Remember that $150 check that Ann Romney wrote to Planned Parenthood in 1994?  Turns out that the check was for a fundraiser to benefit Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts.

And Mitt Romney was there.  Blue Mass Group has got the photo to prove it.  Here's the link -- I can't post photos here.

When news of Ann's check came out, Team Romney said that it was her contribution, not his; that she couldn't remember why she wrote the check; and that Mitt might not even have known about it.  You be the judge.

Believe it or not, there's an actual race going on in Massachusetts.  The MA-05 congressional seat is vacant, Marty Meehan having resigned to take over UMass-Lowell, and there's a special election on October 16 to fill it.  The contenders are Democrat Niki Tsongas, Republican Jim Ogonowski, and some other folks.

At the moment, anyway, the race doesn't appear to be a gimme for the Dems.  The most recent poll has Tsongas up by 10, but actually trailing among independents.  MA-05 is an unpredictable district that has sent Republicans to Congress in the past.

You know what to do.

Is anyone else struck by this?  Especially after reading Kathryn Jean Lopez's fawning interview with Mitt Romney (HT: Jay), it seems to me that Mitt Romney is positioning himself as the guy to vote for if you want more of what you've had for the last eight years.  From what I've seen, there is absolutely nothing in what Romney's been saying lately (as opposed to in 1994 or 2002), whether on Iraq, gay rights, abortion, stem cell research, tax cuts, or just about any other issue I can think of, that's in any respect different from current administration policy.  Incidentally, current public approval of the Bush Iraq policy is a stunning 28%, and overall Bush approval is 36%.

Yet Romney wants to run as George W. Bush.

Isn't that kind of an odd strategery?

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(Got a new verse, or an improvement on what's here?  Drop it in the comments.)

[Cross-posted from Blue Mass. Group.]

A big hat tip to Rick Hasen who noticed this White House press release (buried in the Friday night trash).  President Bush is going to nominate Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

Who?

[Cross-posted from Blue Mass. Group.]

A big hat tip to Rick Hasen who noticed this White House press release (buried in the Friday night trash).  President Bush is going to nominate Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

Who?

This darned judge:

• Wrote an opinion prohibiting the use of any state-owned facilities for abortions, possibly right down to the public water supply - and in the process looked forward to the day when the Supreme Court could "reexamine Roe." 
• Voted to uphold burdensome abortion requirements like a 24-hour waiting period and a rule that second-trimester abortions had to be done in hospitals - and wrote that Roe's central holding should be eviscerated.
• Voted to bar the federal government from banning guns near schools, and from protecting women against sexual assault.
• Wrote that it should be unconstitutional for the federal government to provide minimum wage and overtime protections to city workers.
• Wrote an opinion allowing inflammatory evidence into death penalty sentencing hearings that was not relevant to the defendant's blameworthiness - leading dissenting colleagues to decry the "radical" result as the exercise of "power, not reason."