From Democracy Now, once again Amy Goodman's the only one out there reporting on Rove's stolen elections and the death of Mike Connell when he was about to testify against Rove about what they did on Ohio. Here's another reminder of how disgusting it is that Rove is out there gaining power again instead of sitting in a jail cell: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom: Craig Unger on Stolen Votes, Political Attacks, Billionaire Ties:

In a new book, author Craig Unger examines the return of Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to a two-term presidency, who advised Bush during two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who was at the center of two of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration: the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and the U.S. attorneys scandal. While Rove was almost indicted for the Plame affair, he has reinvented himself to become the most powerful political operative in America. Heading up the American Crossroads super PAC and the affiliated nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, Rove has built up a war chest that has given Mitt Romney a significant cash advantage in the fundraising race with President Obama. In "Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power," Unger writes that Rove’s ambitions are not simply about winning elections, but represent "a far more grandiose vision — the forging of a historic re-alignment of America’s political landscape, the transformation of America into effectively a one-party state.

Full transcript available at the link above.

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As Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future noted last week, even though Mitt Romney's been running nothing but one dishonest campaign ad after another since announcing his recent run for president, the media has finally found a campaign ad they can "cluck tongues at" and it's not a Romney ad:

After a series of blatantly dishonest Mitt Romney campaign ads have been saturating the airwaves -- one even editing audio to make it sound as if the President said something that he never said --our media elites have finally found an ad to click their tongues at. A pro-Obama ad from super PAC Priorities USA Action features Joe Soptic explaining what happened to his wife after the Bain Capital laid him off, taking away their health insurance. The ad has not even been run on TV [...]

Note, this is not an Obama campaign ad. It is illegal for a campaign to coordinate or even communicate or coordinate with these outside groups.

The Romney campaign responded with an ad saying that this ad came from the Obama campaign itself -- yet another in a series of lies from the Romney campaign. [...]

Again, this was not an Obama campaign ad, and has never been aired on TV. Contrast the elite media reaction to this ad with their reaction to the dishonest ads that the Romney campaign has been running on TV, using doctored audio, claiming Obama is "gutting welfare reform," accusing Obama of "war on religion," accusing Obama of corruption, etc. The media elites say this ad, showing what happens to families when they are laid off and lose their health insurance, "crossed a line." Not calling a sitting President a "Marxist" ot the lie about "death panels" or "palling around with terrorists" or doctored audio in an ad from a presidential candidate -- but explaining the tragedy of being laid off and losing health insurance is what "crosses a line."

Case in point, this Sunday's Meet the Press and David Gregory doing his best to add to the list at Dave's post. I was glad to see some push back from Axelrod though.

DAVID GREGORY: Those of us who cover these campaigns understand that even though there's a big choice here it's not as if some of the personal destruction back and forth is going to go away. And we've seen a lot of that this week. And Governor Romney has taken particular aim at an ad that's being run by the president's own Super PAC run by a former press aide to the campaign and in the White House. And this is a campaign about Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain, even though the story that's highlighted in the Super PAC ad happened after Mitt Romney left. Let me play a portion of this and also show you how Mitt Romney's responding to it. Watch.

(VIDEO NOT TRANSCRIBED)

DAVID GREGORY: Disrespecting the office of the presidency is the charge from Mitt Romney about ads like that with the implication that somehow Bain and Mitt Romney was responsible for that woman's death. How do you respond to that?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, I certainly don't think that would be a fair implication. That isn't stated in the ad. It's not a fair implication. But what is true is that Governor Romney and his partners loaded that company with debt, walked away with millions of dollars and left the workers there bereft, without the healthcare they were promised, without the pensions and other benefits that they were promised. And that is emblematic of the kind of--

DAVID GREGORY: You don't think that ad-- (OVERTALK)

DAVID AXELROD: --of work that he did. That is important.

DAVID GREGORY: It doesn't cross the line--

DAVID AXELROD: But let me ask you--

DAVID GREGORY: --in the debate?

DAVID AXELROD: --ask you something, David. How does Mitt Romney, in the very week that he's running an ad that he approves. At the end he says, "I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message." Millions and millions and millions of dollars accusing the president of removing the work requirement from welfare, which every single person who's looked at it, every expert, every news organization, every fact checker has said is patently false.

And he is lecturing people on the quality of campaigns? He ought to be ashamed of himself. He ought to tell his own campaign in the commercials that he controls, "Take that off. It's not true. It's not fair." When he does that, maybe he'll have some standing to lecture other people on the quality of the campaign.

DAVID GREGORY: We're in a new gear in this campaign, clearly. David Axelrod, thank you very much.

DAVID AXELROD: All right, thank you.

If anyone wasn't already sure why we should be worried about people like billionaire Sheldon Adelson buying our elections here in the United States, you won't be left with much doubt after reading this article by ProPublica which was co-published with PBS' Frontline.

Rachel Maddow spoke to one of the co-authors of the article in the segment above, Stephen Engelberg.

Inside the Investigation of Leading Republican Money Man Sheldon Adelson

A decade ago gambling magnate and leading Republican donor Sheldon Adelson looked at a desolate spit of land in Macau and imagined a glittering strip of casinos, hotels and malls.

Where competitors saw obstacles, including Macau's hostility to outsiders and historic links to Chinese organized crime, Adelson envisaged a chance to make billions.

Adelson pushed his chips to the center of the table, keeping his nerve even as his company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in late 2008.

The Macau bet paid off, propelling Adelson into the ranks of the mega-rich and underwriting his role as the largest Republican donor in the 2012 campaign, providing tens of millions of dollars to Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and other GOP causes.

Now, some of the methods Adelson used in Macau to save his company and help build a personal fortune estimated at $25 billion have come under expanding scrutiny by federal and Nevada investigators, according to people familiar with both inquiries.

Internal email and company documents, disclosed here for the first time, show that Adelson instructed a top executive to pay about $700,000 in legal fees to Leonel Alves, a Macau legislator whose firm was serving as an outside counsel to Las Vegas Sands.

The company's general counsel and an outside law firm warned that the arrangement could violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is unknown whether Adelson was aware of these warnings. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bars American companies from paying foreign officials to "affect or influence any act or decision" for business gain.

Federal investigators are looking at whether the payments violate the statute because of Alves' government and political roles in Macau, people familiar with the inquiry said. Investigators were also said to be separately examining whether the company made any other payments to officials. An email by Alves to a senior company official, disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, quotes him as saying "someone high ranking in Beijing" had offered to resolve two vexing issues — a lawsuit by a Taiwanese businessman and Las Vegas Sands' request for permission to sell luxury apartments in Macau. Another email from Alves said the problems could be solved for a payment of $300 million. There is no evidence the offer was accepted. Both issues remain unresolved. Read on...

The chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) on Sunday said it was the fault of President Barack Obama and the Democrats for reports that a super PAC supporting presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney was considering attack ads featuring Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"I know how it works," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus insisted to CNN's Candy Crowley. "It's the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there. He wants this story to play out in the media because for every day that [Obama strategist] David Axelrod and this President don’t have to talk about their broken promises when it comes to jobs, the debt, and the deficit — and the more time they can talk about hypotheticals that may or may not come true — is a day they want to win on."

He added: "So, look, this president’s got a bigger problem and his problem is no matter what he puts out there, no matter what distractions he puts out there, he can’t change the truth and escape the reality of where we are in this American economy. And it’s no good."

The New York Times revealed last week that the the pro-Romney super PAC had proposed an ad campaign linking Obama to Wright. Their plan went so far as to suggest possible responses to charges of race-baiting if ads were to mention Wright’s “black liberation theology.”

After learning of the proposal to use Obama’s former association with Wright, Romney told reporters that he repudiated the effort.

“I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign,” the candidate said. “I hope that our campaigns can be respectively about the future and about issues and about vision for America.”

But on Sunday, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said Romney had only “tepidly and reluctantly” condemned the super PAC’s proposed ad campaign.

“We have said [that Romney's faith is] not fair game,” Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “And we wish Governor Romney would stand up as resolutely and consistently, to refute these kinds of things on his side.”

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has seen some dirty campaigns in career, but on Sunday he said the 2012 Republican primary was "nastiest" one ever.

During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush's top strategist, Karl Rove, put forward the idea that McCain had "fathered an illegitimate black child." As The Nation noted, McCain had been campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter who he had adopted from Bangladesh. The dirty trick gave Bush the boost he needed to win South Carolina.

During a Sunday interview on NBC, the Arizona senator said that unlimited money from super PACs have made the 2012 primary campaign even worse.

"Super PACs have played a key role, unfortunately in my view," McCain told NBC's David Gregory. "Most of them run negative ads. They've driven the unfavorables of all the candidates and made it much more difficult, frankly, to win the election in November."

"This is the nastiest I have ever seen," he added. "It's a result the of the worst decision the United States Supreme Court has made in many years, the Citizens United decision, where out of naivety and sheer ignorance, the Supreme Court just released all money [into the political process]."

From Democracy Now, if anyone was wondering what's keeping the Newt Gingrich campaign afloat after it looked like it was going to implode earlier this year, we can thank our Supreme Court and that Citizens United ruling -- Newt Gingrich’s Campaign Resurgence Funded by Secretive Coterie of Super PACs, Wealthy Backers:

With the Iowa caucus less than two weeks away and the Republican presidential race still up for grabs, we take in an in-depth look at the state of politics and money and how last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has altered campaign fundraising since it opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns.

Several recent exposes reveal how Newt Gingrich has skirted campaign finance rules to raise millions of dollars in unlimited donations from billionaire backers and big industry. McClatchy Newspapers recently reported Gingrich helped bankroll his resurrection as a candidate by exploiting a gap in federal campaign finance laws to create a political money machine that raised $54 million over five years.

Meanwhile the Center For Public Integrity has published new details on how Gingrich has the backing of two so-called super PACs that raise unlimited donations, but legally must operate independently of the campaign. We speak with Peter Stone, a reporter with Center for Public Integrity who has covered lobbying and campaign finance issues for the past two decades, and McClatchy investigative reporter Greg Gordon.

You can read Greg Gordon's report from McClatchy here:

Did Gingrich bend campaign laws with his 'independent' committee?

And here are Peter Stone's articles from the Center for Public Integrity:

Odd couples: Gingrich casts wide net to evangelicals, Tea Party and K Street lobbyists

Billionaire backer may open wallet for Gingrich but bring unwanted baggage

Tyler joins Gingrich PAC, big ad buy imminent