A small band of foreclosure fraud fighters in Florida, ground zero for the housing crisis, decided to get involved in public service at one of the most basic levels possible. These activists want to become the public official who tracks the transfer of mortgages in their respective counties. Sometimes this is called a register of deeds, or recorder of deeds, or a clerk of court. It’s traditionally a backwater for legacy types who, if they’re lucky, never get their name in the papers. But since the foreclosure fraud crisis, a few of these registers of deeds have shown real leadership in exposing criminal fraud in the mortgage document process. Inspired by their efforts, one of the leading foreclosure fraud activists in the nation, Lisa Epstein, is running for office.

You may remember Waukesha County (Wisconsin) Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. Last year, she miraculously found thousands of votes in a state Supreme Court election two days after the balloting, which threw the race to incumbent David Prosser over JoAnn Kloppenburg. A subsequent investigation showed that Nickolaus violated state law on her reporting of election results. Also, [...]

It seems a lifetime ago that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v Connecticut that a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. Eight years later the Constitutional principles underlying that decision were pivotal to the court’s ruling in Roe v Wade which recognized that a woman’s right to have an abortion was a protected private decision with some exceptions.

Many cheered when the Obama Administration intervened and refused to pre-clear Texas’ draconian voter ID legislation. And given the risk to disenfranchisement of particularly minority voters, it was the right thing to do. But a pernicious by-product of this has now been realized: Texas, in its response, will seek to invalidate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act entirely.

Some bad news out of Maine: Chellie Pingree, the progressive member of Congress who considered running for Senate after Olympia Snowe retired, backed out of the race today. The presence of independent former Governor Angus King in the race was enough to get her to drop her plans. That leaves progressive-leaning Dems without a candidate in a state they might have won.

As expected, Vladimir Putin declared victory in the Presidential election in Russia. It would mark the third go-around as President for Putin, after a stint as Prime Minister. Since his first Presidential run in 2000, Putin has remade Russia in his image, centralizing power, crushing dissent (particularly in the media), and basically instituting a kleptocracy.

Scott Walker has decided not to challenge any of the over one million signatures for his recall, meaning that an election will likely be held in the spring. The delays to date allowed Walker to gather unlimited campaign donations, but the recall proponents are already running their first ad.

Various “progressive voices” that agree or sympathize with GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s positions on wars, foreign policy and civil liberties have spoken in favor of the possible impact Paul could have on debate in this country during the 2012 Election. Those individuals have been quickly met with fervent disapproval from liberals who have reflexively suggested that any comments that could be considered supportive of Paul essentially mean one is “endorsing” Paul, urging people to support someone who opposes reproductive rights for women, arguing there are only marginal differences between Paul and President Barack Obama and that Paul just might be their secret political hero.

Just to show how useless his three-tier position is in terms of inoculating him on the issue, last night Rick Santorum slammed Mittens. Romney’s defense of what happened in Massachusetts? He was just obeying the court’s orders.

Protests in Russia over the weekend, after a rigged Parliamentary election that still saw Vladimir Putin’s party lose ground, has led to an additional challenge for Putin in next year’s Presidential race. The near-term ramifications for this open dissent is that it offers an opportunity to potentially challenge Putin in the elections, and one Russian billionaire will take up that effort.