Rick Santorum fared incredibly well in the Iowa caucus Tuesday night. It ended in an almost virtual tie with Romney pulling ahead by a handful of votes. In Santorum's "victory speech" he discussed his family's working class roots. We rarely hear anything much about Mitt Romney's family even though his father ran American Motors and was Governor of Michigan. What about Romney's roots?

I decided to research Mitt Romney's father. George Romney was a powerful industrial and political figure of his day.

Romney's family came from England, converted to Mormonism, came to America and quickly turned to plural marriage which led them to an unexpected exile and exodus to Mexico and then just as abruptly, they fled back to the USA to avoid a revolution.

It's an unexpected backstory to the "next in line" probable GOP nominee.

In this post I'll use information I found from the book by Tom Mahoney published in 1960 called 'The Story Of George Romney."

Mitt comes from a long line of Romney's that resided in England for generations and when an early Mormon missionary from America named Orson Hyde came to England to spread their word, Gaskell Romney and his wife Elizabeth converted in 1839. Soon after they boarded a boat to America. (pg 50)

He and his wife, who had been Elizabeth Gaskell, were attracted by a street meeting of Orson Hyde, one of the first Mormon missionaries to England, and in 1839 were baptized.

If you're not familiar with the Mormon religion, Joesph Smith, the founder, said he had vision as far back as 1820 in upstate New York and traveled West, where his flock finally ending up in Utah, led by Brigham Young after Smith was killed. After writing the Book of Mormon, Smith had a revelation which is known as Article 132 from the Mormon text called Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, a sort of addendum book to the Book of Mormon.

Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Nauvoo, Illinois, recorded 12 July 1843, relating to the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant, and also the plurality of wives (see History of the Church, 5:501–7). Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and principles involved in this revelation had been known by the Prophet since 1831.

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To quote Lawrence O'Donnell from his show back in February, Wayne LaPierre is "Washington's lobbyist in favor of murderers' rights, always to use the gun of their choice." There is no better summary of a man who ensures his $1.27 million salary every year by being a paid serial liar in defense of arms dealers, which groups such as the Violence Policy Center have made clear again and again.

So it should be no surprise that when faced with the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or those of Mexican Drug Cartels, he comes down squarely on the side of the latter, as pointed out by Media Matters:

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has been on a media blitz trying to defend an NRA lawsuit that attempts to block an executive rule aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of cartels and criminals. The new rule would require gun stores along the border with Mexico to report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) when a person purchases multiple long guns, such as the cartel favorite AK-47.

ATF agent and Fast and Furious whistleblower Peter Forcelli, whom the NRA has previously cited as an expert on tactics, disagrees with LaPierre. Forcelli told Political Correction that the "vast majority of ATF agents support the reporting requirement, because they know how it works."

Of course it works. It is common sense that it would work, except manufacturing doubt--from the oil companies to the tobacco pushers to the gun runners--is what these guys do. Common sense and science are their enemies. They might save a few lives, but then LaPierre might only make $1.1 million per annum.

Follow me on Twitter: @cliffschecter

One of the incessant mantras we hear from right-wingers demanding we "secure the border" -- particularly the Minuteman types and their media enablers -- is that the need to do became incredibly important after 9/11, because Islamist terrorists were certain to be crossing into the United States through the desert.

That's certainly what we've been hearing constantly at Fox News and its many onscreen nativists, perhaps most notably Michelle Malkin. Remember how Glenn Beck tried to stir up a panic over the finding of a book on Iranian martyrs out in the desert -- which just happened to be an English translation? It even inspired Rep. Trent Franks to proclaim: "If terrorists ever come across our border with nuclear weapons... they (could) hold an entire city hostage ... This book is a grave reminder of the mindset and intent of the indescribably dangerous enemy we face."

And then there are the politicians who've used the claim to attack President Obama, such as wingnut Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County: ""If the majority of regular illegal immigrants can sneak into America, what does this say about the ability of terrorist sleeper cells?"

Well, as we've been saying about this supposed threat for some time now: They're barking up the wrong tree:

A turning political tide has renewed fears that raged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - that terrorists will sneak into the country across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nobody disputes that's possible, but analysts and government officials say terrorists plotting to kill Americans are more likely to use other routes into the country, if they're not here already.

It's much more common for people convicted in the U.S. of crimes connected to international terrorism to have been U.S. citizens or legal residents, or come into the country on visas.

"There is no serious evidence that the U.S.-Mexico border is a significant threat from terrorism," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York.

Claims of terrorist threats on the Southwest border distract legislators and policymakers from addressing long-term solutions to drug smuggling and illegal immigration, said Tom Barry, senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

"It's politically motivated," Barry said, "playing on that sense of fear that certain people are susceptible to."

That's pretty much what we said awhile back:

Meanwhile, if terrorists really want to sneak into the country, they'll likely do it the way they do traditionally: forge papers and come in through the front gate with visas. That's how the 9/11 terrorists came in, and it's fairly simple and easy for them -- unlike, say, paying large sums to drug lords to sneak you over in a highly dangerous illegal crossing in the remote backcountry, which is how nativists like Malkin seem to imagine the terrorists are sneaking in.

Moreover, if Malkin wants to worry about terrorists sneaking over our borders, she'd be better off keeping an eye on the Canadian border. After all, the only known case of a terrorist caught bringing materiel over the border -- the 1999 Ahmed Ressam incident -- happened in Washington state, on the ferryboat from Canada. A quantitative analysis of terrorist threats to the U.S. found that there was "no terrorist presence in Mexico and no terrorists who entered the U.S. from Mexico"; but there was in fact "a sizeable terrorist presence in Canada and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the U.S."

The idea that it's possible to completely secure the border by physical means is a fantasy anyway. You defeat terrorism with intelligence -- not stupidity.

In Arizona, everyone is freaked out about the violence by Mexican drug cartels south of their border, which was one of the reasons we repeatedly heard from leading state officials as one of their excuses for passing SB1070.

But then it turns out that the ease with which you can buy a gun in Arizona is fueling that violence directly:

The seizure of more than 700 guns and the indictments of 34 people announced on Tuesday are further confirmation that Arizona has become an iron highway for weapons into Mexico, according to federal authorities.

Many legal purchases by straw buyers at Arizona gun stores are being financed and orchestrated by Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, federal officials said.

The cases announced Tuesday involved the purchases of many AK-47s, .50-caliber rifles and other semiautomatic weapons in single-day transactions at gun stores by straw buyers paid by the cartel, U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke said.

"This is a huge problem in this state. It is a strange phenomenon," Burke said at a news conference at the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives. "Drug cartels go shopping for their war weapons here in Arizona."

At least 17 people were arrested Tuesday in five cases involving a joint crackdown by the ATF, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service and the Phoenix Police Department.

Gee, I can remember when, a couple of years ago, Obama administration officials pointed out that many of the guns being used by the Mexican drug cartels were being originating in the USA -- and the NRA and Glenn Beck exploded in angry denial, implying that such imprecations upon the fine name of American arms sellers was an attack on the Constitution itself!

[H/t Jamie]

Post-wellcapping reports of "missing" oil contributed to message failure by giving the impression that Obama's administration simply wanted the oil to vanish from media attention, and was therefore declaring "Mission Accomplished." The White House certainly could have done better. Steadily-climbing spill estimates should have been avoided by coming up with two or three scenarios and publicly crossing fingers. Widespread reports of BP harrassing, intimidating, and banishing reporters from beaches invited all the wrong comparisons to Katrina and Bush.

It really wasn't a fair fight. BP has practiced this scenario many times in the global south: corporate message-makers deny, minimize, and suborn state agencies. The EPA is in such a state of deep capture after three decades of anti-government governance that it lacked power to stop BP from inserting a Corexit spout directly into the flow of oil. BP also had the tools, personnel, and resources to deal with the blowout, whereas the United States government did not. Without any real way to produce results in the Gulf, White House message-men took advantage of the Beltway preference for narrative over things like fluid dynamics and chemistry. The facts?! Who cares...

And so we all wonder about missing oil instead of learning anything. See how that works? Much more after the jump and this very non-metal video:

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A while ago, during a conference at the Army's war college, Prof Andrew Bacevich made a comment that the United States had a greater national security interest in the drug wars south of the border than in Afghanistan. He probably got a lot of criticism for that statement, but was he wrong? I don't think so. This AP article talks about the bullets that are flying over the river into El Paso.

At least eight bullets have been fired into El Paso in the last few weeks from the rising violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, one of the world's most dangerous places. And all American police can do is shrug because they cannot legally intervene in a war in another country. The best they can do is warn people to stay inside.

"There's really not a lot you can do right now," El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. "Those gun battles are breaking out everywhere, and some are breaking out right along the border."

Police say the rounds were not intentionally fired into the U.S. But wildly aimed gunfire has become common in Juarez, a sprawling city of shanty neighborhoods that once boomed with manufacturing plants. It's ground zero in Mexico's relentless drug war.

There is an amusing side to this story (in a twisted kind of way). Of all people, Governor Rick "Let Us Secede From the Union" Perry is losing his cool and is calling for the federales to come save him from the border war. He thinks that there are bombs going off in El Paso (actually not happening). Again, back to the AP article:

And Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement demanding more security.

"It's time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a significant force of personnel and resources to the border to protect our homeland," Perry said.

Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman, said the governor believes that more security - in the form of federal agents and even troops - could all but shut down the border to smuggling and help put Mexico's warring cartels out of business.

No, it's not that simple, Gov. Perry. You don't get to bad-mouth the federal government only when it's politically convenient. You don't get to refuse federal stimulus funds and make wild statements about "state rights" and then turtle up when the shots start firing. As governor, you have the ability to move National Guard troops down to the border - go do it. Send some Tea Party militias and Minutemen people, too. Make sure they're well-armed - well, I guess you don't need to do that, they already are. So where are your balls, big man? Are you running a self-sufficient Republic or is Texas actually part of the Union?

Just another example of Republican governors who can't stop running to the federal treasury while badmouthing the current administration's attempts to govern. Same shit, different day.

Nanny Sues Imus Over Ranch Wrangle

The Smoking Gun:

Toy gun, tiny knife triggered woman's firing by radio star

NOVEMBER 30--A New York woman who briefly worked as a nanny for Don Imus has sued the radio host for wrongful termination, claiming she was canned for bringing a harmless cap gun and pocketknife with her during a trip last Thanksgiving to the family's sprawling New Mexico ranch. Nichole Mallette, 24, also claimed in her New York State Supreme Court lawsuit, a copy of which you'll find below, that she was defamed when Imus later announced on his program that he had been forced to "disarm" his nanny, whom he labeled as dangerous and a "terrorist." read on

Fox News' Megyn Kelly invited Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on yesterday morning to explain exactly why she signed into law a bill that effectively transformed her state into a police state for immigrants and Latinos.

As she has done all along, Brewer mostly whined about how mean her critics were, including all of the folks from other cities who are now officially boycotting Arizona. Kelly listed some of them and asked:

Kelly: Do you think that these folks who are all noticeably outside of your state, are the ones that I just ticked off, including the President, have an appreciation, governor, for what Arizona has been going through with respect to illegal immigration?

Brewer: Obviously not. You know Arizona has been under terrorist attacks, if you will, with all of this illegal immigration that has been taking place on our very porous border. ... The whole issue comes back, that we do not and will not tolerate illegal immigration bringing with it very much so the implications of crime and terrorism into our state.

Terrorism? Does anyone have any idea what Brewer is talking about?

I know that much of the hysteria that was whipped up to push this bill through was based on the murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, who was in fact almost certainly slain by a scout for the drug cartels.

Nonetheless, the Right -- embodied by Fox News -- consistently described his killer as an "illegal immigrant" -- even though the man was not crossing the border to emigrate, but to enable drug crossings on the border.

In other words, the Krentz case was not about illegal immigration, but drug smuggling across the border -- an entirely separate issue. Indeed, Brewer and the Republicans would have been far more effective in attacking that problem by passing laws decriminalizing marijuana.

Perhaps more to the point, Brewer is living in another universe if she's trying to claim that the wave off immigration that has hit Arizona in the past decade has produced a crime wave. As Media Matters points out:

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the violent crime rate in Arizona was lower in 2006, 2007, and 2008 -- the most recent year from which data are available -- than any year since 1983. The property crime rate in Arizona was lower in 2006, 2007, and 2008 than any year since 1968. In addition, in Arizona, the violent crime rate dropped from 577.9 per 100,000 population in 1998 to 447 per 100,000 population in 2008; the property crime rate dropped from 5,997 to 4,291 during the same period. During the same decade, Arizona's undocumented immigrant population grew rapidly.

As for terrorism in Arizona, the only case I can recall of any kind of recent vintage was the Viper Militia bunch arrested back in 1996 -- though some of their rabid supporters have been showing up at Tea Party rallies with guns.

The only terrorist of note to come from Arizona was Robert Mathews, the leader of the neo-Nazi gang The Order.

But those folks are all operating at the same end of the political spectrum as their pal Joe Arpaio -- who was the inspiration for this legislation in the first place.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

And so it continues. You can always count on Rep. Steve King to be the lowest of the low. Here's his newest acute observation on Rep. Grijalva's plight.

Unlike Grijalva, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a big fan of Arizona's crackdown. After praising the effort in a statement earlier this week, King blasted Grijalva's position last night. During an interview on Fox News, King absurdly suggested that Grijalva's district has been "ceded" and accused the Arizona lawmaker of "advocating for Mexico" and against the United States.

LAURA INGRAHAM: This boycott is intended to do, what? I would imagine to intimidate people from supporting this law which, as far as I can tell, is wildly popular, but to intimidate because they're using dollars. Is there anything wrong with that?

REP. STEVE KING: Well, it looks like the case is that, that he's trying to scare the businesses out of Arizona, or he's trying to get the businesses to change their position and press the legislature to reverse the law that was just signed by the governor the other day. I'm wondering if we look at the map of Congressman Grijalva's congressional district if we haven't already ceded that component of Arizona to Mexico judging by the voice that comes out of him, he's advocating for Mexico rather than the United States and against the rule of law, which is one of the central pillars of American exceptionalism.

Steve King should be the Governor of Texas at this point. The fear of brown people is upon us. If you're brown, watch out.

Of course, this is coming from the same guy with the epic humanity to want to put an electric fence along the border, because we do it with "livestock all the time" too.

Digby links to a graph that shows a bunch of other states are lining up to pass frakked up bills next.

And then she adds:

Yes, American exceptionalism is so exceptional that right wingers are allowed to carve out exceptions to any part of the constitution they don't like. Strangely, the parts they don't like most often seem to be the ones that enumerate rights for people who don't look like them.

The xenophobes are on the warpath.

Esquire: Drug War Facts: America's prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico's — and nearly enough dollars for universal health care

Angry Bear: Gang of Six, Regular Order & the Johnson Treatment

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