Arizona House candidate Jesse Kelly (R) refused to discuss his endorsement from a white supremacist group during an interview with KGUN9 News this week, claiming the question about it was “completely out of bounds.”

When the anchor began to ask Kelly why he accepted the endorsement from political action group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a controversial organization linked to neo-Nazi groups, Kelly’s campaign spokesman jumped in to cut her off, saying the question was “not unacceptable” because it was “not recent.” When the anchor persisted, Kelly echoed his spokesman’s sentiment:

KELLY: It was in 2010. This election is about jobs, and the economy, and lower gas prices. Frankly it’s completely out of bounds.

Watch it:

However, although both Kelly and his spokesman are referring to the endorsement from AILPAC during the 2010 race that Kelly ran against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the group actually renewed their endorsement of Kelly just last week. Kelly is currently running again to replace Giffords’ spot now that she is stepping down.

It’s unclear whether Kelly actively sought out the group’s endorsement, or whether he received it unsolicited. And, to be clear, Kelly should not be blamed for someone’s unsolicited decision to endorse him. He is accountable, however, for declining to distance himself from the group when given the opportunity to do so during the KGUN9 interview.

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she’s operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi’s World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that they had received information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request “an administrative hearing to present evidence” disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in “the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls.”

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn’t heard anything back.

It’s unclear precisely how Maureen was identified by the state as an ineligible voter.

Maureen’s story raises serious questions about the integrity of the massive voter purge being conducted under the direction of Gov. Rick Scott. Last year, Scott instructed his former Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to compile a list of people who were registered in Florida but ineligible to vote. Browning resigned in February after struggling to find reliable data, stating “We were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it.”

Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), who represents Ms. Russo, has called on the Governor Scott to “immediately suspend” the voting purge because of widespread inaccuracies and a lack of transparency.

Unfortunately, Maureen’s situation is not an isolated incident. Earlier this week, ThinkProgress reported Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel, a Republican, posted a picture on Twitter of a voter on the list falsely identified as ineligible, with his passport. Congressman Deutch also told ThinkProgress he’s heard from several other constituents who have been removed from the rolls without justification.

It is unclear what legitimate purpose Gov. Scott has to move forward with the voting purge in the face of multiple documented errors. Florida has no history of mass voter fraud. It does have a history, however, of mass voter disenfranchisement. By one estimate, 7000 Florida voters were wrongfully removed from the voter rolls for the 2000 presidential election — 13 times George W. Bush’s margin of victory in that state after the Supreme Court halted the post-election recount.

Texas trial Judge Trey Loftin is running for reelection. He’s also currently hearing a case in which he’s handed down some rulings favoring a drilling company. And he wants you to know that his decisions favoring this corporation are why you should vote for him:

A Texas state judge is promoting his recent decisions favoring a gas driller in its dispute with a local landowner as part of his election campaign, a move some legal scholars say may violate state judicial ethics rules.

With aspects of the case still pending in his courtroom, Judge Trey Loftin sent fliers to voters saying he forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back down.

Loftin, who is campaigning to keep his state judgeship in a county west of Dallas, also sent out materials with the image of talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who credited the judge’s ruling in favor of driller Range Resources Corp. (RRC) (RRC), based in Fort Worth, Texas, for getting the EPA to reverse course.

The clear implication of his campaign fliers, of course, is that a vote for Judge Loftin is a vote for the very same kind of industry-friendly, Limbaugh-approved decisions he’s handed down in the past. Rather than, say, future decisions that side with big business only when the law favors big business and with local landowners when the law is on their side.

Worse, by making a case that is still pending in his courtroom a centerpiece of his campaign, Loftin might as well advertise that voters (and industry donors) can influence the outcome of that very case simply by supporting his campaign. This kind of campaign would be inappropriate even if Loftin were simply suggesting that he would rule against a frivolous lawsuit claiming that every Texan has a fundamental right to an unlimited supply of purple plastic plates, but it is all the more troubling when he implies that a wealthy and powerful industry group could keep a friendly judge on the bench by throwing their support behind him.

A report by the Violence Policy Center shows that deaths caused by firearms outpaced deaths caused by motor vehicles in 10 states in 2009. Deaths caused by cars still outpace those caused by guns nationally, 36,361 to 31,236. The ten states in which there were more gun deaths then car deaths are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington.

State	Gun Deaths	Motor Vehicle Deaths
Alaska	104	84
Arizona	856	809
Colorado	583	565
Indiana	735	715
Michigan	1,095	977
Nevada	406	255
Oregon	417	394
Utah	260	256
Virginia	836	827
Washington	623	580

According to VPC, a successful decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy has resulted in a 43% decline in motor-vehicle deaths since 1966. That strategy includes making changes to vehicles and highways to increase safety. Meanwhile, firearms are subject to limited regulation, and the rate of gun deaths remain largely unchanged. VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand says

Americans are reaping the benefits of smart safety regulation of motor vehicles. The idea that gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths in 10 states is stunning when one considers that 90 percent of American households own a car while fewer than a third own firearms. It is also important to consider that motor vehicles–unlike guns–are essential to the functioning of the entire U.S. economy.

Gun rights supporters have reacted to the study predictably by questioning both the analysis and the motivation of VPC. Arizona State Sen. Frank Antenori (R-Vail) said that comparing deaths caused by firearms with those caused by cars is unfair because while car deaths are accidental, most gun deaths are not, while the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners questioned how VPC connected a firearm to a death. Nevertheless, if public policy makers ignore the data the number of states where there are more gun than car deaths is likely only to increase.

–Alex Brown

Douglas Holtz-Eakin is one of the Republican Party’s top economic pundits. He served as a top advisor to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign. He organized an amicus brief which the Eleventh Circuit relied on heavily in its decision striking down the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that his brief is riddled with factual errors and miscalculations. And he is one of the nation’s top evangelists for the idea that we can solve our economic woes simply by saving rich people from the crushing burden of having to pay their fair share of taxes.

Before Holtz-Eakin began his second career as a salesman for Republican economic policy, however, he actually was a serious economist. In 2004, Holtz-Eakin served as Director of the Congressional Budget Office, and he was asked to analyse the impact on the federal budget of eliminating the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and extending marriage equality throughout the nation. According to the top Republican economist, opposition to marriage equality cannot be squared with the GOP’s supposed devotion to deficit reduction, as marriage equality slightly reduces the deficit:

The potential effects on the federal budget of recognizing same-sex marriages are numerous. Marriage can affect a person’s eligibility for federal benefits such as Social Security. Married couples may incur higher or lower federal tax liabilities than they would as single individuals. In all, the General Accounting Office has counted 1,138 statutory provisions—ranging from the obvious cases just mentioned to the obscure (landowners’ eligibility to negotiate a surface-mine lease with the Secretary of Labor)—in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving “benefits, rights, and privileges.” In some cases, recognizing same-sex marriages would increase outlays and revenues; in other cases, it would have the opposite effect. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that on net, those impacts would improve the budget’s bottom line to a small extent: by less than $1 billion in each of the next 10 years (CBO’s usual estimating period). That result assumes that same-sex marriages are legalized in all 50 states and recognized by the federal government.

According to last night’s federal court decision holding DOMA unconstitutional, Holtz-Eakin’s economic analysis is not simply an interesting historic artifact — it’s also a body blow to the forces trying to protect anti-gay discrimination from the Constitution. In defending the law, anti-gay Members of Congress proposed four reasons why they believed excluding gay couples from their constitutional right to marry is somehow justified, among them a claim that DOMA “is justified as an enactment designed to conserve scarce government resources.” Holtz-Eakin’s analysis refutes this claim, and the district court relied upon it in explaining why DOMA must go down.

In many ways, the resurrection of Holtz-Eakin’s days as a non-partisan economist is a metaphor for why conservative efforts to cling to anti-gay discrimination are doomed to failure. The most intriguing line in yesterday’s opinion is when it characterizes DOMA as an attempt to “establish[] an across-the-board federal definition of marriage limiting it to heterosexual couples, and preempting any opportunity to test the impact of state laws evolving to recognize same-sex marriage.” When marriage equality was nothing more than an idea, conservatives could scare the nation with warnings that gay couples would recruit your children, raise your taxes and destroy your marriage. Now it is a reality in many states — even if the federal government still needs to extend benefits to these couples — and the parade of horribles that anti-gay groups predicted never made it out the gate.

Holtz-Eakin’s memo demonstrates, however, that anti-gay discrimination was doomed even before America got its first taste of marriage equality. Reality leaks through, even if Congress does everything in its power to keep it away.