From the AP:
Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote.
A Nevada secretary of state’s office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.
No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.
Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.
The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.
It’s worth noting that the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General are both Democrats.
Bill Kristol, on how no one can be expected to understand, let alone compare, the candidates’ economic plans — but everyone can understand a smear:
Mike Allen reports on why McCain has been so grumpy lately: “McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.”
But what friends call “grumpy McCain” is showing up regularly on the campaign trail, and several top advisers worry that it’s hurting his campaign by making him appear peevish and hunkered down when the country is looking for a larger and more optimistic brand of leadership.
After his first debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), both spectators in the hall and commentators on TV noted that McCain had deliberately avoided looking at his rival.
A close McCain friend said the reason is clear: McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.
“He is basically having to be somebody that he isn’t,” said the friend, who remains strongly supportive. “He is just not a guy that goes on the attack in public. For him to be on the attack constantly, attacking Obama’s character … McCain is uncomfortable with that, and it’s made him grumpy.”
John McCain would be the first to tell you that it’s a struggle to be an honorable person in such a shameless world.
Late Update: TPM Reader KB:
Shorter Mike Allen: Stuck running a corrosively negative campaign that has been forced upon him by Obama’s success in the polls, John McCain has at times appeared frustrated by his own inability to exert free will.
The secessionist party Sarah Palin has courted and Todd Palin belonged to has ties to Iran?
Politico’s Mike Allen seems to have bought into the idea that John McCain has become so angry and grumpy because he’s been forced by Barack Obama’s high poll numbers to run a sleazy, dishonest campaign. But sleazy and dishonest isn’t the real John McCain. So he’s grumpy about it.
But isn’t the more straightforward explanation that McCain is angry and grumpy because all the elite pundits who used to fawn over him now think he’s a dishonest sleaze?
The truth hurts.
TPM Reader MD is wondering …
I saw this on CNN early this morning. John Roberts was talking about the smear campaign, trying to do the equivalency dance, and actually said (I’m paraphrasing) “Obama is trying to tie McCain to the Keating Five”. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t that like saying John Lennon was “tied” to the Beatles? He was a Beatle! John McCain WAS one of the Keating Five.
I’m seeing other reporters do this too.
Cindy McCain: Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history.“
Even those of us who didn’t go into the campaign with an over-rosy view of McCain have been stunned at just how big a lying sleaze-peddler and hypocrite he’s turned out to be. In today’s episode of TPMtv, we take a look at the awful truth …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
I don’t want to alarm anyone. But you should be aware there’s a significant chance we’ll see some real tire-swinging from tonight’s moderator Tom Brokaw. Brokaw is a pro with a long and distinguished career. But he does appear to have a real thing for the tire-swing. As the Times reported at the end of September, in recent months Brokaw has served as NBC’s emissary to the McCain campaign “to assure the candidate’s aides that — despite some negative on-air commentary by Mr. Olbermann in particular — Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates — until his name was invoked.”
And remember that it was Brokaw, during the Democratic convention, who went on at some length how Bill Clinton and all Democrats had to be really careful about criticizing John McCain because of his time as a POW …
Again, I’m not saying Brokaw’s some hack. He’s definitely. not. But he does seem to have remained captive to the McCain myth, long after many of his generational pundit peers have hopped off the tire-swing for good.