Mitch McConnell leads unprecedented filibuster against appeals court nominee

Mitch McConnell For the first time ever, an appeals court nominee with bipartisan Judicial Committee support was blocked by Senate Republicans, urged on by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. His reason? He says he's honoring past Senate tradition of not approving judges so close to a presidential election. Because McConnell, the guy who has set numerous records for obstruction, cares so much about Senate tradition.

The 56-34-3 vote reflected the unprecedented nature of this filibuster. Oklahoma Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and James Inhofe supported the nomination of Robert Bacharach to be a U.S. circuit judge for the Tenth Circuit court in Oklahoma. They didn't want to vote against party leadership, or the judge, so they voted present, and allowed an unprecedented filibuster.

The White House fired off this statement after the vote.

[...] The American people deserve better than this unprecedented partisan obstruction of the President's efforts to ensure a fair and functioning judiciary.

Nearly one in eleven federal judgeships stands empty. The judicial vacancy rate has never been this high for this long. Currently there are 20 judicial nominees waiting for consideration by the Senate, half of whom would fill vacancies deemed judicial emergencies. Almost all of these nominees have the support of the majority of Committee Republicans, and nine are supported by their Republican home-state Senators. These nominees should be confirmed immediately.

There are 20 nominations waiting floor action, but there are 76 vacant federal judgeships and 32 of those vacancies are called judicial emergencies because of the tremendous backlog of cases they've created. Those nominations will languish, with McConnell hiding behind the excuse of Senate tradition, while at the same time blowing Senate tradition to smithereens with his obstruction.

Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's ready for Senate reform. We need to make sure there are enough progressive Democratic senators in his caucus to hold his feet to the fire and make it happen.

Let's upgrade the Senate with progressive senators who promise to push for filibuster reform. Send $1 to each of the candidates on Act Blue.

Cop car

Just confirming that Rasmussen really sucks

Independent? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Rasmussen, 6/12, likely voters:
Tommy Thompson (R) 52
Tammy Baldwin (D) 36

Rasmussen, 7/25, likely voters:

Tammy Baldwin (D) 48
Tommy Thompson (R) 41

No, Baldwin wasn't down by 16 a month ago, and no, the race hasn't shifted by 23 points in a single month, and no, Baldwin isn't up by seven today. PPP has it a 45-45 tie. Marquette University gives Thompson a small edge. Both of those pollsters have shown Baldwin closing a gap, but as is almost always the case in elections (particularly absent scandal or gaffe), the movement is gradual. This race is a toss-up.

But imagine the poor schlub at Rasmussen tasked with writing up their b.s.?

Baldwin was in a much weaker position in mid-June.

That's one way of spinning it.

Romney aide: 'Kiss my ass. This is a Holy site. ... Show some respect.'

Mitt Romney has answered a grand total of three questions from the American press pool traveling with him on his overseas adventure. When they tried to get him to answer their fourth earlier today, hilarity ensued:

A Mitt Romney aide told reporters to 'shove it' Tuesday morning after the American press corps here shouted questions at the presidential candidate.

As Romney was walking away from Pilsudski Square toward his vehicle, reporters asked him about his string of gaffes and whether he had any comment for Palestinians, some of whom took offense at the Republican's suggestion Monday in Jerusalem that Israel's economy is superior because of cultural advantages Israelis enjoy. Romney ignored the questions and got in his car.

But even though Romney ignored the press questions, traveling press secretary Rich Gorka lost his cool, commanding reporters to "show some respect" because they were about one hundred yards from Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. "Kiss my ass," Gorka said. "This is a Holy site for the Polish people." And as a reporter began asking another question, Gorka once again demanded reporters to "show some respect."

Given how badly Romney's trip has gone, it's hard to blame Gorka for losing it. And given how frequently the Romney campaign speaks out of both sides of its mouth, it's not at all surprising that he told reporters to show respect while simultaneously telling them to kiss his ass. And if you think there's anything wrong with that, apparently you can shove it.

Mitt Romney strategist calls Mitt comedy tour 'a great success, generally'

Romney adviser Stuart Stevens on the overseas trip moments ago:  "I think it was a great success"
' @jimacostacnn via web From MSNBC:

After the mini-press debacle in Warsaw, NBC's Garrett Haake reports that top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens later held a gaggle with reporters (damage control?) after Romney's speech to push back against the perception the trip hasn't gone well. The highlights, Haake notes, include Stevens pronouncing the trip a "a great success, generally," and  saying that Romney has answered "a lot of questions" on this trip when asked why he hasn't done a press conference. (But is taking three questions outside 10 Downing Street 'a lot of questions?)

Well, it's three more than zero, so that's something. But I wonder how even a dedicated Romney staffer can declare the trip "a great success" without buckling over in laughter after saying it. The three noteworthy events of the trip were (1) while in London, questioning the Olympic competence of Londoners, (2) while in Israel, managing to insult both Jews and Palestinians with his observations on how Jews were culturally much better with money than the Palestinians, and (3), admittedly not actually Mitt's fault for once, one of his aides uttering the phrase "Kiss my ass, this is a holy site," which is one of those sentences that pretty much never is a good idea in any real-world circumstance you can think of. All three of them sound like they could have been comedy sketches written to mock a tactless political tourist, but no, the Mitt campaign happily provided them themselves.

So we've got three countries visited, and three campaign gaffes so big that coverage of them overshadowed whatever actual point Mitt was trying to make on that day (we're going to just presume here that Mitt was trying to make actual points during this trip, although what they could have been is a mystery to all). That's the "great success"? Good Lord, what would failure have looked like?

Democratic platform will include marriage equality plank

As predicted by Joan McCarter Monday, the Democratic National Committee has confirmed that there will be an affirmative plank on marriage equality in the 2012 Democratic Party platform. The first openly gay Congressman to voluntarily announce he is gay, Rep. Barney Frank, wrote of the decision:

I want you to be one of the first to know: After a unanimous decision on Sunday, the drafting committee for the Democratic National Convention embraced marriage equality as part of our platform for the 2012 Convention.

The next step will be for the full platform committee to vote on it, after which it will be presented to the delegates at the Convention in Charlotte for a final vote. Make no mistake: This is a historic step toward fairness for all. Once again, Democrats are fighting to move this country forward. [...]

Now, it's up to us to speak up for what he has called a simple proposition: that every single American deserves to be treated equally.

A new Pew poll, shows that 65 percent of Democrats now support marriage equality, up from 50 percent in 2008 and 40 percent in 2004.

As Rep. Frank said, now it's up to all of us to speak up for this basic civil right.

8:51 AM PT:

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), an openly gay member of Congress, predicted the platform plank won't hurt Obama'because voters already know his position'or members of Congress up for reelection who are squeamish on the issue.

'If it's not their position, then I don't think that voters will take that into account,' Polis said. 'Each candidate running for office, whether a Democrat or a Republican, has positions that they stand for. Sometimes those are in agreement with party platform, sometimes not.'

But Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, was less circumspect. Endorsing gay marriage, he said, will cost Democrats in elections up and down the ballot.

'They can kiss the presidential election, the House and now the Senate goodbye,' he said.

Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation poll: Everyone agrees'the political media sucks

Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 7/26-7/29. Registered voters. MoE ±3.1% (no trendlines):

Q: In general, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the political media?

Favorable: 10
Unfavorable: 78
Not sure: 12

For once, something everyone agrees on, more or less. Self-identified Democrats actually have a somewhat more positive view of the political press, at 15-65, while Republicans are absolutely livid, with just 5% holding a favorable view and an amazing 91% saying they think of the political media negatively.

Here's a question where the results (just as unsurprisingly) came out the exact opposite way: bitterly divided.

Q: In general, do you think the United States should have stricter gun laws, or not?

It should: 45
It should not: 46
Not sure: 8

While we don't have trendlines on this topic, similar questions from other pollsters show attitudes on gun control largely unchanged in the wake of the mass murder in Aurora, Colorado.

On a lighter note, we also threw in this question:

Q: Regardless of who you support for President, would you rather go to dinner with Barack Obama and his family or Mitt Romney and his family?

Obama & his family: 51
Romney & his family: 41
Not sure: 7

This spin on the classic "who would you rather have a beer with?" formulation find the POTUS's family winning the popularity war, both because they do better among Democrats than the Romney clan does among Republicans, and because independents would rather dine with the Obamas by a 49-38 margin. Bon appetit!

P.S. As always, our approval and favorability numbers, as well as the Obama-Romney head-to-heads, can be found on our weekly trends page.

Harry Reid says Bain investor told him Romney paid no taxes for 10 years

Is Reid's source right? Nobody but Romney knows. And he knows exactly how he could clear the air... Sam Stein and Ryan Grim of HuffPost:

"His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son," Reid said, in reference to George Romney's standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s.

Saying he had "no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy," Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

"Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying.

"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," said Reid. "But obviously he can't release those tax returns. How would it look?

That's a pretty extraordinary allegation for someone to make, and given that there's no reason to believe Bain investors have any greater access to Mitt Romney's tax returns than anybody else, this probably falls into the realm of conjecture. Nonetheless, as long as Romney keeps his returns secret, what he's hiding is anybody's guess. Over the weekend, Romney said that 'so far as [he] can recall,' he has paid "a very substantial amount" of taxes every year, but he's offered no proof of that. Given that Romney has consistently said he believes releasing his returns would be politically damaging, it's safe to say that even if the Bain investor is wrong, and Romney has paid taxes, there's a fair bit of material in there that Romney doesn't want voters to find out about before the election. And that's exactly why it's so important he come clean and release his returns.

Trophy generation

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Three absurd claims in new Romney ad

So Mitt Romney's campaign is up with a new minute-long biographical ad designed to (re)introduce Romney to voters. It's a schmaltzy ad and if it weren't for the fact that it takes enormous liberties with the truth it wouldn't a bad one. But it does take those liberties and here are three of the worst:

Mitt drives himself ... get it? 1. Romney says he knows what it's like "to wonder whether you're going to be able to make ends meet."

The ad opens with Mitt Romney talking about his business background and saying that he knows what it's like to start a business and create jobs and "to wonder whether you're going to be able to make ends meet." If you're the Harvard-educated son of an auto industry CEO who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has bank accounts in the Caymans, a secretive Bermuda shell corporation, and, until recently, a Swiss bank account, those are words that should never escape your lips. And that's doubly true if you've made millions while firing workers and bankrupting companies.

Amazingly, this isn't the first time Romney has said something like this: Earlier in the campaign he said knew what it was like to be afraid of getting a pink slip. "I know what it's like to worry whether you're gonna get fired," Romney said. "There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip."

Next thing you know, he'll say he knows what it's like to be out of work because he is currently unemployed. Oh wait, he already has.

2. Romney's ad claims that he had the "best jobs record of any Massachusetts governor in the last decade," citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Technically, this claim is accurate, but it doesn't take long to figure out why: In the past decade, Massachusetts has had two governors. Romney was one of them. And the other one was Deval Patrick ... who was governor during the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008, and remains governor to this day. So of course Romney had a better record than Patrick'he didn't have to deal with the financial crisis of 2008 or the aftermath of the Bush presidency.

It is worth noting, however, than over the past two years, Patrick has created more jobs than Romney did during his entire term. (The data is here.) Despite that fact, a much better comparison is to put Romney's job creation record in Massachusetts up against the job creations records of other states while he was governor. But by that metric, Romney ranks 47th in the nation ... so you can see why he chose his ridiculous claim instead.

3. Romney claims credit for creating a $100 million surplus at the Salt Lake Olympics which he says was donated to an endowment for the future of Olympic sport without mentioning the federal government spent $1.3 billion on the games or that the surplus was actually $56 million and the donation was actually $40 million.

"I went off to having the chance to run the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002," Romney says. According to Romney, the games were in a financial crisis, but "by the time the games were over, we had about a $100 million that we put into an endowment there for the future of Olympic sport."

First, "about a $100 million" is more than twice the actual amount. As Romney knows, the endowment actually received $40 million. Another $6 million went to building Salt Lake's Olympic Legacy Plaza and $10 million was returned to federal taxpayers. So the bottom line is the surplus was $56 million, a little more than half what Romney had claimed.

Second, and more importantly, Romney really should be giving credit for the surplus to taxpayers, not taking it all for himself. Yes, it sounds nice that he returned $10 million to the federal government, but given that overall federal spending was $1.3 billion, that $10 million amounts to just 0.8 percent of what American taxpayers spent on the 2002 games.

Also worth noting: When controversy about federal spending erupted in the lead up to the games, Romney responded as only Romney can. He started out by rejecting criticism of overspending by calling it "Balderdash!" (Seriously, he did.) But then he also said that if the spending was excessive, it wasn't his fault, because it had been requested by his predecessors. In other words, don't blame Mitt for the Olympics: He was at Bain.

But Mitt didn't merely manage to deny the existence of the problem while simultaneously saying it wasn't his fault'he also managed to pull of the Romney-hedge trifecta by defending the spending which he said didn't exist and wasn't his fault: "These numbers are going up and up," Romney said. "It's a new world, and it's a dangerous world."

And it's still a world full of Mitt Romney's balderdash.