We’ve got the first nuggets out of Mitt Romney big immigration speech coming later today. And the gist seems to be that he’s going to duck the question of whether he’s for or against, would keep or change President Obama’s new mini-Dream Act. More soon.
The story of the Romney campaign trying to get the extremely unpopular Gov. Rick Scott of Florida to stop crowing about recent job growth in his state is, on one level, just a clumsy leak and a bad news cycle. (Here are the statements from the Scott camp that got Romney and Co. so freaked.) But it lays bare a key dynamic in the 2012 cycle. While the national economy is now sputtering, in key states it’s actually doing fairly well. And as luck or bad luck would have it, several of those states are critical national swing states — most notably, states in the industrial midwest like Ohio and the critical state of Virginia. Read More
For years, North Carolina has been wrestling with how to confront the terrible legacy of its state-sponsored eugenics program. With a victim compensation plan close to approval, the state was set to be in the vanguard of righting the past wrongs of forced sterilization programs across the country.
On Wednesday, the state Senate killed the plan.
We’ll know at the top of the hour whether the Supreme Court will release decisions today in the key remaining cases of the term: Suits over the Affordable Care Act and SB1070, Arizona’s strict anti-immigrant bill.
Update 10:21 AM: Three opinons so far, no ACA or SB1070 yet, but decisions not yet done for the day.
Update 10:26 AM: No opinions on the health care and immigration laws will be released today. Next day for rulings is Monday.
George Zimmerman’s written statement about the night he shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
We first reported back in March an important tug-of-war taking place within Republican ranks.
On one side, Mitt Romney, the GOP’s nominee, who has built a campaign on the claim that President Obama has been a rotten steward of the economy. On the other, GOP governors in key swing states where things not only haven’t been all that bad, but are on a steadily improving trajectory.
The resulting messaging dissonance is a key problem for the Romney campaign, and reporting by Bloomberg last night suggests they’re keenly aware of it.
More to come today.
Earlier today, TPM’s Carl Franzen flagged a study which reported that most Americans don’t know what hydraulic fracturing (aka ‘fracking’) is — the process of extracting oil and gas from rock by pumping highly pressured water and other liquids into the ground.
I wasn’t terribly surprised by that finding. But it reminded me of a very interesting finding from our recent annual TPM Reader Survey about our readers’ views on fracking. Read More
To have a sense of where the country and economy are at, just read this.
Audio and transcript of Trayvon Martin’s father’s call to the police reporting him missing.