Anyone who has dipped a toe in the wild and woolly currents of politics in the last thirty years should be familiar with the name of Richard Mellon Scaife.  As partisans go, there isn't anyone else willing to put so much of their money where their ideologies drive them, $340 million by some estimates.

Among the right-wing organizations substantially funded by Mr. Scaife are the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Judicial Watch, Cato Institute and a working group within his American Spectator publication called the "Arkansas Project," whose specific aim was to locate and create dirt on the Clintons in order to smear them, in hopes of removing Clinton from office.

Those rumors around Vince Foster's suicide lay squarely on Scaife's lap. During the 2004 election cycle, Scaife had his targets set directly on the Kerrys (and specifically Teresa Heinz Kerry), devoting a considerable sum to breaking open records to find dirt to smear the Democratic candidate through his wife.

Which makes this news story all that much more schadenfreude-licious.  Scaife is going through divorce proceedings from his wife, one that has provided lots of fodder for the gossip pages with arrests for trespassing, accusations of abuse and dognapping, of all things.  At issue now is how much of Scaife's fortune is owed to his wife, and guess what?  What's good for the right wingnut gander is apparently not good for the rest of geese.  Scaife wants his records sealed and rival paper Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to return documents.

Mr. Scaife's attempt to make court documents inaccessible is unusual for the head of a news organization. Historically, newspapers and television stations have fought for greater rather than more restricted access. In fact, Mr. Scaife's Tribune-Review joined other organizations in seeking to unseal the estate records of the late Sen. John Heinz during the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry, who is married to Sen. Heinz's widow, Teresa.[..]

Mr. Scaife's attorneys say the Post-Gazette article describes "at length various highly confidential and personal matters contained in the record, none of which have any news value nor are legitimate subjects of public scrutiny."

Karma, baby...

President Obama won on Tuesday with a coalition of the future. Not only did he have the support of younger voters, Asians, African Americans, women, Latinos, moderates, union members and city dwellers and suburbanites alike, he got the support of those who think we should be expanding, not contracting our social compact.

So let's begin with this so-called "Grand" Bargain, and when I say "begin," take that as "keep the government's hands off of our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," if you get my drift. There is no crisis. Let's try it again together: there is no crisis. No fiscal cliff or whatever the buzzwords are in the Beltway today.

The rather slight budgetary issues can be fixed in the blink of an eye, by addressing real problems such as our lack of revenue and propensity for wasting money on things to go BOOM that the military doesn't even want.

Please sign the petition created by my friends I often work with at Social Security Works and make your voices heard on this issue. And you can go here to view the ad just placed in The Washington Post making the same point.

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In Sunday morning's Concord Debate, asked what would happen if his son told him he was gay, Republican candidate Rick Santorum said, “I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it.”

But, Santorum has been asked that question before, and he had a different response at that time. In a 2003 interview, he was asked what he would tell a son who admitted to being attracted to men. Essentially, he said that his son should remain celibate.

“I would try to point out to them what is the right thing to do. And we have many temptations to do things we shouldn’t do,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean you have to submit.”

Santorum added that all parents should help steer their children in a direction “that would lead them to a better and happier life.”

Then, when pressed on whether he would still love his son, he replied, “It’s all you can do.”

That interview came after Santorum compared homosexuality to a host of illegal and devious acts.

He told The Associated Press in 2003, “If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual gay sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery, you have the right to anything.”

While it's difficult for me to imagine Santorum actually loving someone other than himself...I don't doubt for a second that the first thing he would do if one of his spawn were to admit to being gay would be to drop the child off at the Bachmann's Exorcism Clinic for Evil Gays.

Isn't it a little ironic, too, that the man with this medieval attitude towards gays is also the same man who blasted Barack Obama for "Hubris" and "Snobbery" for saying that he thinks all children should go to college?

“This is the kind of snobbery that we see from those that think they know how to run our lives. Rise up America, defend your own freedoms,” Santorum said of Obama's statement.

What about from those who want to tell you when to have sex, how to have sex, and with whom?

Yet Fox was alone among the cable news networks in losing viewers — down 8 percent in prime time and 5 percent for the full day, Nielsen said. The 2010 midterm election year was particularly engaging for Republicans, who make up a big part of Fox's audience.

CNN was up 17 percent in prime-time viewership with a revamped lineup that includes a double dose of Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan replacing Larry King. CNN is third behind Fox and MSNBC in prime time but second for the day as a whole.

CNN's rivals acknowledge its gains but are quick to point out that last year represented CNN's worst year ever in the ratings.

MSNBC can take pride in surviving the exit of its most popular prime time personality, Keith Olbermann, who defected to Current. The network is up 2 percent over last year in its prime-time average, Nielsen said.

An 8% loss for prime time translates to a lot of money for the big advertising time slots. It would be interesting to see a deeper analysis of what could be the cause here. Fox has maintained the same prime time line-up for quiet awhile now, so perhaps people are just getting tired of hearing the same old Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. On the other hand, perhaps people are just finally getting tired of being spoon fed a bunch of b.s.?

There was one other loss worth mentioning here. MSNBC did see their 8:00 time slot drop 11% after the departure of Keith Olbermann. They still managed to fair well though with Rachel Maddow continuing her rise and the 10:00 hour no longer being a rerun of Countdown.

All this makes you wonder what we might see in 2012. I'm sure the ratings overall will increase with the election upon us, but will CNN and MSNBC see a bigger increase than FOX? We'll find out this time next year.

Rick Perry is the luckiest politician of all time. You can debate politics and policy and read through his record, but the hard cold fact is that not even the state of Texas likes him. With an election that had a strong third party candidate, and a eligible write-in, Perry became the only governor re-elected with the lowest vote count in Texas history. Perry became the only governor ever to have been elected with less than 40 percent of the state's support. In fact, just barely over 38 percent. Which means he won his election with 62 percent of the Texas electorate voting for someone else.

Governor Perry was all over South Carolina talking about his record on jobs and the economy, but it seems the luck of Texas has very little to do with his leadership. This weekend the Houston Chronicle reported the top 10 reasons that the growth in the Texas economy had nothing to do with Perry's leadership, despite him taking credit for it.

In a state with a massive oil industry and military contractors, growth with high gas prices while we're in two wars is inevitable and it had nothing to do with what Perry was doing and everything to do with federal policies. More help for Texas businesses comes in the form of exploitation of immigrant labor being significantly cheaper, keep wages low, as well as average wages low. At the same time, Texas has avoided the housing bubble that other states experienced. While others were ballooning with home foreclosures, only six percent of Texas homeowners are in foreclosure.

Some credit Texas’ stability to state regulations on cash-out and home equity loans, which don’t allow borrowers to take out loans that total more than 80 percent of a home’s appraised value.

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I'm almost in denial about having to ask people to do this: sign this petition at change.org to help stop the deportation of Prerna Lal. It's difficult to think of a more stupid move for the Obama administration to make than to initiate removal proceedings against Prerna. Prerna is arguably the most visible undocumented person, or Dreamer (after the DREAM Act), in the U.S.

As her website will tell you, she helped found dreamactivist.org, one of the most powerful online hubs for migrant youth, she's a blogger at change.org, and she's a board member of Immigration Equality. She also earned her Master's degree in International Relations and is currently studying to get her law degree at George Washington University.

The Obama administration is telling us that they're focusing their resources on the worst of the worst while folks on the ground know that they're going after people like Prerna all the time. If you don't want to read on, please sign this petition to stop Prerna's deportation.

The political consequences of this for the Obama administration going into the 2012 elections are enormous. While the mainstream media is ignoring it, pro-migrant voters certainly aren't going to vote for anyone who is deporting away more of our family members, neighbors, peers, and friends than any other President, Democrat or Republican, in history.

While pro-migrant voters shouldn't be equated with Latino voters, Latinos are easily the largest, most visible, and most organized segment of the pro-migrant electorate. According to a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center a record 14.7 million Latinos stayed home during the midterm elections in 2010. It gets worse. Obama's approval ratings among Latinos has decreased from 73 to 54 percent. Obama is not going to be able to win Florida and the Southwest with numbers like that.

The Obama administration's strategy up to this point has been to try and talk about this out of both sides of it's mouth. The Obama administration tries to brag about it's skyrocketing enforcement numbers to independents while blaming Republicans for the mess. Pro-migrant voters aren't stupid. Even 7-year-old Daisy Cuevas understands that it is Obama who is responsible for forcing her to live in terror.

Meanwhile we're left to try and stop the deportation of our friends, like Prerna Lal, one-by-one.  The Obama administration deported almost 400,000 people in 2010 and only granted deferred action to 542 people. Obama deports more people in a day than we're able to save in a year.

Instead of expending our energy trying to help elect Obama we're expending that energy trying to stop deportations. As the 22 Democrat Senators who signed a letter (pdf) asking Obama to halt the deportation of all Dreamers point out, not only is this inhumane, but it's a waste of the Department of Homeland Security's resources. People like Prerna are going through the entire system only to have their deportations halted at the last minute.

Sign the petition to stop the deportation of Prerna Lal, and shout from the rooftops that it's time for Obama to stop this madness.

[Kyle de Beausset (@kyledeb) is a pro-migrant blogger at Citizen Orange]

UPDATE: Fresh election thread just below.

Join us below the fold to follow our coverage of tonight's election results with our live blog.

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This is truly sickening. Maricopa County's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio just sent this shocking message to his followers:

"STOP ILLEGALS FROM STEALING THE ELECTION! Our grassroots army of VOTER FRAUD PREVENTION VOLUNTEERS will stand vigilant across the nation. We will be the first and strongest line of defense to ensure that only legal citizens vote on November 2nd."

Bogus accusations of "illegal voters" crop up every election, and every election they are proven false.  What's truly frightening is that, this year, Arpaio is recruiting an "army" to block people from voting in the name of "fraud prevention."

However, you can send a message to the Justice Department demanding that they send election monitors to Arizona immediately.  These are the people who are supposed to protecting our right to vote, not suppressing it.

When you take action, you'll also get to download a new voter protection card (in English or Spanish) with a nationwide hotline to report problems on election day.

We're encouraging voters to bring it with them to the polls and do their part to protect one of our most cherished rights - unfortunately, we're hearing reports of Arpaio-like tactics in other parts of the country too.

How will Arpaio's "army" and others like them single out who to intimidate? Hair? Accent? Shoes? This is un-American.

Looks like progressives can still crank out the contributions when it's someone who consistently supports our causes. To help keep Russ Feingold in the Senate, please contribute. Here's his Blue America page:

Progressive groups are making a strong push to try and save Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold from defeat in his reelection fight against Republican challenger Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and FireDogLake are all taking part in the electoral rescue mission for the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act.

The Hotline reports:

Feingold needs the money. He has $3M in his campaign account, but Johnson has been raising money at a fast clip and has shown he is willing to dip into his own personal fortune. Fundraising is ongoing, so the donations are still coming in. MoveOn.org has raised $485K in 24 hours, while FireDogLake has raised at least $30K and Democracy For America has brought in about $120K.

Heading into the midterm election season, Feingold seemed to have a relatively easy shot at another term. With election day just weeks away, however, polls show him consistently trailing his Republican challenger.

One of the latest polls, a Time/CNN survey released last week, has Feingold running six points behind Johnson, 45 to 51 percent.

Sadly, I can't imagine what on earth could motivate Americans to so strongly protect their rights. And of course, a brutal crackdown in Iran is inevitable:

An uneasy calm settled over the streets of Tehran Sunday as state media reported at least 10 more deaths in post-election unrest and said authorities arrested the daughter and four other relatives of ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran's most powerful men.

The reports brought the official death toll for a week of confrontations to at least 19. State television inside Iran said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannons.

Iran's regime continued to impose a blackout on the country's most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

But fresh images and allegations of brutality emerged as Iranians at home and abroad sought to shed light on a week of resistance to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The New-York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said scores of injured demonstrators who had sought medical treatment after Saturday's clashes were arrested by security forces at hospitals in the capital.

It said doctors had been ordered to report protest-related injuries to the authorities, and that some seriously injured protesters had sought refuge at foreign embassies in a bid to evade arrest.

"The arrest of citizens seeking care for wounds suffered at the hands of security forces when they attempted to exercise rights guaranteed under their own constitution and international law is deplorable," said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the campaign, denouncing the alleged arrests as "a sign of profound disrespect by the state for the well-being of its own people."

"The government of Iran should be ashamed of itself. Right now, in front of the whole world, it is showing its violent actions," he said.

State-run Press TV reported that Rafsanjani's eldest daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, and four other family members were arrested late Saturday. It did not identify the other four. Last week, state television showed images of Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.