“I find it hard to believe,” said Kilburn. “It’s terrible.” He compared the RNC’s plan unfavorably to what he’d done in Ohio, paying individual claims for employees, preventing them or the state from buying into plans that covered abortion.

Still, while Schmidt has taken money from the RNC to finance some tough re-election battles, Kilburn passed on a chance to criticize her. “She’s been a very faithful pro-life vote,” he said. “She’s a principled supporter of the right to life. Hopefully this is just an anomaly that slid through the cracks.”

“This action will give our auto companies some long-overdue clarity, stability and predictability,” Obama said Tuesday in a speech at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

The new rules unify the Environmental Protection Agency’s goals to reduce the emissions from automobiles and the Department of Transportation’s rules on fuel economy. The proposed program will cover model years 2012 through 2016, increasing fleet-wide fuel economy by 5 percent per year. This means by 2016, the fleet-wide average would hit 35.5 miles per gallon, and would need to meet a new limit on emissions per gallon. The new rules will need to go through the traditional approval process before they are finalized, which needs to happen by March 2010. But the administration estimates that they will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons.

More importantly, it will be the Obama administration’s first action toward meeting its stated goals of reducing emissions and complying with the Supreme Court’s directive to the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The real question is whether the administration will follow through with its threat to move onto setting limits for stationary sources of carbon dioxide emissions, like power plants, refineries, and manufacturers. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declined to offer much information about their progress on that front at a press conference on Tuesday.

“EPA will continue to do it’s job, which is to respond to the now 2-plus-year old ruling about the Clean Air Act,” said Jackson. “I think it is fair to say that today’ announcement is path-breaking … It is the beginning of regulation. We should expect the EPA to continue to do its job.”

But she also made it clear that the administration would still prefer not to write the regulations. “I hope that doesn’t come to pass,” she said. “I believe that legislation is the preferable route.”

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On the other hand, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who has not signed onto Posey’s bill, has been caught on camera telling an irate birther, who claims President Obama cannot hold office “by our Constitution”: “I agree with you, but the courts don’t.” Telling a voter that the president of the United States (who, er, carried Ohio in 2008) is not legitimate is far beyond what Boustany did, and the Democratic National Committee is hitting Schmidt on this today.

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Sotomayor voted with Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, dissenting from the majority’s denial of a stay of execution for Jason Getsy, an Ohio man who was hired to kill another man but accidentally killed the target’s mother instead. Justice David Souter, who Sotomayor replaced, often voted with the same liberal wing of the court.

Getsy had argued that he didn’t deserve the death penalty because the person who hired him and others who participated in the shooting had received more lenient sentences. But the majority of the court rejected that argument, and yesterday the 33-year-old man was executed by lethal injection in Lucasville, Ohio.

This is an easy call for GOP supporters across the country.  Rob Portman is smart, experienced, a skilled communicator and an exceptional candidate … Judging by the reaction to the Georgia run-off, most center-right voters want to start working now to return balance to D.C.

Even assuming, as is popular on talk radio, that the re-election of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) was the first nail in the Democrats’ coffins, Georgia is not Ohio. The Ohio GOP has been getting pummeled since 2005. Forget that President-elect Barack Obama improved on Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 numbers to win the state in November: the Republicans lost a total of four House seats in 2006 and 2008 to white populist Democrats. Former Hillary-lander Phil Singer is probably right about the pre-emptive demolition job that Democrats will try to do on a man who worked in Bush’s economic shop.

When I think of George Voinovich, I think of his inane blubbering about the shamnesty debacle. Blubber, blubber.

I think of his crusading for the massive auto bailout.

And I think of his mortifying meltdown in opposition to John Bolton’ UN ambassador nomination in 2005, which prompted embarrassed conservatives to start a “Console George” campaign to send him tissues.

The ironic thing is that Malkin had a lot of fun with liberal Democrats (”nutroots”) who wanted to purge their party of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in 2006 and 2008. But of course, all Lieberman did was side with President George W. Bush against the Democrats’ Iraq policy, then endorse GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, rather than President-elect Barack Obama. Voinovich wanted to give work visas to Mexicans.

Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is the desire to advantage Japanese auto manufacturers who disproportionately do business in their southern states.

I think the first and second points are key — that the GOP is taking a firm stand against the United Auto Workers, a core Democratic constituency, and in turn, against big-time GM states like Michigan and Ohio.

In recent history, Michigan and Ohio have been reliable swing states. But the actions of prominent Republicans may call into question whether they will retain their status as battleground states in future competitive elections.

As President Lyndon Johnson famously and presciently mused about the impact his signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have on his own Democratic Party, “There goes the South for a generation.”

I suspect some forward-thinking Republicans might harbor similar concerns about Michigan and Ohio.

Today’s lawsuits and rulings include:

The Ohio GOP filed a lawsuit it had previously dropped against Jennifer Brunner, the Democratic secretary of state, claiming she hasn’t done enough to ensure that all provisional ballots are counted fairly and in the same manner across the state.

The New York Times caucus blog quotes Ohio State University law professor and election-law expert Edward Foley saying that the lawsuit is essentially a “placeholder” — Republicans can use it to challenge election results in Ohio if they are close.

“They are specifically relying on Bush v. Gore and the 14th Amendment and claiming that Secretary Brunner’s rules in handling provisional and absentee ballots are not uniform throughout the state of Ohio,” Foley told the Times. “This new filing appears to be an effort by the Republicans to have the process for verifying provisional ballots be handled in their own lawsuit rather than another lawsuit filed by a advocacy group for the homeless.”

Other lawsuits include one filed by the McCain campaign Monday asking a federal judge to order Virginia to count overseas military ballots until Nov. 14. Although the judge didn’t grant the request, he ordered  election officials in Virginia to hold on to the ballots and has scheduled a hearing for Nov. 10 to consider whether late military ballots can be counted.

In Indiana, Project Vote filed a lawsuit challenging Marion County’s decision to reject voter registrations that had been submitted on old registration forms. A judge ruled today that those voter registrations would be accepted.

In Pennsylvania, which has already been called for Sen. Barack Obama, a judge denied a request by voter rights groups that sought to force the state to count emergency paper ballots after the polls closed, instead of taking up to 20 days, as it typically does.

Because this campaign season has been so swamped with lawsuits and threats of legal challenges, both parties have sent thousands of lawyers around the country, particularly in swing states, to prepare to either fend off challenges or bring their own.

At Election Protection headquarters in Washington, nonpartisan volunteer lawyers report that by 8:30 EST this evening, they’d received more than 75,000 calls from voters with questions or problems at polling places.

These lawyers are reporting an unusually large number of provisional ballots being used in Ohio. And in Florida, they are reports of optical-scanning machines malfunctioning, requiring the use of alternative paper ballots. Lock boxes are said to be overflowing. Such problems could, of course, lead to more lawsuits.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sent about 800 observers around the country to monitor the vote, particularly in areas that have experienced voting problems in the past.