Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell stands with Tea Party protesters in Delaware. (O'Donnell campaign)

On the question of whether Christine O’Donnell — a two-time failed candidate and one-time anti-masturbation crusader — was suitable for office, Democratic and Republican operatives wholeheartedly agreed. She would never win the Delaware Republican Senate primary, they said this summer.

[Congress1] But tonight, voters begged to differ. A little after 9 p.m., the Associated Press declared that O’Donnell had beaten out nine-time Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), winning 53 percent of voters to Castle’s 47. She will now face Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney from Wilmington, for the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden in 2008. Democrats can rejoice that Coons, a long shot against Castle, now enjoys a substantial lead in most early polls against O’Donnell, who many believe is too radical to win a general election.

O’Donnell had run unsuccessfully as a candidate twice before in Delaware, and has a history of making bizarre statements — such as claiming she won counties in a race against Joe Biden. (She did not.) Thus, the media and even the Castle campaign ignored her through much of her primary bid.

Then came the Tea Party Express, a California-based organization whose PAC, Our Country Deserves Better, vocally supported O’Donnell. Exhilarated by an upset primary victory in Alaska, in which the group had propelled tea party candidate Joe Miller over incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) by a tiny margin, Express promised to infuse political advertising dollars into the Delaware race and nudged Sarah Palin to eventually lend her star power to O’Donnell as well.

Like Alaska, Delaware has a small voting population and few media markets — making it easy for outside infusions of money to have a big impact on an election. Unlike Alaska, however, Republicans recognized the dire nature of O’Donnell’s challenge and began leaking juicy and unsavory tidbits about her character and history to any news outlet that would listen.

A Wilmington News Journal article from March surfaced, in which the local paper reported that O’Donnell had owed money to her university, on a home mortgage, and to the IRS at various points in the past, and that her campaign committee still owed money from her previous unsuccessful Senate run. A Weekly Standard piece featured O’Donnell making strange and unverifiable claims about her previous home and campaign offices being vandalized by her political opponents. And the Huffington Post reported that O’Donnell had no steady source of income.

This news, combined with more bitter, personal attacks against Castle — like the allegation of a former O’Donnell staffer that he was having a homosexual affair — drove many Republicans, even those sympathetic to or engaged in tea party politics, away from O’Donnell. RedState’s Erick Erikson publicly gave up on the candidate due to her campaign’s lack of professionalism. FreedomWorks, another tea party training ground, refused to get behind her.

The state GOP chairman, Tom Ross, for his part, was downright hostile to O’Donnell and the outside groups that got behind her. Ross repeatedly called O’Donnell a “perennial candidate” with no real ties to Delaware, and later commented that she “could not be elected dogcatcher.”

That fact that O’Donnell has now secured the GOP nomination presents an awkward problem for the Republican candidate and her state party, which had vowed not to help her should she win. O’Donnell will likely continue to receive aid from enthusiastic outside conservative groups, but will face an uphill battle in convincing mainstream organizations that she has a real shot at attracting independent or even moderate Republican votes.

Democrats, for their part, have a whole trove of opposition research against O’Donnell, found by Republican operatives who tried to discredit her campaign. Just yesterday, a former O’Donnell aide, Kristin Murray, recorded a robocall that labeled her “a complete fraud.”

“This is her third Senate race in five years. As O’Donnell’s manager, I found out she was living on campaign donations — using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt,” Murray said. “She wasn’t concerned about conservative causes. O’Donnell just wanted to make a buck.”

So where are the most competitive races? Well, they’re not in Georgia. If you live there, your state legislative races are the least competitive of any state, according to the study’s formula, which takes into account the presence of challengers and money raised. Minnesota is at the other end of the spectrum as the only state where every candidate had a general-election contest in the 2008 cycle.

Check out the competitiveness map after the jump:

By overall geographic region, the South is home to the least competitive legislative elections. States in the Midwest and Mountain West had the highest number of contested races.

In addition to geographic parallels, the study claims to have identified three additional patterns related to election competition. The first is public funding — five of the ten most competitive states offered public funding for campaigns. The second is the cost of campaigning — the cost is inversely related to competitiveness. And the third is business contributions — the study notes the three states with the smallest amount of business contributions were among the five most competitive.

A second study released today by the National Institute on Money and State Politics found that the advantage of incumbency remained strong at the legislative level last cycle, especially when combined with fundraising ability.

While these studies can be used to help make the case for public financing, as I read the data, I couldn’t help but think of Ruth Marcus’ editorial in the Post Wednesday on Arizona’s state legislature. Arizona has “one of the most far-reaching public financing laws in the nation,” Marcus writes, but it also yielded some unintended consequences in the state. Read Marcus’ entire piece for more on Arizona’s current situation.

Participants at the meeting were impressed by Obama’s strong command of the issues at hand and appalled by McCain’s acknowledgment that he had not even read Paulson’s three-page bailout plan.

A Republican sitting some distance down the long table whispered to a pair of Democratic senators, “Everyone here is ready to vote for Obama, including the Republicans.” [Democratic House Financial Services Committee Chairman] Barney Frank was even more disgusted than usual. “This was about as unpresidential as it gets,” he said later.

Bush’s expressive face said it all. When Obama spoke, he paid careful attention, as if he knew that here was his successor. When McCain spoke, Bush’s face was quizzical and unconvinced, as if he’d eaten something sour.

But that was the civilized portion of the meeting. Shortly thereafter, Paulson begged Democrats not to attack the bailout plan. But it was the Republicans who had withdrawn their support, and Frank was incensed at Paulson’s suggestion that Democrats were somehow to blame.

Barney Frank muscled his way past Harry Reid and started yelling. “F— you, Hank! F— you! Blow up this deal? We didn’t blow up this deal! Your guys blew up the deal! You better tell [GOP Rep. Spencer] Bacchus and the rest of them to get their s— together!” When Paulson tried to equivocate, Frank threw in another “F— you, Hank!” — his third of the day.

For all the bedlam at the meeting, Obama and his team emerged confident that the election was theirs to win — and that the country needed them to win.

“That was surreal,” Obama said on the speakerphone from the car on the short ride back to the hotel, with several campaign aides on the call. “Guys, what I just saw in there made me realize, we have got to win. It was crazy in there.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be president,” he said in his familiar wry tone, only with more amazement than usual. “But he definitely shouldn’t be.”

Mitt Romney at a book signing in Huntington, N.Y., on Wednesday (William Regan- Globe Photos)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) effectively clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination in the 10 days between the South Carolina and Florida primaries. Up against a wall, with polls showing Mitt Romney moving up as Rudy Giuliani faded, McCain unleashed a new attack. Romney, he said, had given up on the Iraq War. Romney, said McCain, had wanted to “surrender and wave a white flag” and “set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster.” Thrown off his message, Romney stopped talking about the economy and tried — in vain — to get McCain to back off. Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) endorsed McCain, the senator won his state’s primary by 5 points, and within two weeks Romney would drop out of the race.

[GOP1] Romney won’t be caught in that position again. That’s at least some of the rationale for “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” a book he is launching with a national tour, a round of media sit-downs, and a series of speeches. The title — which Romney credits to an aide after he had spent “at least six months trying” to think of one — is a knock on President Barack Obama for purportedly conducting an “American Apology Tour” in other countries. For roughly 100 pages, Romney lays out a vision for American foreign policy defined against Obama’s “radical reworking of American and Western leadership” — and what Romney characterizes as Obama’s view that “America is in a state of inevitable decline.”

For a politician whose every action points at a 2012 White House bid, it’s a bold move. As unemployment hovers near 10 percent and health care reform trudges through Congress, support for Obama’s approach to foreign policy has been a source of strength. Polling released in January and February found approval of Obama’s handling of terrorism in the 50s, even after a thwarted airplane terror attack on Christmas Day 2009. A Gallup poll released last month found support for Obama on foreign policy at 51 percent, 15 points higher than support for the president’s domestic record. A Franklin & Marshall poll released last week found the same thing, with 57 percent of Americans backing the president’s approach to Afghanistan and a slight majority backing his overall foreign policy. The president and his party are more vulnerable on economic issues, which Romney, a self-made multimillionaire, has a unique ability to speak out on. Instead, he’s opted to challenge Obama on his foreign policy strength.

“It’s a good juxtaposition,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Romney’s first home state of Michigan. “Obama has said he kind of wants to create this new world order. It’s been a year since his worldwide tour, and we haven’t seen many successes — potential adversaries are taking advantage of our perceieved weaknesses.”

Romney’s focus takes advantage of several developments in Republican Party politics. Despite Obama’s popularity on national security, one of the surest ways to draw standing ovations in conservative crowds is to call the president out for weakness, apology, “abandoning our allies” or “giving civil rights to terrorists” — points Romney made in his speech to CPAC and makes again in “No Apology.” And as Republicans look toward possible presidential candidates for 2012, the current field lacks any contenders with the built-in national security credibility of McCain. Some Republican strategists and conservative activists say that opens the door for any candidate to win over veterans and national security-minded voters by speaking out first and taking a hammer to Barack Obama.

“There are really no divisions between Republicans on national security,” said Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain campaign strategist who now works with Liz Cheney’s Keep America Safe. “There will be events we can’t predict, so you’ll see the candidates take different positions. I think you saw that in 2008. Everybody’s for keeping Gitmo open, so Romney will say ‘double it.’”

During Romney’s 2008 run, tactics like that couldn’t quite win over the GOP’s national security voters. In exit polling of the Florida primary, for example, 44 percent of Republicans called McCain “most ready to be commander-in-chief.” The 27 percent of primary voters who’d served in the military backed McCain by seven points over Romney; those with no service record backed him by only three points.

But no candidate on the 2012 horizon has a record like McCain’s — or any military record to speak of. Among the dozen candidates seen as most likely to jump into the race, politicians whose names have appeared on straw polls or who have been invited to address GOP dinners, none served in the military.

“If you’re gonna run for president you just have to make clear what your foriegn policy stances are,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a Fred Thompson backer in 2008 who eventually switched to Romney. “It may have more to do with views and ability than with whether you were a corporal or private in the military. Perhaps what [Romney] wants to do is check that box on his resume. Everybody has to check that box.”

The way that Romney checks that box in “No Apology” is illustrative, with positions inspired by neoconservative thinkers — Fred Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas P. Barnett – cited throughout the text. America, argues Romney, is one of four competitors with “distinct strategies for twenty-first-century world leadership,” with the others being China, Russia, and “the jihadists.” Romney sees the first two rivals increasing their military power in a way that might cut America out of their spheres of influence. Were China, for example, to “become capable of declawing America’s military in Asia, they will gain freedom of action to do whatever they choose in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.’” The solution to this is more military spending: Romney calls it “inexplicable and inexcusable” that the 2009 stimulus package “devoted almost no funding” to defense. In other sections of the book, as in his speeches, Romney argues that President Obama is creating mounting crises by not dealing aggressively with critics of American power. “The day is coming,” he writes, “when [Venezuelan President] Chavez announces a ‘peaceful’ nuclear program organized and supported by the mullahs in Iran.”

These, said Republican strategists, are arguments that will build up Romney’s commander-in-chief credentials in the possible 2012 field. Possible candidates like Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), they said, hadn’t focused on national security to the same extent. Only supporters of Newt Gingrich suggested that their candidate could get a jump on Romney, pointing out to TWI that the former speaker of the House is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor at the National Defense University and a co-chair of the UN Task Force, and has held other educational or ceremonial defense positions. But no one argued that Romney was staking an early claim on the GOP’s national security vote.

“By articulating it early,” said Anuzis, “by making a strong case early, he establishes his credentials — even if they are theoretical and political.”

At the same time, liberals who look at the foreign policy polling data are skeptical that Republicans have so many openings on President Obama’s national security record.

“There is a large sub-group of the Republican base for whom this is absolutely a winning argument,” said Heather Hurlburt, a Clinton administration veteran who now leads the National Security Network. “There’s a larger swath of moderates/independents — maybe as much as a third of the electorate — for whom national security is a ‘threshold issue.’ They aren’t — consciously — voting on national security issues. But they can’t really take in a candidate’s pitch on jobs, healthcare, values, whatever, if they haven’t first been convinced that the candidate will keep them safe and shares a baseline understanding of the threats we face. The ’06 and ’08 elections — and Obama’s ratings on national security and foreign policy — show that these people can be quite receptive to international approaches that start with diplomacy, engagement, cooperation and persuasion — as long as they believe that strength will be used when necessary.”

Some conservatives agreed, saying that whether a candidate like Romney can ride this message to success in 2012 — not just primary victories, but the White House — depends on what Obama does. David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter who now runs the Frum Forum website, wondered whether Obama was benefiting from a “benefit of the doubt bump.” It would take a while to sort out whether Romney’s play for national security cred was working.

“He’s got a theme and a tone,” said Frum, “but not a message.”

Still from an advertisement by John McCain's re-election campaign (YouTube)

In the wake of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Ma.) upset victory in Massachusetts, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a memo to campaign managers suggesting a few ways to prevent their candidates from becoming the next Martha Coakley.

“Create sufficient pressure for your moderate opponents to be forced to weigh in on the positions of your far right opponents,” argued the memo writers. The memo set up a hypothetical scenario in which a front-running candidate would have to respond to someone who questioned whether President Barack Obama was a natural-born citizen of the United States. The so-called “birther” question, they argued, could trip up Republicans just as well as questions about the gold standard or nullification of federal laws.

[GOP1]Republicans and conservatives rolled their eyes at the scheme. “That has got to be the most brilliant campaign strategy since Michael Dukakis and [former Georgia Senator] Max Cleland raised questions about their own patriotism,” joked conservative columnist James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal.

But it wasn’t Democrats who fired off the first attack ad on the “birther” conspiracy theory. On Feb. 24, Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) re-election campaign released a 78-second video accusing his primary challenger, J.D. Hayworth, of indulging the conspiracy theorists. Footage of wild-eyed “birther” attorneys segued into footage of Hayworth mulling over the “questions” surrounding the birth of the 44th president.

The attack from McCain followed several days of under-the-radar, intra-Republican rumor-mongering about Hayworth’s apparent indulgence of the “birthers.” While they haven’t launched such full-on assaults, some Republican strategist have also nudged reporters to pose the “birther” question to California U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore and Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, as well as Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.), a candidate for governor of Georgia. Even Sarah Palin, who gave a wishy-washy answer to a conservative radio host when asked about Obama’s citizenship, has taken some quiet friendly fire from Republicans bracing for her to hit the 2010 campaign trail. More than 18 months after the conspiracy theory debuted, it continues to dog the GOP — with some prodding by strategists and activists in both parties.

Most Republicans argue that the prominence of “birther” conspiracy theories is the fault of the left, and of liberal think tanks and bloggers like Mark Stark who have captured Republicans on video fumbling the question. Outwardly, they say it’s a distraction that won’t matter.

“The fact that national Democrats are focusing on birthers,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “instead of the national unemployment rate… is absolutely bearing fruit [for the GOP.] Republican candidates are now ahead in the polls in eight Democrat-held Senate seats along with all five contested open seats. It’s clear Democrats have not learned a thing from their losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts.”

Still, the issue succeeded in shaking up the GOP primary in Arizona. The “Identity” video sparked a war of words between Hayworth’s and McCain’s press shops, with the former accusing the latter of desperation. But there’s a reason for the “birther” resurgence: a bill in the Arizona state legislature, co-sponsored by most Republicans, that would demand “documents that prove” that any future presidential candidate “is a natural born citizen.” The existence of that measure lengthened the news cycle for McCain’s attack, with Hayworth saying he’d support a version of that kind of legislation and McCain taking a pass, his spokesman Brian Rogers telling TWI that the senator “generally doesn’t tell the state what to do.” Hayworth’s campaign called that a dodge.

“This law specifically requires documentation for the presidential primary,” said Hayworth’s spokesman Jason Rose in an interview with TWI. “It should apply to anyone seeking any office. When J.D. goes to the polls he has to provide an ID, so why have a different, lesser, standard for this office?”

Despite the local legislative issue, Rose clarified that Hayworth’s position on Obama was that “the questions about the president have been asked and answered.” But the hubbub there could be repeated in five other states where legislation about the eligibility of presidential candidates has been introduced — in every case, by Republicans. Indiana’s Senate bill 82 grapples with the legal standing issue that has vexed “birthers,” granting the right to challenge qualifications to “a registered voter of the jurisdiction conducting the election.”

New Hampshire’s House bill 1245 mandates that “the names of the candidates shall not appear on the ballot unless the secretary of state has received certified copies of the birth certificates of the candidates.” And in South Carolina, freshman state Rep. Tommy Stringer has introduced legislation that would amend the state’s election code to make sure that “a candidate for President or Vice President of the United States may not have his name printed on a ballot in this State unless there is conclusive evidence that he is a natural born citizen of the United States.” In an interview with TWI, Stringer said the Certificate of Live Birth made available by Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 “satisfies” him, unless “someone comes up and proves he was born in Kenya or someplace.” The rationale, he said, was not shaming Obama, but demanding transparency.

“As far general opinion goes, Americans don’t trust the government at either the federal or state level,” Stringer said. “Whatever we do to enforce trust and accountability — something like proving citizenship for office — that’s a minimal thing that could establish some trust.”

Stringer was bearish on the chances of his legislation — he doubted it would pass in 2010, though he plans to introduce it again in 2011. The “birther” movement itself has been just as persistent. At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, two leading “birther” attorneys drew a mixed response from attendees and a negative response from politicians. Phil Berg, the Pennsylvania attorney who filed the first suit against Obama in 2008, handed out advertisements, occasionally finding sympathy. But Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli pulled out of a panel because Gary Kreep, a California attorney who has represented Alan Keyes in a “birther” lawsuit, would be on the podium.

After chatting with Berg, Ken Timmerman, a Newsmax.com reporter and former editor of Reader’s Digest, told TWI that the media’s blackout on the conspiracy theory had affected him, too. He’d had articles about the subject spiked. Conservatives, he said, were worried about tackling it.

“What they do is use the Saul Alinsky response,” said Timmerman, “just to ridicule us. ‘Well, it’s the birthers again, the crackpots.’ I think that’s what a lot of the hesitation is about. They don’t want to allow the left to dismiss a legitimate movement because of something like this.” Timmerman understood the thinking of conservative leaders, and understood why liberals thought it was a target for mockery. He just thought they were both going to proven wrong.

Arizona Democrats, meanwhile, are enjoying the circus.

“John McCain hasn’t been a leading voice in the anti-birther movement,” said Jennifer Johnson, a spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party. “He saw this as a way to draw a distinction and paint J.D. as an extremist, and less of a legitimate candidate.” And McCain, she said, had no reason to worry about offending hard-right primary voters. “He lost them years ago.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) got the ball rolling last week when he leaked to the Journal that he’d met with J.P. Morgan Chase CEO and Chairman (and big Democratic donor) Jamie Dimon about donating to Republicans; Dimon refused to comment. The Times picked up the gauntlet this week, quoting the BB&T CEO Kelly King — a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable:

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support [of financial companies].”

Interestingly, according to campaign finance records, King has donated exclusively to Republican candidates, and BB&T’s PAC has historically weighted its contributions in favor of Republican candidates regardless of the party in control. It sounds like a guy who doesn’t even donate to Democrats is trying to shake them down for concessions on financial market reforms based on their desire for campaign contributions — and reporters are lapping it up.

But is it true that financial companies are switching their campaign contribution allegiance to Republicans in 2010? The first (and only) concrete example offered of a company doing this is Bank of America, according to the Journal.

Through the first nine months of 2009, about 54% of donations from Bank of America Corp.’s political action committee and employees went to Republicans, according to campaign-finance data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That was a switch from the 2008 campaign, when 56% of the company’s donations went to Democrats.

That’s true, but it’s only half of the picture. Bank of America actually operates two PACs: one out of Washington, and one out of Delaware. In 2008, the D.C.-based PAC gave 55 percent of its congressional race donations to Democrats, but 54 percent of its Senate donations to Republicans; the Delaware-based PAC split its donations to candidates down the middle, but gave 58 percent of its PAC-to-PAC expenditures to Republican causes. Overall, the $50,000 extra that the D.C.-based PAC gave to Democratic Congressional candidates was outweighed by the $87,000 extra the Delaware-based PAC gave to Republican causes.

In the 2010 cycle so far, the D.C. PAC has given 53 percent of its Congressional contributions to Republicans and 91 percent of its Senate contributions to Republicans, and the Delaware PAC gave just over two-thirds of its contributions to Republicans PACs. It’s a movement away from Democrats, but the cycle is far from over — in fact, given that it’s still primary season for contributions, it’s barely begun — and the numbers show that the Bank of America was hardly some great supporter of Democrats during the best of times. Like many other companies, what loyalty it showed to Democrats in 2008 was solely loyalty to House Democrats, not to the party overall.

The story holds true for many other major banks: Supposedly staunchly Democratic firm J.P. Morgan has a similar dual-PAC structure, and the majority of its contributions went to Republican candidates in 2008, and weren’t outweighed by the minor advantage held by Democrats in its PAC-to-PAC contributions in 2008 — nor were its second PAC’s small contributions to candidates strongly in favor of Democrats. While its PAC-to-PAC contributions in 2010 are heavily in favor of Republicans so far, its contributions to candidates are running fairly even — and the PACs have allocated less than a quarter of the 2008 cycle contributions despite strong fundraising. Dimon himself has yet to donate to a single Republican candidate in 2010.

Goldman Sachs, everyone’s favorite punching bag, hasn’t donated to a single Republican senator for 2010, and its contributions to Democratic House candidates far outpace those to Republicans. The Times says that UBS’s PAC is donating mostly to Republican candidates because of its strong support for Senate Republicans; but UBS’s donations to Democratic House members are besting those to Republicans, which is the very reason why its 2008 donations favored Democrats in the first place. The embattled AIG is one of the few companies whose donations to Democratic senators outpaced those to Republicans in 2008; that continues in 2010.

In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the PAC donations by finance, insurance and real estate companies have turned in favor of Democrats in 2010 as compared to 2008, spurred by a reversal of fortune for Republicans among commercial banks and insurance companies as well as gains for Democrats among savings and loan companies and security and investment companies. It seems a lot like the real story is that Republicans are trying to claw back a trend away from donating to Republicans in 2010, rather than spurring any movement away from the Democrats. But that would take some number crunching to figure out, rather than relying on whispers from Boehner’s office or statements from Republican bankers.

“I urge the House Judiciary Committee to report this resolution out favorably and to demand that the attorney general answer the questions surrounding this case,” said Wolf. “The career attorneys and Appellate Division within the department sought to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to protecting voting rights by vigorously prosecuting any individual or group that seeks to undermine this right.”

After the jump, read the Resolution and Wolf’s full statement.

Wolf Nbpp Roi

“I rise today to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the attorney general to transmit to the House all information relating to the decision to dismiss an important voter intimidation case, United States v. New Black Panther Party. The case sought to enforce Voting Rights Act statutes against members of the New Black Panther Party that threatened Philadelphia voters — both verbally and physically — last year.

“This case was inexplicably dismissed earlier this year — over the ardent objections of the career attorneys overseeing the case as well as the department’s own appeal office.

“I regret that Congress must resort to oversight resolutions as a means to receive information about the dismissal of this case, but the Congress and the American people have a right to know why this case was not prosecuted.

“As ranking Republican member of the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, I take oversight of the department very seriously.

“I also strongly support voting rights protections. In 1981, I was the only member — Republican or Democrat — of the Virginia delegation in the House to vote for the Voting Rights Act and was harshly criticized by the editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, and when I supported its reauthorization in 2006, I was criticized again by editorial pages.

“Time and again over the last year, the department has stonewalled any effort to learn about the decision to dismiss this case. I have written Attorney General Holder on six occasions asking for an explanation for the dismissal of this case. To date, I have received no response from him.

“I wrote the DOJ inspector general to request a review of this decision. He deferred to the Office of Professional Responsibility – which reports directly to the attorney general. I have written the Office of Professional Responsibility seeking information on its investigation. The Office has refused to share any information.

“In fact, the only response I have received – from a legislative affairs staffer – was woefully incomplete and – in places – inaccurate.

“Two months ago, I met with House Judiciary Chairman Conyers to ask for his assistance in obtaining this information, but he has yet to take any action. This is a shameful failure to provide necessary congressional oversight.

“It is not only Congress that is being stonewalled by the attorney general. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has repeatedly sought this same information, in fulfillment of its statutory responsibility to ensure the enforcement of civil rights law.

“After being similarly rebuffed, the commission filed subpoenas with the department for this information as well as to interview the career attorneys that handled the case.

“However, we understand that the attorney general has instructed his department to ignore these subpoenas. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer is forcing these career attorneys to choose between complying with the law and complying with the attorney general’s obstruction.

“At least one of the attorneys has been compelled to obtain private counsel.

“I urge the House Judiciary Committee to report this resolution out favorably and to demand that the attorney general answer the questions surrounding this case. The career attorneys and Appellate Division within the department sought to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to protecting voting rights by vigorously prosecuting any individual or group that seeks to undermine this right.

“This House must not turn a blind eye to the attorney general’s obstruction. He has an obligation to answer the legitimate questions of the House and the Civil Rights Commission. It is imperative that we protect the right of all Americans to vote — the sacrosanct and inalienable right of any democracy.”

The question of whether McCain did or did not flip-flop on Medicare cuts notwithstanding, McCain’s citation of FactCheck.org — the reputable fact-checking Website operated by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center — is itself a pretty dramatic flip-flop.

In the heat of the campaign last year, I asked McCain if he had any comment on a series of FactCheck.org analyses that found that many of his campaign advertisements contained false or misleading information. McCain responded by chuckling and giving a rather dismissive answer that failed to address the heart of the question.

Me: Senator, FactCheck.org, the nonpartisan fact-checking Website, has cited nine — eight or nine — of your recent ads as containing false or misleading information. I was wondering how you would respond to this, and how do you reconcile it with your pledge to run an honorable campaign?

McCain: [Chuckling] I don’t respond to Websites that I have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m proud of our campaign. We have been fair. We have been balanced, and we have clearly pointed out the differences between myself and Sen. Obama.

So in August of last year, McCain had a low opinion of FactCheck.org when it was criticizing the factual basis of his campaign ads. But today, McCain requested that one of the site’s reports that supported him be entered into the Congressional Record.

And what’s more, if you want to be absolutely technical about it, McCain’s comments on the Senate floor today actually represent a rare (and risky!) double-flip. As I reported last year, even before McCain pleaded ignorance on FactCheck.org’s credibility, his campaign put out a press release using one of the organization’s analyses to defend the Arizona senator from an AFL-CIO attack ad about his support of veterans’ health benefits. That press release mysteriously vanished from the campaign Website sometime after I wrote about it.

It would seem that, just as he did last year during the presidential race, McCain is still trying to have it both ways.