The plot, hatched by a strange alliance of high-profile conservatives, was to have James O'Keefe and his "crew" catch the SEIU in some kind of voter fraud similar to what O'Keefe has tried to commit in various states around the nation in order to claim that voter ID laws are necessary.

Let's note for the record that the entire right wing has been curiously silent about the voter registration fraud schemes bought and paid for by the Republican National Committee. You would think concerned conservatives like Fund, Fox and Friess would be very, very concerned, but instead, silence fills the hole where outrage should be.

The Players
John Fund is a conservative champion of Voter ID laws, and senior editor for The American Spectator. Fund also writes for the Wall Street Journal.. Steve Friess is the son of right-wing moneybags Foster Friess, of "aspirin between her knees" fame. And of course, James O'Keefe is the Breitbart disciple who loves to edit video to make it look like people are doing things they aren't in order to destroy organizations like ACORN.

Others involved include Heather Higgins, pundit and president of Independent Women's Voices. Higgins is also affiliated with the Hoover Institution.

The Plot

It begins with a tip that appears to have come via neocon radio host John Batchelor. The tip says that the SEIU is contracting for buses to take voters to the polls, asserting that "if you're black or brown they'll rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out."

That tip went to John Fund, who then forwarded it to Heather Higgins, who forwarded it to Foster Friess. Out of this, comes the plan from Steve Friess to make an "ACORN sting video." Oh, the paranoia just shines through. Also the racism.

Some black /Latina conservatives could be wired for video, and get picked up on one of these busses, and show what goes on. My guess -they are offering cash, (which I am pretty sure is illegal), and I also would wager that at least some of these busses are making more than one stop with the same people - ie getting them to vote twice -though I don't know the mechanics of that.

Perhaps some private detective types would be needed to help track down the busses, and a block or two ahead of them to drop our cameramen off...

Too much to dream? Imagine pulling this off - legal / image problems for SEIU would be a good thing... think there's upside to this?

Brietbart would know, and Fund would know - 'if we catch them doing X, it could mean Y' - I just don't know what the stakes are...

The most interesting part of the Steve Friess email was right at the end, where he asks his dad to 'bounce this off Breitbart.' At the time, O'Keefe hadn't been arrested for his attempted bugging of Mary Landrieu's office and was still widely hailed as a conservative hero. Evidently O'Keefe was also still part of the Breitbart inner circle, too.

O'Keefe forwarded on the email to Nadia Naffe, who worked for O'Keefe for awhile before there was a break and she accused him of harassment.

The End

Evidently they did try to get something, but never used it. Buzzfeed reports:

Reached by email, Naffe said the emails were authentic: "Fund and Steve Friess, the son of billionaire Foster Friess, introduced the idea to O'keefe that SEIU would fraudulently register anyone with brown skin to vote."

"James flew me out to Boston to find the SEIU busses, just days after that email was sent," Naffe said. She claimed that "Congressman Steve King from Iowa was waiting at the hotel when we arrived to take us to dinner. He gave us a pep talk about illegal voting."

"O'keefe has the footage, though I'm doubtful he would share any of it. Since, he was arrested a week later in New Orleans while attempting to wire tap Senator Mary Landrieu," Naffe said.

This may not rise to the level of blockbuster reporting, but I did think it was interesting to see how intertwined the networks are. John Fund, Andrew Breitbart and Foster Friess, all huddled together to make sure those nasty black and brown people didn't vote in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile in other pockets of RepublicanLand, they're fraudulently changing voter registrations, tossing Democratic registrations in the trash, and otherwise working on rigging elections. What a bunch of poseurs.

Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley announced this week that she's suing the big banks for mortgage fraud. Be still, my heart!

So you can see a noose tightening around the necks of the banks, who would like nothing better than to strike a deal where AGs release them from liability in return for a nominal fee. Not all the AGs are willing to take that step, as detailed above. And now, Coakley, who has been very good on this issue, is out with perhaps the most wide-ranging lawsuit against the big banks over foreclosure fraud. Recall that some favorable court rulings in Massachusetts, including the Ibanez case, have ruled that banks don’t have standing to foreclose in cases where they improperly assigned mortgages. That is part of the case law in Massachusetts, making it a fertile environment in which to pursue this case.

According to the Boston Globe MERS is also named in the lawsuit:

The suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, also names the private company Mortgage Electronic Registration System Inc. and its parent, MERSCORP Inc., as defendants, according to the attorney general’s office.

“The AG’s lawsuit seeks accountability for the banks’ unlawful and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure process, including unlawful foreclosures, false documentation and robo-signing, MERS, and deceptive practices related to loan modifications,’’ the news release from Coakley’s office said.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:

GMAC is trying to get other big banks to follow suit. I hope the state and other groups that do substantial financial business with banks (largish churches are also attractive clients) make it clear than any effort to punish the state for enforcing the law will be met by moving their accounts to smaller institutions that respect the law.

From the Wall Street Journal:

GMAC Mortgage, the mortgage lender of Ally Financial Inc., is exiting the vast majority of its lending in Massachusetts a day after the state sued it over its foreclosure practices.

The nation’s fifth-largest mortgage originator said it “has taken this action because recent developments have led mortgage lending in Massachusetts to no longer be viable,” ratcheting up the high-stakes mortgage fight there….

GMAC Mortgage will stop purchasing loans from correspondent lenders and wholesale brokers, which makes up the majority of the company’s business. The lender said it was “disappointed” but that “it has an obligation to manage risks and deploy capital in an appropriate manner and in a way that protects the investment of the U.S. taxpayer.”

Get a load of the sanctimoniousness. Since when do the interests of investors trump the rule of law? In fact, the logic is backwards, since investors are not well protected in a regime where laws are not respected. Does anyone want to invest in, say, Somalia?

Continue reading »

Politico's idea of news: John McCain, Twitter genius. Because it's pure genius to tweet stuff like this:

But they don't stop there.

But it’s not just McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, who’s the GOP standard-bearer for social media. In a social media game mastered by the campaign of Barack Obama, the study found Republicans have “struck back,” with GOP senators averaging more than 5.5 IQ points higher than their Democratic counterparts.

Of the seven senators who scored “genius” social media rankings, four were Republicans: McCain — the top tweeter, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Scott Brown of Massachusetts and John Cornyn of Texas.

DeMint is a tea party force, and Brown rode significant grass-roots tea party support to upset Martha Coakley for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat last winter. Cornyn is the head of the Senate GOP campaign organization.

Wow. A Tea Party force. And a Twitter genius. Evidently the authors of the official academic study of Senators' Twitter use didn't take the gaming aspect into account when they came up with this study. Nor did they particularly care what the content was.

But hey -- props to the staffer behind the McCain account, who at least knows enough about trolling to get Politico's attention, eh? They don't really think John McCain tweets from his iPhone do they? He barely understands his Blackberry.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has ruled that DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is unconstitutional. Chris Hayes anchored Rachel Maddow's show and led off with this segment and interview with Martha Coakley.

We begin tonight with breaking news out of Massachusetts. A federal judge ruled that the federal government's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro decided that the defense of marriage act violates the fundamental principles of this nation.

With that, the judge made advocates of marriage equality very happy. One of the rulings involved seven couples and three widowers, all of whom who had been ineligible for the federal benefits that come with being lawfully wed thanks to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. That law required the federal government to ignore for federal purposes any marriage not between a man and women.

Same-sex wedded couples have no access to family health insurance, no social security survivor benefits, no joint filing of federal taxes.

There are two salient things about the ruling. The judge granted the plaintiffs what's known as summary judgment. Both sides filed their arguments and the judge decided he didn't need to hear another word.

The remarkable part of the ruling is the reason for it. In addition to ruling that DOMA violated the equal protection clause, he also invoked the Tenth Amendment, which Chris Hayes points out as the "holy grail" of conservative thought:

Judge Tauro saying the rationale strains credulity. Judge Tauro ruled that a key part of the bill violated a couple's right to equal protection. Judge Tauro also ruled for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, saying the federal government wrongly forced it to discriminate, writing "the federal government, by enforcing DOMA encroaches on the province of the state and offends the Tenth Amendment.

The tenth amendment is the "don't tread on me" amendment. It's the one conservatives are using to repeal health reform. It's Texas governor Rick Perry's favorite battle cry. Now, today, the Tenth Amendment means gay couples are one step closer to being treated equally in this country. Don't tread on them either.

I believe the Obama administration concurred with the judge's ruling, which is why the President issued his executive order protecting the rights of gay couples with regard to health care and ordered benefits extended to same-sex partners.

It does, however, place the DOJ in a weird position. Since the DOJ is responsible for enforcing the laws on the books, they're going to have to appeal this judge's ruling, even if the opinion inside the administration is that the judge was right. This is their duty under the law, and it carries the risk that this case will go to the Supreme Court for a final resolution. When it's appealed, don't assume the administration is against the ruling simply because DOJ is doing its job.

If it reaches the Supreme Court and Elena Kagan is confirmed, it affirms the wisdom of her refusal to answer the question about DOMA's constitutionality. Had she answered that question, she would have had to recuse herself from any proceedings that related to it, which would have left an unbalanced court to decide the case.

In any event, this is a landmark decision which sets a much faster pace for the eventual repeal of DOMA.

Progressives will be watching some big primary races this Tuesday. But the biggest race of all is in Pennsylvania's Democratic senatorial primary, where groups like MoveOn and Democracy for America have poured resources behind Joe Sestak, backing him against the Obama-backed Sen. Arlen Specter:

Perhaps no race has as much symbolic significance for Obama as the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania between incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak. According to the most recent polls, the two are locked in a virtual tie as they go into Tuesday's voting.

A Specter loss would be viewed by many as a defeat for Obama, even though the president remains highly popular among Pennsylvania's Democrats. That's because Obama was personally involved in wooing Specter to the Democratic Party and promised support in his bid to stay in the Senate. One of the final ads Specter is running features the senator visiting Obama.

The White House signaled more than a week ago that the president would not make another campaign trip for Specter in the final days of the primary race, perhaps wanting to avoid a repeat of the presidential-visit-followed-by-loss sequence that occurred in January when Republican Scott Brown won the open Senate seat in Massachusetts just days after Obama campaigned there for Democrat Martha Coakley.

But a win by Sestak may not offer any lasting damage for Obama. He campaigned as a supporter of the president's, and the congressman could turn out to be a better candidate in the fall against the Republican nominee.

If Specter loses -- or even if he wins by a tiny margin -- it could foreshadow difficulties for all incumbents, as further evidence that voters are fed up with those in power. It would also be an indication of the difficult prospects for party-switchers; Obama is asking many Democrats in Pennsylvania to support Specter after they had spent years campaigning and voting against him.

Democrats have been voting for Specter for a long time, so I don't think that's a real problem. If anything, people will vote against him because they think it's time for new blood.

Hullabaloo: Accountability is for the little people

TPMDC: Pelosi: Bush administration officials barred officials from briefing congress on the impending financial crisis in the fall of 2008

MAL Contends: AP: VA makes it too easy for veterans to file claims...seriously

Oliver Willis: Conservatives now spamming Twitter

World-O-Crap: CSI: White House Special Victims Unit

The Reid Report: Fla. lawmaker caught viewing soft porn attacks reporter

Flipping around to CNN, Wolf's The Situation Room goes gaga over the Scott Brown swearing-in. They are in a frenzy. The devoted almost the entire first hour of TSR to him. Tongues are hanging out, heavy breathing follows as the cameras check him out to the chamber where Joe Biden does the honors.

Fox News stocks talker Ben Stein (fired for ethics violations at the NY Times) opines that he's just the type of guy you want to have a beer with and he's so much better looking than the schoolmarmy-looking Martha Coakley.

Then they picked up his presser. It's all about cutting those damn taxes...

He ducks the DADT question by saying he'll just ask the generals how they feel. That's real leadership. He said the stimulus didn't create one new job...

And Brown said that not only do we have to worry about terrorists attacking our airports, but they are also coming for our shopping malls.

Q: Do you mind being one or two republicans as long as you like the bill.

Brown:...We have terrorists trying to kill not only in our airports, but in our shopping malls.

I hadn't heard of that one. There was the Derrick Sharif case in 2007, but that involved no terrorist organizations and was a conspiracy of one. There have been some right-wing sites that were saying a mall would make a nice, juicy target.

Wonder if that's where Brown was getting his information.

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I've been writing a lot about the role Fox News and the right wing noise machine played in getting Scott Brown elected in Massachusetts. Margery Eagan, a Boston Herald reporter (who supported Coakley) told Howard Kurtz that right-wing talk radio and sports talk radio demonized Martha Coakley endlessly. This was a big part of her fall after she held a 31-point lead in MA.

CNN's Reliable Sources:

On Boston newspapers’ coverage of the Massachusetts Senate race

EAGAN: Well, she got very good press from "The Boston Globe," not from my paper, "The Boston Herald." But you know something? People don't like -- TV journalists and newspaper journalists do not like to talk about the influence of talk radio. Let me tell you something. There was a nonstop hammering of Martha Coakley on the AM stations here, on the huge sports stations here. She was the evil incarnate and Scott Brown was the next coming. And, you know, the New England Patriots in the playoffs lost early on. It was as if there was this transference from Tom "Terrific" Brady, the quarterback of the Patriots, to Scott "Terrific" Brown. You look at the rallies for Scott Brown, they were very white, they were very suburban, they were Gillette Stadium fans, and there was almost this...

KURTZ: But just briefly, did you mean to say earlier that "The Boston Globe" tilted towards Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, and your paper, "The Boston Herald," tilted towards Scott Brown in the news coverage?

EAGAN: Well, I would say my paper was pretty much cheerleading for Scott Brown. We're the conservative paper in town, and The Globe, I think, was -- they were evenhanded somewhat, but I think that they were definitely cheerleading for Martha Coakley, absolutely. They're the liberal paper in town. That's the way it always is.

I cover the sports media on C&L all the time because I think it's important to show how they act like the Beltway media elite -- they have their own Village. And their political reach is greater than people think, because the sports talkers are uniformly right-wing and they love to bash liberals, just like their "opinion show" counterparts. Locally, AM right wing hate talk radio does play a major role in the GOP propaganda battles and it worked very well for them in Massachusetts.

Eagan names what the media elites will dare not: the actual influence right-wing talkers have in America. Good for her.

John Amato wrote earlier this week about the extensive plugs Fox News gave to Scott Brown's candidacy, and now Media Matters lists the many, many ways they worked for his campaign. Go read the rest:

Fox News didn't simply cheer from the sidelines of this contest. Indeed, the network actively aided Brown's campaign. Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to the election, and during each appearance, Brown directed viewers to his website to find out "how to help with donating and volunteering." Fox News political analyst Dick Morris took it upon himself to urge viewers to "go to DickMorris.com ... to help elect Brown," because if "we win this fight, then there will never be another victory for Obama." When asked at a rally about "ethical questions" raised by Fox News' advocacy for Brown, chief political correspondent Carl Cameron fled, saying he didn't have time to answer. But he did have the time to autograph "Brown for Senate" campaign materials and pose for pictures with Brown's volunteers, as Think Progress documented.

Fox News also did Brown the favor of repeatedly misrepresenting remarks Coakley made to portray her as incompetent. America's News HQ anchor Gregg Jarrett stated on January 17, "Martha Coakley is out of step when she says things like terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan, or in the debate saying, quote, 'We need to get taxes up.' " Interpreting Coakley's remarks in this way requires a willing suspension of basic verbal reasoning skills; and that was Fox's "straight news" programming. On Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy actually claimed that Coakley "suggested the Taliban [are] gone from Afghanistan," and Michael Scheuer declared that Coakley "doesn't seem to mind" that "we are losing there." For his part, Glenn Beck accused Coakley of "religious bigotry" for saying that those who would "deny emergency contraception to a woman who came in who had been raped" probably "shouldn't work in the emergency room."

In case boosting Brown while attacking Coakley wasn't a sufficient strategy, Fox News baselessly fomented fears that Democrats would "cheat" to steal the election. Warning Fox News viewers not to become complacent before Election Day, Beck stated, "[Y]ou can imagine how ugly this thing will get if -- oh God help us all -- if it's too close to call." Beck displayed the ACORN logo and added, "[T]hey have friends in low places." Invoking the Florida recount, Beck asserted that Democrats "were so incompetent they didn't even know how to cheat. But don't worry -- they've gotten good at it now."

Fox even told viewers that they could strengthen their 401(k)s by electing Brown. Echoing CNBC's Jim Cramer, Fox Nation declared that "Brown Win Could Cause Huge Stock Rally." On Election Day, Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson introduced Fox business contributor Stuart Varney by stating, "Well, you may want to make a call to Massachusetts and get some people out to the polls. Well, that's because our next guest, and a friend, says that your portfolio could look much better if Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy's vacant Senate seat." As Varney spoke, Fox & Friends displayed an on-screen text reading: "What can Brown do for you? A boost in your 401K may be in the cards." And over on Fox Business, Charles Payne asserted that a Brown win "fertilizes the soil for an incredible longer-term stock market rally."

But after closing up 115 points on January 19 before election results were in, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 122 points the day after Brown's victory and another 213 points the next day. Baffled by this turn of events, Beck said on his radio show, "I'm not sure why it's coming down" since "it made total sense to me" that the market would "go through the roof" if Brown won.

There appears to be a high turnout for MA's special election which possibly could be good news for the bumbling Martha Coakley.

A reader brings us up to speed after the jump ...

By noon, more than 55,000 voters cast their ballots in Boston - up from an estimate of 24,000 during the December primary. That puts Boston on pace to produce more than 150,000 votes. In raw votes, if this keeps up, that'll be slightly more than the 2002 or 2006 state elections, but well below presidential years. (The surge in enrollments in '08 means that a slight increase in the number of voters would still be a significantly lower percentage.)

It's also above the election eve forecasts. The Secretary of State predicated roughly double the December turnout - so far, Boston is actually up 130%. And with lines discouraging voters at some precincts and a snowy morning, coupled with much more intensive GOTV efforts, there are some indications that turnout may actually tilt toward the afternoon.

It's too soon for optimism. Turnout had to exceed projections for Coakley to have any chance. Well, it has - so she's still in the running. But we're going to need more numbers before we can guess whether she'll pull it out.

I would stress the readers caveat that this is really nothing for Dems to get too excited about. What it does suggest is that the kind of big turnout Coakley would need to pull this off seems to be happening. Solid turnout is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition.

mcjoan finds that the local media sees the same thing.

Local media is sounding the same theme. Depsite the bad weather, folks are voting.

From WBZ-TV in Boston:

In contrast to the light turnout for the party primaries last month, there are already signs of a heavy turnout. In the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's district in Barnstable, they're estimating a 60-percent turnout by the end of the day.

For you Bay-staters, what are you seeing on the ground? And for the rest of you, have you made your calls? Polls are open for several more hours. Keep on pushing.

Race tracker wiki: MA-Sen

Usually turnout is very small for special elections and state primary elections, but if Coakley has any chance to win it if the polls are correct is by a bigger than normal turnout. We'll see.