After refusing to answer questions all summer, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force acknowledged that a gaming group funding its mailer seeking to link marriage and gambling measures in Maryland. The “in-kind” contribution of $343,125 came from Penn National Gaming.

Source: s3-ec.buzzfed.com

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has admitted — after months of secrecy — that Penn National Gaming paid for a summer mailing that sought to mobilize supporters of Maryland's marriage equality bill against a gambling expansion measure in the state.

In a Friday, Oct. 12, filing with the Maryland State Board of Elections, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Action Fund acknowledged that Penn National, which has spent millions of dollars opposing this fall's ballot measure to expand gambling in the state, gave an "in-kind contribution" of $343,125 for "vendor mailing costs" for the mailer.

The Aug. 8 mailing to Maryland Democrats urged those who support marriage equality in the state to call their elected lawmakers to tell them to oppose a gambling expansion measure that was going to be considered in a special session of the Assembly that was beginning the next day. Repeated questions to the Task Force about the source of funding for the mailer went unanswered, but the Oct. 12 filing confirms what had been rumored for months: A group with gaming interests in the state had funded the mailer.

Because of the way Maryland election law works, however, the Task Force Action Fund's registration as independent expenditure committee meant that Penn National Gaming was effectively able to hide this expenditure during the time the legislature considered whether to press forward with the measure.

The legislation in question passed in August and the measure will be appearing as Question 7 on the November ballot alongside the Question 6 referendum on the state's marriage equality bill, but Task Force's refusal to answer questions about the funding of the mailer continued throughout the summer and into the fall. As recently as Oct. 8, BuzzFeed had asked the Task Force about the funding for the mailer but was told only, "We'll be putting out additional information later this week as the Maryland reporting is due."

The Task Force put out no information about the filing. BuzzFeed discovered the filing through a search of the state's public campaign finance database.

The filing, however, does not answer all of the questions raised in recent months.

On Aug. 9, BuzzFeed was told only that the "National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund Maryland Political Action Committee" funded the mailer. BuzzFeed later reported that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund Maryland Political Action Committee, whose treasurer was listed on the mailer and with the state as Bradley Carlson, actually was registered with the state as an independent expenditure entity.

The Oct. 12 filing was not filed by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund Maryland Political Action Committee, but was instead filed by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund. The treasurer listed on the filing is Brian Johnson. It is not clear why the changes were made between the initial filing and the Oct. 12 filing.

On Aug. 13, BuzzFeed asked the Task Force's communications director, Inga Sarda-Sorensen, "Did anyone with gambling interests or with clients with gambling interests provide the funding for this mailer?" Over the period between the delivery of the mailer and the Oct. 12 filing, every BuzzFeed inquiry to Task Force officials about the funding of the mailer resulted in a response similar to this mid-August response provided by Task Force deputy executive director Darlene Nipper, "This mailer, which was funded by the Task Force Action Fund, is part of the effort to get marriage equality over the finish line in Maryland by advocating that an uncluttered ballot provides for the best chance for securing marriage equality this November." (Task Force executive director Rea Carey was on a sabbatical when the mailing was sent but has since returned to her duties.)

Among those who questioned the Task Force's actions are Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, who supports the gambling expansion measure. He told BuzzFeed in September, "I think they got spun. They had some board members that had a conflict of interest with the gaming companies, and they got a bit spun on that and hopefully they’ve learned from the experience."

Then, earlier this month, Maryland State Sen. C. Anthony Muse went into more detail about the issue to The Washington Post. According to the Post, "Muse, who opposes the ballot measure, said that [Penn National's Steven] Snyder told him Penn had given money for the mailer to the DCI Group, a Washington-based consulting group, which in turn gave funds to the Task Force for the mailer." Monique Hall, a vice president at DCI Group, sits on the Task Force Action Fund board, a fact the Task Force confirmed as of Oct. 8.

Additionally, though, the Post reported that Penn National Gaming reported on an ethics form due several weeks after the legislative session that it gave "more than $1 million to the DCI Group. At the time, Karen Bailey, a Penn spokeswoman, declined to detail what DCI did with the money." The Task Force Action Fund's Oct. 12 filing, however, does not mention DCI Group. It instead denotes the "in-kind contribution" came directly from Penn National Gaming.

The Oct. 12 filing states that the Task Force Action Fund has had no other reportable activity in Maryland since the August mailing other than the $343,125 in-kind contribution from Penn National.

View Entire List ›

Six TDs for November 6th.

Source: youtube.com

In trying to understand both Obama and Romney, we've been trapped in their family histories. Flattering and selective.

Jack Bohrer's astounding addition to the historical understanding of Mitt Romney this morning — and the revelation that an oft-repeated family legend is a myth — is just the latest reminder of the degree to which writers telling the stories of both candidates, and of many other politicians, are trapped in the quicksand of family lore.

We learned about Mitt Romney's father's legendary walkout from the 1964 Republican Convention from Mitt Romney, who now doubt believed it — there's no reason to make such a thing up. He likely heard it from his own father or his father's circle, an after-the-fact embellishment of George Romney's real hostility to Barry Goldwater. Similarly, the exercise of writing a biography of Barack Obama was, for David Maraniss, in no small part an exercise in debunking Obama and Dunham family legends, among them his mother’s alleged experience of racism in Kansas and colonial brutality toward his Kenyan grandfather and Indonesian step-grandfather.

What these stories have in common, in particular, is a politician's utterly human instinct (I first recall doing this in Kindergarten, myself) to tell stories that make your father, no matter how great, look even better.

Romney's father actually lived a great American life. He was self-made, a titan of industry and a major political figure viewed for a time as the frontrunner for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. He was also a true champion of vivil rights at a time when that had a real cost for politicians in both parties, but particularly for those seeking a future in Republican politics. As Bohrer writes:

There is no questioning George Romney’s sterling civil rights record. He had been battling segregated housing in Michigan since World War II. He set the standard for fair employment practices at American Motors, successfully lobbied to make them law statewide, and later established a state civil rights commission at the constitutional convention.

But he was also given to the occasional gilding of the lily, as when he claimed to have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Detroit, a claim Mitt Romney was criticized for repeating. (When George Romney did appear at a civil rights march soon after King appeared in Detroit, the head of the local NAACP chapter warned reporters that "he’s going to tell you that he has been out in front of us all along.”)

The political press tends, again understandably, to accept politicians' stories about their lives at face value. That is, Bohrer points out, exactly how a false anecdote worked its way past the dean of Columbia's Journalism School and the storied New Yorker fact-checking department earlier this month. Romney recalled to Nicholas Lemann that on election night 1964, Romney's pollster, Walt DeVries, told the governor, "George, you probably can’t win" as the presidential election went to Democrat Lyndon Johnson in a landslide.

DeVries told Bohrner that the story isn't true, and that no one had bothered to ask him, since the story came from a man in the room. (Mitt's misremembering may stem from an account documented elsewhere, in which DeVries estimates a 100,000-vote victory, and later revises the number up to 200,000. Romney ultimately won by 363,000 votes.)

It's hard to blame Romney for passing on myths given him by his father or his father's circle, or for having an idealized image of his father. It's equally difficult to blame Barack Obama, in very different circumstances, turning the scraps of memory and reporting of his absent father into a relatively coherent and useful narrative: Barak Obama Sr. appears, in Dreams From My Father, as an appealing, but flawed, man, charismatic and brilliant, pulled away from his family by his desire to reshape post-colonial Kenya, and then broken by a society that couldn't recognize his talents.

There's some truth to that story, but it is more effective as metaphor — for the dashed hopes of an African technocratic elite — than as history. Maraniss reveals that much of what the future president learned about his father was false, beginning with the fact that his mother left Hawaii for the mainland to get away from him, likely because he was beating her. Barack Obama has no George Romney to idealize, but he at least sees his father as having had the missed potential to become a great leader. What he does not approach saying, or thinking is what Lemann wrote in his New Republic review of Maraniss's book: "Barack Obama, Sr., though brilliant and magnetic, comes across as a real horror-show."

And indeed, Obama's memoir skips, perhaps because his mother protected him from it or perhaps because he protected himself, another part of the post-colonial story that's very much in play in his own history: The misogyny and violence common in many traditional societies.

Elements of both Obama's and Romney's mythmaking narratives are self-serving, and Obama's memoir is the consciously-crafted work of an adult who appears to exaggerate at times for literary effect. But it is very hard to condemn either man for worshipping his dad, or to call him a liar for passing on typical family stories. (This also seems to be why Elizabeth Warren thought she was Native American.)

It is, though, worth asking how much of our understanding of political leaders — now and always — is rooted in this sort of family lore. While leaders' public lives are well-documented, their childhood and early professional lives aren't, and they themselves are usually our sources for anecdotes and understanding. Both Obama and Romney prove what a bad idea this is: Obama's memoir is more an obstacle than a guide to actually understanding him; and Romney's view of his father as a man who sacrificed his career for principle is roughly the opposite of Bohrer's analysis of a politician who was much more like his son than is typically thought.

There is a way to get this right. It's just hard. Maraniss spent years reading old newspapers, tracking down elderly relatives on three continents, and persuading ex-girlfriends to share their diaries. Bohrer, doing research for a book on Robert Kennedy, spent a week in the University of Michigan's archives this summer taking notes and photographing thousands of pages of contemporary documents, much of the summer poring over those, the New York Public Library's microfilm archive, and Teddy White's papers in Boston. What that sort of deep reporting and history turns up are also, incidentally, known as facts — solid targets, perhaps, for the fact checkers who have spent much of the cycle trying to arbitrate policy arguments which don't always have their roots in a factual dispute.

There's no real shortcut to this sort of thing. As Jack's editor, I've of course been pushing him to deliver more quickly. But, as he wrote me this morning. "I believe had I rushed this, I would have gotten the story wrong." And all things considered, the few months from reporting to publishing seem lightning-quick. I first met Jack at the Maryland home of Richard Ben Cramer, maybe the greatest American political storyteller and a past master of blown deadlines.

The only pity with this sort of deep and rich reporting is how late it tends to come: You have to have accomplished quite a bit to draw a sane person to dive that deep into your history. It would have been nice to have a more accurate understanding of where Barack Obama was coming from before he ran for president. It would have been nice to understand the meaning of Mitt Romney's father before October. These aren't histories likely to swing votes or have any sort of linear effect on policy or politics, but they are core to understanding the men who want to be president.

Speaking to financial and health care consulting firm

Image by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Obama senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs is skipping debate prep this week, during a year in which he never quite regained the his central role on the 2008 campaign and part of Obama's first term, but has spent time on the lucrative speaking circuit.

Gibbs participated in two debates with former Bush adviser Karen Hughes last week sponsored by financial services and healthcare consulting company Navigant.

The Obama campaign sent mixed signals last week over whether Gibbs, noted for his ability to criticize Obama to his face, would join debate prep, ultimately telling The Wall Street Journal he would not. He was not in Williamsburg where Obama is drilling for Tuesday night's town hall.

Gibbs and Hughes faced off twice last week, and will appear onstage again together the day after the last presidential debate.

LINK: Obama Aide Picks Up Paychecks From Finance Industry For Speeches

Worries about the moderator.

delivers pizza to volunteers at his campaign office in Williamsburg, Virginia, October 14, 2012.

Image by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — President Barack Obama is "energized" for tomorrow's town hall debate with Mitt Romney, aides told reporters on Monday.

Obama has been drilling for his rematch with Mitt Romney since Saturday at a private river-side compound here, meeting with senior advisers and Sen. John Kerry for rehearsals.

Obama campaign traveling press secretary Jen Psaki said Obama has been spending most of his time "studying and practicing," for tomorrow night, adding. "He’s looking forward to it, he’s excited for it. He’s calm and energized."

Psaki would not comment on a report that the Obama and Romney campaigns jointly approached the Commission on Presidential Debates to address moderator Candy Crowley's statements that she would play a larger role than previously agreed to by the campaigns.

"The president is looking forward to the debate tomorrow night, looking forward to answering questions from the American people who will be in the audience," Psaki said. "But he’s prepared for and is ready to take questions from wherever they come."

Asked specifically if the campaign was opposed to Crowley asking follow-up questions, Psaki replied “I’m not going to get into the specifics of the negotiations.”

She added that Obama is also preparing to take questions from Crowley or Romney if the situation arises.

"If the questions come from other sources, he’s happy to address those questions as well,” she said.

Psaki also pushed back on accounts of the first debate camp in Henderson, Nev. being relaxed.

"He took every moment of the debate prep seriously the first time around," she asserted. "He’s taking it seriously this time around."

Obama has taken time to "enjoy the grounds" of the Kingsmill Resort, Psaki added. "Walking around, and taking in the beautiful atmosphere we have here.”

But Psaki said that — in contrast to the first debate — Obama is going to challenge Romney.

"You should expect that he’s going to be firm, but respectful, in correcting the record," she said.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul responded to Psaki, saying, "President Obama can change his debate prep, but he cannot change his failed record."

But the campaign continues to argue it's winning in key states.

“We were duped in Cuba by Castro. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“The choice is between capitalism and socialism, facts and hope, truth and deception, jobs and welfare, the dignity of work and government dependency, fiscal responsibility and more debt. Past behaviors are an indicator of future performance. Look at the past three and a half years. The economy, the $16 trillion debt, Obamacare, unemployment, taxes, regulations, and their foreign policy.

“Since Obama took office, our share of the debt has increased from $35,000 to about $51,000 per person in the United States. 30 cents of every dollar is borrowed and mostly from China, a communist country. Watch out for words like redistribution, social justice, environmental justice, fair share, and leveling the playing field. We were duped in Cuba by Castro. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Source: youtube.com

Sign of confidence from the Obama campaign. And a correction from the first debate.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the vice presidential debate last week.

Image by Pool / Reuters

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Vice President Joe Biden will appear on all three network morning shows on Wednesday, less than 10 hours after President Barack Obama faces off against Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate.

Biden will appear on CBS This Morning, The Today Show, and Good Morning America, according to a network source.

The pre-booking stands in contrast to the last debate, when the Obama campaign was temporarily shell-shocked by the president's performance. Aides waited more than 10 minutes to enter the "spin room" in Denver as they formulated a message. The following morning, aides, not high profile surrogates, took to TV.

Biden's appearance is both a sign of renewed confidence from the Obama campaign that he will have a better performance in New York tomorrow night, and a response to realization that aides also bungled post-debate communications.

A campaign spokesperson for vice president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A secret speech!

Image by Evan Agostini, File / AP

Paul Ryan's "finance event" with Donald Trump tonight at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in New York will be closed to reporters, a campaign aide said.

The event is not a fundraiser, in the campaign's parlance, because no checks are being collected specifically for attending the event. But the event is only open to the campaign's top-tier donors, part of a several day finance retreat including strategy and polling briefings by campaign aides in New York City tomorrow night. The campaign has only opened fundraisers to reporters.

A fundraiser earlier in the day at the Hilton New York will be open to a small "pool" of reporters.

POLITICO's Maggie Haberman reported that Trump is expected to speak at the event on the decommissioned World War II aircraft carrier tonight.

“You have to be tone-deaf not to be concerned.”

Image by Mike Hutchings / Reuters

For years, Lance Armstrong and top members of his Livestrong Foundation were welcome guests on Capitol Hill despite nagging accusations of PED use.

Even when USADA reopened its investigation of Armstrong earlier this year, his friendships on the Hill remained strong and public. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner sent a letter in July asking the Office of National Drug Control Policy to look into whether USADA was misusing federal funds in their pursuit of Armstrong. And in the same month, Texas Sen. Kay Hutchison and Rep. Jose Serrano met with members of Armstrong's foundation to discuss his concerns about USADA.

But in the days after USADA's enormous final report dropped, even Armstrong's loudest supporters on the Hill have been all but silent. When contacted by BuzzFeed, reps for Hutchison and Sensenbrenner declined to speak about the issue. Rep. Serrano's office did not return a request to comment.

Even if Armstrong has no desire to compete in the world of professional sports again, a large source of pride and protection of his reputation comes from the Foundation. (Last week Armstrong responded to the USADA report by tweeting out a link to events celebrating his foundation's 15th anniversary. "What am I doing tonight? Hanging with my family, unaffected, and thinking about this," he wrote, linking to a Livestrong press release.)

Livestrong spent $150,000 in lobbying money last year, according to records on opensecret.org, and has reported spending $80,000 this year. (The foundation has said donations have remained consistent, if not risen, since USADA re-opened the investigation.)

A source close to Armstrong, who declined to be identified on the record because they do not speak for the Livestong Foundation, said there is fear in his camp that members of Congress who regularly meet with reps from the foundation to discuss about cancer research will be less likely to pick up his calls after the damning coverage.

"Obviously you have to be tone-deaf not to be concerned," the source said.

Armstrong associates who spoke publicly to BuzzFeed denied that there was any reason to be worried.

"I think on the Hill and inside the Beltway Lance Armstong is perceived as one of the world's most highly regarded cancer advocates," Livestrong spokesperson Katherine McLane said, adding that once Congress is back in session she looks forward to "resum[ing] our lobbying and our conversations with our friends on the Hill at the appropriate time."

Furthermore, an Armstrong lawyer says he expects USADA's bombshell report will backfire against the agency because it will encourage lawmakers to look deeper into the anti-doping agency's finances.

USADA, which receives some funding from the government, is a non-profit independent agency which acts as the official anti-doping monitor for U.S. Olympic sports.

"I think this is the kind of report that people should fear from a quasi-government agency," Armstrong's lawyer, Mark Fabiani, charged.

Image by Jeff Mitchell / Reuters

Romney gains in Florida. Democrats say the polls are skewed.

President Obama at a Univision Forum last month.

Mitt Romney aides say he has made crucial gains among Florida's Hispanic voters by portraying Obama as fatally weak, a perception they argue has particular power in the Latino community.

A new Florida International University/Miami Herald poll released over the weekend shows President Obama leading Romney among likely Latino voters by just seven points, 51-44 percent. A Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald poll released late last week actually showed Romney ahead of Obama by two points — an 11-point shift from a month earlier. And a third poll, released Sunday by Public Policy Polling, shows Romney down just three points among Florida Hispanics.

By contrast, Obama won 57 percent of Florida Latinos in 2008, according to exit polls.

One Obama campaign adviser, requesting anonymity to address the polls frankly, contested that they were likely skewed by oversampling Cuban-American voters, who are mostly conservative. And the adviser stressed that Obama still maintains a wide lead among Latino voters nationwide.

But nationally, Hispanic voters are also among the lowest enthusiasm levels of any demographic in the country. And oversampling Cuban-Americans doesn't explain the 11-point bounce Romney received in the days since the debate. For the Obama campaign, which is banking on a Latino landslide similar to 2008, the numbers could spell danger.

The Romney campaign, meanwhile, says their gains among Latinos are the product of an aggressive, and little-noticed, outreach effort in Florida — and a debate performance that solidified a caricature of Obama that has taken hold in the Latino community.

"No one is spiking the football, but we're very happy with the trend line," the adviser said.

Romney aides told BuzzFeed their polling indicates that Obama's biggest vulnerability among Hispanics is that he's viewed as a "weak leader." In much of Latino culture, they explained, political leaders are expected to demonstrate a macho bravado, and Obama's debate performance last month — with his verbal pauses, downward gaze, and weak defense of his own record — seemed to exacerbate the incumbent's perception problem.

What's more, Obama's debate performance — which was viewed in Spanish by nearly 3 million people — followed a similarly weak performance on a Univision forum a couple of weeks earlier. There, anchor Jorge Ramos grilled the president on his "broke promise" to reform immigration policy in his first year in office, and Obama's muted defense was made worse by the unenthusiastic crowd.

"Hispanics got to see the real Mitt Romney during the debate, not the caricature the Obama campaign has spent millions creating," the Romney adviser said of the presidential debate. "Hispanic voters were also reminded of the real Barack Obama — the weak and ineffective leader who failed to deliver on any of the promises he made 4 years ago."

The Romney campaign also said they're seeing the fruits of a months-long Hispanic outreach campaign in the state, complete with Spanish-language ads, 13 full-time paid staffers, who are holding grassroots town-hall meetings in Latino communities across the state. The Obama campaign declined to say how many full-time staffers they have in the state, but said they are operating many more offices in Hispanic areas than the Romney campaign is.

Mario Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative advocacy group that just announced it's spending $1 million on Latino-targeted advertising in Florida, said the Romney's team has made the environment more hospitable.

"The Romney campaign has engaged in a robust outreach effort to ensure they turn out the vote in November," said Mario Lopez, President of the Hispanic Leadership Fund. "We are now seeing the impact that these activities are having."

UPDATE: The Obama campaign released a statement from Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez responding to the Romney campaign's claims to BuzzFeed:

“The Romney campaign’s latest assertion that the President is not ‘macho’ enough for Latino voters not only plays into backward and offensive stereotypes of the Hispanic community but shows how little they understand Latino priorities and concerns. I don’t know any Latino who thinks it’s right to veto the DREAM Act, make the middle-class pay for tax cuts for the rich or take away the opportunity for as many as 9 million Hispanics to get health care. Latinos respect the President because he’s doubled funding for Pell Grants so an additional 150,000 Hispanic kids can afford a college education, made it possible for as many as 9 million Hispanics to have access to healthcare, has created 5.2 million private sector jobs in the past 31 months and his administration acted to temporarily lift the shadow of deportation from many deserving DREAMers. Hispanics overwhelmingly support the President because he’s moving us forward, not back, with his actions and his words.”

To clarify, "macho" was BuzzFeed's word to characterize Romney aides' description of what Obama lacks. No Romney aide used the word on the record.

The polls turn agains the president. “Gallup’s data is once again far out of line with other public pollsters,” Joel Benenson says in a defensive memo responding to new swing state polling showing Romney leading by five points.

To defend the Defense of Marriage Act, or to leave it alone?

Image by Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Mitt Romney's administration would face tough decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act during his first month in office, and same-sex couples’ fight for federal recognition is one area where a Romney victory could lead to immediate changes.

Romney has avoided stumping on marriage, abortion, and other "social issues," but questions of policy and law would be harder to avoid in the White House than on the campaign trail.

Ever since President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Feb. 23, 2011, that they no longer would be defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act in federal court challenges over the law’s definition of "marriage" and "spouse," many Republicans — including Romney — have highlighted the move as something that would not happen if Republicans controlled the executive branch. Although the Obama administration initially defended the law, Obama decided that the law was unconstitutional after a little more than two years into his time in office.

And now, if Romney were to win the presidency and change course again as he told the National Organization for Marriage he would do, both the lawyers defending and those taking aim at the 1996 law agree that the Supreme Court could be entering uncharted waters.

The Supreme Court has been asked to consider the constitutionality of DOMA’s federal definitions, which bar recognition of same-sex marriages under all federal laws, in four different cases. BuzzFeed, along with others, have reported that the justices are not likely to consider to consider which, if any, of the cases it will hear until weeks after the election, likely Nov. 20, at the earliest. Because one court of appeals already has ruled that the law is unconstitutional, as well as the trial court judges in the other three cases, it is considered very likely that the Supreme Court will take one of the cases.

The federal government’s current position, argued in court by the Department of Justice, is that DOMA’s Section 3 is unconstitutional. The defense of the law has since been taken up by the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), which is controlled 3-2 by the House Republican leadership. If Romney wins, the Department of Justice would be overseen by an attorney general picked by Romney after he takes office on Jan. 20. (On the other — less probable — hand, the House leadership could flip to a 3-2 Democratic majority on BLAG earlier in January 2013 if Democrats do the unexpected and take back the House majority.)

If the court were to announce on Nov. 21 that it is taking a DOMA case, then the first brief in the case would be due, under ordinary Supreme Court rules, 45 days later. Because that falls on a weekend, the opening brief would be due Jan. 7 — 13 days before Romney would take the oath of office.

Depending on election outcomes, advocates on all sides of the issue agree that what follows what follows could be quite complicated.

The opening brief generally comes from the party seeking to have the Supreme Court reverse the decision of the lower court. Because the plaintiffs challenging DOMA and the Obama administration agree that the law is unconstitutional, which is what all of the lower courts in the cases have decided, the House Republican leadership is the party most likely to be slated to file the opening brief. If Romney wins, however, questions could be raised about whether the House legal group retains the authority to participate in the case as a party if the Justice Department takes up defense of the law once again.

Paul Smith, who is on the legal team for some of the people challenging DOMA’s constitutionality and argued Lawrence v. Texas on behalf of the gay couple charged with violating Texas’s Homosexual Conduct Law, said today that he was not certain of what the court would do in such a situation.

Because the Obama administration supports the lower court rulings striking down the law, he suspects the court would have the administration file its brief in response to the House Republican leaders' brief, "But that would make their deadline after the inauguration, meaning that a Romney administration might tell them not to file a brief supporting [upholding the lower court ruling]. Whether they would then want to, and be able to, file a brief supporting reversal out of time is hard to say."

Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog, a frequent advocate before the Supreme Court, suggested that the court could delay the case altogether. "On the briefing, they would be inclined to reach out to the current [Justice Department] for advice on whether to defer the briefing schedule. What happens then is uncertain." Because the Obama administration already is on record as to its view that the law is unconstitutional, Goldstein believes that "by agreeing to an extension [until the next administration would begin] they aren’t endangering their legacy. So I think as a matter of continuity they would pay a lot of attention to what the incoming administration was able to say about its desires."

The legal director of Lambda Legal, one of the advocacy groups that has challenged DOMA in court, points out that it is not just the Supreme Court who would face questions. Of a Romney administration, Lambda’s Jon Davidson said today, "They would have some hard decisions to make right off the bat if he were elected."

"There’s not much middle ground here that he could stake out," he said, noting that either reversing course or keeping the same course doubtless would dissatisfy significant portions of the country. "There's a question in my mind about whether they would want to take that on in the first week of the new administration." The other lawyers with whom BuzzFeed spoke doubted that possibility, with Goldstein saying there is an "excellent chance that Romney would defend DOMA."

The House Republican leaders' lawyer, Paul Clement, talked with BuzzFeed about the issue at a Cato Institute event on Sept. 18. Of the implications of a Romney win for any DOMA Supreme Court case, Clement said, "I don’t know that there’s a playbook for this. It's a great question, in the sense that it obviously would affect the dynamics somehow, but I just don't think there are enough analogues." Referring to amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, briefs — where a non-party to a case informs the court of its views — Clement said, "There’s one or two cases where the government has withdrawn an amicus brief or something like that, but in a case like this, I don’t think there’s a ready analogue."

Regardless of which parties are arguing which position, though, Davidson notes that "the full spectrum of positions are being advanced," a point echoed by the other advocates as well. And, Davidson adds, “[U]ltimately, the court is going to do what it feels is right."

Uncharted though it could be, the four DOMA cases on the Supreme Court's docket await action — and November is looking likely to be a very significant month for beginning to chart that path forward.

A creative fundraising pitch for Washington gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna, who made headlines for dancing to PSY's Gangnam Style. “Really, it's the only way I could ever show my face at school again.”

Source: youtube.com

Source: youtube.com

The Secretary of State commented to CNN that she was taking responsibility for the lack of security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi before the attacks.

Source: youtube.com

I asked 25 Republican students at Hofstra University to describe Democrats in ONLY 3 words. Post your own in the comments!

"Energetic, pretentious, misinformed"

Ariella

"Wasteful, incompetent, stupid"

- Matt

"Holier than thou"

- Brittany

"Ignorant, dishonest, misinformed"

- Johnny

View Entire List ›

I asked 25 Democratic students at Hofstra University to describe Republicans in ONLY 3 words. Post your own in the comments!

"Straight, white, males"

- Kia

"Stuck-up, headstrong, all-knowing"

- Giulia

"Closed-minded, greedy, old-fashioned"

- Brian

"Arrogant, selfish, assholes"

- Suzy

View Entire List ›

“What else do you have to do?”

HEMPSTEAD, New York — With the traditional post-debate spin room arriving far too late to effect a media consensus formed instantly on Twitter, the Romney and Obama campaigns debuted a new frontier in political media management here today: The pre-wash.

Reporters began arriving in the vast Hofstra University gymnasium Tuesday morning, some of them a full 12 hours in advance of the 9:00 p.m. debate. And officials of both campaigns and parties Tuesday afternoon promptly to work on the blue carpet, trying to put them in just the right state of mind to appreciate their respective candidates. They deployed surrogate after surrogate — senators, governors, strategists, and flacks — simply to keep reporters occupied.

"We're doing this because you're here writing about it," quipped Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus — an answer echoed, almost word-for-word, by surrogates of both parties.

"What else do you have to do?" asked an Obama campaign aide.

The mission: "raising expectations for the other guy, managing expectations for ourselves," said Romney aide Kevin Madden.

The pre-wash (a laundry metaphor coined by the Washington Post's Amy Gardner to anticipate the spin cycle) was a marked departure from the two previous debates this cycle. In Denver and at the vice presidential debate in Danville, Ky. the spin was almost entirely contained to the period after the debate. And after Obama's dismal performance in the first contest, the president's campaign only deployed five staffers to talk to reporters.

By 8 p.m. Tuesday, more twice that had already interacted with reporters, excluding the usual communications staffers. Indeed, the Obama campaign has brought 22 official surrogates to the debate site, a number dwarfed by the 37 Republican surrogates here.

Among the pre-washers at the campaign laundromat:

For Obama: Howard Dean, Robert Gibbs, Stephanie Cutter, Jim Messina, Cecile Richards, Martin O’Malley, John Kerry, Chris Van Hollen, and Antonio Villaraigosa.

For Romney: Rob Portman, George Pataki, Peter King, Eric Fehrnstrom, John Sununu, and Bob McDonnell.

Or trying to. Vladimir Jaffe is “brave enough” to take on Occupy Protesters, says Judge Napolitano.

HEMPSTEAD, New York — Vladimir Jaffe had a brief moment of notoriety in 2011 when, as one of a handful of conservative amateur documentarians covering then-nascent Occupy Wall Street, he appeared on Fox News for a long segment on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show. As it turns out, Jaffe is back — he's made the trip from his current home of Staten Island to Long Island to take video of the crowd of protesters outside the second presidential debate at Hofstra University.

"It's not a movement, it's just a bunch of hippies who really don't know what they stand for, and they're just having a good time," Jaffe said of Occupy, in a thick Russian accent. He wore a National Rifle Association jacket and carried a camera.

Jaffe left Russia in 1988 at age 29, before the fall of the Soviet Union. His experiences with communism, he says, shaped his view of politics forever.

"Left is the most dangerous thing we currently have," Jaffe said. "It's a religion."

Jaffe has made dozens of videos at Occupy protests, always referring to himself as "Former Soviet Citizen" in the titles (e.g. "Nice Misguided 'Occupier' Kid Rather Belongs To Tea Party Based On Former Soviet Citizen's Analysis").

Jaffe asks questions like "And when you abolish capitalism what are you going to replace it with I wonder?", usually followed by his favorite retort — an incredulous "Really?" — depending on the answer.

His videos took him all the way to the Fox News set, where Judge Napolitano praised him as "brave enough to go toe-to-toe with the Occupy Wall Street protesters."

Jaffe identifies strongly with the Tea Party movement and supports Mitt Romney, who he met at a "Tea Party event in Philadelphia," he said.

"He's very personable," Jaffe said. And if Obama wins again — "God help us," Jaffe said.

As a swirl of protesters — Gary Johnson supporters, anti-drone people, Occupiers, and "Rent Is Too Damn High" candidate Jimmy McMillan — surrounded him, Jaffe had his camera trained on a young protester familiar from Occupy protests in New York. "Really?" Jaffe could be heard saying.

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GOProud says gay voters care most about the same economic issues as everyone else. Obama-endorsing Human Rights Campaign says “a tough economy is made worse for LGBT people by the lack of legal protections.”

The stage is set for the second U.S. presidential campaign debate taking place in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012.

Image by Lucas Jackson / Reuters

"If you want to ask about ‘gay issues’ tonight, ask about jobs and the economy," Jimmy LaSalvia, the head of the gay conservative group GOProud said tonight in advance of the second presidential debate.

"In the lead up to this second debate, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not the candidates will get asked about ‘gay issues’ tonight," LaSaliva said in a statement. "The media ... think the only thing that qualifies as a ‘gay issue’ and the only thing that gay voters care about is gay marriage. The truth is that jobs and the economy are a gay issue – and indeed, the most important gay issue in this election."

GOProud, which has endorsed Romney's run for president, pointed to a recent Harris Interactive poll conducted for Logo TV, which found that 32 percent of LGBT respondents picked jobs or the economy as the most important issue in deciding their presidential vote. Only 6 percent said same-sex couples' marriage rights were the top issue.

Over at the Human Rights Campaign, which endorsed Obama's re-election early before Romney even won the Republican nomination, HRC vice president for communications Fred Sainz shot back.

"I don't disagree with Jimmy. Jobs, the economy, our foreign affairs are all important issues to LGBT Americans," he told BuzzFeed. "What Jimmy misses is that a tough economy is made worse for LGBT people by the lack of legal protections, whether it be employment nondiscrimination protections or the existence of DOMA.

"Obama wants to get rid of these barriers. Romney wants to keep them."