We don’t know enough to assign blame on who should have known or done more to rescue those three women held captive in Ariel Castro’s house in Cleveland. We don’t know if anyone, the cops or neighbors, could have done anything more. But this article captures one thread of the story – the neighborhood in question is one just starting to get cleaned up from widespread prostitution and drug dealing. Poking your head around or asking questions about odd or shady-seeming behavior wasn’t necessarily a good idea. And a decent number of homes were all or half boarded up. Here’s the piece.

This comes from the department of dodged bullets or missed opportunities, depending on your predilections. But independent of your point of view it’s a pointed reminder of the deceptiveness of the Romney campaign. Read More

Anderson Cooper interviews Charles Ramsey, the guy who helped free those three women from that house in Cleveland. After the jump … Read More

Three year old fatally shoots himself with uncle’s unsecured gun.

PolitiFact comes up with another doozy of a “fact check” and Rachel Maddow lets it rip. Watch.

There have been several stories today claiming that neighbors called police about strange behavior at Ariel Castro’s home on two or three occasions — naked women on all fours in the backyard, people banging on windows in the house, etc. But Cleveland police are saying that’s not so. They say that only two calls were logged to that home — one from Castro himself and another about Castro but in reference to his work as a school bus driver. Full statement after the jump. Read More

Now Charles Ramsey’s 911 call has been released. After the jump … Read More

One of the most surreal and fascinating things about the Cleveland abductions is that the suspect, Ariel Castro, didn’t just live in the general vicinity of the victims’ families. He was connected to them in numerous ways. He was friends with Gina DeJesus’s father and played in bands with her uncle.

From the AP … Read More

AP and CNN calling it for Mark Sanford in South Carolina.

DCCC chairman Steve Israel (D-NY) issued a statement that reads in part:

In this deep red Republican district that Mitt Romney won by 18 points, the fact that the Democrat made this competitive is a testament to the strength of Elizabeth Colbert Busch as a candidate and the Republican habit of nominating flawed candidates. Democrats will be aggressive and drive deep into Republican-held territory this cycle to find districts with flawed Republican candidates where we can compete.

The abduction and captivity of those three women in Cleveland now seems to have been a good deal more sickening and awful than we might have imagined — and that’s saying a lot since it already seemed pretty awful. Read More