Though statewide legislation voter ID legislation failed earlier this year, county commissioners in eastern North Carolina approved a measure yesterday requiring photo identification in order to vote.

In June, Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) vetoed a bill that would have required all North Carolinians to produce a photo ID before voting. Perdue’s decision prevented the Tar Heel State from joining over a half dozen other states, from Texas to Wisconsin to South Carolina, where Republican legislatures have enacted strict new voter ID requirements in an effort to disenfranchise student, minority and low-income voters who tend to vote for Democrats.

Commissioners in Craven County, a small county on the North Carolina coast, took matters into their own hands this week, approving a photo ID measure for their voters. Jon Erickson of WCTI has more:

The proposal, which passed 5-to-2, would “require voter identification in order to participate in future Craven County elections,” according to the county’s measure.

If enacted, the measure would prevent Elon Hill from voting unless he gets identification.

“The first time I voted… I didn’t have [photo identification],” said Hill, an Army veteran who lives in New Bern.

Commissioner Scott Darcy, who introduced the measure, told a reporter he was comfortable with the fact that the new requirement would “affect fewer than 1,000 people in the county.”

Craven County’s move will have to be approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature before it can go into effect. However, unlike in June, Perdue will not have say in the matter. The North Carolina constitution mandates that “local bills” – those that apply to fewer than 15 counties – are exempted from gubernatorial vetoes.

Earlier this year, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) announced a plan to essentially rig the 2012 presidential election by giving away up to a dozen of the state’s electoral votes to whoever gets the Republican nomination. Under Corbett’s plan, each of the state’s 18 congressional districts — which are being gerrymandered so that as many as 12 of them favor Republicans — would choose how to allocate a single electoral vote rather than having all of the state’s votes go to the winner of the state. Democrats won Pennsylvania in every presidential election since 1992 — but Corbett’s plan would all but ensure that the GOP candidate received more electoral votes from the state even if the state’s voters decisively prefer to reelect President Obama.

Since Corbett announced this election rigging plan, numerous Republicans have opposed it on the grounds that it could endanger a few Republican House seats by causing the Obama campaign to shift resources into those districts (no Republican seems bothered by the fact that rigging elections is wrong). For now, these dissenters appear to be carrying the day:

Republican-sponsored proposal to change how Pennsylvania’s electoral votes are counted in next year’s presidential election appears to be running out of steam. [...] “I see no movement on it. I’m not going to push for movement, but I still support it,” Corbett, a Republican, told a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon. [...]

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, the bill’s sponsor, responded to Corbett by saying that advancing the bill would require a considerable effort by the Senate, the House, and the governor.

“At this time, my primary focus is completing our work on legislation regarding education reforms, the Marcellus Shale industry, and transportation funding,” wrote Pileggi (R., Delaware). “When those items are finished, we can revisit the Electoral College reform legislation, although I do not believe there will be sufficient time to advance it this year.”

So the good news is the plan is probably dead. The bad news is that it can be revived at any time. Unlike many other states engaged in drastic GOP overreach, Pennsylvania has no provision for citizens to repeal laws by referendum, and no provision to recall manifestly unfit elected officials such as Tom Corbett.

In other words, there is nothing other than sheer public outrage preventing Corbett from reviving this plan in late 2012 if it looks like President Obama is headed towards a close victory that could be prevented by some creative election rigging tactics.

For many years, insurance behemoth AIG was so poorly managed that the American taxpayer eventually had to invest nearly $70 billion in the incompetently run company to prevent its collapse from taking the entire U.S. economy along with it (much of this money has since been repaid). Former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg, however, thinks that the American people haven’t done enough to protect his massive fortune, so his company filed a lawsuit demanding even more taxpayer money:

Starr International, the company run by the former head of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), has filed a $25 billion lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that the takeover of the insurance company at the height of the financial crisis was unconstitutional.

When the government took an 80 percent interest in AIG during the financial crisis, it did so without “due process or just compensation,” in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, according to the suit filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The unbridled arrogance of this lawsuit is astonishing. While the wealthy insurance baron is correct that the Constitution does not allow private property to be taken “without just compensation” — a requirement that generally requires the government to pay a property owner the fair market value for their property — his legal complaint can be rebutted with just one chart:

That’s the near total collapse of AIG’s stock price immediately after investors learned that the insurance giant was little more than a smoking pile of toxic assets. So, at the time when the federal government took a supermajority interest in AIG, the fair market value for this interest was only slightly north of zero. Rather than receiving zero dollars for AIG’s mix of toxic sludge, however, AIG received tens of billions of dollars from the American people.

Now, however, its former CEO wants even more.

Last week, ThinkProgress reported on a Mississippi woman who received three years in federal prison because she lied on a series of forms in order to obtain $4,367 in food stamps she needed to feed herself and her two children. Meanwhile, this happened:

According to U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis, the Synthes officials wanted to beat their competitors to market without going through the lengthy process of getting the bone cement product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So they plotted to train select surgeons in its off-label use and then have the doctors publish their findings, the judge said.

The program continued even after a patient died in surgery in Texas in 2003 and another died in California. The patients suffered sharp drops in blood pressure after the bone cement compound was injected into their spines. Synthes only halted the training after a third death in 2004.

“One adverse event should have been enough to let you know that this course was not right,” the judge said. “I can’t understand how there wasn’t a stop sign.”

Former President Michael Huggins, of West Chester, Pa., and former Senior Vice President Thomas B. Higgins, of Berwyn, were sentenced to nine months in prison. John J. Walsh, of Coatesville, the former director of regulatory and clinical affairs, was at the West Chester-based company less time and received a five-month sentence. Former Synthes Vice President Richard Bohner, of Malvern, had his sentencing postponed after his lawyer became ill in court.

So, we now living in a country where a poor woman who steals bread to feed herself and her family receives a prison sentence that is four times harsher than the one doled out to corporate executives who killed three people. The woman who lied to receive food stamps paid back the $4,367 she illegally obtained. Nothing can bring back the three lives these executives cut short.