This article titled “Wisconsin Republicans cut collective bargaining” was written by Ed Pilkington in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 10th March 2011 04.57 UTC

Republicans in Wisconsin’s state senate have pushed through the most severe assault on trade union rights for a generation, taking opponents by surprise and passing a measure in barely 30 minutes that sharply curtails collective bargaining for public sector workers.

The procedural ruse by the Republicans hands victory to the new rightwing governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, in his three-week standoff with the state’s Democratic senators. All 14 Democratic members of the chamber had fled to Illinois where they have been in virtual hiding in order to frustrate the governor’s plans by preventing a vote on the proposed measure.

Under the state senate’s rules, any bill that was budgetary in nature has to have a quorum of at least 20 senators. That meant the 19 Republican senators needed at least one Democrat present to move to a vote.

But in a shock move, the Republicans unhooked the overtly financial clauses from the bill, and pushed the rest through in record time, arguing that because it was no longer related to the budget it required no quorum.

The new bill that cleared the senate provides for a drastic reduction of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, excluding police and fire officers who are exempt. Unions can no longer negotiate over pay rises above the rate of inflation, and they have been forced to accept increased payments to their pension and health schemes equivalent to an 8% pay cut.

The bill went through on an 18-1 vote of only Republican senators amid dramatic scenes in the state capitol. Up to 2,000 protesters who had amassed in the building since the confrontation began three weeks ago chanted: “You are cowards!” and “The whole world is watching!”

Walker celebrated the rupture of the stalemate saying “the action today will help ensure Wisconsin has a business climate that allows the private sector to create 250,000 new jobs”.

But Democrats cried foul, saying that by springing the vote on the senate the Republicans had violated their rights.

The leader of the senate Democrats, Mark Miller, released a statement from exile in Illinois saying: “Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten. Tonight, 18 senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people. We will join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government.”

Wisconsin has become a litmus test of the new more aggressive style of Republican politics that were emboldened by the Tea Party-fuelled victories in the mid-term elections last November. Walker took up his post in January and quickly became the most extreme of a new class of Republican governor that has targeted the public sector unions.

Similar battles are sweeping through the US, from Indiana, where senate Democrats are also holed out in Illinois to avoid a quorum, to Idaho, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee.

The Wisconsin bill has to pass through the state’s second chamber, the assembly, but that is considered a foregone conclusion.

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This article titled “Republicans repeal healthcare reforms in symbolic vote” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Thursday 20th January 2011 01.02 UTC

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to repeal the health reform law it passed last year in a largely symbolic but politically loaded repudiation of Barack Obama’s flagship policy.

The legislation, entitled the “Repealing the job-killing healthcare law act”, passed with a clear majority of 245 to 189 as the vote went almost entirely along party lines, in contrast to the healthcare legislation last year which passed with a wafer thin majority as many conservative Democrats rejected it.

But it is unlikely to go much further because the leaders of the Senate, which is still under Democratic party control, have said they will not take up the repeal legislation. Even if they did, the Republicans are unlikely to find the support they need in the Senate to overturn reforms that extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and prevent insurance companies from cutting off treatment, among other measures.

However, Republicans in the house intend to keep the battle over healthcare alive by finding ways to throw obstacles in the way of implementation, such as using spending bills to deny funding for the reforms. The Republican leadership has been accused of making a priority of an ideologically driven and largely futile attempt to repeal the healthcare law when the economy is a more urgent matter – the same accusation levelled against Obama by his opponents.

But Republicans say that overturning healthcare legislation is intended to remove a financial burden on business and to cut the budget deficit. The new speaker of the house, John Boehner, said that the healthcare law will “increase spending, increase taxes and destroy jobs in America”.

A study by the congressional budget office differs. It says that scrapping the healthcare reforms will cost 0bn over the next decade.

The Republicans also pushed the repeal because dozens of new members of Congress made overturning healthcare legislation a leading commitment of their campaigns.

“Our vote to repeal is not merely symbolic,” said one new Republican member, Nan Hayworth, an ophthalmologist. “It respects the will of the American people and it paves the way to reform our healthcare.”

Some Republicans argued in this week’s debate in the House that the law is unconstitutional because the federal government is overstepping its powers in requiring Americans to buy health insurance.

Democrats argue that the legislation helps millions of Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions or caps on health care coverage who were effectively left without treatment and some of whom died.

One Democrat member, Steve Cohen, likened Republican accusations that the reforms are socialist to the fictions of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels.

“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” he said. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it.”

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This article titled “Christine O’Donnell’s use of campaign funds ‘under investigation by the FBI’” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 29th December 2010 20.11 UTC

Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party star with a chequered past and uncertain future, is said to be under federal investigation for misusing donations made by supporters during her failed election campaigns.

The Associated Press reported that a criminal probe has been opened to examine whether O’Donnell broke the law by using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses during the Delaware Republican’s attempts to win a seat in the US Senate.

But O’Donnell responded by saying the news was evidence of “thug tactics”, lashing out in a statement that claimed a sinister plot against her by both the Republican and Democratic parties and suggested that Vice President Joe Biden, a former Delaware senator, was involved in manipulating the FBI.

O’Donnell’s case has been assigned to two federal prosecutors and two FBI agents in Delaware but has not been brought before a grand jury, according to AP reporters Ben Nuckols and Mattew Barakat, quoting a “person with knowledge of a federal campaign-finance investigation,” who they said could not be named in order to protect the identity of a client.

Delaware’s News Journal also reported that O’Donnell was “the subject of a federal criminal probe to determine if she illegally used campaign money to pay personal expenses,” quoting “a federal source in a position to know”.

In her statement on Wednesday evening, O’Donnell said: “We’ve been warned by multiple high-ranking Democrat insiders that the Delaware Democrat and Republican political establishment is jointly planning to pull out all the stops to ensure I would never again upset the apple cart.

“Specifically they told me the plan was to crush me with investigations, lawsuits and false accusations so that my political reputation would become so toxic no one would ever get behind me. I was warned by numerous sources that the political establishment is going to use every resource available to them.

“So given that the king of the Delaware political establishment just so happens to be the Vice President of the most liberal presidential administration in US history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table.”

Accusations of financial irregularities have dogged O’Donnell for months, even before O’Donnell shot to fame in September after her surprise victory in the Delaware Republican primary – thanks to a surge of support from the Tea Party movement and backing from the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.

On the eve of the Republican primary, O’Donnell’s former campaign manager accused her of being a “complete fraud,” who lived on campaign donations “while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt.”

Shortly afterwards, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming that O’Donnell had used more than ,000 in campaign funds for personal use. O’Donnell denied the charges, saying: “I personally have not misused campaign funds.”

After the news broke, Crew’s executive director Melanie Sloan told the Washington Post that she welcomed the inquiry.

“It’s quite clear that O’Donnell was misappropriating money for personal expenses,” Sloan said. “My understanding is that she treated the whole thing like her piggy bank.”

After winning the nomination O’Donnell received .3m in donations for her election campaign, which ended in heavy defeat despite her lavish spending. O’Donnell’s controversial past, limited CV and erratic campaigning style saw her crushed at the polls by the unfancied Democrat Chris Coons.

In a lengthy post-election investigation into the O’Donnell campaign’s spending, the News Journal reported earlier this month that her campaign had retained more than 0,000 of the .3m total. It also highlighted statements to the Federal Election Commission that O’Donnell’s operation paid her sister ,000 and her mother ,500 for work during the campaign.

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This article titled “Barack Obama gives way to Republicans over Bush tax cuts” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Tuesday 7th December 2010 01.46 UTC

Barack Obama is bowing to Republican demands to extend a deep tax cut for wealthier Americans, to the fury of some of the president’s allies who say he has succumbed to “blackmail”.

In a bruising political battle that appears to set the tone for Obama’s dealings with the Republicans in Congress following their victories in last month’s midterm elections, the president had sought to extend a tax cut for middle-class Americans introduced by the Bush administration seven years ago which expires at the end of this month. But he wanted to see a return to pre-cut rates for households with an income above 0,000 a year, on the grounds that wealthier Americans could afford to pay more. The move would generate trillions of dollars for the financially-strapped treasury over the next decade.

The Democratic leadership believed that provided the middle class was looked after, the Republicans would find it difficult to justify tax cuts for the wealthy. The House of Representatives, still controlled by Democrats until the new Congress is sworn in next month, passed Obama’s plan by a clear majority last week. But Republicans blocked the legislation in the Senate at the weekend and said they would rather see everyone’s taxes rise than agree to scrapping the cuts for the wealthy.

Some Democrats called on Obama to stand firm and let the Republicans carry the blame for the inevitable middle-class backlash. But leading Democrats say the president is backing down and has agreed to extend tax cuts for everyone. In return, the White House appears to have extracted an agreement to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Today Obama said that his priority is to “prevent the middle-class tax increase” that would have come about if there was no agreement. “There’s some serious debates that are still taking place. Republicans want to make permanent the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

“I have argued that we can’t afford it right now. But what I’ve also said, we have to find consensus here because a middle-class tax hike would be very tough not only on working families, it would also be a drag on our economy at this moment,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re coming up with a solution, even if it’s not 100% of what I want or what the Republicans want.”

Leading Democrats did not hide their frustration at the president’s backtracking. Senator John Kerry, the former presidential candidate, accused Republicans of holding the country hostage.

“They’ve said, ‘No, we are willing to hold that hostage so that we can give the wealthiest people in the country a bonus tax cut’,” he said.

The outgoing House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is reported to have expressed deep unhappiness at the deal, saying the White House gave in too easily to Republican pressure. Richard Durbin, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, said the agreement to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy was “against my judgment”.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel economics prize winner, called on Obama to stand firm against the Republicans’ “tax-cut blackmail” which will cost the US treasury trillion in revenue over the next decade and prompt a “major fiscal crisis”.

“If Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they’ll just face more demands in the future. As long as Republicans believe that Mr Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?” Krugman wrote in the New York Times.

But Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said that Obama had little choice but to make a deal.

“The Democrats generally haven’t adjusted to the fact that they lost the election badly. That’s fundamental and they haven’t accepted it. Republicans designated maintaining tax cuts as their top priority,” he said.

“The Republicans have pulled it off at the right moment. It’s immediately after the election with two years to go before the next election. So the Republicans are getting to please their constituency which believes in that from top to bottom – not just the rich but their middle-class members – without suffering any real electoral consequences. That’s why Obama caved. In the end, everybody’s taxes would have gone up. Republicans would have held to this and blamed Obama.”

Sabato said that the confrontation over taxes sets the tone for Obama’s dealings with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and an increasingly belligerent Republican leadership in the Senate next year.

“This is going to be a very inflexible Republican congress,” he said.

In a statement from the White House last night, Obama sought to explain to the American people how he had come to agree to what many in his own party decried as a humiliating climbdown. He said that he had with regrets accepted compromise in order to spare millions of struggling Americans further pain in the form of rising taxes.

Obama made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the Republican position. He said he “completely disagreed” with their insistence that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two per cent of Americans were made permanent.

“Economists from all across the political spectrum believe giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires does very little to grow our economy.”

But he said that he felt he had no option but to swallow that element in order to loosen the Republican stranglehold which would have seen two million Americans lose their unemployment benefits by the end of this month and millions more face rising taxes.

“What is abundantly clear to everybody in this town is that the Republicans will block a permanent tax cut for the middle class unless they also get a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.”

He conceded that the compromise would be unpopular equally among his supporters and opponents. But he said “I’m not willing to let working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare here in Washington.” “I think this is a symptom of the weakness that was produced November 2 which in turn was a symptom of the weakness produced by a bad economy and Obama’s decisions.”

Bush tax cuts

George Bush passed two major tax cuts that were portrayed by critics as gifting large amounts of money to the wealthiest Americans. The second round of cuts, in 2003, reduced taxes across the board from individual income tax to capital gains and estate tax. The move was controversial and the legislation only passed the Senate after Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, cast a deciding vote.

The tax cuts expire at the end of this year. Republicans campaigned in last month’s midterm elections to maintain the cuts for all tax payers. Barack Obama said he would keep the benefit for middle-lass households with a total income below 0,000 a year but that the better off should pay higher taxes at a time when the US is sinking deeper in to debt.

By some estimates, maintaining the reduced rate for households on more than 0,000 a year will cost the US government about tn in income over the next decade. But earlier this year Deutsche bank concluded that letting the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthier Americans expire would significantly slow economic growth.

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This article titled “Sarah Palin poised to run for president in 2012 – but will consult family first” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 17th November 2010 23.52 UTC

Sarah Palin has given her clearest sign yet that she intends to run for president in two years’ time by saying that she is consulting her family about the decision.

But the former Alaska governor’s strategy to build a national following received a setback when the near completion of the count in the Senate race in her home state pointed to a victory for the write-in candidate, Lisa Murkowski. Voters could only choose her by writing her name on voting papers. She beat the Tea Party contender, Joe Miller, who was strongly supported by Palin.

Palin, who was John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate in 2008, told the New York Times she was in discussions with her family and colleagues on a bid for the Republican nomination. “I’m engaged in the internal deliberations candidly, and having that discussion with my family, because my family is the most important consideration here,” she said.

The New York Times said that Palin went on to say that “her decision would involve evaluating whether she could bring unique qualities to the table”.

But her final decision on whether to run for president could still be months away, and may ultimately be influenced by growing evidence that while many on the right of the Republican party like Palin, they consider her unelectable.

Palin recognised that she has some influential critics within her party who have questioned both her limited political experience and seriousness.

Karl Rove, President George Bush’s chief political strategist, has said that Palin lacks gravitas for appearing on her own television reality show.

“I know that a hurdle I would have to cross, that some other potential candidates wouldn’t have to cross right out of the chute, is proving my record,” Palin said. “That’s the most frustrating thing for me‚ the warped and perverted description of my record and what I’ve accomplished over the last two decades.

“It’s been much more perplexing to me than where the ‘lamestream’ media has wanted to go about my personal life. And other candidates haven’t faced these criticisms the way I have,” she said.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said Palin’s chances of winning her party’s nomination will have been damaged by the Republicans’ failure to win more seats in this month’s Senate elections because of extremist candidates, such as Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. That will have been compounded by Murkowski becoming the first Senate candidate in more than 50 years to win a write-in campaign, reflecting the strength of feeling among Alaskans toward Miller and delivering a rebuke to Palin. Sabato said that will make mainstream Republicans and Tea Party activists alike more wary of Palin.

“Activists are not really stupid people. Only rarely do they make a bone-headed mistake like they did in Delaware with Christine O’Donnell. Usually they don’t nominate people who can’t win,” Sabato said.

“It’s not just the leadership that recognises she’ll have a hard time winning. It’s also a good bit of the rank and file. They get it. They’re paying attention. They’re not critical of her. They really like her. It’s just that they don’t think she can win and they really want to beat Obama. That’s the key.”

Sabato’s view is backed by a survey of Tea Party leaders and activists in the Daily Caller which found that while “almost all in the movement love her and support her, many of them simultaneously have serious reservations about whether they want her to run for president”. Some said she had “too many negatives” against her and is too divisive.

A recent poll found that fewer than one in five Republicans think she should be their party’s presidential candidate. Palin’s confirmation that she is discussing her political future with her family may lay to rest speculation that she was merely flirting with the idea to keep her name in the spotlight and promote other interests such as her Fox News show and her reality television programme on Alaska.

Palin told the New York Times that her experience as McCain’s running mate was for the most part “amazing, wonderful, do it again in a heartbeat”.

But she added: “What Todd and I learned was that the view inside the bus was much better than underneath it, and we knew we got thrown under it by certain aides who weren’t principled‚” and that “the experience taught us, yes, to be on guard and be very discerning about who we can and can’t trust in the political arena.”

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This article titled “Sarah Palin the pack leader as ‘mama grizzlies’ roam US political landscape” was written by Ed Pilkington, for The Guardian on Friday 8th October 2010 16.08 UTC

It’s cubbing season in the United States and all over the country mother grizzly bears are on the attack, tearing their foes limb from limb and gorging on the carcasses. It’s a bloody business, American politics.

The concept of the “mama grizzlies” was first introduced into the political debate in 2008 by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as one of her homely campaign trail mantras – alongside “hockey moms” and “First Dude”.

Since May this year she has been using it nonstop. She seems almost ready to launch the Mama Grizzly party.

“Here in Alaska I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody’s coming to attack their cubs,” she said at one conservative rally.

“You thought pitbulls were tough, well you don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies.”

When she first started projecting the metaphor, critics within both the Democratic and Republican parties ridiculed it as just another marketing gimmick to disguise Palin’s lack of policy substance.

But the curious thing is, the more she deploys the expression the more it appears to be coming true.

Across the US a growing number of female politicians have indeed broken through the glass ceiling of local obscurity to become nationally recognised figures.

Many are on the right or members of the Tea Party eruption to which Palin has attached herself.

In part the phenomenon can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Palin used her star power to back mama grizzlies, helping them to come into existence.

Nikki Haley, the Republican nomination for governor in South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, the anti-abortion former Hewlett-Packard boss standing for the Senate in California; Sharron Angle taking on Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, in Nevada; and the volatile Christine O’Donnell in Delaware all bear the Palin mama grizzly stamp.

Having coined the expression, Palin helped make it real. But that only goes so far as an explanation. For Palin not only helped make the trend happen, she has also ridden on the back of it.

Recent polls suggest that more than half the followers of the Tea Parties are female.

Several of the most important Tea Party leaders, who have risen from nowhere to become significant names on the national stage, are women.

These include Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots and Amy Kremer who is chairman – her title – of the Tea Party Express.

Palin cleverly spotted that times were changing. Conservative American women are no longer satisfied with organising cake sales and potlucks.

They are starting to feel their own power, and they are in for the kill.

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This article titled “US midterm elections live blog – Tuesday 5 October” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 5th October 2010 12.58 UTC

Good morning. If you thought American politics was non-stop in 2008: welcome to the 2010 midterm elections, where more money being spent on an election cycle than any previous time in human history.

From now until 3 November, we’ll be live-blogging our way through the thickets of attack ads and polling data every weekday, in an attempt to keep up with the political activity through the US, with 37 Senate races, 39 gubernatorial elections – including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – a strew of state legislatures and every seat in the US House of Representatives all up for election.

One thing that seems pretty plain, even a month out, is that the Democrats are in for an old fashioned hiding. After just two years of Democratic rule, the miserable state of the US economy has disheartened their supporters and fired up Republicans. As things stand, the Republicans will almost certainly gain a clear majority in the House of Representatives, and even win a majority in the US Senate – the latter being unthinkable just a few months ago.

But there is one iron rule that drives US midterm election results: turnout. Republicans and Republican-supporting independents will go out and vote. Democrats will stay home. And that will make all the difference.

The worst news for the Democrats came yesterday, with a sophisticated poll by Gallup. It attempted to gauge the level of chances of different groups bothering to go and vote . And it found that the fewer people that voted, the better the Republicans would do. In its worst case scenario, Gallup found that with the lowest turnout the Republicans would win a 56% share of the vote nationally, and the Democrats would win just 38%.

To avoid a crushing defeat, Democrats have to convince their supporters to go and vote – it’s as simple as that. And that’s one of the things we’ll be watching for in the next four weeks.

In the meantime here’s the political ad that Tea Party darling and Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell broadcast to the people of Delaware last night for the first time, in an attempt to remake her image.

It begins with O’Donnell saying “I’m not a witch,” which is possibly the first time that’s happened in modern election history, at least since the Salem witch trials.

But does it work, especially the “I’m you” refrain? Let us know by leaving a comment below. Personally, I don’t think it does: if she’s not a witch why is she dressed in black and standing before a spooky dark background while haunted house-style music plays in the background?

9am ET:

It was a busy night last night with a batch of candidates debates, most notably in Connecticut – a super-crucial Senate race – where two flawed candidates went at each other hammer and tongs. The NYT reports:

Richard Blumenthal and Linda E McMahon questioned each other’s truthfulness and qualifications to serve in the United States Senate Monday in a televised debate marked by tart exchanges and obvious iciness between them.

McMahon, the Republican, used to run World Wrestling Entertainment, a “sport” with a number of ethical issues, while Blumenthal has, over the years, exaggerated his military service. McMahon is hugely wealthy and is plastering the tiny state with ads such as this:

“If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?” Dangerous stuff and as nasty as it gets.

9.10am ET:

By the way, the timestamps on this live blog are in Eastern Summer Time, which is five hours behind British Summer Time (and I use the word “summer” in a purely technical sense).

9.20am ET:

How bad is the outlook for the Democrats in the House of Representatives? This bad: according to the latest seat by seat ratings from the Rothenberg Political Report, the Republicans have 86 seats that they can potentially win off the Democrats. The Democrats have … just eight.

9.30am ET:

Following Christine O’Donnell’s unusual “I’m you” TV ad last night – and how many people around Delaware are thinking “You ain’t me, lady” – the campaign of her Democratic rival Chris Coons is quickly up with a response website, christineisnotme.com, with the riposte:

In her new television ad, Christine O’Donnell says she is you. But unless you think the retirement age for Social Security should be raised, want to further de-regulate Wall Street, are against a woman’s right to choose, think public schools should teach Creationism, and think homosexuality is an “identity disorder,” she is not you.

That makes the point pretty clearly.

9.45am ET:

Speaking of Christine O’Donnell, the fabulous Michael Kinsley has his first column in his new role as an op-ed columnist for Politico. It’s on the subject of intellectual honesty. Pausing briefly to school some young bloggers, Kinsley then smacks Mitt Romney around the head with a truth-fish:

If he thought there was some political advantage in asserting that two plus two is five, Romney would be out there within minutes with a speech about how business had taught him a thing or two that these government bureaucrats will never understand and promising that in his administration two plus two will equal six.

You can read the whole thing here. Kinsley is a crown jewel of US journalism.

10am ET:

The obvious subtext running through this election season is the 2012 presidential elections. Isn’t that two years away, you say? Well, not quite. The first contest will be in January/February 2012, a mere 14 months after the midterms are over, and as we saw in 2008, there’s no time to lose.

It’s useful to assume that the 2012 Republican presidential primary kicks off on 3 November, the day after the midterms end. Oh joy.

Mitt Romney will appear in all the lists of runners and riders, and he certainly wants to run. He hasn’t got a hope in the current climate. For example: Romney recently endorsed the Alabama Republican governor candidate Robert Bentley. Or he tried to, until Bentley turned him down:

A spokeswoman for Bentley, Rebekah Mason, said Friday that Bentley wanted to concentrate on the race for governor and did not want to give the impression that he was endorsing anyone in the 2012 presidential race.

When candidates don’t even want your endorsement in a general election, then you are really in trouble. Save your money, Mitt, and stay home next year.

• Update: Reader ScotJones, in comments below, has an idea why Bentley passed on Romney’s backing – he’s a Mike Huckabee supporter:

Bentley is already bought and paid for by Huckabee … Huckabee endorsed him and provided financial assistance.

10.15am ET:

The most fascinating story of the day brings together race, politics and the economy in a eye-opening way.

Two academics have run the numbers and found that predatory mortgage lending and then mortgage foreclosures followed predominantly African American, racially segregated neighbourhoods. The authors write:

By concentrating foreclosures in metropolitan areas with large racial differentials in subprime lending, segregation structured the causes of the crisis, as well as the geographic and social distribution of its costs, on the basis of race. Segregation therefore racialized and intensified the consequences of the American housing bubble.

You can get the article here but this looks like being a powerful piece of research, and the first one to put hard numbers on an effect that many people suspected was the case.

10.30am ET:

The Washington Post has a long (and frankly, tedious) profile-cum-notebook dump on Hawaii’s ancient and long-serving Senator Daniel Inouye. It makes Hawaiian politics sound insular, which is hardly surprising. Somehow the Post’s editors managed not to cut out this amusing detail on page 23:

Inouye keeps no computer, a promise he made to himself after helping pass the telecommunications act in 1996, because he considers them too addictive. “I only have a cellphone,” he said, happily taking a blank-screened phone out of his pocket. “And this cellphone is not on. No one can call me, and I have no idea what the number is.”

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cellphone, really. But then Inouye is 86 years old and it’s his cellphone.

10.52am ET:

One of the key Senate battlegrounds is going to be Wisconsin, where Democratic heavyweight Russ Feingold is under pressure according to recent polls. Feingold’s got a new TV ad up that’s clever and punchy, without being defensive:

Hat-tip to Mike Memoli – @mikememoli – one of the Guardian’s Top 50 Twitter accounts to follow for US politics and election coverage.

11.20am ET:

The Washington Post has a poll out today that has a glimmer of good news for Democrats, who are slightly up on their miserable summer polling. But it’s still bad news overall:

Among likely voters, Republicans hold a six-point edge, 49% to 43%, on the congressional ballot. At this time four years ago, Democrats led by 12 points. Then, Democrats also held a 19-point advantage when voters were asked which party they trusted to deal with the country’s main problems. Today, the public is almost evenly divided on that question, nearly matching public sentiment in October 1994, the last time Republicans won both the House and the Senate.

Since turnout is crucial in a midterm election, lacking the bait of a presidential elecvtion year, it’s the “likely voter” numbers that are important. Many more Republicans say they are folloiwing election news closely, which is generally a good indicator of voting intentions.

11.36am ET:

In her Gothic masterpiece of TV advertising, Christine O’Donnell tells us that if elected, she’d “do what you would do”. Now what exactly does that mean? Gabe at the hilarious Videogum site suggests:

To be fair, if Christine O’Donnell were elected to the Senate she probably WOULD do what I would do if I was elected to the Senate: walk around in perma-flop sweat, looking really confused and feeling out of one’s depth while struggling to grasp even a child’s understanding of parliamentary procedure and proving almost comically incapable of the day-to-day business of crafting legislation. PERFECT!

In conclusion, says Gabe: “Seriously, though, shut up, Christine O’Donnell.”

My colleague Ed Pilkington has a slightly more generous interpretation of O’Donnell’s performance art:

It has the feel of one of those washing-up liquid ads from the 1970s.

Our American readers might like to know that “washing-up liquid” is British for dishwashing detergent, which is what people used to use to clean plates and so on before the invention of massive dishwashing machines that do that for you.

11.50am ET:

It must be “nasty ad month” here in America: here’s the Tea Party Express having a low-blow at Lisa Murkowski, who was defeated by Tea Party superhunk Joe Miller in the Republican primary but is now running as a “write-in” candidate for Alaska’s senate seat:

Murkowski is trying to get the ad taken off TV … but I don’t fancy her chances.

12 noon ET:

I was about to do a lunchtime round-up when this new poll for the West Virginia senate seat landed – and it’s more bad news for the Democrats:

Deep resistance to Obama’s agenda has put a West Virginia Senate seat once thought to be safe territory for Democrats in serious jeopardy.

The poll gives Republican businessman John Raese a five percentage point lead over the state’s Democratic governor Joe Manchin among likely voters, by 48% to 43%. Strangely, most voters like Manchin – they just don’t want to vote for him for the US Senate.

A loss in West Virginia would be a huge boost to Republicans attempts to win a majority in the Senate and this will be one of the most closely watched races out there this year. Nevada, another key senate seat, is also looking good for the Republicans, by 49% to 46%.

12.22pm ET:

My colleague Ed Pilkington’s earlier piece about Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” ad draws this historically accurate response in the comments from reader ternunstoned:

She has to offer more proof that she isn’t a witch. What about a televised dunking? Hosted by someone dressed as Matthew Hopkins.

Hmm, good point. So if she sinks, she isn’t a witch, right?

12.46pm ET:

Spurred by a reader’s comments below that we have shamefully overlooked the Rhode Island gubernatorial race, here’s the latest news from the Ocean State, where Democratic candidate Frank Caprio is locked in a close battle with independent candidate (albeit a former Republican senator) Lincoln Chafee.

The latest poll shows Caprio with 29% while 23% support Chafee. The Republican loser-candidate John Robitaille has just 14%.

1pm ET:

Ha. Remember that Russ Fiengold ad earlier in the blog with the dancing in the end zone and the football and what not? Well … one of the clips – tastefully described as “Randy Moss … pretends to ‘moon’ the crowd” – belongs to the NFL. The NFL told the Weekly Standard it did not give Feingold’s campaign permission: “We did not license the footage and have contacted the Senator’s campaign about removing it.”

And quite right too, because what would happen to western civilization if anyone could just use any few micro-seconds of footage? Anarchy, that’s what. Thank you NFL.

1.24pm ET:

Apologies. The lunchtime round-up has been delayed due to breaking news and a lack of lunch. Also some nasty HTML tags.

1.55pm: Of course we’d all love to see Rachel Maddow interview Christine O’Donnell. Not gonna happen, based on this tweet from St Rachel:

Ejected from O’Donnell HQ. Staffer insulted producers Bill & Laura then angry man came outside and told us to leave and not come back.

So much anger.

2.22pm ET:

Oh dear, more really bad news for the Democrats: Latino voters aren’t planning to turn out in the midterms, according to the NYT:

A poll released Tuesday found that though Latinos strongly back Democrats over Republicans, 65% to 22%, in the Congressional elections just four weeks away, only 51% of Latino registered voters say they will absolutely go to the polls, compared to 70% of all registered voters.

Hey, that’s only bad news in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and a few other states. On the other hand, Meg Whitman is doing her best to motivate Latino voters to go to the polls in California.

The poll is from the Pew Hispanic Centre, and there is some good news, in that Hispanic voters remain committed to the Democratic party even if they won’t get to the polling booth:

Two-thirds (65%) of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, while just 22% support the Republican candidate, according to a nationwide survey of Latinos. If this pro-Democratic margin holds up on Election Day next month, it would be about as wide as in 2008, when Latinos supported Barack Obama for president over John McCain by 67% to 31%

.

2.41pm ET:

Over at the Atlantic, James Fallows weighs in on another one of the Christine O’Donnell stories that, frankly, we haven’t bothered to cover because there are so many. In this one, O’Donnell said in a previous Republican primary that China had a “carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America” and accused one opponent (who happened to be ethnically Asian) of appeasement. She then said:

“There’s much I want to say. I wish I wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to.”

Ah yes, the “classified information”. I think we can guess exactly how much “classified information” that she was privy to: a number between zero and nil. Fallows observes:

It’s not the concern about takeover that’s so far-fetched. Who knows how the world will look in 50 years. It is the “privy to classified information” riff that, to anyone who knows anything about the world of politics, instantly signals, “I am completely insane.”

3pm ET:

If there’s a ray of hope anywhere for the Democrats it’s in the gubernatorial races, where the “kick out the Washington bums” rhetoric of the Tea Party doesn’t work. Take Colorado, for example: the Tea Party put up an awful Republican candidate, Dan Maes, against John Hickenlooper. There’s an independent candidate, Republican retread Tom Tancredo, running on an anti-immigrant platform, but he’s only prospering because Maes is so poor.

Anyhow, the latest fundraising states – via the excellent Felicia Sonmez, @fixfelicia, one of the Guardian’s Top 50 Twitter feeds to follow for US politics – finds that Maes is drying up, cash-wise:

CO GOV nominee Dan Maes (R) raised only K from Sep 16-29, compared with 1K for Hickenlooper (D) and 9K for Tancredo

Taxi for Mr Maes, as they say in Britain.

3.23pm ET:

Nikki Haley, the Republican candidate for governor in South Carolina, has had a pretty stiff lead in the polls, and it may take more than this, from the Post and Courier in Charleston, to bring her down:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley called a commissioner at the state’s workforce agency while she was a sitting lawmaker to ask that an audit of her family’s business be suspended.

“Yet another example of why South Carolina cannot trust Nikki Haley,” says her opponent Vincent Sheheen. A response is promised soon.

3.55pm ET:

Some more not very good news from California, a state that Democrats really need to hang on to if they wish to retain control of the Senate. A smallish Reuters/Ipsos poll has Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer with a lead of 49% over Republican challenger Carly Fiorina on 45%. Really, for an incumbent senator, a failure to get above the 50% mark and hold only a margin-of-error lead is poor, even with a month to go.

4.09pm ET:

However, there is a very interesting detail tucked at the end of the Reuters California poll released just now:

Most voters oppose a ballot proposal on November 2 to legalize marijuana.

There’s another state revenue-raising plan foiled.

4.32pm ET:

The problem with the Democrats is they are too nice and … er, scratch that. This being “Nasty Video Week,” Democrat John Lynch – running for governor of New Hampshire – has some warm words for his opponent, John Stephen in this ad.

Note the classy use of the burning building in the segment about Stephen supposedly lobbying to pardon a contributor convicted of arson. Nice.

Based on this piece in the Nashua Telegraph, Stephen’s action doesn’t sound that bad and certainly not as sinister as this ad would suggest.

4.50pm ET:

Just how extreme is Joe Miller, the Republican candidate for senator in Alaska? Quite a bit. Here’s a town hall meeting he gave in Fairbanks, from the wonderfully-named Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

He called the idea of a living, changing Constitution “bullcrap,” and said he would support an amendment for term limits as well as an amendment repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of senators by the public rather than by state legislatures.

Repealing the 17th amendment is a bit of a touchstone of the wackiest of the Tea Party people. The thought is that direct election by public vote makes politicians too independent, whereas if they were appointed by a cabal of state politicians they could be yanked back at a moment’s notice. So if the locals didn’t like how Senator X was going to vote on a bill, he could be replaced by Senator Y or Z without fussing about with elections or primaries, but via a bill in the state legislator.

Also note how Miller contradicts himself in the same sentence here: changing the constitution is “bullcrap” unless it’s for imposing term limits. Hmm.

Later, talking about the threat from a nuclear Iran, Miller warns:

“One bomb in one city could end our Constitutional republic,” he said.

Eh? This is crazy talk. My guess is he’s stoking paranoia about the aftermath of a national emergency and, you know, the Fema concentration camps that Glenn Beck has banged on about.

5.23pm ET:

More on Alaska’s Joe Miller and a spat that has developed between Miller and the Palins, who had supported Miller in his primary victory over Lisa Murkowski, uncovered by the Mudflats blog.

Last month Miller appeared on Fox News and was asked if Palin was qualified to be president. His less than enthusiastic answer seems to have angered Todd Palin, leading to an email exchange:

Miller’s non-committal response that there were “a number of great candidates out there” for the job fell far short of a Palin endorsement, and seems to have roused the ire of Todd Palin who launched an angry email blasting Miller on behalf of his wife. Palin sent the email on the morning of the [Fox News] interview to Tim Crawford, Joe Miller and the Palins’ personal attorney, Thomas Van Flein (who also serves as Miller’s attorney.) In the email, Todd Palin instructs SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford to “Hold off on any letter for Joe. Sarah put her ass on the line for Joe and yet he can’t answer a simple question “is Sarah Palin Qualified to be President”. I DON’T KNOW IF SHE IS.”

Read the full story here – which suggests that the Palin reaction is a strong hint that Palin is gearing up for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 – with the most amusing part being Todd Palin’s complaint: “Sarah spent all morning working on a Face book [sic] post for Joe, she won’t use it, not now.”

5.45pm ET:

Events have conspired against me posting this earlier but here’s an excellent bit of field work by the Think Progress blog – part of the Centre for American Progress’s action fund.

According to Think Progress, it’s possible that the US Chamber of Commerce, a fearsome and well-funded lobbying machine, is soaking up contributions from foreign companies while at the same time funding political campaigns this year to the tune of m:

A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. According to legal experts consulted by ThinkProgress, the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections.

The Chamber made a response via Politico:

The Chamber is proud to have global companies among our membership. We’re careful to ensure that we comply with all applicable laws. No foreign money is used to fund political activities.

6pm ET:

Time to wrap things up for today. Only 27 more days to go until election day. So what did we learn on Tuesday 5 October?

• Christine O’Donnell launched her first ad aimed at voters in Delaware – and her first words are: “I’m not a witch.” The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington describes the ad as “It has the feel of one of those washing-up liquid ads from the 1970s“

• It was a day of generally bad polling data for the Democrats, with a new Washington Post poll finding the Republicans leading a generic national ballot by 49% to 43%

• More bad news in the shape of news that Latinos are as likely to vote with their feet and stay at home than go out and support Democratic candidates on 2 November

• Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller and political rock star Sarah Palin appear to have had a falling out after Joe hedged when asked on Fox News if Palin was qualified to be president. Todd Palin wasn’t best pleased, emailing: “Sarah put her ass on the line for Joe and yet he can’t answer a simple question”

• Finally, the Guardian has put together a list of the Top 50 Twitter accounts to follow for US politics and the 2010 midterm elections

We’ll be back tomorrow, thanks for reading.

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This article titled “Meg Whitman’s housekeeping problems get more untidy” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 1st October 2010 21.37 UTC

After strenuously denying allegations that she knowingly employed a housekeeper and nanny without legal work status for nine years, Meg Whitman’s campaign to be the next governor of California was back on the defensive after a document emerged casting doubt on her previous denials.

A lawyer for the housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, has produced a 2003 letter sent by the Social Security Administration addressed to Whitman and her husband, Griff Harsh, saying that Diaz Santillan’s name did not match the social security number she had provided and asking for confirmation.

At the bottom of the letter is a note, in writing alleged to belong to Harsh, saying: “Nicky please check this. Thanks.”

On Thursday the Republican candidate and former eBay chief executive had denied ever receiving such a letter from the government, offering to undergo a lie-detector test and saying bluntly: “Neither my husband nor I received any letter from the Social Security Administration.” Whitman even suggested that Diaz Santillan may have stolen it, saying: “She may have intercepted the letter, it’s very possible, I have no other explanation.”

But by Thursday night, the Whitman campaign was backtracking, saying that the Whitman and Harsh might have received the letter.

Harsh later issued a statement saying it was “possible” that the handwriting on the note was his, though he did not recall receiving the letter. Harsh’s full statement reads:

“While I honestly do not recall receiving this letter as it was sent to me seven years ago, I can say it is possible that I would’ve scratched a follow-up note on a letter like this, which is a request for information to make certain Nicky received her Social Security benefits and W-2 tax refund for withheld wages. Since we believed her to be legal, I would have had no reason to suspect that she would not have filled it in and done what was needed to secure her benefits.”

Submitting a false social security number is a common tactic used by workers without means of legal employment, although the letter from the SSA says that it “makes no statement about your employee’s immigration status”.

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This article titled “Lisa Murkowski to run as write-in senate candidate in Alaska” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 18th September 2010 05.27 UTC

The simmering civil war within the Republican party opened a new front on Friday night, after Senator Lisa Murkowski said she would run as a write-in candidate in November’s election against Joe Miller, the Tea Party favourite who deposed her in the state’s Republican primary.

In front of signs reading “Let’s make history” and supporters chanting “Run, Lisa, run!”, Murkowski declared:

This is a statement we must make for Alaskans. Together we can do what they say cannot be done. Alaska is not fair game for outside extremists. We are smarter than that … and we will not be had.

Murkowski’s announcement came shortly after Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and a supporter of Miller, had finished burnishing her presidential credentials in a speech to the Republican faithful in Iowa.

Palin quickly responded via Twitter, retweeting a supporter’s remark: “My advice for Lisa is the same for anyone who sees a grizzly in the woods. DON’T RUN.”

Murkowski had lost a nail-bitingly close primary against Miller by around 2,000 votes but the national Republican party remains committed to supporting Miller.

For the Democrats, Murkowski’s decision is good news in that it highlights Republican internal disarray, struggling to cope with the impact of the Tea Party movement that this week saw an inexperienced social conservative Christine O’Donnell defeat a widely respected Delaware politician in the Republican senate primary there.

Another internal fight, like that in Florida between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio, a Tea Party-backed candidate, means precious time and money being wasted by the GOP in winning seats regarded as safe for Republicans.

But the rift in Alaska will be difficult for Scott Adams, the mayor of Sitka and the Democratic nominee for the senate seat, to exploit because of the steep Republican advantage.

For Republicans, the internal tensions over the growth of the Tea Party and its emphasis on political purity appear to be getting worse at a time when the party should be gearing up for the 2010 midterm elections.

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This article titled “Sarah Palin’s Iowa speech backs Tea Party over Republican elites” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 18th September 2010 02.28 UTC

Sarah Palin made her return to the Hawkeye State on Friday night, the field of dreams for presidential contenders, speaking to the Iowa Republican’s annual Ronald Reagan dinner and drawing polite applause for her laundry list of attacks on liberals, the Democratic party and the “lamestream media”.

But it was Republicans who aren’t fully on board with the Tea Party bandwagon who Palin gave special attention, suggesting that false attacks against the Tea Party had come from Republicans as well as what she termed “the far left”. She warned the traditional Republican hierarchy that it was “time for unity now” and the power struggles needed to end for the good of the party:

“We can’t blow it, GOP, but we won’t wait for that political playbook to be handed to us from on high from the political elites. We won’t do that… It may take some renegades to get us there. It may take folks shaping things up to get us there.”

Palin had spurned the high-profile Values Voters Summit in Washington DC in order to speak at the Iowa party dinner, a reflection of the importance of Iowa as the crucial first contest in the 2012 presidential primary calender.

Palin was never going to reveal her 2012 presidential candidacy so soon but she did tease the audience with a tale of her husband Todd warning her not to go out jogging that day because “The headline, in Vanity Fair, is going to be: Palin in Iowa, she’s going to run.”

In a typically spirited speech that didn’t so much torture the English language as waterboard it beyond the point of submission, Palin’s appearance was carried live on the C-Span cable network, where it clashed in Friday primetime with America’s Funniest Home Videos and a Jim Carrey movie, Liar, Liar.

Palin called for Republican party unity but – perhaps buoyed by recent successes for the Tea Party in Delaware and Alaska – she also took a few swipes at her own party. In one particularly overwrought passage, Palin said:

“It’s been made absolutely clear that those who hold these, I think, common-sense and pretty mainstream positions, who are attacked, unfortunately, some destructive false shots don’t just come from the far left, and that’s what I’ll admit to learning in these last couple of years.

“But those in the liberal media: you’re worse for using, in that lamestream media, those unsubstantiated untrue hits, it’s not fair to our country, it’s not fair to the electorate, it’s not fair to our democracy, and it is not fair to our troops willing to sacrifice all for our freedoms, journalists, ok?”

Later, Palin indulged her own ideas of how she would run the Republican party, suggesting that she could unite its factions, rattling off a long list that mentioned Tea Party hero Senator Jim DeMint, presidential rival Mitt Romney, former president George Bush, rightwing commentators William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh, among others:

“To rally the troops, you know what I’d say? I’d say, you know folks we’ve got 46 days to go. I’d say DeMint, you’re awesome, we need you down south. Mitt, you go west. GW, we need you to raise some funds. Kristol, Krauthammer, you go east. Rush, go deep, go everywhere, people are listening … we need everyone working together.”

But Palin couldn’t resist a reference to Karl Rove, who dismissed Tea Party favourite Christine O’Donnell as “nutty” after her primary win last week:

“And Karl: go to – here! You could come to Iowa, and Karl Rove and the other leaders, who will see the light and see that there are the normal, patriotic, hard-working Americans, who will say no, enough is enough. We want to turn this around and we want to get back to those time-tested truths that are right for America.”

Aside from attacking her critics in the media and on the left, Palin sounded traditional Republican themes of smaller government and lower taxes, and warm praise for Ronald Reagan.

Palin insisted on taking an over-literal approach to a remark by President Obama that the Republican party would disagree with him even if he said the sky was blue. “Not true – the sky is blue,” said Palin, who also confirmed that fish swim in the sea.

Palin advanced no concrete ideas of her own, although she did describe America’s posture on the Middle East peace process as one that “picks a fight over housing policy with Israel,” thus reducing settlement building on the West Bank to the level of a zoning dispute.

The speech was heard politely by the large crowd, and references to the US Constitution, the Founding Fathers and Ronald Reagan received enthusiastic applause. But the reaction to Palin’s more typical political gambits seemed muted by comparison.

It’s a busy few days for the Palin family’s DVR, because on Monday Bristol Palin makes her debut on Dancing With The Stars.

Correction: I just noticed that I’d called Iowa the Granite State, which is of course New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the first presidential primary, as opposed to Iowa which holds the first caucus. And then the Buckeye State, which is Ohio. In fact Iowa is nicknamed the Hawkeye State. Apologies to Iowa.

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This article titled “Jan Brewer’s Arizona governor election debate meltdown” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 3rd September 2010 00.22 UTC

Poor Jan Brewer, the current governor of Arizona and a hero to the anti-immigration movement in the US. Taking part in her one (and, we can safely assume, only) candidates’ debate before the election in November, she suffers not one but two televised meltdowns.

The first, above, occurred during the debate itself, while she was making her opening statement and was attempting to list her accomplishments. That should have been the easiest part of the debate. But no. “It will go down as one of the most painful openings to a political debate in recent memory,” noted NPR.

Yesterday, Brewer commented: “It certainly was the longest 16 seconds of my life. I’m human, I’m human.”

The second, below, came after the debate when she was confronted by reporters asking about her previous claim that decapitated bodies of illegal immigrants had been found in the Arizona desert – although there is no evidence to support Brewer’s claim.

Repeatedly asked to explain her claim – which she had used as an example of why Arizona needed its controversial new anti-immigration law – Brewer simply refused to open her mouth, before fleeing the scene to annoyed groans from the assembled journalists.

Her performance will presumably be some help to her Democratic challenger, Arizona’s state attorney general Terry Goddard, who challenged Brewer to recant her statement on the beheadings during the debate. But Brewer enjoys a huge opinion poll lead and her twin meltdowns seem unlikely to make enough of a dent.

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This article titled “US right claims spirit of Martin Luther King at Lincoln Memorial rally” was written by Ewen MacAskill in Washington, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 28th August 2010 20.02 UTC

Tens of thousands descended on Washington today for one of the biggest culture clashes in decades – one that pitted an almost exclusively white crowd against one that was predominantly African-American. Both claimed the legacy of Martin Luther King.

The biggest crowd was for a rightwing rally supported by the Fox Television host and author Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Tea Party activists, who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

Beck estimated that the crowd, the biggest show of strength by Tea Party activists this year, numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many of whom had travelled long distances. He claimed he had been unaware when he organised the rally that it coincided with the King anniversary, but insisted that the civil rights leader was an inspiration for all Americans and not any one section of the community.

The other rally, held hours later, was a more traditional event, supported mainly by African-Americans, marching through Washington to mark the anniversary of King’s speech. Many of those on the march accused Beck of hypocrisy and of stirring up the black community.

One of the marchers, Chicago student Brendan Yukins, 18, said of the Beck rally: “It is really insulting… the Tea Party always makes a big deal of being open to everyone, but when you look at the crowd it is white, over-45s.”

Beck, conscious that so many of these events are judged on the numbers of those attending, looked out on a crowd that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial all the way up the Mall to the Washington Memorial, and put the figure at more than 450,000.

Even if the final tally is lower, the crowd was still substantial and a tribute to his drawing power. The rally had no specific agenda, billing itself as “restoring honour” to the US and rekindling what Beck and other speakers saw as the spirit of the American Revolution – family values, low taxation and cutting the federal deficit.

He told the crowd, in a speech peppered with references to God: “For too long, this country has wandered in darkness, and we have wandered in darkness in periods from the beginning.

“We have had moments of brilliance and moments of darkness. But this country has spent far too long worried about scars and thinking about the scars and concentrating on the scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished – and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

Palin, who received the biggest cheer of the day, was equally fuzzy: “We must not fundamentally transform America, as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honour.”

With so few African-Americans in the crowd, Beck compensated by having African-American speakers present, including King’s niece, Alveda, a conservative who has been a guest on his show. Beck and others also made frequent references to King, with the Fox presenter arguing that civil rights were, and are, a matter for all Americans and not just African-Americans and their liberal supporters.

Before the rally, Beck had appealed for supporters to leave banners at home in a move aimed at avoiding the slogans that appeared last year denigrating Barack Obama, leading to accusations that the Tea Party was racist. The crowd largely complied. There were plenty of T-shirts reflecting the mood, ranging from Obama’s iconic Hope image, in which the president had been replaced by George Washington, to ones celebrating the US military – “Special Ops: A mission from God” – and army veterans – “Freedom is not free: I paid for it.”

Asked why there were virtually no African-Americans in the crowd, Robert Lemaster, 65, who had travelled from Ohio, opened his hands wide: “I don’t know why others are not here.” He denied the Tea Party was racist: “That is nonsense. I know lots of minorities who support the Tea Party. It is not about racism but issues such as taxation.”

He saw no problem in holding the rally on King’s anniversary. “Martin Luther King was an American. He belongs to America. Why would any American object to celebrating Martin Luther King?”

The counter-rally, billed as “reclaiming King”, was led by the Rev Al Sharpton, and began at Dunbar high school, the first Washington DC school for black students. It ended near the Lincoln Memorial, close to the site of a proposed monument to King.

One of the marchers, Bomani Crumpton, 55, from Philadelphia, had no objection to Beck holding his rally, saying the Tea Party activists were entitled to free speech. “My objection is that Beck is being dishonest. I don’t believe he did not know it was King’s anniversary,” Crumpton said.

He was equally sceptical about Beck’s claims to be concerned about civil rights and condemned last year’s Tea Party’s posters “with degrading pictures of the president”.

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This article titled “Senior Republican Ken Mehlman comes out as gay” was written by Richard Adams in Washington, for The Guardian on Thursday 26th August 2010 17.56 UTC

One of the key architects of the Bush-era Republican election machine that exploited anti-gay prejudices to motivate its conservative base has disclosed that he is gay and is lobbying to legalise same-sex marriage.

“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” said Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican national committee and the manager of George Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, in an interview published on the Atlantic’s website.

Mehlman’s revelation makes him the most senior figure in the Republican party to publicly identify himself as gay. As a member of Bush’s inner circle, Mehlman would have been party to the agenda of hostility towards gay and lesbian rights that the Republicans adopted. It was designed to draw conservative and religious supporters out to vote.

Mehlman said he was aware that Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, worked to place anti-gay initiatives and referendums on election ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help the party, a claim Rove has hotly denied.

While Mehlman expressed his regret at Republican tactics during his tenure, some gay activists were angry with him. Mike Rogers, who attempted to out Mehlman and a number of other politicians, wrote on his blog that Bush’s 2004 election campaign was “the most homophobic national campaign in history. That campaign was run by one of the nation’s worst closested individuals, Ken Mehlman.”

Rogers said he wanted to hear Mehlman apologise for the damage he helped cause. “Ken Mehlman is horribly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past,” he said.

Other critics pointed to recent political donations by Mehlman to Republicans opposed to gay marriage or to revoking the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring homosexuals serving in the US military. In 2010, Mehlman’s donations include ,000 to the conservative Idaho senator Mike Crapo, who voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“Mehlman is following the same line he touted in 2004 and 2006 as a major Republican party power leader: support anti-gay politicians who are all too comfortable demonising [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people for some votes,” said Michael Jones, of change.org.

Others welcomed Mehlman’s declaration that he was taking an active role in the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group behind challenges to California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. Chad Griffin, an activist against Proposition 8, said Mehlman had made a great contribution. “When we achieve equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it,” Griffin told the Atlantic.

Liz Mair, a Republican blogger and consultant, said: “Ken Mehlman single-handedly has probably helped move the country, and the Republican party, in a more gay-friendly and equality-minded direction.”

There has been no response so far from Bush, who was informed by Mehlman several weeks ago.

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This article titled “Joe Miller beating Lisa Murkowski in shock Alaska election result” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 25th August 2010 16.25 UTC

The final votes in Alaska are still being counted but it seems all but certain that Joe Miller, a political novice promoted by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, is ousting sitting senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary – the biggest upset of the 2010 election year so far.

Barring an unlikely turnaround in uncounted absentee ballots, Murkowski will lose the Republican nomination despite having one of the best-known names in Alaskan politics and heavily outspending her rival.

Palin has been celebrating Murkowski’s possible downfall via Twitter, writing that the result was “a miracle on ice” and tweeting:

Keeping fingers crossed, powder dry, prayers upward… but Joe Miller just tweeted @JoeWMiller What’s the moose hunting like in the Beltway?

With 429 out of 438 electoral districts counted, the pair were separated by just 1,960 votes, with Miller on 45,909 votes (51%) to Murkowski’s 43,949 (49%). A maximum of 16,000 absentee ballots are outstanding, with Murkowski needing to win perhaps two-thirds to overcome Miller’s lead – not impossible but thought to be improbable.

The shock comes because Miller, with little organisation or financial backing, had trailed Murkowski by 62% to 30% in polling carried out in mid-July. The same poll found that less than 50% of likely Republican voters had even heard of Miller, while 98% recognised Murkowski.

But Miller had two weapons in his favour. One is that he received a string of endorsements from the Palin family, starting with Sarah Palin’s father, then her husband Todd, and then finally the former governor and vice presidential candidate herself. The other was the promotion of a referendum, Ballot Measure 2, which would require parents to be notified before their teenage children 17 years or younger received an abortion.

Miller told the Anchorage Daily News that he thought the ballot measure brought out voters who supported him over Murkowski. “The Proposition 2 supporters were our supporters, largely,” Miller said. “Frankly I think the pro-life vote was important.”

If Murkowski does lurch to defeat, it will be another loss for her family at the hands of Sarah Palin. Lisa Murkowski was first appointed to the US Senate in 2002 by her father, Frank, who was then governor of Alaska. But Frank Murkowski was then dethroned by Palin in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary, and there has been frosty relations between the two ever since.

On another level, however, Palin may be mourning a missed opportunity. If Murkowski had been known to be so vulnerable, then Palin herself might have run for the seat.

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This article titled “Obama’s mixed message on New York mosque helps no-one” was written by Richard Adams, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 16th August 2010 08.00 UTC

For a moment there, even what the White House calls the “professional left” was delighted with Barack Obama.

On Friday night, speaking at a White House-hosted iftar – a sunset dinner celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan – Obama finally addressed the controversy around the building of an Islamic cultural centre in lower Manhattan:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.

That was taken to be an unambiguous signal of where Obama’s sympathies lay in the increasingly bizarre controversy over the building, one that has been stoked by the likes of Sarah Palin and even more mainstream Republicans, such as Texas senator John Cornyn.

“This is one of the most impressive and commendable things Obama has done since being inaugurated,” wrote Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, one of the “professional left” critics of Obama recently excoriated by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs as never happy.

It didn’t last long.

On Saturday, Obama spoke to reporters during his visit to Florida, and was asked again about the controversy. He replied:

My intention was simply to let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

And I think it’s very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.

Some in the hyper-caffeinated media instantly reported this as Obama “walking back” something those same members of the media had previously declared to be a clear-cut endorsement of the new centre and mosque. Greenwald declared that Obama “has diminished his remarks from a courageous and inspiring act into a non sequitur, somewhat of an irrelevancy”.

In fact Obama neither endorsed the building of the centre nor walked back his support. But that has become irrelevant.

The result is that Obama has walked into an ambush of his own making. By appearing to say one thing on Friday and another on Saturday, it looks as if he trimmed his position after getting a battering from the right, which set off after his Friday remarks like a dog on heat.

If one reads Obama’s Friday remarks closely, at no point does he endorse the building of the cultural centre and its mosque, although he clearly supports the right of the centre’s supporters to build it if they wish to.

In fact, few of the “Ground Zero mosque” opponents would take issue (although some do) with Obama’s position. They argue that, while the group building the centre has a constitutional right, the insensitivity of the project, only a few city blocks away from the site of the World Trade Centre, is such that building it would be a mistake for all concerned.

There’s even polling – by Fox News – showing a majority of Americans agree that Muslims have a right to build the centre, but just as many saying they oppose one being built on the site as planned.

The danger is, Obama’s cack-handed attempt to intervene may instead strengthen the hand of the centre’s opponents. His intervention has pushed the issue further out of the shadows of Sarah Palin’s Facebook page and into mainstream media and politics, which can hardly be good news for supporters. And in splitting the issue of first amendment rights away from the “wisdom” of the decision, has Obama given its opponents’ argument a measure of credibility?

I think not. Looking back at Obama’s Friday speech, he is clearly saying that first amendment rights trump wisdom, whether he thinks it’s a wise decision or not.

Sadly, the time for nuance has passed. When even a relatively sensible Republican such as Ed Rollins calls Obama’s comments “probably the dumbest thing that any president has said or candidate has said since Michael Dukakis said it was okay to burn the flag,” then any carefully calibrated messages will get lost in the ether. At this point Obama should be hoping he hasn’t made matters worse.

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