter Act were sullied by his votes for spending and earmarks. Phillip was not alone — all of Griffith’s Republican challengers have announced that they are not dropping out of the race. In a statement on Parker’s switch, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) notably neglected to swing the committee’s endorsement to the newest member of the House GOP conference. “We’ve known for a long time that Parker Griffith’s principles are either for sale to the highest bidder or can change depending on how the poll results are looking,” said a spokesman for Mo Brooks , a county commissioner who’d gotten some early support from the NRCC, in an interview with Politico. “He seems to speak out of both sides of his mouth.” The harsh reactions of Brooks and Phillip were in line with the reactions of activists in Alabama’s fifth congressional district. “He’s an S.O.B.,” said Dale Jackson, a conservative radio host who’s posted a banner reading “Parker Griffith Cannot Be Trusted” on his Website. “He’s a liar. Michael Steele should be ashamed of himself. The NRCC should be ashamed of itself for not coming out and immediately repudiating this guy. He was unacceptable a year ago and he’s acceptable now? A year ago, they were saying this guy was a murderer.” The “murder” charge that Jackson referred to came from ads that the NRCC ran in 2008, accusing Griffith of “warehousing” cancer patients and letting them suffer to increase his profits. Other Griffith critics, however, have focused on his voting record as a reason to support some other candidate in the GOP primary. Erick Erickson, editor of the influential RedState.com, posted a link to Griffith’s requested earmarks and challenged fellow conservatives to “pick this guy off and get a real Republican in that seat.” Andy Roth, vice president of government affairs at the Club for Growth, reacted to the Griffith news with a blog post detailing how he’d voted to keep spending items in the stimulus package. “It was a factual post,” Roth explained to TWI. “It was not stating any opinions, except that he’s not really that conservative for someone who claimed to be a conservative Blue Dog Democrat.” Griffith’s seat, said Roth, was “on the radar” of the fiscally conservative 527 before his decision, and it remained on the radar. Activists back in Griffith’s district were pleased by the potential support for a challenge to Griffith. “Personally, I do not plan on supporting Parker Griffith,” said C hristie Cardom, a lead organizer of Huntsville, Alabama’s Tea Party group. “I do not consider him a constitutional conservative, which is the beginning of my criteria for our next congressman. To earn my vote, Parker Griffith would need to start by convincing enough Democrats in the Senate or House to vote against ObamaCare and kill it. If he stops ObamaCare, Cap & Trade and other extreme socialist and detrimental agendas, I will consider voting for him.” Brooklyn Burgess, the executive director of the state’s branch of the conservative Eagle Forum, told TWI that Griffith was falling into a familiar role — that of the “big-government” politician who changes parties without changing stripes. “I’d expect him to become another [Alabama Sen.] Richard Shelby in terms of bringing pork home and spending,” said Burgess, referring to the senator who left the Democratic Party after the GOP’s 1994 sweep. “I think Griffith will hurt the conservatives who were running for this seat. If he wins I think he’ll become another big-government Republican we can’t get rid of.” Steve Gordon, an Alabama conservative activist who worked on former Rep. Bob Barr’s (R-Ga.) Libertarian presidential bid last year, tentatively attacked Griffith, using some of the same language as Burgess. “What seems to be a GOP victory at first may well become another liberal victory in the long term,” Gordon wrote in a post for the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus. “Unless Parker Griffith starts voting like a true fiscal conservative, Alabama could be stuck with another entrenched big-government Republican congressman.” Griffith, who never faced an easy road to re-election in 2010, lacks some of the advantages of previous party-switchers. When Alexander switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP in 2004, he waited until hours before the candidate filing deadline to make the change. That deprived the blindsided Democrats of a chance to recruit a strong challenger. When Shelby made his switch in 1994, it was with the knowledge that Republicans were taking over the Senate and in the position to give him more influence. Griffith’s switch not only puts him in the minority; it pits him against an active and demanding Republican base that has made it clear throughout 2009 that candidates and incumbents needed to pass several tests to win their support. “There’s two great candidates running against Griffith,” said Richard Barry, a conservative activist at the Liberty House, a hub of grassroots activism in Alabama-05. “He’d be my third choice.” To win the votes of Alabama Republicans, Barry said that Griffith needed to bump up a “50/50″ voting record to a 90-percent conservative record, and to become more “aggressive about stopping the tyranny and the socialism.” “If he’s out in front fighting the health care bill, I’d put my arms around him,” said Barry. “If he did a Joe Wilson — you know, ‘You Lie!’ — hey, we’d applaud him. If he pulled that we’d consider supporting him.”

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Conservatives Not Ready to Embrace Party-Switcher

It’s the first rule of congressional lawmaking: Never miss an opportunity to grab everything you can for your constituents, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else. That’s certainly been the case in the Senate’s health care reform bill, where it wasn’t just the moderate holdouts who successfully secured enormous earmarks for their states. Here’s the emerging list: (1) Ben Nelson (D-Neb.): Making a joke of the earlier claim that his vote is “not for sale,” the Nebraska Democrat won three huge concessions for his state in the Senate bill: $100 million in extra Medicaid funds; an annual fee exemption for some Nebraska-based insurance companies; and another carve-out exempting some physician-owned hospitals in the state from new restrictions. (2) Mary Landrieu (D-La.): Senate leaders secured her support with $300 million in new Medicaid funding for Louisiana. (3) Max Baucus (D-Mont.): The Finance Committee chairman has long fought for federal funding surrounding an asbestos mine in Libby, Mont., The New York Times pointed out over the weekend. The health reform bill, most of which Baucus and his staff wrote, fulfilled his wish, including a provision to expand Medicare coverage to victims living near the mine. (4) Bill Nelson (D-Fla.): Representing a state chock-full of seniors, the Florida Democrat has been concerned about the proposed cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, under which the government pays private insurers to cover Medicare beneficiaries. The result? Three counties in south Florida are exempt from the cuts. (5) Chris Dodd (D-Conn.): Many senators have been scratching their heads in recent days trying to figure out who would benefit from a $100 million provision to build a new university-affiliated hospital. Turns out that Dodd, who ushered the health reform bill through the Senate HELP Committee in the absence of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), is eyeing the funding for UConn. (6) Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) : The Vermont Independent had threatened to oppose the bill if it lacked a strong public insurance option. Instead, Senate leaders agreed to Sanders’ request for additional money for community health centers ($10 billion more, to be exact). Vermont was also among the handful of states to win extra federal Medicaid funding. This, of course, is nothing new. As David Axlerod told CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend, “Every senator uses whatever leverage they have to help their states. That’s the way it has been. That’s the way it will always be.”

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Health Care Reform, Earmark Edition

At this point in the health-reform debate, observers are well aware that the Republican strategy is to delay the vote as long as possible, even if it means dragging out debate on unrelated bills that GOP leaders support. That agenda was on display in October, when it took nearly a month to push through an extension of unemployment benefits that ultimately passed 98 to 0 . And it’s on display today, as Republicans are forcing a long-drawn debate on a defense spending bill that every member of the party will eventually vote for. The tactic forced Democratic leaders to stage a 1 a.m. cloture vote this morning on the defense bill, in hopes of passing the final bill tomorrow morning and moving back to the health-care debate. Forcing that cloture vote is the working definition of a filibuster. And yet GOP leaders have had the temerity to argue that (1) they didn’t filibuster the defense bill and (2) the Democrats are behind all the delays. This isn’t spin — it’s lying. From Roll Call : Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused Republicans of attempting to filibuster the Defense bill, which includes funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an effort to block work on the health care bill. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and other Republicans, however, sought to place the blame for the funding delay on Democrats, accusing them of dragging their feet in bringing the bill to the floor and arguing they are prepared to pass the bill. “I find it rather curious that our colleague … is accusing Republicans of filibustering this Defense appropriations bill. Republicans don’t control the Senate or the House. The House just passed this bill Wednesday. Now, it could have been passed in October or September,” Kyl said, adding that, “We always vote for the Defense appropriations bill.” Moments later, Kyl refused an attempt to pass the defense bill immediately by unanimous consent. Hours later, he voted against bringing the Defense bill to a final vote. In a perfect world, the Republicans voting with Kyl would be forced to explain why they sought to kill the bill providing troop funding in the middle of two wars.

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Senate Republicans Filibuster Defense Spending Bill — Then Deny They Did It

From Rasmussen, an accurate pollster who’s not based in Florida, this poll finding a tie between Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) and former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in the 2010 GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Florida is important. For one, I don’t think Rubio has even run a TV ad against Crist. He’s been the beneficiary of fairly uncritical press coverage centered on the likelihood of him scoring an upset, while Crist has gotten remarkably negative coverage on decisions like the appointment of a crony, George LeMieux, to fill the Senate seat he’s running for following Sen. Mel Martinez’s (R-Fla.) retirement. Much has changed since the summer, when the Crist camp spread rumors that Rubio might quit the race and run for something else.

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The Rubio Surge

MiamiHerald.com FBI: Rothstein's alleged scam could top $1 billion Sun-Sentinel.com Attorney Scott Rothstein's alleged investment scam may exceed $1 billion dollars in victims' investments , the FBI said Thursday. Previous estimates of the … FBI: Alleged scheme by lawyer Scott Rothstein could top $1 billion MiamiHerald.com FBI: Alleged scheme by Fla. lawyer could top $1B The Associated Press Rothstein's million-dollar car towed over the horizon Broward Politics all 97 news articles

TPMMuckraker (blog) Florida law firm seeks probe of alleged funds scam Reuters Citing unidentified sources, the newspaper said the FBI and other federal investigators were investigating a Rothstein-controlled investment company run … Lawyer's sales pitch called suspect MiamiHerald.com SCAMMED: Frum Community Hit Hard: Tens Of Millions Lost Yeshiva World News Prominent Fla. Lawyer's Sales Pitch Called Suspect CBS 4 Broward Politics all 177 news articles

Sun-Sentinel.com Scott Rothstein's investment deals seemed too good to be true Sun-Sentinel.com According to a lawsuit filed against him by his firm and its co-founding partner, Rothstein was running a covert investment scheme on the side and may … Stuart Rosenfeldt: RRA will go down in history in same breath as Madoff Broward Politics all 140 news articles

This Sun-Sentinel video of Florida Republicans at a firing range pretty much speaks for itself. But did Robert Lowry, the Republican challenging Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), really need to have the letters “DWS” next to the silhouetted head of his target? h/t: The Hill .

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Florida Republicans ‘Celebrate an Armed Citizenry’

Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), the last major Republican office-holder in the very blue home of Vice President Joe Biden, is set to announce whether or not he’ll run for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Politico reports that he’s in. As I noted last week, Castle’s numbers have been softer than you’d expect from a pol who hasn’t lost an election in this state since he entered politics in the 1960s. He ran 24 points ahead of the McCain-Palin ticket last year; he’s only leading likely Democratic candidate Beau Biden (son of the vice president, state attorney general) by five points. Nonetheless, a seat that Republicans had no chance at will become a seat they have a real chance at.

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Delaware Republican Running for Senate

Dave has been following the saga of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who incited a GOP uproar this week after charging that the Republicans’ health reform strategy is to let the sick “die quickly.” The comment caused GOP leaders to threaten an anti-Grayson resolution, to be introduced if Grayson failed to apologize for his remarks. Roll Call has the tale of the apology, delivered Wednesday afternoon on the House floor: After speaking extensively to the press, Grayson came to the floor with an apology, but not for the Republican Party. “I would like to apologize,” he said. “I would like to apologize to the dead.” No word yet of the GOP response. – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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Grayson Apologizes

One week after Marin Cogan wrote a spot-on profile of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), the punchy freshman Democrat fulfilled her prediction that he would be “the first member to bring the blogosphere’s in-your-face style to Capitol Hill.” He gave a short floor speech on health care where he summed up the GOP’s as “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.” The National Republican Congressional Committee has relentlessly hammered Grayson (a target in 2010) since then, aided by TV personalities who have been dutifully asking Democrats if they’ll condemn him. The NRCC looks to be winning a PR victory, at least — The Washington Post gives Grayson on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand coverage, comparing him to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). This seems like the wrong comparison. In June, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said that Democratic health care reform might lead to seniors getting “put to death.” There’s your comparison. It’ll be interesting to see how Grayson plays this.

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NRCC Pushes Alan Grayson ‘Controversy’

TWI politics reporter David Weigel was a guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross yesterday. In a nearly 40-minute, wide-ranging interview, Weigel discussed much of the stellar reporting he’s done on the conservative movement. If you missed it, you can listen right here after the jump. – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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David Weigel Talks to NPR’s Terry Gross About ‘The Remaking of the Right’

Andrew Breitbart (YouTube) On September 10, Andrew Breitbart launched his new site, BigGovernment , with hidden-video camera footage of two young conservative activists who’d gotten ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) employees to advise them on hiding prostitution profits from the IRS. Within hours, Breitbart was doing interviews with reporters who wanted to know how, exactly, the story had come about, and why Big Government was releasing the videos and the identity of the muckrackers–25-year-old James O’Keefe III and 20-year-old Hannah Giles–so slowly. “It was strategized,” Breitbart told TWI this week, so “that they would be deprived of the type of information that a defense attorney would try to gather in order to create a defense.” Image by: Matt Mahurin Who were “these people?” They were not just the leaders or members of ACORN itself. “They” were the Democratic Party, the White House, the progressive Center for American Progress and its president John Podesta. The “Democrat-media complex” is Breitbart’s name for the whole apparatus. “We deprived them of information,” Breitbart explained, “so that they couldn’t come up with a vile, kill-the-messenger attack with the media doing the groundwork for them.” The success of Breitbart’s strategy was immediate, stunning, and still ricocheting around the political world. Five days after the story broke, the United State Senate voted 83-7 to prevent ACORN from receiving any federal funding. Two days later, the House of Representatives did the same . Meanwhile, Breitbart was talking to more reporters, amused at how the “kill-the-messenger attack” was playing out. When one report from the Washington Post called him for a story about O’Keefe and Giles, Breitbart compared their tape to the photos of Abu Ghraib prison released in April 2004. “She goes, ‘Wait a second! I worked on the Abu Ghraib stories,’” said Breitbart. “I go, ‘Yeah, that was one aberrant National Guard unit. And now I have five ACORN places that are all complicit in the exact same thing. And there are more!’” (The reporter, Carol Leonning told TWI that the conversation did not go this way, but that she enjoyed getting Breitbart’s take “very much.”) Breitbart, angered by the Post’s eventual story–it seemed to intimate that O’Keefe and Giles had been motivated by ACORN’s registration of non-white voters, in a line that was corrected days later–moved right on. BigGovernment had claimed a victory that conservative journalists and activists had been seeking for years, occasionally embarrassing ACORN with a state lawsuit, but drawing no blood. It was a natural next step for Breitbart. Until a few years ago he was known mostly as the man behind the curtain of The Drudge Report and a ringleader for Hollywood’s quiet community of political conservatives. (Breitbart lives in Los Angeles and runs his web operations from an office in his basement.) With the launch of BigGovernment, he is gaining new recognition as the conservative movement’s most successful–in terms of damaging liberals–new media pioneer. “I get accused of breaking some journalism school rules,” said Breitbart. “Well, why don’t we have the Howard Kurtz conversation on a low-rated CNN show after this? Or at a j-school of your choice? I’m willing to be accused of being a monster.” In the planning stages of BigGovernment, Breitbart asked Mike Flynn, a longtime friend and a fixture in Washington’s libertarian and conservative circles, to recommend an editor. Both men eventually decided that the editor should be Flynn, who had recently left the libertarian Reason Foundation. With no Washington office, and with only six other employees, Flynn and Breitbart trained their eyes on possible scoops. Originally, they had planned to launch the site with a scoop from a filmmmaker named Patrick Courrielche . He had been on a conference call in which White House and National Endowment for the Arts staffers seemed to be directing artists to glorify the administration with their grants. But they rushed the launch of BigGovernment to capitalize on the ACORN tapes. Flynn, a one-time lobbyist and campaign strategist who had beaten ACORN in an Albuquerque minimum wage referendum, got to edit the story that terminated the group’s taxpayer funding. “The voter stuff had always been the least interesting to me,” Flynn told TWI . “ACORN’s always been around, and they’ve always been a kind of Apple Dumpling gang. They’re always screwing up.” The revelation of the ACORN story, said Flynn, was that conservative and libertarian journalism had gotten past “this frustration that whatever they do, people won’t cover it.” With video, and with the right new media strategy–with Fox News–they could get coverage after all. “It’s not just the ACORN story,” said Flynn. “Van Jones resigned without a single column in the New York Times. They threw [the NEA's] Yosi Sargeant under the bus. The Census acted on ACORN before the Washington Post weighed in. There are actual repercussions even without the mainstream media weighing in. If I was at the New York Times, I’d be shuddering.” Breitbart, more than Flynn, has taken fire from the “Democrat-media complex” on the ACORN story. O’Keefe and Giles have said they spent $1,300 of their own money on the story, and Breitbart has said he’ll post their receipts online. Much of the media attention on the ACORN tapes and the ensuing scandal has focused on O’Keefe, a Rutgers University graduate who had been making pie-in-the-face video exposes of liberals for years. O’Keefe came out of a campus conservative movement which has been well-trained, well-funded , and well-connected (to other campuses and to the broader movement) by groups like the Virginia-based Leadership Institute and the Delaware-based Collegiate Network. They are far from the first activists to film similar stunts; the pro-life activist Lila Rose , another recipient of Leadership Institute aid, has filmed “stings” of Planned Parenthood. But little of this conservative muckraking has made it beyond local news or Fox News reports. In coming to Breitbart, O’Keefe and Giles found a new media ally who could package and sell their goods. “The unorthodox roll-out was orchestrated to protect James and Hannah,” said Breitbart. “The moment that their peril ended, was when Jon Stewart reported on this, making fun of the media for missing the story. At that moment I called James and Hannah and said, “You’re mostly in the clear, and the only people left who’ll attack you will be some liberal bloggers.’” Breitbart knows something about liberal bloggers. His pre-BigGovernment career included many months working to launch The Huffington Post. (He had been a researcher for Arianna Huffington in the early 1990s, before he joined Drudge, when both of them were still conservatives.) “I wanted the world to see what the Left and the Los Angeles/Manhattan salons had to think about national politics,” Breitbart told TWI. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I thought it would be great for Arianna and I thought it would be great for the right, because it gave them source material.” As the Huffington Post launched, Breitbart launched breitbart.com , a news aggregator with some original content. In 2007, he launched breitbart.tv , where Fred Thompson published a video poking fun at Michael Moore that preceded the former Tennessee senator’s ill-fated run for president. In 2008, Breitbart kept up the momentum, launching a sprawling conservative blog about the film industry, BigHollywood , and writing a column of the same name for The Washington Times. He saw the rise of liberal new media as a rearguard action against conservative new media, which in 2004 had pushed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allegations against Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and the scandal of allegedly forged documents that CBS News used in a report about President George W. Bush’s military service. “It’s so obvious that the mainstream media needed the netroots,” said Breitbart. “It needed the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos and the Media Matters of the world to protect them from future Swift Boats and Rathergates.” The ACORN scandal, he said, was “Rathergate 2.0.” “The left has done a very good job with Internet stuff,” said Flynn. “Josh Marshall has broken some interesting stuff at TPM. They ought to know that you don’t need a big backer to break news. This notion of this right-wing conspiracy–Look, I’ve been inside what would be called the right-wing conspiracy for a long time, and there’s no planning. These people couldn’t plan a bake sale.” On Wednesday afternoon, ACORN filed lawsuits against the filmmakers and against Breitbart. He has not responded to that yet; when he spoke with TWI, he was still laughing at how mainstream media reporters could get so excited about Abu Ghraib and so angry at his site and his reporters. “This is the Abu Ghraib of journalism!” said Breitbart. “Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, everywhere you go. I heard that two million times, from when they reported in 2004 to right now. This is the Abu Ghraib of Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraibs for everyone! NEA Abu Ghraib! White House Abu Ghraib! ACORN Abu Ghraib! Journalism Abu Ghraib! You’ve all been exposed, you corrupt bastards.”

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HuffPo Cofounder Takes on ‘Democrat-Media Complex’

It’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for the seriousness with which congressional Republicans have approached health care reform. The Senate Finance Committee was barely an hour into its consideration of health-care reform on Tuesday morning, but Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) already knew where he stood. “I do not support a government takeover of the health-care system,” he railed. The proposal “confiscates more money from the taxpayers,” he went on. “It tramples on American freedom and liberties.” After this vigorous display of open-mindedness, Bunning was spent. About an hour later, spectators noticed that the senator, who had been resting his chin in his hand, had fallen fast asleep. As giggles rippled through the chamber, an aide shook Bunning, who woke with a start. But I guess if you’re not there to participate in a constructive way and you’re retiring at the end of this term , it doesn’t really matter anyway, right?

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Bunning Snoozes Through Health Care Deliberations

The Massachusetts State Senate has approved a bill that would alter the state’s Senate succession law to allow Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.) to appoint an interim replacement for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). The vote was 24-16, with 11 Democrats voting with the five GOP members against the bill. Scott Brown, one of the Republicans who voted no, is a candidate for the full term in January 2010.

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Massachusetts Senate Approves Interim Senator Legislation

There’s no indication that it’s anything more than a mild fall, but Politico reports that ambulances and fire trucks were dispatched this morning to the home of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). At 91 years, Byrd is the oldest member of the Senate, and he has been in poor health for much of the year. Advocates of health care reform are particularly anxious for Byrd to return to the Senate, since he has pledged to take up the health care mission of his good friend, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). From Politico: “Byrd apparently stood up too fast this morning in his home and fell down,” said Jesse Jacobs, a spokesman for the senator. “To err on the side of caution his caregiver called an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital where he is currently being checked out. At this point in time there is no indication that he will be admitted.” If Byrd’s health does take a turn for the worse and he’s forced to leave the Senate, his replacement would be appointed by the state’s Democratic governor, Joe Manchin . Nonetheless, with Kennedy’s passing having complicated the prospects for health reform, Democrats will be hoping for Byrd’s speedy recovery. – Check out our Senate Public Option Scoreboard here . You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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Ambulances Dispatched to Sen. Robert Byrd’s Home

In a rote column about “liberals stifling dissent,” The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone argues that “the two most violent incidents at this summer’s town hall meetings came when a union thug beat up a 65-year-old black conservative in Missouri and when a liberal protester bit off part of a man’s finger in California.” The “black conservative” is Kenneth Gladney, who claimed to have been assaulted by members of the Service Employees International Union at a health care town hall in St. Louis. Curiously, however, there is no record of charges being filed against Gladney’s alleged attackers. And Gladney’s Website is down, with this message replacing the content. Unfortunately, this site is no longer available due to nonpayment on the part of Kenneth’s attorney, David Brown. The site will resume normal operation once payment is received. The site below the jump:

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The Mystery of Kenneth Gladney

Speaking of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) — who apparently is weighing a run for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) — Kate just passed along the all-time money-est Barton quote ever (and that’s saying something) about how wind power might aggravate climate change. From a March 10 energy and commerce committee hearing: Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about. This man was once the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which this year passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

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Barton’s Greatest Hits: Wind Power Might Mess Up Global Wind Patterns and Make the Earth Warmer