Another Quote of the Day

Charlie Crist: “Including as many Americans as possible in our electoral process is the spirit of our country. It is why we have expanded rights to women and minorities but never legislated them away, and why we have lowered the voting age but never raised it. Cynical efforts at voter suppression are driven by an un-American desire to exclude as many people and silence as many voices as possible.”

Voter suppression is as close as you get in democratic politics to mortal sin. And it’s going to be one of the prime features of the 2012 election. It is shameful, cynical and frankly disgusting.

Quote of the Day

Ari Fleischer: “[Obama’s] right that the system isn’t fair, but not because the top 1% pay too little. It is because they pay too much.”

Is That Your Final Answer, Mr. Romney?

It’s looking more and more improbable that Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr really confided to Mitt Romney that he was pining for Mitt to get into the White House and use his business know-how to set America back on the straight and narrow.

TPM Reader BK checks in with this report from down under …

Here is a bit of background from an Australian on Bob Carr, the Australian Foreign Minister. First and foremost, Carr is a serious public intellectual and policy wonk. He is the author of several very nerdy books (including one, “My Reading Life” about books he has read). He is a strong supporter of the arts. He agrees with the prevailing science on global warming and has a long record on environmental issues. Second, in policy terms, Carr is is well to the left of both Romney and Obama.

Romney’s Tax Returns Not ‘Disqualifying’

John McCain’s trusted campaign hand Steve Schmidt was on Meet the Press Sunday, so it’s no surprise that the conversation turned to the question of what’s in Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Schmidt said they reveal Romney’s an “extremely wealthy man” but that the returns themselves “do not look anything like the average American.”

“There was nothing that was disqualifying,” Schmidt said. “That pick in 2008 was not about any deficiency with Mitt Romney. It was a political decision that we made in a very bad political circumstance.”

Mitt’s First Foreign Stumble?

It’s treacherous for a US presidential candidate to travel overseas – lots of opportunities for mis-chosen words and getting drawn into other countries’ domestic politics. With Mitt Romney about to leave on his big trip abroad he may already have had his first big foreign stumble. At a GOP fundraiser in San Francisco last night, Romney said that Australia’s foreign minister had warned him that foreign leaders see the US in decline and – at least in Romney’s telling – was hoping for Romney-like policies to make things right.

Chart Of The Day

Comparing the costs of the Democratic and Republican tax plans.

Meet Ralph Rose

The Irish-American shot-putter who purportedly refused to dip the American flag to the royal box at the 1908 Olympics in London.

Finally Taking the Plunge

If you read about how the federal constitution came about, one thing is crystal clear: it was devised by people who wanted to create a strong federal government and saw the states as obstacles to doing so. The people who believed in states rights and an anemic federal government – the ancestors of today’s Tea Party – were the Anti-Federalists. And they lost.

More on ‘What’s Up with New York’, Pt.2

We’re taught to think of liberal New York City and Republican-ish upstate to understand New York state. But TPM Reader JH notes that in recent years, in national elections, even ‘Upstate’ now appears to be solidly Democratic …

More on ‘What’s Up with New York’, Pt.1

Over the weekend I posted about what to me at least was a surprising fact: New York isn’t now just a consistently Democratic state. At the national level it’s close to the most overwhelmingly Democratic state in the country. More than California and Massachusetts. And Obama currently has his biggest margin there than any state beside Vermont.

A number of TPM Readers chimed in with more details.

TPM Reader JM rightly notes that New York Republicans were always considerably more progressive than their national brethren, even before the Reagan Revolution …

I don’t write much anymore (new job, twins will do that to you) but as a native NYer and former Dem Party official who has lived upstate and downstate I wanted to weigh in why Obama is doing so well in NY. I have seen firsthand how the National Republican Party has destroyed what was left of the NY Republican Party in Manhattan (not that I objected) in the early 2000s. The election of my friend Jonathan Bing to the Assembly in 2002 eliminated the last Republican elected official in Manhattan which was unprecedented. They have not won an office since in part b/c of albatross of the National Republican Party.

The First London Olympics

I wish I could say that dipping into our slideshow of the 1908 London Olympics is an escape to when sports were purer and simpler. But each generation has its own sports controversies and that was just as true in the summer of 1908 as it is now. Fascinating photos and stories.

Watch Live

NCAA’s announcement on sanctions against Penn State just getting underway.