Mother Jones has a new article on Romney friend and adviser Jay Sekulow, who engaged in a lobbying campaign to criminalize homosexuality and ban abortion in Africa.

Why is this important? Because Sekulow is an activist lawyer and law professor (at Regent University, a Christian law school) and a religious extremist who has argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court. Prominent court journalist Tony Mauro called him "the leading Supreme Court advocate of the Christian right."

Here is Sekulow in his own words describing his conversion to Jews for Jesus, which evolved into his becoming both a board member and general counsel for the evangelical group. After that, he says he formed a new group to fight for evangelicals:

C.A.S.E: Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism. That is what we've named the new organization which will be defending the legal rights of individuals and organizations who are telling the gospel--specifically in issues relating to access, as in parks, college campuses, street corners, and of course, airports. .... [The public] needs to hear the good news about the Messiah, and we must protect our right to tell them.

From the 2012 report, Colonizing African Values: How the Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa: [More...]

New Jersey Residents displaced by Hurricane Sandy will be allowed to vote by e-mail or fax. The directive issued today is here.

Any voter who has been displaced from their primary residence because of Hurricane Sandy is hereby designated as an “overseas voter” for purposes of the Overseas Residents/Absentee Voting Law, N.J.S.A. 19:59-1, et seq.

For those wanting to vote in person, check your polling place by texting WHERE to 877877 or visiting elections.nj.gov.

Nate Silver now predicts President Obama will win with 303 electoral college votes.

Friday’s polling should make it easy to discern why Mr. Obama has the Electoral College advantage. There were 22 polls of swing states published Friday. Of these, Mr. Obama led in 19 polls, and two showed a tie. Mitt Romney led in just one of the surveys, a Mason-Dixon poll of Florida.

Most electoral map predictors favor President Obama -- even if he loses Florida and Virginia.
You can make your own here.

Which states will be the deciding factor? If Romney were to win Florida and Virginia, it could come down to Nevada or Colorado. Obama may not need both, one would do. [More...]

Joe Biden in Arvada, Colorado today:

When taking the stage, Biden reminded the crowd that tonight was end of Daylight Savings time. "It's Mitt Romney's favorite time of the year because he gets to turn the clock back," Biden said.

A new Ipsos/Reuters poll on early vote results shows Obama leading in key swing states: [More...]

Watch Mitt Romney supporters' unbelievable (or should I say predictable) comments after his recent campaign event in Dalliance, Ohio (the one where he said Jeep is thinking of moving all jeep production to China.) That the reporter keeps a straight face during the interviews is quite a feat. The really crazy comments start around 0.50 seconds in.

According to his supporters, Obama is a Muslim who reads the Koran, a socialist, and a communist. He isn't a good President because he's too angry. He and his aides all have "bad things" in their past that the media has failed to report. The scary looking, unhinged white- haired lady (0.56 seconds) is completely off her rocker. Keep watching, she returns throughout becoming more unglued each time.

Not one of these supporters can describe Mitt Romney's plan (even though they are leaving a rally where he just gave a speech about it ) but they all support it. Either they are beyond stupid or Romney has no articulable plan. (Probably a combination of both.)

After two minutes, you'll want to take a shower to rid yourself of any residue of these people. Then you'll want to vote three times just to make sure they aren't picking our next President. I can't imagine anyone forgetting to vote Tuesday after watching this sorry lot explain their ignorant, bigoted opposition to Obama and support of Romney. In one day, it's had 209,000 views. I hope it goes viral over the weekend. Pass it around.

Too funny: In Montrose, Colorado today:

Today, four days before the election, Paul Ryan told a crowd assembled on an airport tarmac that he could "smell success." And the crowd roared.

The smell, in fact, was that of cow manure, or something that smelled an awful lot like it. The tarmac is nestled in the mountains here, and as it became more and more overpowering, and as Ryan was more and more intently describing his running mate's business credentials, the VP contender paused, took a deep whiff and said, "I can smell success right now.

"That's the smell of success isn't it? That's the smell of progress. I love that smell, it makes me feel at home," Ryan said.

Gov. Christie has ordered gas rationing in 12 counties. Will it affect voter turnout in the state? The WSJ reports on voting hurdles in the tri-state area affected by Sandy.

“Five hundred and thirty seven. The number of votes that changed the course of American history … If you’re thinking that your vote doesn’t count, that it won’t matter. Well, back then, there were probably at least 537 people who felt the same way.”

We get the Government we elect. Don't forget to vote. [More...]

Former President Bill Clinton is in town, campaigning for President Obama. At 5:30 pm, he held a campaign rally in Adams County, near Denver. At 7:30 pm, he will be at Denver's Manual High School.

On Thursday, President Obama will campaign in Boulder.

Sounds like a "Get Out the Vote" effort, since Denver, Boulder and Adams County are largely Democratic.

In Mitt Romney news, I just muted the TV. The same ad has come on twice in 15 minutes: an elderly woman talking about how Mitt gave the eulogy at her 14 year old son's funeral -- more than 30 years ago. That qualifies him to be President? It's sickening to see those making his campaign ads (in this case Crossroads) use this elderly woman and exploit her son's death. Is there anything Mitt Romney won't try and capitalize on? Mitt Romney: Capitalize and Privatize.

Here's an open thread, all topics welome.

A new Mitt Romney ad began airing over the weekend,

The 30-second spot shows cars being crushed as a narrator says Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

At a campaign event last week, the one at which Meatloaf butchered America the Beautiful, Romney said "he read a story somewhere" that "Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China... “I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair.”

Jeeps production is not being outsourced to China. Chrysler says it has no intention of moving production, even for the new Jeep Patriot. To the contrary, it says it is increasing production at its Toledo and Detroit plants, with up to 2,200 new jobs.[More...]

The New York Times has endorsed President Obama. It leads with the dangers of a Romney win:

• The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold.

• The United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown disaster.

• An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives.

• Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us. Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.

As to Mitt:

President Obama laid out his second-term agenda in an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register, which his campaign provided to the paper today with permission to publish. He says he will get immigration reform done in 2013. The full transcript is here.

"The second thing I'm confident we'll get done next year is immigration reform," Mr. Obama told the newspaper. "And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon.

[More...]