That viral Youtube may be the most famous American cri de coeur of the new century --- a shot heard round the political world announcing that Elizabeth Warren was not just running for the Senate in Massachusetts, but that she was going to do it by redefining the political framework that's governed this nation for the past 30 years. Warren's message put fear in the hearts of the big money boyz and the political establishment and they reacted. Strongly. This is not a person they want in the Senate and they are going to do whatever they can to ensure she isn't elected.

As someone who has been fighting for the middle class for many years as a researcher and advocate, Warren is a rare politician who has knowledge of the way Washington works while not being of Washington. As her recent battles setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showed, the wall of resistance to her ideas is formidable and a lesser person would have done her work and gone back to her secure and happy life as a professor and lecturer. But those battles only made her more determined.

She's going to be the next Senator from Massachusetts if we have anything to do with it --- and if her track record is any indication that ossified institution isn't going to know what hit it.

Elizabeth Warren is staking her race on a commitment to resist the lures of big money and special interests. Wall Street, for obvious reasons, has her in their crosshairs and will pour unlimited amounts of cash into the race to defeat her and the GOP establishment is desperate that they do so --- after all, her win could keep the Senate in the hands of the Democrats.

But despite all that, it's not impossible for her to win this, not by a long shot. There's a limit to what money can buy and Elizabeth's message is resonating strongly as she crosses the state meeting people. She's consistently running ahead of her opponent Scott Brown in the polls, but she needs our help to stay competitive.

This week her campaign is running a money bomb collecting donations from like-minded individuals all over the country who understand that Elizabeth Warren doesn't just represent the people of Massachusetts, although she does. She represents all of us who want to see the American dream restored and the middle class strong and thriving again in this country.

Howie, John and I were thrilled to have Blue America be among the very first to endorse her campaign and we couldn't be more excited that she's found a few minutes to join us here today.

Please give as generously as you can--- and please welcome her to Crooks and Liars!

In the midst of everything going on, this story has fallen by the wayside, but it's an important one, especially if you think Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination for 2012. At the end of Romney's term as governor, Romney's staffers destroyed emails, sold publicly-owned hard drives to staffers, and made sure no digital tracks were left behind. This action flies in the face of public records laws in Massachusetts, which require that electronic records be preserved for state archives. (Bush administration, anyone?)

Via ThinkProgress:

Asked why he purchased his hard drive for $65 just two weeks before leaving office, Romney’s chief legal counsel, Mark Nielsen, couldn’t explain, saying only that he followed the law:

“I’m confident that we complied with the letter and the spirit of the law,’’ he added. When asked why he would want to purchase his hard drive, he said, “Employees were given that option and it was my understanding that it was a longstanding practice in the governor’s office.’’When asked about replacing the remaining computers and wiping the server clean, he said, “All I can tell you is we fully complied with the law and complied with longstanding executive branch practice. Nothing unusual was done.’’

The problem with that statement is that no one can find any precedent for selling hard drives at the end of a term. The Romney campaign notes that they turned over 700 cubic feet of information to the archives, but those are paper records and trying to find anything in them is akin to searching for the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack.

Which brings us to the interview at the top, where Romney has yet another reason for keeping his hard drives.

Via ThinkProgress:

Romney and his campaign have so far denied this, with the candidate saying this weekend in New Hampshire that his staff took the highly unusual step of purchasing their work hard drives because they might contain “confidential and private” information. Meanwhile, he’s made calls for greater White House transparency a part of his campaign message.But in a fairly stunning admission today during an interview with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, Romney suggested that his administration deleted emails because they didn’t want “opposition research teams” to have access to them:

ROMNEY: Well, I think in government we should follow the law. And there has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications. So ours would have been the first.

That's a new one. An elected official who used equipment paid for by the public he served choosing to withhold information from that same public in order to thwart opposition research?

Just a little bit of what one could expect from a President Romney, who clearly takes his cues from the Karl Rove School of (Non)Transparency.

Need some good news today? Here you go. Elizabeth Warren has jumped into the lead in the Massachusetts Senate race over Scott Brown. Granted, it's very early in the race, but initial polls had her down 9 points over Brown, and now she leads 46-44.

Via PPP:

Warren's gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she's made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who's developed an opinion about her during that period of time. What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she's increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown. We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving. We have seen a steady decline in Brown's numbers over the last 9 months. In early December his approval was a +24 spread at 53/29. By June it had declined to a +12 spread at a 48/36. And now it's continued that fall to its current place.

Brown's position has always been a little tenuous as a Republican in a strongly Democratic state, making him very dependent on the support of Obama voters to stay above ground. In June he was at 72/17 with McCain voters and now he's at 74/18, pretty much the same. But with Obama voters he's gone from 35/48 to 27/62, accounting for the entire drop in his overall approval numbers. It's a similar story when you look at the horse race numbers. Last time Brown led Warren 87-6 with McCain voters and now it's 87-9. But with Obama voters Warren's turned what was only a 47-24 lead into a 68-20 one.

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One of the conservative baloney machine's greatest triumphs has been to convince a sizable portion of the country that states such as Massachusetts (which I proudly call home) are decrepit urine-soaked wastelands whose streets are overflowing with junkies and hookers living inside million-dollar public housing units that are paid for on the backs of the few hard-working Real Americans who haven't fled for the greener pastures of Rick Perry's free market paradise down South. You've probably heard quite a bit about the "Texas Miracle" in the press a lot and I'm sure you'll be surprised to know that it's a longhorn-sized pile of poop.

First, let's just consider that the unemployment rate in the free-market paradise of Texas stands at a freedom-y 8.4 percent. For contrast, the unemployment rate in my socialist hellhole of Massachusetts stands at communist-like 7.6 percent. Poverty rates are also intriguing, since 10 percent of Massachusetts residents live below the poverty line while 15.8 percent of Texas residents live below the poverty line.

But that's not all! My evil job-killing state has the lowest rate of uninsured people in the country, at 5.3 percent. Texas, on the other hand, has left a whopping 27.1 percent of its population uninsured. I'm not sure what's quite so miraculous about not having access to health care but then again I'm just a commie pinko. What the hell do I know?

And there are other things too. Like, education. In Massachusetts, 85 percent of eighth graders scored at or above basic in the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, while 52 percent scored at or above proficient. Texas' eighth graders scored 78 percent at basic, 36 percent at proficient. You see a similar trend for reading: 83 percent of Massachusetts eighth graders scored at basic in reading, with 43 percent at proficient. In Texas, 73 percent of eighth graders scored at basic in reading while 27 percent scored at proficient.

"OK, OK," you say. "So Massachusetts has a better economy, education and health care than Texas. But all those big government programs are surely sapping Massholes of their precious moral values and leading to crime running rampant in the streets and a breakdown in family values! DON'T YOU READ DAVID BROOKS!?!!?!"

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yesterday I read in The Hill, about how Elizabeth Warren will have a hard time raising enough money because she won't have Wall Street behind her. I was furious!

First, let me just get past the premise: The idea that someone in today's political climate can't get elected without the help of Wall Street is disgusting. The fact that we need such a huge amount of money to get someone elected continues to astound me.

A few months ago I had a friend reviewing my resume. I started out my life in politics as a finance director on campaigns - raising money for candidates. My first race - a Congressional - we raised $1.1million. My friend looked at the line on my resume and replied "awww how cute is it that $1.1 million in 2004 was how much campaigns used to cost?"

There is something very wrong with our country.

Scott Brown has a whopping $10 million in the bank - and the leading contributors - you guessed it - come right out of the banking, financial, hedge fund, mortgage industry. And Elizabeth Warren has the gall and gumption to think that she can stand up for people like me and defend my rights as a consumer - and still get elected to the U.S. Senate. I have to wait to get paid in a few weeks but I'm pulling out my credit card right now.

The question persists is money the only power in politics. I wish it weren't - I wish it didn't matter, but we all know too well the sheer number of people you need to match a million bucks. We saw it in Wisconsin where the Koch brothers as well as every right wing organization in the country was spending millions just to hold on to a few state Senate seats. But they didn't hold them all - they lost two and they almost lost three. And we were so outmatched financially it was ridiculous. We did that. Our blogs, our door knocking, our phone banking from across state lines - we did that. And we can do it again.

Last night on MSNBC's The Last Word the special commentary dealt with these very issues - and posed the question - is there any room left for people power in politics? I don't want to sugar coat anything - I think only time will tell, but it has been what I personally have based my entire professional political career on. We have the power - we have the voices - we have so much that we can do, not just for Warren but for all of our candidates who stand for the basic fundamentals of our democracy. We have the power - we just have to use it.

[Please sign the petition, above, and ask Boston to stop allowing the federal government to turn our local police into border patrol agents.]

Boston has made one mistake too many in trying to enforce federal immigration law.

The city is currently enrolled in the federal program with the Orwellian name Secure Communities (S-Comm), which forces local police to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest. The Obama administration wants to force every local police force in the U.S. to enroll in this program by 2013, but states and localities across the nation are resisting. If migrant communities are afraid to go to their local police officers to report crimes, then all residents are less safe. Following the governors of Illinois and New York, the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, recently declined to participate in the program.

While the program is under review in Boston, the latest Boston Globe article from Maria Sacchetti makes clear that the time for Boston to terminate its S-Comm program is now. With DREAMer Lizandra DeMoura now in deportation proceedings, this program has manifestly done enough damage to our communities.

In 2006, one of the first official acts of Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis was to refuse then Gov. Mitt Romney's request to use local police forces to enforce federal immigration law. What wouldn't be made public until four years later is that while Davis was publicly decrying the involvement of local police in enforcing federal immigration law, privately, the Boston Police Department was the pilot for a program that would check the immigration status of everyone they arrested, a program which would later come to be known as S-Comm.

It's easy to understand why the federal government approached Boston about doing this. As one of the most pro-migrant major cities in the U.S., involving Boston early would blunt criticism against S-Comm later. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also promised all participants in S-Comm that the purpose of the program would be to target the worst of the worst for deportation.

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Ten years ago, George W. Bush was sworn in as America's first MBA President. Now, Mitt Romney wants to be the second. Two years after President Bush completed the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover, Romney the perpetual White House hopeful declared, "I spent my career in the private sector. I know how jobs are created and how jobs are lost." Especially, it turns out, the part about how jobs are lost.

Addressing New Hampshire Republicans Saturday, Governor Romney decried the state of the U.S. economy. "This is the Obama Misery Index, he said, "and it is at a record high. It's going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work--it's going to take a new president." In a Boston Herald op-ed Tuesday, Mitt regurgitated both his Obama Misery Index and "I know a thing or two about how jobs are created and how they are lost" talking points. At CPAC last month, Romney was clear about who that new president should be:

If I decide to run for President, it won't take me two years to wake up to the job crisis threatening America. And I won't be asking Tim Geithner how the economy works-or Larry Summers how to start a business.

If Mitt's line sounds familiar, it should. In his latest incarnation, the man Michael Kinsley deemed "the most transparent candidate" is once again campaigning to be America's CEO.

On the stump in Florida three years ago, Romney made the case that his Harvard MBA, his tenure at Bain, his Salt Lake Olympics experience and his stewardship of Massachusetts made him uniquely qualified him to lead during tough economic times. The multimillionaire venture capitalist told Florida voters:

"I know how America works because I spent my life in the real economy...I won't need a briefing on how the economy works. I've been there. I know how the economy works."

Days earlier, Romney offered the reader's digest version of his resume:

"I've spent my life, 25 years...in the world of business. I know why jobs come and go."

As his record shows, Mitt Romney is all too familiar with why jobs go - out of state, out of the country or just go altogether.

In 1994, Romney's career as a vulture capitalist boomeranged against him in his Senate race against Ted Kennedy. The tale of SCM, a northern Indiana-based stationery company purchased by Ampad, a firm owned by Romney and a group of investors, came to dominate the campaign. As the New York Times recounted, in that instance in the vulture capitalist label was well-earned in the subsequent crackdown on the workers there:

Management has shed 41 of 265 blue-collar jobs, cut wages, tripled some workers' health insurance payments, abolished most of their seniority rights and junked the prior management's union contract, which had two years to run.

Romney's record in Massachusetts also loses some its luster upon closer inspection. While his campaign this week boasted of creating 57,600 jobs during Romney's tenure from 2003 to 2007, Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum pointed out that Massachusetts' performance lagged well behind the national average. As Reuters reported:

"The state lagged the U.S. average during that period in job creation, economic growth and wage increases.

As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years, he [Sum] said. "On every measure you've got, the state was a substantial under-performer."

Two weeks ago, the New York Post, surely no friend of Democrats, documented Mitt Romney's career as a vulture capitalist. As John Kosman detailed, Romney didn't merely produce a "spotty jobs record" when he ran Bain Capital. During a time when he retained a controlling stake, his company reaped huge paydays on investments in firms that later went belly up.

For example, the leveraged buyout of medical testing company Dade Behring by Bain and Goldman Sachs in 1994 was followed eight years later by Dade's failure in 2002. But not until Bain Capital had extracted a rich reward:

Bain reduced Dade's research and development spending to 6 to 7 percent of sales, while its peers allocated between 10 and 15 percent. Dade in June 1999 used the savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million. Dade then turned around and used $365 million from the loan to buy shares from its owners, giving them a 4.3 times return on their investment.

Bain's slash and burn business model didn't end there. As Kosman explained in the Post:

Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

Of course, Romney's tenure at Bain also produced some big wins - and job gains - at firms like Staples and Domino's Pizza. But as it turns out, Romney's old employer was also creating jobs in Iran.

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Supreme Court won't annul gay-marriage okay in Mass.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over gay marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation’s only law sanctioning such unions.

Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. They declined, without comment...read on

Merita Hopkins, a city attorney in Boston, had told justices in court papers that the people who filed the suit have not shown they suffered an injury and could not bring a challenge to the Supreme Court. “Deeply felt interest in the outcome of a case does not constitute an actual injury,” she said.

Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly told justices that voters can overrule the Supreme Court by adopting a constitutional amendment.

The lawsuit was filed by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel on behalf of Robert Largess, the vice president of the Catholic Action League, and 11 state lawmakers.

Jake Tapper on This Week interviews David Axelrod on the healthcare bill, pushing the right-wing narrative that people don't want this bill. Axelrod responds that when you push on into the details, the public supports the things this bill does:

TAPPER: David, pluralities, if not majorities of the American people do oppose this bill. Doesn't he have a point?

AXELROD: Well, first, let me note that Senator Brown comes from a state that has a health care plan that is similar to one that we are trying to enact here, and that people in his state are overwhelmingly in support of it. He voted for it and said he wouldn't repeal it. So we're just trying to give the rest of America the same opportunities that the people of Massachusetts have to get health insurance at a price they can afford.

This bill is important to the American people, Jake, and when you get underneath the numbers and you ask people, do you support giving people more leverage against insurance companies so that they -- if they have preexisting conditions, they can get coverage, so if they get sick, they don't get thrown off, so they don't have these huge premium increases of the sort we've just seen announced in states around the country, they say yes. When you say, do you want to give small businesses and people who don't have insurance through the job the chance to get insurance in a competitive marketplace where they can get it at a price they can afford and give them tax credits to help them do that, they say yes. And when you say, should we reduce the overall costs of the health care system over time, they say yes.

But that's the program. That's the plan. And it is important to the American people that we have the fortitude to go ahead against it, to leave the politics aside, to leave the partisanship aside, to resist the special interests and get the job done.

TAPPER: But according to polls, the American people do not agree with what you think--

AXELROD: The polls are split, Jake. I mean, one of the interesting things that has happened in the last four or five weeks is that if you look at -- if you average together the public polls, what you find is that the American people are split on the top line, do you support the plan? But again, when you go underneath, they support the elements of the plan. When you ask them, does the health care system need reform, three quarters of them say yes. When you ask them, do you want Congress to move forward and deal with this issue, three quarters of them say yes. So we're not going to walk away from this issue.

I was reading a column written by Jill Lawrence of Politics Daily and I learned that I helped cause Evan Bayh to quit his day job.

Evan Bayh and the Senate's Lonely Moderates: Bridge-Builders No Longer Needed

During the long, still incomplete march to pass a health reform bill, Democratic moderates – in particular Montana's Baucus and Nebraska's Nelson -- routinely took incoming from liberal bloggers for dragging the bill rightward. The left was especially critical of Bayh's take last month on Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. Bayh told ABC News that voters up there "just don't believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems." He said Democrats would court catastrophe if they ignored the wakeup call. John Amato wrote at CrooksandLiars.com that Bayh was promoting Fox News talking points.

Yes, I am that mean and scary and Bayh just couldn't handle the heat from C&L, baby.

Look, I don't expect all Democratic politicians to vote 100% across the board, but when there is a signature piece of legislation that could help millions of Americans on a vital issue like health care, then I think the few ConservaDems should not help destroy a bill that is so critical to so many lives. Howie Klein has a breakdown of his voting record.

Last week polls showed ConservaDem Evan Bayh with a nearly insurmountable lead over lobbyist Dan Coats for the Indiana Senate seat. And this morning Chris Cillizza broke the news that Bayh had decided not to run for re-election. That must have been kind of sudden since he spent the last 6 years sucking up to every lobbyist on K Street, raised $8,911,690 and has a hefty $13 million in his campaign account. Beloved of Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, Allianz and dozens of corporations with anti-working family agendas, Bayh's fundraising looked extremely... Republican. But then, so does his voting record. Since Obama was elected president only Ben Nelson was a less dependable vote for Democrats when they were needed most-- on crucial, substantive roll calls where Democrats either lost or almost lost. The 3 worst scores among Democratic senators for the 111th Congress:

Ben Nelson- 47.76

Evan Bayh- 53.73

Blanche Lincoln- 59.70

Voting almost 48 % of the time against a newly elected Democratic president is beyond being a conservative democrat. it's aiding and abetting the enemy of change. Bayh whined like a teenager whose parents cut off their Internet yesterday when he gave his presser and said he was so tired of the partisanship. He could have done his part and helped President Obama and the Senate put together a good health care bill, but he did not. Politics is a contact sport and he proved he couldn't take it.

Ron Brownstein made a similar point On Andrea Mitchell this morning:

It's hard to see how he justifies this to other Democrats. But look it's more broadly what's happening with the Democratic Party. They've gone from 93-94, it took them 15 years to reestablish unified control of the House and the Senate and the White House as they did in 2009. And here they are, one year into it and the party seems to be in many respects losing its nerve. You have the Bayh thing as the latest in a series of --, Beau Biden, Lisa Madigan in Illinois, a variety of Democratic House members in tough districts walking away.

Look, politics is a contact sport and the Democrats have had the best opportunity they've had in 15 years to advance their agenda, and yet as they take all the flack that comes with that it feels like some of the party is crumbling and losing their nerve. Stunning decision.

Run for the hills you coward. And if your hero is Dick Lugar, why then is he still in Congress and you're not?

And shudder this thought by Digby:

The good news is that we are separating the men from the boys. The Democrats have everything, but it's all so icky and hard that a whole bunch of them are just walking away. Good riddance. If they don't have the cojones to stick it out when their country needs them, then they shouldn't be in politics.

I'm glad these guys weren't in charge during the Depression and WWII. We'd all be dirt farming for the Greater Axis Empire today.

Amen.