For your entertainment, you are asked to determine which bill pushed by a Republican state legislator is stupider: This one or this one?

The Justice Department has issued their formal press release in the plea arrangement with Lorraine Brown, the former President of fraudulent foreclosure document processor DocX, a division of LPS. Brown pleaded guilty to wire and mail fraud and faces five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines, from what DoJ describes as “a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million fraudulently signed and notarized mortgage-related documents with property recorders’ offices throughout the United States.” She also acknowledged lying to the FBI and other federal regulators investigating the scheme.

Separately, the state of Missouri, which had previously indicted Brown in the same scheme, announced their own plea agreement with her on fraudulent and forged document filings in his state.

The Founder of DocX, which later changed its name to LPS, has pleaded GUILTY in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida. In the “Factual Basis” document attached to her Plea Agreement, Lorraine Borwn, the founder of DocX, LLC, admits that the documents produced by these companies from the period 2003-2009 were forgeries.

Medicine in the 1920s was extremely crude, and death was always so close. In our fatalistic view, life and death were a lot closer than they are now. Infection from an injury like the one my mother suffered could kill as easily as not. The cure for everything at the time was gasoline. On the heels of war and a pandemic flu so severe that we still study it today, we were in a position at that time of being extremely poor combined with a lack of medicine. People never thought of death as a strangeness.

But at least Representative Todd Akin, the son of his mother, father of his daughters, husband of his wife, and pious Christian that he is, didn’t call Senator Claire McCaskill a bitch.

‘Cause that would be downright ungentlemanly.

Todd Akin has three nightmares. First, Claire McCaskill has a devastating trio of ads featuring women who have been raped, including a conservative who says she’s never voted for Claire before, but she will now. Second, conservative men who are turned off by Akin’s views on women are starting to be heard.

Akin isn’t taking this sitting down. He’s launched a four-city tour to push back against this called “Missouri Women Stand With Todd Akin,” but it has a rather large problem from the standpoint of optics. None of the women that Akin’s campaign listed as headliners for the tour are from Missouri. Ooops.

And then there’s that third nightmare-inducing commercial, with all the naked women.

Don’t believe me? Click on through . . .

With Todd Akin standing firm in his decision to remain on the Missouri ballot as the GOP candidate for US Senate, it falls to the rest of the Republican party leadership to flip-flop on their condemnations and fall into line.

And they have.

What’s curious, though, is that one of the flip-floppers is former MO senator and current Romney security affairs advisor Jim Talent, who is rumored to be in line for a possible cabinet post should Romney win. Either Romney will soon flip-flop on Akin as well, or Talent has decided that there will be no Romney administration come Jan 21, 2013, and he’d better help the GOP take the Senate. (Or, of course, both.)

Here’s the GOP’s current political calculus, courtesy of Todd Akin: The more Romney’s fortunes founder, the more the GOP needs to pull out all the stops to win the Senate, and if principles like “women are human beings, too” need to be sacrificed to the cause, so be it.

In 1976, Jack Danforth was running for the US Senate in Missouri; in 2012, Todd Akin is running for Danforth’s old seat. In 1976, the GOP platform noted a wide diversity of opinion about abortion and the wisdom of Roe v. Wade; in 2012, the GOP platform demands adherence to One Right Answer. In 1976, the GOP platform pushed for adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment; in 2012, it pushes for a human life amendment.

In 2006, as this religiously-motivated shift in GOP politics unfolded, Danforth lamented it, much to the amusement of conservatives like the SBC’s Richard Land. But Danforth also predicted “The more people think about it, the more people will resist it.” Today, people are realizing that Todd Akin is the embodiment of the GOP platform, not the exception to it. The reaction to him and his comments makes it appear that Danforth may have been right.

I sure hope so.

Care for a Friday afternoon news dump? Todd Akin, the Missouri Senate candidate whose comments about abortion, pregnancy and rape dominated the week, will hold a press conference today at 4:15pm CT in St. Louis County. I’m not sure why this would be held if it weren’t an update to the status of his Senate campaign.

Akin missed the deadline to easily withdraw from the race in Missouri, but it’s not really that much more difficult at this point.

It’s not because Akin might lose to McCaskill, costing the GOP control of the Senate. It’s not because the focus on Akin might derail the careful planning for next week’s Republican National Convention. It’s not because the focus on Akin might spill over into the presidential race, forcing Romney and Ryan to talk more about social issues than the deficit, the budget, and the economy, and perhaps costing them the White House. It’s because Akin chose what Ryan did not.