The Sheriff can be a frightening figure in a small, rural county. (This one was in southern Illinois and I can say that since that’s where a lot of my family comes from.) But this is a case where when law men go bad, sometimes they go really bad. First Sheriff Raymond Martin was dealing pot out of his police SUV, which was pretty bold. He also bragged about being able to set up anyone he wanted to on ginned up charges. But over the weekend, already in jail for the pot dealing and now with the help of his wife and son, Martin upped the ante to murder-for-hire.

CQ downgrades the Colorado Senate seat held by Democrat Michael Bennet from “Leans Democrat” to “Tossup.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

We sort through the Olbermann and Maddow segments last night featuring Richard Wolffe and try to suss out what Wolffe was really saying about the Flight 253 fallout — and how much of that really came from the White House.

The new Rasmussen poll has Dem candidate Martha Coakley with a 50% to 41% margin over Republican Scott Brown. Figure in that Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state and that Rasmussen’s polls tend to have a slight GOP lean and you can probably figure she’s going to win on January 19th.

But in a low-turnout special election, you never know. And there’s little question that the most enthusiastic voters are leaning Republican in this cycle.

And here’s the thing to keep in mind. If Scott Brown were to pull off an upset that would end Health Care Reform, pulling Dems back to 59 seats and preventing final passage of the bill.

Not saying this is a likely scenario. But the stakes are staggering.

Late Update: Several point out that there would be one way to still pass Reform. If the House agreed to pass the identical bill the senate passed, with literally no changes whatsoever, then that could go to the president’s desk and be signed. I thought of this last night. But it was not clear to me whether there would be some parliamentary impediment to doing this. Does anyone know?

Normally, you’d need to be a Florida politics junky to care that the Chairman of the Florida GOP, Jim Greer, is resigning his office today. But this is an ominous sign for Charlie Crist in the Florida senate primary and another sign of right-wing power in the nationwide GOP battle between moderates and the Tea Party/Club for Growth right. We’ll have more background shortly. This one’s a big deal.

Late Update: Here’s more on the story.

Jon Stewart, on the underwear bomber: “If the bomb works, there’s gonna be 72 very disappointed virgins.”

A look at the newly unveiled tallest building in the world:

(On a related note, I second MSNBC’s David Shuster on this: “Breaks my heart as I think about what might have been…in rebuilding ground zero.”)

As you can see in our current feature, the Tea Party/Club for Growth wing of the GOP scored a major victory today in finally forcing the resignation of FL GOP Chairman Jim Greer, a key ally of Gov. (and senate candidate) Charlie Crist. But lest you think Greer is some utter milquetoast, he’s no real stranger to the crazy either. Greer’s the guy who started the whole Obama is indoctrinating our children ruckus back in the fall.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) will not run this year for another term in the Senate.

Pete Hoekstra, the Republican congressman from Michigan who’s running for governor, left the domain address PeteHoekstra.com unregistered, and now it’s fallen into enemy hands .