Citizens United, the group whose decision to make an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary triggered a landmark Supreme Court case on the First Amendment and political speech, is working on another film: “Fast Terry.”

McAuliffe will probably brag about it, as it’s just one more thing he has in common with Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: The full “Fast Terry” movie can now be viewed in its entirety here.

Today’s Morning Jolt features… (sigh) yes, some Bob Filner and Carlos Danger Anthony Weiner revelations and reaction, but also an eye on the upcoming lower-ticket campaigns that might not get nearly as much attention…

Looking at the House Races and Even Lower on the Ticket…

You can always tell which incumbents a national party committee thinks are most vulnerable by who they tout the most. The NRCC has the “Patriot Program,” which lists 20 incumbents who… well, I’ll let the NRCC describe it: “a goal-oriented program helps Members stay on offense and fully prepare for their re-election campaigns. Through a number of Member-based communications, fundraising and strategy goals established at the beginning of the cycle, the program helps to ensure that its members are ready to run well-funded and organized campaigns against their Democratic opponents.”

The current lineup: Reps. Dan Benishek (Mich.), Gary Miller (Calif.) Michael Grimm (N.Y.), Bill Johnson (Ohio), Tom Latham (Iowa), Tom Reed (N.Y.), Scott Rigell (Va.), Keith Rothfus (R-Pa.) Lee Terry (R-Neb.) Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Steve Southerland (Fla.) Rodney Davis (Ill.) Jeff Denham (Calif.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.) Bob Gibbs (Ohio), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Joe Heck (Nev.), David Joyce (Ohio), David Valadao (Calif.) and Jackie Walorski (Ind.). Not too many surprises there; most of those districts were either carried by Obama or represented by a Democrat until recently.

Meanwhile, the NRCC notices that the South Florida real estate market is so hot, at least one Democratic Congressman hasn’t been able to move into his district.

It has been almost a year since Joe Garcia told The Miami Herald’s editorial board that he’d move into the new Key West-to-Miami-Dade Congressional District 26 if he won.

Garcia won. But he hasn’t yet moved. His office said the freshman Democrat is in the process of getting a place.

Maybe he’s just waiting for prices to come down.

Meanwhile, Democrats are beginning to realize that having a pop-culturally-dominant messiah at the top of the ticket, but paying less attention down-ticket, has big consequences:

Barack Obama has spent well over $1 billion on his political campaigns, but it’s the $20 million to $30 million Democrats didn’t shell out three years ago that is costing the White House as he slogs through the first six months of his second term.

The GOP’s wildly successful, low-key and stunningly cheap campaign to seize state capitals in 2010 has come back to haunt Obama and his fellow Democrats. It’s now clear that the party’s loss of 20 state legislative chambers and critical Midwestern governorships represents an ongoing threat every bit as dangerous as the more publicized Republican takeback of the House that same year.

There was no stopping the GOP wave that year — but strategists in both parties say Obama’s team might have blunted it if they had somehow managed to cut into the GOP’s cash advantage — $30 million to the Democrats’ $10 million — in statehouse races by making campaigns at the very bottom of the ballot a priority.

Eh. Obama has always been very skilled at persuading voters to believe in him. They’re not so persuaded when he touts Jon Corzine, Martha Coakley, Creigh Deeds, or most of the 2010 Democrats…

From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

It is not necessarily the most important question before us, but it is one that persistent and widespread this week: Just what is Huma Abedin thinking?

The delightful Kemberlee Kaye asked why so many Democratic women are willing to overlook, accept, or forgive creepy and awful behavior from their elected officials:

“Public service has nothing to do with bedroom service. 98.4367% of men cheat. I do know a few good men who don’t. Leave Weiner alone,” Tamara Holder tweeted. Bogus statistic aside, why should anyone ignore the actions of a sexual predator*, particularly one currently seeking the mayorship of the largest city in the United States? And the young women he sought out? What about them?

See also Ted Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Bob Filner, Elliot Spitzer, John Edwards and Al Gore.  Their legacies, at least in the minds of the collective left, do not include their abhorrent treatment of women. No, no, Democratic women wouldn’t dare criticize the way these power-drunk politicians treated their wives, mistresses, ladies of the evening, et al. At least not publicly.

*If you momentarily feel the instinct to dispute the notion that Weiner was a sexual predator, keep in mind he chatted online with a 17-year-old girl but assured the world that “nothing inappropriate took place.”

We should try to resist the temptation to believe that you and I are better, smarter, or more moral than other people because we’re conservatives. That’s just not true. You and I are better than everyone else because you read this newsletter.

Yes, you can find plenty of folks on the Right who fail to live up to their own ideals or general standards of acceptable behavior. But thankfully, for all of our flaws, you don’t see a lot of conservatives arguing, or, the idea that certain creepy behavior has to be accepted out of party loyalty. And that represents a key philosophical difference with the Left, at least in practice.

Whether you come from a more socially-conservative perspective or a more libertarian one, your philosophy gives you some strong arguments about why this sort of behavior is unacceptable.

If you’re socially conservative, your values are likely shaped by a Judeo-Christian teaching that every person is created by God and thus deserving of respect, etc. So besides the usual Biblical/Torah-based teachings – don’t commit adultery, etc. – sexually harassing your underlings, using an employee as a sexual plaything or using your wife as a human shield during an embarrassing press conference is to objectify them and pretty obviously not in line with God’s teachings.

If you’re libertarian, one of your core tenets is the value of the individual and the need to protect the rights of the individual – and sexual harassment undoubtedly represents an infringement upon the rights of an individual. You may have less of an issue with adultery between consenting adults or even with prostitution (freely-agreed contracts!) but ultimately whatever happens must be agreed upon by both/all parties. Cheating on one’s wife and humiliating her in a public scandal isn’t usually part of an agreed contract. (Someday we may have a political power couple in an open marriage, and it will be interesting to see what the public reaction will be.)

However, modern liberalism usually defines the world in terms of groups and group rights. The rights of the individual are much less important (see how often the Left criticizes our society as too individualistic or “go it alone”) and their vision of a wise redistribution of money, power, authority, rights, etc. often requires the correct person or group to be in charge. Having the Left’s preferred people in charge is, in fact, the preeminent value on the Left, and any other “rule” can be broken in its name – i.e., it’s okay to serve on corporate boards and make lots of money, as long as you donate to the party, etc. 

In short, the rights of a female employee of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner don’t amount to that much in the minds of a lot of San Diego Democrats, compared to the need to keep Filner in charge so he can enact their preferred policies. In fact, when forced to take a side, they side with the powerful man running the gravy train:

The local Democratic Party has known for a long time about sexual harassment allegations against Bob Filner, a former Democratic assemblywoman said in a Thursday interview.

“I blew the whistle on this two years ago to the Democratic Party leadership,” former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña said.

Saldaña said that in summer 2011 six prominent women in local politics, business and education told her that Filner had physically or verbally harassed them. Saldaña had been exploring what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid for Congress and the conversations came in the context of the 2012 elections.

Saldaña said she contacted former party Chairman Jess Durfee with the allegations and Durfee was among a group of Democratic leaders who met with Filner to discuss them that summer. She said nothing happened.

“As disgraceful as Bob’s behavior has been, it’s been tolerated by our Democratic Party leadership,” she said.

Saldaña said Filner never personally harassed her and declined to say who alleged to have had run-ins with the mayor. She said former City Councilwoman Donna Frye, who is calling for Filner’s resignation over unspecified sexual harassment allegations, inspired her to talk.

Saldaña has a long history of conflict with Filner, most prominently over a failed border sewage treatment project about a decade ago. She also wound up endorsing him for mayor.

Party leaders, she said, made it clear that if people didn’t support Filner they wouldn’t receive their support again.

Most of us recoil from that as a soulless and ghoulish way of seeing people, as insignificant cogs whose well-being is easily sacrificed in the name of the “greater good.” But that’s why we’re on this side.

Discussing this on a conservative e-mail list, Emily Zanotti of NakedDC noted:

A lot of these Democratic men use their power and position to cow these women. Sanford was a schmuck, but his affair was consensual. Weiner (and Clinton and Spitzer) all had affairs with women who basically worshiped them. The latest girl revealed to be messaging  Weiner kept saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m talking to you!’ ‘wow, you’re so awesome,’ etc. Clinton banged an intern. Spitzer paid sex workers. 

It’s a combination of power-broking and power-worship that probably results from the ideology but takes on a really perverse sexual form.

While we’re on the subject… dear Mainstream Media: every disgraced politician wants the kind of soft-focus powder-puff coverage that People gave Weiner and Abedin in 2012 to help their redemption narrative. Don’t give it to them.

 

 

“I’m very happy in my present life,” Weiner, 47, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “The only next dramatic steps I’m planning on are Jordan’s first,” he says, referring to his 6-month-old son and remaining noncommital on whether he will run for office again.

In his first joint interview with wife Huma Abedin, who is deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the couple address how they survived Weiner’s lewd text and photo scandal that led to his resignation, as well as who has diaper duty.

Around the same time as that interview, Weiner was beginning his online relationship with his new 22-year-old object of affection.

Gee… this looks like an interesting story from a Memphis television station.

MEMPHIS, TN -(WMC-TV) – Action News 5 is taking you inside a Mid-South car company that promised to bring hundreds of jobs to North Mississippi. A former employee is raising concerns about how much the company has actually accomplished.

“We would stand over the car with tools in our hand and look like we were doing something to the car, but we wasn’t doing anything,” said the former employee.

It is a strong statement against a company that until now has refused to go on camera or let our cameras inside. But that, too, all changes on Action News 5 at 10 p.m.

“This is a real company, it’s a building company, we have set very aggressive goals for ourselves, but we will not meet anyone’s arbitrary deadline for us,” said Greentech Automotive Vice President Marianne McInerney.

More questions. More answers. It is all coming up Wednesday in an Action News 5 investigation at 10 p.m.

Quite an interesting quote, although the breathless stay-tuned commentary suggests the newscast may be anchored by Ron Burgundy.

UPDATE: The Memphis station’s report overlaps a lot with this one from Ryan Nobles of NBC’s Richmond affiliate:

For the first time we get a look inside this private company. But that visit was only granted after we were approached by a former employee who saw our initial report and told us he was concerned that the start- up venture was not headed in the right direction.

In July of 2012 the picture of Greentech automotive was a car company on the verge of revolutionizing the industry.

“But now we start at full factory production and at full capacity we can make a car an hour,” said McAuliffe at the time.

But according to a worker- who was there, those lofty goals were nowhere near reality.

“We were worried, scared. A lot of us were scared for our jobs.”

This worker asked us to protect his identity. He describes himself as a happy employee who never missed a pay-check. But he was constantly worried that what the company was telling the public wasn’t actually happening inside

“We were told, you know, when we first went in the fall of ‘11 we were going to build a 100 by Christmas, that didn’t happen,” he said.  “Then we were told we were going to build x amount through the year 2012 and that didn’t happen.”

It is a culture of uncertainty that his former employers forcefully reject.

“This is a real company, it’s a building company,” said Greentech spokesperson Marianne McInerney. “We have set very aggressive goals for ourselves, but we will not meet anyone’s arbitrary deadline for us.”

McInerney took us in a ride of one of the Greentech prototypes. It is a 5 seat sedan that runs on no gas. She said Greentech is selling cars all over the world.

“We have distribution agreements that account for 30,000 vehicles over the next three years,” she said. “That’s pretty significant.”

But she can’t provide specific numbers on actual cars that have been produced. The former employee told us that in his more than a year in a half on the line maybe 30 cars were built and most of them never left the building.

“They would take everybody and put them out on the line and we would stand over the car with tools in our hand and look like we were doing something to the car but we wasn’t doing anything,” he said.

The worker claims the company had them put on a show for what he believed to be foreign investors. According to McInerney he simply misunderstood the training process of a complex and new technology.

“There’s what we would call a training build.”  

This investigation could fizzle… or it could have big repercussions:

President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the Homeland Security Department’s No. 2 official is under investigation over alleged intervention to obtain approval for a company run by a brother of Hillary Clinton to participate in a program that provides U.S. visas for foreign investors, according to an email the department’s inspector general sent to lawmakers Monday night and obtained by NBC News.

The investigation into Alejandro Mayorkas – who currently serves as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (UCIS), an agency within Homeland Security – was opened in September 2012 based on a referral from an FBI counterintelligence analyst, according to the email. The inspector general probe was first reported by The Associated Press.

“At this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of criminal misconduct,” the email from the Homeland Security inspector general states. “We are unaware of whether Mayorkas is aware that we have an investigation.”

The probe is based on allegations that Mayorkas personally intervened to win an approval for Gulf Coast Funds Management, a financing company headed by Clinton’s brother Anthony Rodham, after USCIS officials rejected its application, according to an aide to GOP Sen. Charles Grassley, who had received internal USCIS emails about the matter from a department whistleblower.

If Gulf Coast Funds Management sounds familiar, it’s because one of its clients is its client is… GreenTech Automotive, the electric car company that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe headed up until recently. (UPDATE:  According to Gulf Coast Funds Management’s Form I-924A filed with the U.S. Customs And Immigration Services, GreenTech is GCFM’s only client. This was the case back in 2009, too. )

Let’s walk through this slowly. Gulf Coast Funds Management is a Regional Center, meaning a government-approved private organization that aims to help economic growth in a particular geographic area and that is authorized to line up foreign investors with application slots for federal EB-5 visas.

Congress created the federal EB-5 program in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. To qualify, a foreigner must invest at least $1 million, or $500,000 in either a rural area or an area with high unemployment. The investment must “create or preserve at least 10 full-time jobs for qualifying U.S. workers within two years.” The government makes 10,000 EB-5 visas available each year, with 3,000 administered through the Regional Centers. According to one advocate for the program quoted in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, three out of every four visa recipients come from China.

It would be wrong and false to say that a Regional Center sells U.S. visas, or that there is any court-admissible evidence that its actions or its clients’ actions constitutes a visa-for-sale-scheme. (Hello, GreenTech Autmotive lawyers contemplating a libel suit, like the one you filed against the Franklin Center! Notice the careful wording in that previous sentence!) Nonetheless, at least two Virginia state officials examined GreenTech Automotive’s proposals and reacted with great skepticism:

Sandi et al. Even if the company has investors “lined up”, I maintain serious concerns about the establishment of an EB-5 center in general, and most specifically based on this company.Not only based on (lack of) management expertise, (lack of) market preparation, etc. but also still can’t get my head around this being anything other than a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications that we have no way to confirm or discount. . . . 

This “feels” like a national political play instead of a Virginia economic development opportunity. I am not willing to stake Virginia’s reputation on this at this juncture. 

While the Regional Centers are not allowed to sell the U.S. visas, they are allowed to point out that investment in their projects may qualify a foreign citizen for a residence visa, and they may appear to suggest that one directly leads to the other. For example, at the top of the website for Gulf Coast Funds Management LLC, the Statue of Liberty’s torch is next to the slogan, “Invest in your future with EB-5.”

Gulf Coast Financial Management needed approval from USCIS to expand its regional center to include Tennessee and Virginia parts of “Project Mastiff,” GreenTech Automotive’s plan to manufacture parts in Virginia, build a warehouse facility in Tennessee, and build an assembly plant in Mississippi. The effort to reverse that initial rejection appears to be connected to the inspector general’s investigation into “alleged conflicts of interest, misuse of position, mismanagement of the EB-5 program, and an appearance of impropriety by Mayorkas and other USCIS management officials.”

While  Alejandro Mayorkas is still being investigated, we know McAuliffe was also making efforts to get the Department of Homeland Security, urging them to get U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, urging them to reverse their decision on Gulf Coast Funds Management. Terry McAuliffe, in December 2010, writing directly to Janet Napolitano. Watchdog.org noted that McAuliffe was insisting to DHS that the EB-5 funding that their decision impeded was “crucial” to his company , while telling the public “we are in great shape financially.”

And according to NBC News’ report,  DHS officials acknowledged that the politically-connected McAuliffe and his allies were pushing hard for the decision to be reversed:

In a letter to Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano released Tuesday night, Grassley asked for details about the department’s handling of the company’s application and quoted from an internal agency email about Gulf Coast describing it as a “politically…well connected company” and noting the involvement of Rodham and McAuliffe. However, the author of the email — who is not identified — added after noting the firm’s political connections, “not that I think it matters because it shouldn’t impact how we do our job.” 

Again, the Inspector General could conclude that nothing illegal occurred. We’ll just have to wait and see.

And wonder if the investigation will be resolved before November of this year.

Moments before Lousiville businesman Matt Bevin announced he was running for Senate in Kentucky, challenging incumbent Mitch McConnell, McConnell’s press team spotlights a Louisville Tea Party board member resigning from his post in a show of support for McConnell: “Scott Reed was a founding board member of the Louisville Tea Party in 2008 yet resigned from his post as Vice-President to run for state representative in 2012.  Reed said he resigned from his current board post about one month ago when Louisville Tea Party President Sarah Durand decided to back Bevin’s Republican Primary campaign and become Bevin’s spokeswoman.”

Katrina Trinko previewed the Bevin-McConnell fight; expect McConnell to go after Bevin’s business record and contend he took a bailout from the state of Connecticut; Bevin will argue McConnell has forgotten his conservative roots and become the face of Republican compromise in Washington.

Bruce Carroll, friendly blogger, has a new project down in his home state of South Carolina:

Carolina Conservatives United launched today with a grassroots effort to Defeat Lindsey Graham in the 2014 Republican Primary. Carolina Conservatives United is a non-profit political organization based in South Carolina whose mission is to support political candidates who support conservative values and oppose those who do not.

“As residents of South Carolina and grassroots activists in the conservative movement, we are concerned not only about Lindsey Graham’s voting record on important issues but also the contempt he regularly displays toward small-government conservative citizens,” said Bruce Carroll, Chairman of CCU.

“Lindsey Graham is part of the DC culture that is crippling our nation.  We believe that he’s been there long enough and we are going to spend time outside our normal day-to-day jobs & lives to bring him home,” said Breeanne Howe, CCU Board Secretary. “Fellow conservatives who would like to join us can donate to the cause and also send us leads on Graham’s record through our email: DefeatGraham@gmail.com.”

 For more information, visit www.DefeatLindseyGraham.org.

Bruce tells me, “Our board is expressly NOT supporting any candidate.  We are only working to force Lindsey Graham into early retirement.  I do not expect we will endorse a candidate for the GOP 2014 Senate Primary…  We are starting from scratch and the investment of our time and personal money.  We are starting with about $10,000 at kickoff tomorrow.  I have some promises of donors once we launch, but I never count my chickens in advance. Our goal is to raise enough money to start running TV ads in South Carolina by the fall.”

Here’s their first web video:

That’s the good news if you want to see Graham replaced. Here’s the bad news: these folks will need a candidate, and preferably only one candidate. Nancy Mace, Lee Bright, and Richard Cash have all been discussed as potential candidates, but only Cash has jumped in  – and they’re not likely to be able to afford an anti-Graham primary fight amongst themselves.

Meanwhile, Graham begins with a huge headstart; $6.3 million in cash on hand.

Really long Morning Jolt today. Besides today’s preview on the sleaziest mayoral candidate in the country (Carlos Danger – er, Weiner) and the sleaziest mayor in the country (Bob Filner), there’s news of a new group forming to retire Lindsey Graham, another deal from Terry McAuliffe looking at, and thoughts on Man of Steel and superhero sequels.

The Era of the Psychotic Candidate

Remember Alvin Greene? He was the guy who scraped together the filing fee to appear as a candidate for Senate on the Democratic line, and who won, even though almost no one in the state knew who he was. One of his major ideas to improve the economy was making an action figure of himself. We all had fun laughing at the surreal Forrest-Gump-come-to-life, and he was enjoyably crazy candidate, right up until the moment he started howling and wailing at a reporter who showed up at his home, and then it started to feel like we were laughing at a man with serious mental health issues.

We can still laugh at Anthony Weiner… and we will be laughing at him for a long time. But it is starting to feel like we’re watching a man with serious, deep-rooted psychological issues relating to his sexuality, his self-control, his ability to assess risk, his inability to admit the truth unless confronted with overwhelming evidence of his falsehoods, his willingness to see others as objects and God knows how many other issues…

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner said he sent texts and lewd photos of himself to a woman over the Internet after he resigned from Congress, prompting at least three rivals to call for him to drop out.

The gossip website The Dirty posted correspondence between the unidentified woman and Weiner, 48, who left the House of Representatives in 2011 after similar pictures sent to women surfaced. The latest images used the name “Carlos Danger,” the website said. It displayed a photo taken straight down a man’s body showing bare feet and strategically placed pixels.

“I said other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner said at a press briefing in Manhattan with his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. “While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”

Weiner said he would stay in the race for mayor.

God, I wish Andrew Breitbart were still alive so he could have hijacked the podium again yesterday.

Full video of the most brilliant comeuppance of the modern media era.

Did anybody really think Weiner had really changed from the man caught in scandal two years ago? Some may have hoped that fatherhood would make him grow up some, and some may be surprised that he would be so reckless as to choose to run for mayor with additional women out there, waiting to tell their tales of his much more recent tawdry behavior… but did anybody really believe that he had turned over a new leaf and become a changed man? Back in June, BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer quoted professional therapists who contended Weiner’s description of his short stay at a psychiatric evaluation center did not come close to what they would consider serious treatment.

People go into politics for a lot of reasons – some altruistic or idealistic or principled, some base, and for many, a mix of both. A career in politics can provide an individual with a lot of what they desire – power, admirers, fame, money. Kissinger declared power to be the ultimate aphrodisiac, so perhaps political stature is indeed a great way to enhance one’s sex appeal. (Right now, half my male readers working in politics just mumbled to themselves, “I must be doing it wrong.”)

Clearly, those fulfilling those desires can be addictive. We’ve seen the comeback playbook executed by politician after politician, time after time, so that it has become a boring, predictable cliché; the more a candidate sticks to the playbook, the less persuaded we should be that there is any real remorse or acceptance of responsibility.

After the “deny, deny, deny” strategy (as Monica Lewinsky quoted Bill Clinton) blows up in a politician’s face, he admits some portion of the accusations, but denies others. (A “modified limited hangout.”) There may be counter-accusations; there is an acceptance of some consequences but not others. At the press conference, the wife may be rolled out as a human shield. There is an insistence that the focus on the scandal has been a distraction from the politician’s real work. There is an insistence that this wrongdoing was a private matter and not the public’s concern. The accusations are driven by partisan motives, anyway. There is an admission of sin and often a very public seeking of spiritual counsel from political allies who are religious figures. There is a soft-focus interview that appears to be an open confession but that remains vague on key details; the privacy of others will be cited. God will get mentioned a lot. And throughout it all, the politician remains convinced: I can come back from this. This isn’t the end of me. As his presidential campaign flopped and his sex scandal ticked like a time bomb, John Edwards was utterly convinced he could trade his endorsement for the running mate slot to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; when that effort went nowhere, he set his sights on being attorney general or, ultimately, nominated to the Supreme Court.

They need this. They so, so need this. They really cannot go on to living a life outside the spotlight, just practicing law somewhere or running a hardware store. (Well, John Edwards is apparently returning to practicing law.)

The spoils of political victory – power, fame, groupies, lucrative post-elected-office jobs in lobbying or consulting – will always attract a certain number of unscrupulous head cases, egomaniacs, narcissists, and borderline unhinged. They will only go away when the voters say “no.”

Speaking of “no”, and how some politicians don’t realize it means, “no” …

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner: Heroic Veteran of the War on Women.

Okay, San Diego. What’s it going to take?

A former employee of San Diego’s mayor stepped forward Monday claiming she was forced to resign after she said the mayor treated women as “sexual objects or stupid idiots.”

 “The past six months turned out to be the worst time of my entire working life,” said Irene McCormack Jackson, former communication director for Mayor Bob Filner.

McCormack Jackson had worked as a journalist and as a manager with the Port of San Diego before she accepted the position on the mayor’s staff.

Among the allegations: that Mayor Filner told her to work without panties.

She also claims the mayor said he wanted to see her naked and couldn’t wait to consummate their relationship even though they had only a working relationship.

“He thought it was acceptable behavior to regularly make sexual comments that were crude and disgusting,” McCormack Jackson said.

Wait, there’s more!

SAN DIEGO – San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith will question the police officers in charge of Mayor Bob Filner’s security.

A lawsuit filed Monday by former Filner communications director Irene McCormick Jackson claims the men who guard the mayor witnessed sexual harassment.

“McCormack Jackson was in an elevator with … Filner along with the police officer…” the lawsuit alleges.
 
“The police officer was fixing his handcuffs,” the lawsuit claims. “The mayor put a headlock on (McCormack Jackson) and said, ‘You know what I would like to do with those handcuffs?’”

The lawsuit also says Filner stopped the harassment when a member of his security detail walked in on it.

“Mayor Filner only ceased trying to kiss her when the elevator stopped and a staffer got in with them,” the lawsuit said.

Remember, Filner’s excuse is, “I’m a hugger.”

Here is the entirety of what President Obama said about guns in his two appearances at events for Organizing for Action last night:

At the “OFA Dinner”:

Obviously, the scourge of gun violence is something that we still have to stay focused on.

At the “OFA Event”:

Nothing.

In those remarks, Obama mentioned the Great Recession, job creation, wage and income flatlining, college debt, health-care costs, immigration reform, climate change, Obamacare implementation, wildfires in Colorado . . . basically, almost every major issue except guns.

Until very recently, Organizing for Action’s fundraising e-mails emphasized the issue of gun control, again and again and again . . . and OFA had previously pledged to withhold support from four Senate Democrats who voted against the gun bill — Senators Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), and Max Baucus (Mont.).

From Mike Allen’s “Playbook,” a.k.a. that other political morning newsletter:

THE REASON PRESIDENT OBAMA is giving an economic address tomorrow (in Galesburg, Ill.), per a briefing by senior administration officials: People feel stable, but not secure. Since the inauguration, the administration has had to deal with the Middle East, gun safety and Snowden, and reporters have given attention to Benghazi and the IRS. So Obama wants to stop, grab the political debate and turn it to what he sees as the most important issue: growing the economy from the middle out, not the top down. Looking ahead to budget battles with Congress this fall, he’ll lay out the stakes, but won’t get into legislative tactics. He probably won’t use the word “sequester,” since many listeners wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

Is that last line sarcasm, or an actual expression of senior administration officials? Are they admitting that their “beware the horrors of sequester” campaign failed so spectacularly that the public at large not only isn’t upset about the spending cuts, but that they in fact forgot or never learned what it is?

If the public perception of the sequester is so casual and accepting, and the electorate has proven so persistently resistant to the administration’s usually effective scare tactics . . . and if the administration has grown so frustrated with its inability to shift public views on this topic that it has effectively dropped the issue . . .

. . . doesn’t the sequester represent the single biggest win for the cause of limited government in many, many years? And for that matter, for Republicans?

American Commitment Action Fund, a conservative super PAC, is launching a web video that brutally contrasts the campaign boasts of Newark mayor Cory Booker with the ugly realities of life in the city and the way he governs. In short, all glitzy image, few actual results:

The video features quite a bit of Booker criticism from Ras Baraka, a Newark city councilman . . . who is also the son of Amiri Baraka.

If that name sounds familiar, you’re probably remembering Baraka’s post-9/11 controversy:

In September 2002, at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, N.J., Amiri Baraka stood up on stage and read his recently published poem on the 9/11 attacks, “Somebody Blew Up America.”

The crowd reacted with stunned silence, and several people booed. A few days later, Gov. Jim McGreevey asked Baraka to resign his post as Poet Laureate of New Jersey. This year, Baraka returned to the festival, and read the poem again.

About half the audience stood to cheer when he was finished, while the other half was either clapping quietly, or sitting with arms crossed, scowling. Baraka hadn’t changed the poem, and the line that outraged so many people in 2002 was still there: “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed / Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day / Why did Sharon stay away?”

Who could imagine that 11 years later, his son would be featured in a conservative super PAC’s ad?

Epic Morning Jolt today covering Iraq’s big prison breakout, discussion of a bailout for Detroit, George Zimmerman emerges for a dramatic rescue, a new face appears in Georgia’s Senate race, what Despicable Me 2 puts parents through and . . . (deep breath) . . . yes, the royal baby.

Today’s preview: the Iraq section.

Oh, Hey, No Big Deal, Just 500 al-Qaeda Members Escaped Death Row from Abu Ghraib.

So, one of the good things about the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is that we don’t have to worry about that country anymore, right? The whole Sunni-Shia-Kurd rivalry, not our problem anymore. Rising sectarian violence, on par with the worst times of 2006 and 2007? Call somebody else.

Except . . . maybe what happens over there can come back to bite us anyway:

Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.

The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are gaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi’ite-led government that came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Other militants took up positions near the main road, fighting off security reinforcements sent from Baghdad as several militants wearing suicide vests entered the prison on foot to help free the inmates.

“The number of escaped inmates has reached 500, most of them were convicted senior members of al Qaeda and had received death sentences,” Hakim Al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defense committee in parliament, told Reuters.

Those 500 bad guys probably will cause trouble locally, and not necessarily set out to target Americans here or abroad . . . probably.

If you’re wondering, no, no one has ever escaped Guantanamo Bay (these guys don’t count) and no one has escaped the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, either. Four bad guys escaped from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2005, and all four were eventually recaptured or killed.

One other thought, since we’re briefly refocused on Iraq: The calculations of the death toll from the Iraq War range from 110,600 (the Associated Press) to The Lancet’s 601,027 to the “Opinion Research Business Survey,” which declared 1 million. (It will not surprise you that the latter numbers are greatly disputed.) But the number is reasonably estimated to be somewhere north of 100,000 and probably short of 200,000.

In other words, estimates of the death toll from the Syrian Civil War — 83,000 to 110,000 — are now reaching the low end of the Iraq War casualties; by the time the bloodbath over there ends, it may surpass the death toll from the Iraq War.

President Obama pivots to the economy . . . arguably for the second time this month. The RNC collected these “pivots” for a while, until they became as numerous as his statement expiration dates.

Sure, the unemployment rate is down to 7.6 percent, after peaking at 10.1 percent; of course, that’s a slow decline since the beginning of 2012 (8.3 percent). This is still high by historical standards (the unemployment rate was below 7 percent from June 1993 to December 2008) and the unemployment rate’s drop is fueled in part by a steep decline in the labor-force participation rate, from 66 percent of all Americans over age 16 to close to 63 percent.

If you’ve got money in the stock market, you’re enjoying a bullish run. About 30 percent of American households have $10,000 or more in stocks. But for most of the folks who suffered the biggest fall in the Great Recession’s start, back in autumn 2008, economic security is hard to find. Wages are stagnant, and actually slightly less than at the end of 2009.

Asked about the issues that will dominate the 2014 races, the heads of the NRCC and DCCC tell Chuck Todd the economy first, before Obamacare and immigration (admittedly related to the state of the economy), gun control, social issues, etc. The issue of our continuing economic troubles never went away; it’s just that the narrative-setters lost interest. To the political class of both parties, the pain is far away (Washington’s economy is comparatively thriving, even in the Age of Sequester) and their preferred options are blocked by the opposition’s role in government.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer assures us, “Over the next several weeks, the President will deliver speeches that touch on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class in America: job security, a good education, a home to call your own, affordable health care when you get sick, and the chance to save for a secure, dignified retirement.”

What holds back the economy?

• Companies are reluctant to hire the long-term unemployed.
• The increase in home ownership during the past decade made it tougher for workers to relocate for new opportunities in other places.
• Those who are classified “long-term unemployed” have generally lost skills that kept them competitive in the job market; folks who made a good living as Realtors during the housing boom have a tough time participating in, say, the fracking boom.
• Washington and state governments love certain industries — e.g. green-jobs programs that meet 55 percent of their job-placement targets — and hate others, e.g., EPA officials who compare their approach to oil companies to crucifixion.
• Obamacare’s regulations make part-time workers more economically attractive to employers than full-time workers.
• At the beginning of the year, payroll taxes went up, amounting to a 2 percent reduction in most Americans’ take-home pay.

These problems are not likely to be solved by another big-spending “jobs” bill; some of them are probably beyond the capacity of Washington to solve. But the president needs to say something about it — so he will give more speeches, and assure his followers that “if those mean House Republicans would just pass another version of the stimulus I passed in 2009, everything would be fine.”

The Morning Jolt starts off the week with a look at how New York’s media elite treated Barack Obama a decade ago, fun at the mulitplex, what the president should have called the Sequester, and . . . 

Everything You Need to Know About the Colorado Recall Elections

If you’re a fan of the Second Amendment, and you feel that a whole bunch of lawmakers — mostly Democrats — reacted to the horror of Newtown by rushing to pass a bunch of ill-thought gun control laws that would have done nothing to prevent that tragedy, then you need to pay a lot of attention to the recall efforts against two Colorado state lawmakers.

Second Amendment advocates aim to replace Democratic senators John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo. (They also tried to recall Senator Evie Hudak of Westminster and Representative Morse won, 48.1 percent to 47.2 percent, with about 250 votes separating the two (and Libertarian Douglas Randall collected 1,258 votes). That year, Giron won more solidly, 54.8 percent to 45.1 percent, a margin of about 4,000 votes. In that November midterm election, about 28,000 votes were cast in Morse’s race, about 40,000 votes in Giron’s. Of course, in a special recall election, turnout may be much lower.

The local Republican parties selected former Colorado Springs City Councilman Bernie Herpin to take on John Morse and George Rivera, former deputy chief of the Pueblo police force, to take on Giron.

Here’s how it works:

The ballot will include the original statement from the petitioners as to why the official in question should be recalled, as well as a no more than 300 word rebuttal from the official, if the official submits a statement.

The ballot will have two boxes, marked “Yes” approving the recall and “No” disapproving the recall. There will also be a list of candidates for whom those that voted for the recall may vote for to replace the official. In this sense, the recall election is held simultaneously with the election of the new official.

If a majority of participants vote “No” in the recall, the official whom the recall was filed against will remain in their position. If there is a majority of “Yes” votes, then the new official will be the candidate on the list with the most votes.

The election will be conducted by mail, and even more so than in regular elections, the details count in this one:

All active, registered voters in Senate district 11 will receive a mail-in ballot. Ballots will be mailed to military and overseas voters by August 9. Ballots will be mailed to local voters starting August 19.

There will be two sections on the ballot. One will ask whether or not Senator John Morse should be recalled. The second section will allow voters to choose a successor candidate.

Voters MUST answer the recall question to have their vote counted. The County Clerk and Recorder’s Office says if a voter skips the recall question their ballot will be voided, even if they voted for a successor candidate.

Ballots have to be received by the Clerk and Recorder’s Office by 7:00 p.m. September 10 in order to be counted. Voters can verify that their ballot was received by visiting the Go Vote Colorado website.

Herpin’s pitch:

I’m running to defend our Constitutional rights and promote an environment where small businesses are free to create jobs and improve our local community.

For too long, John Morse has been more interested in doing the bidding of Big Government interests in Denver and Washington and less interested in the economic concerns and well-being of our community.

We have the opportunity to remove the president of the senate and send a strong message that we will not tolerate elected officials who disrespect our Constitutional rights and ignore their constituents.

Many in our community know about my long standing vocal and public support of our Constitutional rights. I also have a history of serving our city and have always prided myself on being responsive to the people of Colorado Springs.

Rivera is pointing out that separate from Giron’s gun vote, she’s also voted for a slew of bills he deems bad for the district:

A bill that makes it easier for water to be taken from the Arkansas River basin to be moved to Aurora and other northern Colorado cities, the bill calling for higher renewable energy standards that will make the cost of electricity rise by up to 20% for those living in the rural electric areas like Pueblo West, the bill that makes it easier for an employee that has been terminated to sue small business owners like my wife and I and to ask for punitive damages for things like “mental anguish”, “inconvenience” or ”loss of enjoyment of life”, and the bill that completely changes our voting process to an all mail in ballot which greatly increases the risk of voter fraud.

These two state-senate districts will, in the coming six weeks, get a taste of what Wisconsin “enjoyed” recently, having lots and lots of people from outside the state taking an intense interest in their local elections:

Richard Bamberg’s phone has been ringing off the hook — not literally — but three calls last week and then four Thursday have made him a little jaded by the Senate District 11 recall effort.

It’s just the beginning of what may be hectic days until the Sept. 10 recall election for Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs.

“I asked to talk to their supervisor. I asked them to leave me alone,” Bamberg said of the most recent caller who asked a few questions and then spoke for several minutes about positive things Morse has done as a lawmaker. “The thing I don’t get is I’m not in Morse’s district.”

Christy Le Lait, campaign manager for A Whole Lot of People for John Morse, said the calls aren’t coming from its campaign.

Department of Bad Timing:

After five years of virtual silence during the region’s economic free fall, Detroit is on the verge of mounting a major marketing push to reestablish the city as a host of state and national meetings and conventions.

“Detroit, America’s Great Comeback City” will be the tagline for the new campaign, to launch around July 1 with national TV, radio and print ads, plus social media outreach. It’s the first national sales pitch in five years, but this time it’s built on existing momentum, including a 68% increase in hotel night stays from 2011-2012.

There’s also the $300-million expansion and upgrade of Cobo Center to brag about and some impressive already-booked business to build upon.

Maybe the “Help Us Come Back City”?

Also from today’s Jolt:

So What’s at the Heart of the ‘Free Jahar’ Movement?

Would the Rolling Stone magazine cover be less bothersome if we hadn’t also seen a “Free Jahar” movement appear in recent months?

Let Elizabeth Stoker of The Atlantic summarize the phenomenon:

Since the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man allegedly responsible, along with his now deceased older brother, for this year’s Boston Marathon bombings, media outlets have anxiously observed the development of the “Free Jahar movement.” Less a typical protest group and more a loosely affiliated confederation of conspiracy theorists, Tsarnaev sympathizers, and anti-government dissenters, these individuals communicate mainly through social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter, where they keep up to date on the latest developments in Tsarnaev’s trial by tagging pictures and text posts with #FreeJahar. The Twitter account devoted to the cause, @FreeJahar, has fewer than 2,000 followers. The handful of Tumblr accounts devoted to the same purpose use hashtags to indicate posts related to Dzhokhar, allowing for easy, anonymous perusal.

Oh, wait; Stoker feels these folks have been . . . wait for it . . . unfairly stereotyped!

Those who support Tsarnaev have a variety of reasons for doing so. Some believe he is innocent, and that the marathon bombings were perpetrated by the U.S. government. Others believe that Tsarnaev’s rights were violated during and shortly after his capture, while others fear that he will be subject to the death penalty, which they oppose. Yet despite the fact that conspiracy theories and their adherents abound all over the web, it is the primarily female users of these social media outlets who have been, despite their varied reasons for supporting Tsarnaev, uniformly reviled as a single entity in the media.

To properly smear Tsarnaev’s female supporters, it was first necessary to lump them together in a gender-based cadre stripped of whatever affiliations they may have ascribed to themselves: Tsarnaev fangirls.

What’s that? You feel the media isn’t giving these folks a fair shake? Then listen carefully, because somewhere the Tea Party is playing the world’s smallest violin in sympathy.

I’m going to do something I don’t ordinarily do: cheerfully cite Amanda Marcotte of Slate as a rebuttal:

Tsarnaev’s supporters insist that they have purely intellectual reasons for supporting the young man accused of causing three deaths and 14 amputations. They believe the government set him up. But they sure do spend a lot of time sharing pictures of him on Tumblr, squealing over any behavior of his that can be construed as “cute,” and clucking maternally over his well being. On Wednesday, outrage flared up in “Free Jahar” circles because of the unflattering portrayal of him in the court illustrations. The whole thing feels uncomfortably like a Justin Bieber fan squee — bad enough when it’s for Bieber, but even worse for someone who appears to be a remorseless killer.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing new about this. Every reasonably good-looking, famous criminal can count on getting a fan club of excitable women who justify their affections by denying his guilt or rationalizing his crimes — or both, since we’re not talking about rational people here. Olympian Oscar Pistorius, accused of murdering his girlfriend, has a devoted fan base that swings between claiming he was framed and hinting that his victim had it coming. Ted Bundy had scores of groupies, and even managed to marry one of them. And there are so many rabid fans of the violent Chris Brown (notably, not a killer) that even the object of their affection has asked them to cool it with the constant haranguing of whoever he’s currently beefing with.

So what’s in it for the women? I think the answer is in the fantasy many women have of loving a dangerous man who then, by virtue of this love, eventually reveals a gentleness he doesn’t show the rest of the world. It’s the old “my love tamed the dangerous beast” fairy tale of romance novels and Disney movies.

This puts Amanda Marcotte on largely the same page as . . . Michelle Malkin. Bipartisanship!

I would like to declare a war on women — namely, on all those cringe-inducing ninnies who lust after every celebrity criminal defendant with big muscles, tattoos, puppy-dog eyes, or Hollywood hair.

You know who I’m talking about, right? America’s Bad Boy groupies. They’re on the courthouse steps with their “Free Jahar” signs, cooing over how “hot” and “cute” the bloodstained Boston Marathon bombing suspect is. He “can blow me up with babies,” one moral reprobate quipped shortly after his capture. “I’m not gonna lie, the second bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is hot. #sorrynotsorry,” another young girl boasted.

If you think he’s hot now, sweetheart, you should check him out when he sits in the electric chair.

(I know, I know, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1984, and if federal courts sentence him to death, he’ll get lethal injection.)

So, in the Free Jahar crowd, are we seeing the same old freaky-crush-on-a-serial-killer phenomenon amplified in the age of social media, or is this something different?

It ties into his appearance, doesn’t it? We’re used to terrorists looking like this:

  

What, no Khalid Sheik Mohammed groupies? Okay, I guess they have some standards.

Terrorists in the public eye are not usually so young, and their life experiences are usually extremely different from that of the average American teenager. So perhaps Little Brother Bomber’s visage breaks through some young people’s cultural filters because he’s not old, he’s not obviously from another culture; he seems like someone they could have known.

And one of the constants of our popular culture is some young, fresh-faced allegedly cute young man who makes young women go insane with excitement and devotion:

 

Pick your generation.

However, this is a particularly dark turn for our already pretty insufferable culture, because it suggests that some people really can’t get past the idea that beautiful people are good and ugly people are bad. Although that school of thought has been around for a very, very long time:

The early Greeks were inclined to think that beautiful people were good and ugly people bad — still a common point of view, though likely to lead to disillusion. “The most beautiful is the most just,” proclaimed the Delphic Oracle. Plato opined that beauty lay in harmony and proportion, and was best discerned by the mind, not the eye. In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, following the philosopher Plotinus and Abbott Suger of St Denis, many were of the opinion that light and colour emanated from the divine.

The belief that a person’s character, good judgment, moral virtue, etc. is tied into their appearance is horsepuckey, of course.

Charles Krauthammer, back in 1999:

Early in their training of cinematic conventions, kids learn the rule of thumb for sorting out good guys from bad guys: the good-looking guy is good and the bad-looking guy is bad. Indeed, if the guy is positively ugly, he is the likely villain. And if he has something visibly wrong with him — a limp, a scar — he’ll be an especially cruel one.

Of course, Hollywood did not invent this cultural convention. It is a tradition that goes back at least as far as Richard III, whose “Deformed, unfinish’d . . . half made up” body — a hunchback, a limp — prefigured the disfigurement of his soul.

Krauthammer’s column went on to critique the deformed, handicapped Confederate Civil War–veteran villains of Wild, Wild West.

Did years and years of Hollywood’s visual shorthand somehow get hard-wired into how young people see the world?

Get ready for two very intense, quick fights in two state-legislative races that will carry a great deal of national weight on the gun-control issue:

A Denver judge Thursday ruled petitions submitted to oust a pair of Democratic senators from office are valid, a pivotal ruling that sets in motion Colorado’s first-ever recall election of state lawmakers.

“The petitions here substantially comply with law,” Denver District Court Judge Robert Hyatt said in his oral decision from the bench. “Recalls are a fundamental right of Colorado citizens.”

Shortly after Hyatt handed down the decision Thursday, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed an executive order to set the recall election date of Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo for Sept. 10.

Both are the targets of recalls by constituents for their support of stricter Colorado gun laws implemented this month.

Suddenly, every gun-control supporter and Second Amendment advocate will be focusing on these two state-legislative districts, hoping to send a signal about the post-Newtown gun laws.

From the final Morning Jolt of the week:

Detroit Is Bankrupt. Time to Turn the Whole Thing Over to Omni Consumer Products.

The least surprising shock of 2013:

Detroit, the once-thriving Midwest metropolis that gave birth to the nation’s auto industry, is now the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy.

Kevyn Orr, the city’s appointed emergency manager, formally sought federal bankruptcy court protection on Thursday after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, approved the filing, deeming the decision necessary “as a last resort to return this great city to financial and civic health for its residents and taxpayers.”

“I know many will see this as a low point in the city’s history,” Snyder wrote in a letter authorizing the bankruptcy filing. “If so, I think it will also be the foundation of the city’s future — a statement I cannot make in confidence absent giving the city a chance for a fresh start, without burdens of debt it cannot hope to fully pay.”

In the letter, Snyder explained his decision by citing statistics that have hobbled the city’s operations:

• The city’s unemployment rate has nearly tripled since 2000 and is more than double the national average.

• The homicide rate is at historically high levels, and the city has been named among America’s most dangerous for more than 20 years.

• Detroiters wait an average of 58 minutes for police to respond, compared with the national average of 11 minutes.

• An estimated 40% of the city’s street lights didn’t work in the first quarter of 2013.

• Roughly 78,000 city structures have been abandoned.

Funny to think how much of Obama’s message in 2012 was how wrong Romney was for writing an op-ed that ran with the headline, “Let Detroit go Bankrupt.” (Romney was in fact referring to the Big Three automakers and the bailout of the auto industry.) Chuck Todd may not be able to believe it, but a lot of folks see the latest developments as one more sign that the president brags about improvement even as circumstances actually get worse — turning a blind eye to Detroit, unsustainable local and state spending, and overall urban decay.

Conn Carroll: “I love how the standard liberal reaction to Detroit going bankrupt is to blame all the missing people. Why do you think they left, geniuses?”

Still, people predicted a dystopian, anarchic, crime-ridden future for Detroit going back to the late 1980s. In fact, as we look back on those fears of the future, the obvious solution is right there, all along:

Oh, like a robot cop would make today’s Detroit any worse.

The Democrats’ attacks on Virginia attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli have focused more on “he’s a dangerous right-wing extremist/he’s a clone of Todd Akin” than on trying to tie Cuccinelli to Governor Bob McDonnell’s donor-gift scandal, but it was likely the opposition would begin beating that drum louder as Election Day approached.

But that avenue of criticism is largely shut down now:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli solicited and initially neglected to disclose thousands of dollars in gifts from Jonnie Williams Sr. and troubled dietary supplement company Star Scientific, but broke no laws, a prosecutor’s report today says.

The investigation has also found no evidence that Cuccinelli, who also initially failed to disclose his ownership of more than $10,000 in Star Scientific stock, “in any way, promoted supported or assisted Star Scientific while he had a financial interest in the company.”

The findings, released this morning by the office of Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring, are a significant political boost for Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor this year. The attorney general has been dogged by Democrats over his affiliation to Williams and his company — at the center of ongoing state and federal probes involving Gov. Bob McDonnell and the gifts received by his family.

The inquiry by Herring’s office, which also involved the Virginia State Police, found no evidence that Cuccinelli knowingly violated the State and Local Government Conflict of Interest Act.

As I reported last week, the Cuccinelli defense was twofold: that he himself had noticed his failure to initially report the gifts and reported it to state authorities, and that not only had he not done favors for his donors, but his office actually ruled against them the few times they had business before the state.

“I inadvertently didn’t report some things. I’m the one who went back and found them, and I’m the one who held a press conference and said, ‘hey, here are all my items.’ I missed four or five over the course of four years. That’s part of my commitment to transparency. When I make mistakes, I own up to them. Back in the Senate I supported budget transparency and other changes like that. That’s also a part of why I put out eight years of my tax returns, and I think my opponent ought to do that as well.”

(Cuccinelli also asked the Richmond Commonwealth Attorney to conduct an independent review of his disclosures.)

Cuccinelli feels like he’s got a pretty good defense. He doesn’t merely not do special favors for his donors; he’s something of an ingrate, because as attorney general, he’s actually made decisions and fought suits against them.

“Speaking for my office, the only thing [Jonnie R. Williams Sr. has] ever gotten out of my office is opposition to one lawsuit. So there’s been nothing in our office other than that one case where we came out and immediately opposed their position. . . . The perception is met best by facts, and the fact is that the one occasion that something came across the desk of the attorney general’s office responsibility, they were pushed back on, they were fought, without giving an inch.”

This was a 2011 Star Scientific lawsuit, challenging a sales-and-use tax assessment on tobacco-curing barns the company owns in Mecklenburg, Va.

“Hey, look at my biggest donor in the last ten years. What did they get for it? They got an electricity bill that will drag Dominion’s revenue down $700 or $800 million over the next twelve years. That’s what they’ve got for it. Virginians will continue to get that good policy, regardless of who’s supporting me or not.” He appears to be referring to this case, where the “Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a decision of the State Corporation Commission (SCC) regarding Dominion Virginia Power’s recently concluded base rate case. The court rejected the arguments advanced by Dominion, which would have allowed Dominion to earn a higher return on equity from customers than the SCC’s interpretation of Virginia law allows.” Cuccinelli and his office represented Dominion customers in the court fight.

All you need to know, in one word: ObamaCareNado.

Well played, Crossroads GPS. Well played.