In late 2008, as the nation’s entire financial system stood on the verge of collapse, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. President George W. Bush signed the bill, bailing out Wall Street banks who were up to their metaphorical noses in toxic assets. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), then a private citizen and college president, told Politico at the time that, contrary to 2008 presidential GOP nominee Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) earlier fears, the government intervention had been initially successful.

Now a secret-money outside spending group tied to Karl Rove, the man perhaps most responsible for the Bush presidency, is running a new attack suggesting that Kerrey had somehow acted inappropriately because he expressed his opinion.

War hero Bob Kerrey, after retiring from the Senate in 2001, is running to reclaim his old seat this November. The “issue advocacy” ad, titled “Disturbing,” says:

Bob Kerrey supported the Wall Street bailout while serving on the board of a company that tried to exploit it. Kerrey’s company tried a bureaucratic ploy to get bailout funds, but the ploy failed. These schemes were called a “disturbing trend” by an independent watchdog, violating the spirit fo the law to jump on the gravy train. For Bailout Bob Kerrey, it’s Wall Street ways, not Nebraska values. Tell him, support balanced budgets, not bailouts.

Watch the spot:

Nearly everything in this ad is disingenuous. The ad strongly implies that Kerrey had had something to do with the enactment of TARP. He was not a senator at the time, nor a lobbyist. The ad’s only citation for the argument is the 2008 Politico article in which Kerrey spoke positively about the bailout after the fact.

The insurance company mentioned in the ad — Genworth — was one that Kerrey advised, but did not control. It allegedly tried to buy a struggling bank to qualify for bailout funds — a move that even the watchdog concedes was totally legal. The group cited in the ad — the Project On Government Oversight — wrote to Congress: “We do not accuse these companies of wrongdoing in acquiring other financial institutions.”

If the secret funders behind Crossroads GPS bothered to look at the record, when Kerrey left the Senate in 2000, the budget was indeed balanced. Kerrey was the deciding vote in the Senate in 1993 for President Clinton’s budget reconciliation act, which set the nation on the path of deficit reduction (his yes vote, combined with the vice president’s, allowed Democrats to pass the bill without a single Republican supporter). In fact, he left a roughly $236 billion dollar surplus.

It was “Bailout Bush” and “Bailout Rove” who turned that the budget surplus into a $1.2 trillion deficit. What is “disturbing” is that Crossroads GPS is using money from undisclosed donors to run ads aimed at misleading voters.

Yesterday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly passed a watered-down Violence Against Women Act — by 222 to 205 margin. The bill not only stripped important provisions from the Senate version but also included provisions that may put women in greater safety risk. For this and other reasons, 23 Republicans voted against the bill along with 199 Democrats.

Just six Democrats voted for the weak tea House Republican version of the bill. Five — Reps. John Barrow (D-GA), David Boren (D-OK), Jim Matheson (D-UT), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), and Colin Peterson (D-MN) — are members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition. But the biggest surprise was a yes vote from Rep. Shelely Berkley (D-NV).

Berkley, who is running for Senate this year, has previously been a strong voice for women’s health and safety. On April 26, she tweeted that she was proud those in the Senate “who helped pass the Violence Against Women Act.”

A Berkley spokesman forwarded a statement from the Congresswoman, explaining her vote:

It’s sad that on an issue as important as domestic violence prevention, Washington Republicans have refused to allow a vote on the full Violence Against Women Act passed by the Senate with a bipartisan majority. The fact that a full debate on this issue is not allowed illustrates exactly what is wrong with politics in Washington. However, while today’s legislation is far from perfect, it is better than not having any version of the Violence Against Women Act at all.

Additionally, in a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), she lamented that while she strongly supports the Senate version, because the the majority did not allow a vote on that stronger version, she was “forced to choose between a deeply flawed version of the Violence Against Women Act or nothing at all.”

While her frustration with the Republican majority’s obstruction of a real Violence Against Women Act re-authorization is understandable, the version she voted for was so deeply flawed that many of her colleagues — including even some in the GOP — determined that the Republican version was not necessarily better than nothing at all.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill, via a “motion to recommit,” warning that the Republican’s bill violates the confidentiality a victim is entitled to by telling her abuser that she called the cops.

Additionally, the House version stripped out much-needed protections protecting same-sex couples, immigrants, and Native Americans against domestic violence. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), who voted against the bill, argued that the bill needs House GOP-removed provisions “that would clarify equal treatment for LGBT individuals, bolster enforcement on Native American reservations, and ensure that victims aren’t deported simply for reporting domestic abuse.” Biggert explained her opposition, saying “We don’t need a perfect bill. We need a bill that can provide a solid foundation on which to begin conference negotiations with the Senate. H.R. 4970 fails on this count.”

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett — the state’s top election official — made an appearance on a local radio show yesterday in which he threatened to keep President Obama’s name off of the state’s November ballot unless the state of Hawaii provides his official birth certificate.

Bennett is the latest Republican elected official to call into question Obama’s place of birth in recent months. His comments were first flagged by the site White House Dossier:

BENNETT: First of all, I’m not playing to the birthers, I’m not a birther. I believe that the president was born in Hawaii, or at least I hope he was…Hawaii has a special provision in their law that allows other government officials from other states to request what’s called a verification in lieu of a certified copy of a birth certificate. So I’m not asking for the certified copy of the birth certificate at all…I was frankly expecting that they would very quickly and very simply say ‘yes.’ Eight weeks later, they haven’t said, I can’t seem to get them to say yes.

In fact, Hawaii said “yes” over a year ago. Last April, Obama released a certified copy of his long form birth certificate to the public. And while that did nothing to quell the furor of birthers like Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, it more than meets Bennett’s verification requirement.

And yet Bennett is insisting on still more costly and time-consuming work by the state of Hawaii to verify they have the original document on hand. The reason for his suspicion? Arpaio’s sham investigation into the copy released by President Obama raised sufficient questions:

BENNETT: When Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse released a press conference a few week ago, or a month ago or whenever it was, that the birth certificate posted on the White House website might be fraudulent, I started getting, as you might imagine, literally over 1,200 emails from people saying ‘well that’s proof, you should require the president to produce the original of his birth certificate in order to be on the ballot of Arizona.’

Arpaio’s press conference more closely resembled an SNL parody than a serious investigation, and it was widely ridiculed for employing faulty “science” and drawing wild conclusions based on little more than technological anomalies.

Bennett is hardly the first person to propose removing Obama from the general election ballot this fall, but as secretary of state, he is in a position to actually act on those threats. Bennett’s insistence that he is not a birther and is simply doing his due diligence as the state’s top election official is a distinction without difference, as it ignores the fact that he is accepting as possibility that Obama’s publicly available birth certificate is fraudulent.

The group of GOP strategists who were exposed for their race-baiting plan to attack President Obama on his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright are trying to distance themselves from a proposal that sought to portray “Barack Hussein Obama” as a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”

Brian Baker, president and general counsel of the Ending Spending Action Fund — the super PAC that considered the Wright attacks — appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday to argue that the PAC and chief financier Joe Ricketts were only interested in criticizing the administration’s handling of the economy and wanted to steer clear of “attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.”

But Baker’s comments to the New York Times before the controversy erupted on Thursday may complicate his attempts to distance the PAC from the proposal. Baker told the newspaper on Wednesday that no decision has been made on whether or not to dredge up Wright. Asked to clarify the remark this morning, Baker claimed that he meant to say that “we will not be doing this”:

MARK HALPERIN (TIME): Is that accurate? Did you tell the New York Times on Wednesday that you all had not made a decision about whether to go with this plan or not?

BAKER: Mark, what I said to the New York Times — and I tried to make very clear that I had not spoken to Mr. Ricketts on this — that when I got this thing on Thursday, I didn’t think it was anything worth consideration. Joe wasn’t at the meeting. I never spoke to Mr. Ricketts about it, and what I said to him very clearly was, ‘This was so far a field than what we wanted’ and I pointed him to the sentence in the report which says we know you wanted something related to spending and we’re giving you something related to character. So I said this is just one of many proposals. And when I said no decisions have been made, I was meaning we will not be doing this. Now, I could have been clearer. Yes, I should have been clearer. But when I meant no decisions have been made, I meant we’re not moving forward. That was what I was trying to communicate to the New York Times.

Watch it:

Baker and his colleagues are doing serious damage control, but Fred Davis — whose company drafted the proposal — insists that Baker did not shoot it down. In a statement yesterday, the firm said, “The Ricketts family never approved it, and nothing has happened on it since the presentation.”

While most Republicans — including Romney himself — are disavowing the smear campaign, at least one prominent party member has endorsed the Wright attacks. Herman Cain, former Presidential candidate and Romney endorser, told Greta van Susteren that Rev. Wright is “fair game.” “[Q]uite frankly, it wasn’t highlighted enough in 2008 when he was running for president the first time,” he added.

During the GOP primary, Newt Gingrich made attacking Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital one of his primary focuses. “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation,” Gingrich said in New Hampshire in January, “we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” “You have to raise questions when somebody comes in, takes over a company…and then drains of its money and walks off leaving people behind on unemployment,” Gingrich told Bloomberg of Romney’s time at Bain.

Gingrich’s Super PAC was even more aggressive, purchasing a lengthy documentary-style video that assailed Bain Capital, and running other ads hitting Romney for killing jobs at Bain.

But now that Gingrich is supporting Romney and campaigning for him, the former House Speaker is criticizing attacks on Bain, saying they won’t work. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Gingrich did not exactly recant, but did acknowledge the ineffectiveness of one attack he used on Romney – the private equity firm Bain Capital. When Gingrich accused Romney and Bain of taking over companies and downsizing them at the expense of workers, he was widely condemned by fellow Republicans and eventually backed off.

This week the Obama campaign released an ad along those same lines. Gingrich said his experience should be a lesson to Obama: “that dog won’t hunt.”

Gingrich said the attack will not resonate in voters’ minds as they think: “You want me to be mad because in one company somewhere Romney may have in fact been involved in someone losing their job while you as president have been involved in millions of people losing their jobs?”

Perhaps Gingrich just thinks attacks on Romney’s record won’t be successful, or perhaps he’s trying to Etch-A-Sketch away the myriad attacks he launched against on the former Massachusetts governor during the primary, now that Romney is the presumed GOP nominee and it’s useful for Gingrich to curry favor with him.