It's about time. I make a point of reviewing FEC filings on a routine basis just to see who is giving what to who. The one thing I've learned over the past year is this: When the FEC is asked for an opinion, it will always rule on the side of the Citizens United folks. I have yet to see them give the time of day to voters' concerns.

CREW feels the same way, evidently. Yesterday they filed suit against the FEC, alleging a practice of summarily dismissing complaints without explanation for the basis of the dismissal. Generally, the dismissals occur because of a deadlock between the three Democrats and the three Republicans on the commission. At least, that's the case unless it's a request for an advance opinion of some new and ugly practice by Republican consultants like Alex Castellanos or Carl Forti's Black Rock Group.)

From the press release:

“The gridlock at the FEC makes the Senate look high-functioning in comparison,” said Ms. Sloan. “The FEC is clearly a broken agency. Instead of ensuring fair elections in which all players follow the rules, too often commissioners refuse to act, and then, refuse to even explain why they failed to act. This leaves Americans in the dark, with no legal remedy. Even worse, candidates can freely break campaign finance laws to gain an edge in a federal election without any fear of repercussions.”

The lawsuit itself (PDF) is quite specific, and addresses a complaint filed by CREW with respect to Rep. Duncan Deport-American-Citizens Hunter's exploratory bid for a run at the Presidency in 2008.

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My first week on the job here at Crooks and Liars, I went on CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez to talk about an investigative piece co-written with Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin's longtime dalliances with Alaska's far-right elements, particularly the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

At the time, the McCain campaign blew us off publicly. And unfortunately, none of our colleagues in other media settings picked up on the story and asked further questions about the issues it raised -- particularly at a time when the McCain campaign was busy accusing Barack Obama of "palling around" with "terrorists" and extremists.

Now, it turns out that my short appearance on TV threw Sarah Palin into a tizzy and provoked a quarrel with Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign. This from a CBS story by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe:

Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day offer a rare look at just how frustrated then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy. The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.

The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin's relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla. The AIP's platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party's 2008 convention.

On the morning of Oct. 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, "THE PALINS AND THE FRINGE."

While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP.

The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message (all of the e-mails are reprinted below as written).

"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."

This clear cut response from the campaign's top dog carried an air of finality, but it did not satisfy Palin. She responded with another e-mail, adding five more names to the "cc" box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane. They included her senior political adviser Tucker Eskew, senior aide Jason Recher, the lone traveling aide from her Alaska office Kris Perry, press secretary Tracey Schmitt and personal assistant Bexie Nobles.

Palin's insertion of the five additional staffers in the e-mail chain was an apparent attempt to rally her own troops in the face of a decision from the commanding general with which she disagreed. Her inclusion of her personal assistant was particularly telling about her quest for affirmation and support in numbers, since the young staffer was not in a position to have any input on campaign strategy.

"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."

Now, the problem with this response is that it's just factually false. Palin's connections with the AIP ran much, much deeper than Todd's paper affiliation. As we explained in the Salon story:

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When it was revealed in October that the Republican National Committee spent a whopping $180,000 on new clothes for Sarah Palin and her family, the McCain/Palin campaign promised that all the clothes would be donated to charity after Election Day. (McCain said on October 26 that 1/3 of the clothes had already been returned). Well, according to the NewMajority website, the clothes are sitting in trash bags at RNC headquarters in D.C.

New Majority:

But for reasons that remain mysterious, the clothes remain stashed at the RNC's Washington, D.C., headquarters. A source close to the issue told NewMajority that the clothes are "in the process" of being donated, and an RNC spokesman corroborated, saying the clothes have indeed been returned from Palin, "inventoried and will be appropriately dispersed to various charities." Attempts for an explanation of when and where the clothes will be donated went unanswered, and the governor's Alaska office does not comment on campaign issues.

The fact that the clothes have not been donated or publicly accounted for, however, has angered some big donors - who want to know exactly how their money was spent, and who are already enraged by the extravagant wardrobe figure. They say it's time for the RNC to air its dirty laundry, if you will.

This should really come as no surprise, being that we're talking about the disastrous McCain/Palin campaign. I just never thought that we would still be hearing stories like this three months after the election. Sheesh. Looks like those RNC lawyers dispatched to Alaska to retrieve Palin's clothes forgot to "donate" them.

As McCain's henchman Rick Davis was trying to label as "Secret Donations" amounts that are under the disclosure limits of the bill McCain himself wrote on campaign finance, and suggesting that Obama is taking in illegal foreign donations...

... the worst-run presidential campaign in history was rolling into another blunder.

John McCain's presidential election campaign has solicited a financial contribution from an unlikely source -- Russia's U.N. envoy -- but a McCain spokesman said on Monday it was a mistake.

In the letter, McCain urged Russia's U.N. Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, to contribute anywhere from $35 (20 pounds) to $5,000 (2,912 pounds) to help ensure McCain's victory over Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama, currently ahead in voter preference polls. "If I have the honour of continuing to serve you, I make you this promise: We will always put America -- her strength, her ideals, her future -- before every other consideration," McCain assured Churkin.

Moscow's mission to the United Nations issued a terse statement on the Republican presidential candidate's letter, saying that the Russian government and its officials "do not finance political activity in foreign countries."

Yes, it was almost certainly a database error, and more than a few people as finding it amusing as hell. But it also undermines the McCain campaign's narrative in the most embarassing way.

It also leaves some questions open. The FEC's notes on public financing say:

A major party nominee who has accepted public funding for the general election may not accept any contributions to further his election. You may, however, help a publicly funded nominee by contributing to the candidate's compliance fund. A compliance fund is a special account maintained by publicly funded nominees solely for paying legal and accounting expenses incurred in complying with the campaign finance law. You may contribute up to $2,300 to the compliance fund of a major party nominee.

$5,000 dollars is over the limit set for the FEC. The campaign still was sending out to ask for money even though it has accepted public finance so was it clearly asking for a contribution to the compliance fund?

Time for an FEC audit of McCain's finances. That's what FOX and the rest would be baying for if this was an Obama campaign letter.

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(Big ups to Heather for the movies)

In the latest Presidential debate, two of the questions dealt with Russia and while both candidates tried to stress their differences they both sang pretty much the same kneejerk tune (although John McCain sang it with feeling).

McCain, seemingly forgetting his own admonition to Obama that you don't telegraph your thoughts or intentions to a nation you want co-operation from, repeated his tone-deaf claim that he sees the letters KGB when he looks in Vladimir Putin's eyes. McCain would need the goodwill of Russia on containment of loose nuclear materials or on supply lines to Afghanistan and would likely want its co-operation of on energy policy and on responses to Iran, the financial crisis and a host of other issues. How's he going to get that by attacking the Russian Prime Minister in such a personal way?

What he sees in President Medvedev's eyes he hasn't said yet, but it's doubtful he's even noticed the shuffle in Russia's top leadership. It wasn't "K.G.B." because the guy leading Russia now was never one of the "former apparatchiks" Putin has supposedly surrounded himself with.

McCain's rhetoric was in keeping with someone so close to the luridly fascist and virulently anti-communist U.S. Council for World Freedom.

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Our Future: Seventeen months ago, Rick Perlstein wrote an essay predicting exactly how the 2008 campaign would go down. Turns out the only thing he didn't predict was the Paris Hilton reference.

Tomgram: Thomas Frank on Washington's Lords of Creation

collateral: The next crisis to hit our sinking ship of state may be a pension fund debacle that, had we stuck to a sensible tax policy, could have been avoided.

Mock, Paper, Scissors: The MPS Guide to GOP vice presidential candidates. In a handy print-out and keep format for further reference, it brings you the Pro, the Con, and the Baggage for each of the whispered candidates!

earthfamilyalpha: Change I Can Believe In

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Morning Martini, Conservative Truths, Montreal Simon, WTF Is It Now?!?

There is a whole world that a certain segment of conservatives live in that actually does not touch on reality at all. A world where museums can be built to show dinosaurs roaming the earth with humans. Where online encyclopedia entries must reflect a conservative world view. Where presidential candidates still have a shot after denying evolution.

This conservative world's newest target is YouTube. That's right. Apparently, cats playing the piano and homemade videos of soap stars and Harry Potter characters to the soundtrack of the latest pop love song are too...shall we say...liberally biased:

The popular video-sharing Web site first debuted "Hillary 1984," which compared Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. to a Orwellian dictator, then-Sen. George Allen's career-altering "macaca" moment and the "I Feel Pretty" video that chided former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' good looks.

But YouTube, which is owned by Google, has also been a favorite target of conservatives, who accuse the site of a liberal bias.

Railing against YouTube, two Republican White House veterans have launched QubeTV as a conservative alternative.

"The 2008 campaign will be dominated by video and in particular by user-generated video," says QubeTV founder Charlie Gerow, a former aide in the Ronald Reagan White House.

"There are a vast array of young conservative activists and operatives out there armed with cell phones or hand-helds that are going to capture the next 'macaca' moment or John Kerry bad joke and put them on Qube TV," says Gerow, whose Pennsylvania strategic media firm, Quantum Communications, created the Web site.

Gerow insists YouTube banned a video by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin about radical Islamists.

Responding to that incident, a statement on the Web site reads: "We fly the conservative flag here at QubeTV, and we will not be about banning or deleting conservatives."

For what it's worth, Michelle Malkin personally has 25 of her videos on YouTube and a site search yields 251 results, so she's hardly underrepresented. But that's just that pesky reality again. It's much more fun to embrace victimhood, even if it's a ridiculous lie.

I can imagine the right wingers with their "socialized medicine = bad" meme just having their heads spin on this one.

NY Times (h/t ysbaddaden)

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. (.pdf)

While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public's domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.[..]

Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts.

But the same divisions that doomed the last effort at creating universal health insurance, under the Clinton administration, are still apparent. Americans remain divided, largely along party lines, over whether the government should require everyone to participate in a national health care plan, and over whether the government would do a better job than the private insurance industry in providing coverage.

Gore is 'getting the band back together'

Right on schedule. In the third week in February, speculation about Al Gore's future picked up considerably when Roger J. Stone Jr. and Dick Morris wrote about the possibility of another Gore presidential campaign. In the third week in March, a cover story for The American Prospect sparked a new round of Gore-related scuttlebutt. Now it's the third week in April. Guess what the hot topic of conversation is?

Al Gore is getting the band back together. In a move that could inch him closer to another bid at the presidency in 2008, the former vice president has hired Roy Neel, a veteran of presidential politics, to help run his current campaign to raise awareness of global warming.

The WaPo's Richard Cohen added today, "[O]n paper, he is the near-perfect Democratic candidate for 2008." Gore may be a man on a mission, but is the mission the 2008 campaign? Stay tuned.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

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We all saw what a vicious hypocrite John McCain really is last week when he voted against the DREAM Act -- a bill he not only sponsored, but campaigned before Latinos on.

Now he's justifying his mendacious flip-flop by complaining that Latinos turned their backs on him:

McCain also voted no Saturday on the Dream Act, which would have granted citizenship to thousands of foreign-born college students. He initially sponsored the legislation. Gullett said McCain constantly faced voters on the campaign trail last year asking about border security and that affected his stance. His communications director, Brooke Buchanan, explained that on immigration, McCain believes the border needs to be secured above all else, citing the increasing border violence over the last four years. "His opinion has evolved with time," she said. "Don't we expect our leaders to base their opinions and policies, don't we expect them to change with the time? And that's what Sen. McCain has been doing. It's truly in the best interest of our country."

Woods said "it hurts" McCain to vote against legislation like the Dream Act after years of working on reform but said the senator felt betrayed when Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008. "When you carry that fight at great sacrifice year after year and then you are abandoned during the biggest fight of your life, it has to have some sort of effect on you," he said.

But as Kos observes, McCain actually threw Latinos under the bus in January 2008, during the Republican presidential debates:

MS. HOOK: Senator McCain, let me just take the issue to you, because you obviously have been very involved in it. During this campaign, you, like your rivals, have been putting the first priority, heaviest emphasis, on border security. But your original immigration proposal back in 2006 was much broader and included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are already here.

What I'm wondering is, and you seem to be downplaying that part, at this point, if your original proposal came to a vote in the Senate floor, would you vote for it?

SEN. MCCAIN: It won't. It won't. That's why we went through the debate.

MS. HOOK: I know, but what if it did?

SEN. MCCAIN: No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the border secured first. And so to say that that would come to the floor of the Senate, it won't. We went through various amendments which prevented that ever, that proposal.

He also backed the bus back up and ran over Latinos again in May, on Bill O'Reilly's show:

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