The administration lifts the moratorium on offshore drilling, which was ostensibly the reason for Sen. Mary Landrieu’s hold on the nomination of Jacob Lew to head up the President’s Office of Management and Budget, but Landrieu says that’s not good enough and that she won’t release the Lew nomination.

Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk caught on tape discussing his plan to send “voter integrity” squads to four predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Chicago and other parts of Illinois on Election Day. Kirk calls them “vulnerable precincts … where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.”

As we and of course many others have been reporting for years, there’s little if any evidence of systematic vote fraud in the United States today. Most of the ‘voter integrity’ agitprop has one real aim: reducing minority voting, especially blacks and Hispanics.

We’ve got a new development in the Lake Pirate story, this one involving an alleged severed head. More soon.

Our Eric Lach is trying to rundown the conflicting reports that the lead Mexican investigator on the “lake pirates” case along the Texas-Mexico border has been beheaded. The initial reports began to emerge within the last couple of hours from the offices of elected representatives along the border on the U.S. side, but they were vaguely and loosely attributed.

No one on the Mexican side was confirming, at least initially. In fact, CNN quoted Ruben Dario-Rios, a spokesman for the attorney general of Tamaulipas state in Mexico, saying, “We have not heard any report about one of our investigators being killed. We have over 1,000 investigators working for the state.”

Now we’re seeing a report in the south Texas Monitor saying that a spokesperson for the attorney general of Tamaulipas named Ruben Dario Rios Lopez (presumably the same guy) has confirmed the death:

Rios did not have any details about Flores’ death but assured that it had nothing to do with the Hartley probe. The spokesman offered no basis for that assurance, however, and said Mexican officials need Young-Hartley to meet with them and file a complaint in the city of Miguel Aleman.

I’m sure the family will race down there now to file that complaint. More soon.

This probably won’t count for much with the NRA, but you can add gun control advocates to the list of Democratic-leaning folk disaffected by Obama’s first two years in office.

Eric Lach runs down the grisly report that a Mexican investigator working on the “lake pirate” case has been beheaded.

Back in the day, Vince and Linda McMahon sued Geraldo Rivera, among others, for airing claims by WWE’s first female referee that Vince had forced himself on her. Christina Bellantoni takes a look at the case. You can read the lawsuit here.

It’s become a litmus test of sorts for high-profile Republicans: Do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President? It can and has been a tricky question to answer, and not everyone has successfully threaded the needle.

A tough, tough Republican mailer in Arizona: vote for the Dem and immigrants will soon be shooting up your neighborhood:

Take a look at the whole thing.

Tucked away on Carl Paladino’s campaign website is a page dedicated to over-the-top, campy, poster-style campaign slogans that are actually pretty funny, if a little strange. We’ve assembled the best of them here:

I’m not sure Paladino winning would be good for New York, but Gov. Paladino would be awesome for TPM.