On Monday, a group opposed to federal health care sponsored an email from Rasmussen Reports containing survey results showing that people oppose federal health care. On Tuesday, Rasmussen sent out another of its “Daily Updates” — this one containing neither polling data on federal health care, nor advertisements for the Health Care Compact Alliance.

As the Texas Independent has previously reported, HCCA is a 501(c)4 nonprofit led by Sam Adams Alliance CEO Eric O’Keefe of Chicago and construction mogul Leo Linbeck III of Houston. HCCA is pushing for states to implement interstate “health care compacts” to supplant federal health care — an idea that can be traced back to former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, writing for conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Picking up on Monday’s Texas Independent story, an editor for progressive website Daily Kos writes, “Rasmussen apparently isn’t even trying to appear non-partisan, any more.”

According to the Rasmussen survey, 58 percent of respondents favored repealing federal health care reform, with 36 percent opposing repeal. Those numbers are consistent with results of Rasmussen surveys on the topic since March of 2010, with support for repeal ranging from 50-64 percent, and opposition to repeal ranging from 32-44 percent.

The Daily Kos editor contrasts Rasmussen’s results with those from a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that 39 percent of respondents favor repealing the law and 51 percent either want to keep the law as is or expand it. Another Daily Kos story notes that 53 percent of KFF poll respondents were “confused” about federal health care reform.

In Tuesday’s “Daily Update” from Rasmussen, the polling firm included survey results on low approval of congressional incumbents, negative perceptions of the economy, ebbing concerns about Japanese radiation and a generic congressional ballot. The advertisements on the email are for books by pollster Scott W. Rasmussen and for Pulse Opinion Research, Rasmussen’s venture based in Arlington, Texas.

Daily Kos had contracted Research 2000 to conduct weekly polls for its website, but an outside review published by the site shows highly improbable results. Kos founder Markos Moulitsas plans on suing Research 2000 over the allegations.

With all of Research 2000′s survey’s thrown into doubt, Grassley’s re-election bid looks far more secure. In May, Research 2000 showed an increasingly tight race — a margin of eight points — giving hope to Grassley’s Democratic challenger, attorney Roxanne Conlin.

Democrats had latched onto these poll results, hoping to show the incumbent to be vulnerable before the fall election, but if all of Research 2000′s results are discredited, Grassley’s route to re-election looks much smoother. In Rasmussen’s last look at the race, Grassley led Conlin by 17 points, and no other pollster has shown as close a race as Research 2000. Both the Cook Report and CQ rank Grassley’s seat as likely Republican.

- Only 24 percent of Republicans say that ACORN definitely did not “steal the 2008 election.” Twenty-one percent say the community group did; 55 percent are unsure.

- Thirty-one percent of Republicans say President Obama is “a racist who hates white people.” Thirty-six percent disagree; the rest aren’t sure.

- Twenty-three percent of Republicans want their states to secede from the union. In the South, it’s 33 percent.

- Only eight percent of Republicans say that “openly gay men and women [should] be allowed to teach in public schools.”

In every case, the more anti-Obama, conservative results come from Republicans in the South.

We haven’t seen the full poll results yet, but I’ve been shown an early list of the questions that Research 2000 cycled through. Some of the wording may have been changed since.

QUESTION: Should Barack Obama be impeached?
QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States?
QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama shows too much deference to foreign leaders?
QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
QUESTION: Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
QUESTION: Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama?
QUESTION: Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?
QUESTION: Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions?
QUESTION: Would you support or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English?
QUESTION: Should homosexuals be allowed to serve in the military?
QUESTION: Should homosexuals be allowed to marry?
QUESTION: Should homosexual couples receive any state or federal benefits?
QUESTION: Should homosexuals be allowed to teach in public schools?
QUESTION: Should sex education be taught in public schools?
QUESTION: Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
QUESTION: Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?
QUESTION: Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
QUESTION: Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
QUESTION: Do you consider abortion to be murder?
QUESTION: Do you support the death penalty?
QUESTION: Should women work outside the home?
QUESTION: Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?

[H]is moneybomb on Monday was the first real moneybomb conservative activists have ever pulled off (the Paulites are libertarians). This has definite parallels to OH-02 in 2006, when we raised big money for Paul Hackett. While we narrowly lost that race (like Brown hopefully does), it was a big step ahead for us as a movement, teaching us how to effectively rally around a movement candidate. Well, Brown is the conservative movement’s Hackett.

This is important, even if it truncates some history. Republican congressional candidates Jim Ogonowki (2007) and Jim Tedisco (2009) were adopted by the conservative “rightroots” and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in moneybombs, although they lost their elections. But this race quickly confirmed that the conservative base, for all the talk of civil war between activists and leaders, desperately wants to influence the GOP and bring it some election wins.

Kos also captures some of the liberal anger at Coakley, whose decision to hoard cash during the one-month campaign–a decision that let Brown go on the air, and define himself and the race, before she did–is being blamed for making Democrats burn through money they’ll need in November.

Gibson, who now hosts a radio show for Fox, is back on bookshelves with some serious heavy lifting: “How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History.” How “swiftboating” makes any sense in this context, I don’t know. Suffice to say that the book is pretty terrible.

It begins with a recap of the 2000 Florida recount that’s riddled with errors. An example: “It was Gore who took the case to the Supreme Court.” That’s exactly the opposite of what happened. The Bush campaign appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court, which it did. That’s why the case was titled “Bush v. Gore” and not “Gore v. Bush” — Bush sued first. That’s the level of fact-checking you get in this book. You also get convincing “rebuttals” like this:

Indeed, Bush’s “smartest move” was … wait, what?

Gibson’s on the same slippery soil when he goes after the agents of “swiftboating” by name. In a chapter titled “The Echo Chamber: Dailykos and the Left-Wing Noise Machine,” Gibson fingers dailykos.com as an all-powerful source of lies and conspiracy theories.

That section represents a little bit of mission creep: The real problem with the blog, and with all of the liberal blogosphere, is that it refuses to acknowledge that George W. Bush was right about everything.

It’s an awful but fascinating little train wreck of a book.

Bill Owens (D) – 35 percent
Dede Scozzafava (R) – 30 percent
Doug Hoffman (C) – 23 percent

Owens leads among Democrats, Scozzafava leads more narrowly with Republicans, and Hoffman barely leads with independents. The Republican’s problem: Hoffman is taking 27 percent of the GOP vote and only 8 percent of the Democratic vote. Hoffman — the only candidate who has not had a negative ad run against him — has the lowest negatives and the lowest overall identification numbers.

The poll was completed on Wednesday, which means it included some interviews after Scozzafava’s bizarre police call on a reporter — a stumble that has helped the race go national.

And she’s right. As I reported last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee ended up adopting almost all the Republican changes to the bill that removed or watered down civil liberties protections, while voting against most of the reforms proposed by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), which would have limited the FBI’s powers under the Patriot Act to going after what the law was designed to attack: international terrorism.

The result, as Feingold put it, was that the Senate Judiciary Committee had become the “prosecutor’s committee” — accepting virtually every recommendation from the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors to expand their powers.

Do you approve or disapprove of Senator Max Baucus' actions on health care?

Approve  Disapprove Not sure

All 42        44       14
Dem 34        55       11
Rep 49        38       13
Ind 41        42       17

In case you missed that, the poll found that on the issue of health care, Baucus is more popular among Montana Republicans than Democrats — by a margin of 15 points.

That’s not all.

Do you favor or oppose creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase?

Favor    Oppose    Not sure

All 47        43       10
Dem 78        15        7
Rep 23        66       11
Ind 48        41       11

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, has drawn a clear line in the sand against the public option, but Baucus continues to insist that his committee will produce a bipartisan bill. Which party does it look like Baucus is catering to?

It’s probably also worth pointing out that earlier this month, Gallup found that Montana Democrats have a two-point party identification advantage over Republicans in the historically red state.

And the fate of the public option may very well rest with Baucus.

This post has been updated for clarity.

Also tomorrow, after numerous delays, the Obama administration is expected to produce a much-anticipated 2004 CIA inspector general’s report with more details and criticism of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics.

As I explained in my last post on the Jawad case, the Obama administration is trying to keep holding Jawad — who’s been in U.S. custody without charge for almost seven years — based on those tortured confessions, which even a military judge previously deemed too unreliable to use in his military commission case.

The ACLU will argue tomorrow that the federal judge in Jawad’s habeas corpus case should rule that evidence gathered through torture is still too unreliable — and therefore inadmissible — to be the basis for continuing to keep him in prison indefinitely.

Although the Jawad case appears to be the first in which the Obama is seeking to rely on evidence obtained through torture, it’s just one of many examples of the government’s refusal to acknowledge the legacy of torture under the Bush administration — and its consequences.

There are, of course, the now-notorious photographs of detainee abuse that the Obama administration has kept from being released, despite the orders of a federal court to turn them over. And then there’s the fact, which Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, Daily Kos and John Sifton have been writing about, that there are a whole lot of unsolved murders and mysterious autopsy reports concerning the brutal deaths of detainees in U.S. custody, for which almost no one has been held accountable.

In many cases, these deaths weren’t the result of waterboarding or some other act that Obama administration officials have admitted are torture; they seem to have been the result of ordinary “enhanced” interrogations:  beatings, stress positions, food and sleep deprivation and the like.

According to a report from Human Rights First, about 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody since August 2002, but only 12 deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for U.S. officials.

The ACLU has embarked on an important campaign for accountability for the torture and abuse that U.S. officials have inflicted on detainees. That includes ongoing efforts to unearth more information, to press for prosecutions of those who authorized the abuse, and to compensate the victims, many of whom, like Jawad, still remain in U.S. custody.

Tomorrow’s brief arguing that tortured evidence shouldn’t be the basis for continuing to hold detainees is a small but important step.