WASHINGTON -- A Democratic senator has asked the Obama administration to immediately bar Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin from re-entering the U.S., based on a previously unenforced 1996 law.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who as a congressman in 1996 authored an amendment that excludes from reentry into the U.S. citizens who renounced their citizenship for tax purposes, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday, asking her to enforce the law -- for the first time -- by barring Saverin.

"By all accounts Mr. Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship for the purposes of avoiding taxes despite taking advantage of the multiple opportunities afforded to him by the United States," Reed wrote. A Homeland Security spokesman couldn't be reached for comment after the close of business Thursday.

Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore in September. Reed's letter comes on the eve of Facebook's initial public stock offering that is expected to value Saverin's share of the company at around $4 billion. Saverin's switch to Singaporean citizenship, which came to light two weeks ago, could save him hundreds of millions in taxes if his Facebook stock increases in value after the company sells stock to the public.

Earlier on Thursday, two Democrats proposed legislation that would hit Saverin with heavy taxes and bar him from reentering the U.S.

But Reed's plan doesn't call for a congressional action -- just an executive decision.

Reed wrote in his letter that the secretary of Homeland Security now has the power that was once only vested in the attorney general to determine who should fall under the 1996 statute.

And just like Homeland Security can bar aliens involved in terrorism or drug trafficking, Reed wrote, "I urge a similar and vigorous treatment for the exclusion of expatriates that have renounced their citizenship in order to avoid taxes."

Saverin issued a statement Thursday, insisting he was grateful to the U.S. and still intends to pay plenty of taxes.

"I am obligated to and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government," Saverin said. "It is unfortunate that my personal choice has led to a public debate, based not on the facts, but entirely on speculation and misinformation."

Hugh Hewitt, Townhall
These quotes are from my interview Wednesday with Bloomberg View's Jonathan Alter, the transcript of which is here.Rev. Jeremiah Wright is relevant again, and about to get even more relevant, and it will be hard for the MSM which loved the 50-year old story of alleged bullying at Cranbrook to ignore the details of what happened 50 months ago. Alter is a strong supporter of Obama and a very smart guy, and he knows this re-emergence of Wright is very bad news for the president. His dismissal of the story is a cue for every other MSM lefty.

WASHINGTON -- As the Securities and Exchange Commission considers requiring corporations to disclose their political spending to shareholders, a coalition of institutional investors and public interest groups are seeking to make next week's Bank of America shareholder meeting a flashpoint for getting corporate money out of politics.

Consumer watchdog Public Citizen and a host of activist groups are planning protests around several major shareholder meetings in the coming months, but the Bank of America meeting Wednesday will be among the most prominent. At the meeting, Trillium Asset Managment, a firm that manages $1 billion in environmentally friendly investments, will present a resolution that would bar the company from engaging in any political spending whatsoever. That ban would include lobbying, campaign contributions and donations to politically oriented groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. BofA has given money to ALEC, but the Chamber is more secretive about its members, and it is not clear whether BofA has contributed to the Chamber or not.

In recent years, significant percentages of shareholders at some large companies have voted to require their firms to provide increased disclosure about the extent of their political donations, although none of these resolutions have passed to date. And Trillium views its more aggressive proposal to get BofA to end all political spending as intimately connected with a campaign pressuring the SEC to require disclosure.

"For the better part of the last decade, we've seen consistent and increasingly strong shareholder votes on political spending proposals," said Shelley Alpern, Vice President of Shareholder Advocacy for Trillium. "A growing number of investors consider this area to be a material factor in evaluating the financial worth a company and the strength of its governance mechanisms. Investors will be better off when the SEC requires disclosure from all publicly traded companies. Companies deserve a level playing field and investors need the information."

Trillium's efforts to push BofA's money out of politics coincide with a major protest of the meeting being organized by a host of good government and consumer-rights groups, including National People's Action, The New Bottom Line, Rainforest Action Network, North Carolina Coalition Against Corporate Power, Common Cause, Action North Carolina, Jobs with Justice, Right to the City and Unity Alliance. Organizers anticipate significant turn out from east coast Occupy enclaves in New York, Atlanta, Ashville, N.C., and Charlotte, N.C. -- BofA's headquarters. Another institutional investor, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Pension Plan, will initiate a separate vote that would force BofA to disclose its political spending at the same meeting.

Public Citizen supports Trillium's resolution. "We don't think corporations should play in politics, both because it's bad for democracy and because it's bad for their own bottom line," said Lisa Gilbert, deputy director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

The city of Charlotte is preparing for the protest with a preemptive civil liberties crackdown that will likely provide some insight into the city's tactics for coping with the Democratic National Convention in September. Under the rules, protesters can be arrested or searched for carrying bags with the "intent" to conceal any of a host prohibited items, which range from weapons to commonplace markets. Wearing a scarf with the intent to conceal one's identity is also grounds for arrest under the rules.

Although Charlotte has long been nicknamed "The Wall Street of the South," it has rarely been a prominent destination in Democratic Party politics. The party leadership's decision to hold its convention in the banking mecca has been criticized by many Democrats who believe big banks and financial interests are not currently supportive of the party or its economic policies.

Up in Washington, there is also some support in the SEC for companies to disclose their political spending to shareholders.

"The Commission should provide for disclosure of corporate political expenditures," SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar said during a February speech. "Investors are not receiving adequate disclosure, and as the investors' advocate, the Commission should act swiftly to rectify the situation by requiring transparency."

While the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision barred the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations, it explicitly permitted the government to require transparency, and allowed shareholders to demand more stringent actions against individual firms.

Resolutions requiring major CEOs to change the way they operate their companies rarely pass. While millions of citizens own small stakes in big companies through their retirement plans, most are passive or even unaware of their investments. When firms host annual meetings, large money managers like hedge funds and banks are tasked with voting on behalf of their clients. Such firms are reluctant to favor changing a company's operations. Shareholder advisory companies like Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services provide recommendations to these large investment houses, but generally shy away from recommending voting for overtly political or social resolutions.

In addition to the Bank of America meeting on Wednesday, Trillium will float similar proposals at a meeting on Tuesday for 3M, a multinational chemical and consumer product conglomerate, and Target's meeting in June. New Bottom Line and other consumer groups are targeting 40 major shareholder meetings with protests this year.

Bank of America's management team opposes both resolutions on political spending. It even challenged the legality of Trillium making the proposal to shareholders by appealing to the SEC, which upheld Trillium's right to force a vote on political spending by fellow BofA shareholders.

In materials distributed to shareholders, BofA board members argued that the firm's political expenditures are in the best interests of its shareholders and customers.

"We regularly communicate with and express our policy positions and concerns to policymakers, public officials and regulators at the federal, state and local levels, in order to protect and advance the long-term goals and interests of our company, customers and stockholders," the BofA board said. In the same set of materials, the board said BofA should not be required to disclose political expenditures to stockholders, saying that doing so would be "unnecessary" and "provide our stockholders with little, if any, meaningful information."

More than 178,000 people disagree, however. That's the number of comment letters the SEC has received to date demanding that the agency require disclosure of political expenditures. Supporters include some major figures in finance, most notably John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group, one of the world's largest investment firms, responsible for trillions of dollars in client funds.

While Commissioner Aguilar has also endorsed disclosure, the SEC has not formally begun writing any rules on the matter, and it is not yet clear if other commissioners would support the measure.

John Nichols, The Nation
Voters across Europe are rejecting politicians who have placed the mania for deficit cutting above all other needs, and the mainstream media are beginning to echo the mood, with even The Economist arguing that austerity is “strangling the eurozone’s chances of recovery.” As deeply flawed as the European experiment with austerity has been, however, at least it is commonly understood as a policy response to serious fiscal challenges. It’s different in the United States, where there has been little honest debate about the reasons for or the failures of...

The Truth-o-Meter says: Full Flop | Mitt Romney once distanced himself from Ronald Reagan, but no longer

Ronald Reagan is the ultimate icon for Republicans. But has Mitt Romney flip-flopped on his support for the Gipper? The flip-flop charge was raised by the Democratic National Committee in an video advertisement. Separately, one of Romney’s Republican primary opponents, Newt Gingrich, charged that Romney has demonstrated insufficient warmth for the late president. In this item, we’ll ask whether Romney has flip-flopped on his degree of support for Reagan. We’ll start by noting that the Flip-O-Meter rates politicians' consistency on particular topics from No Flip to Full Flop. ...

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The Truth-o-Meter says: Full Flop | Mitt Romney rejected state tax pledge before signing national one

These days, it’s hard for candidates to claim they truly oppose taxes if they haven’t put it in writing. As a presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney signed a pledge to forswear tax increases. In fact, in his official tax proposal, Romney has advocated across-the-board tax cuts. But has he been consistent over the years about putting his commitment not to raise taxes in the form of a pledge? The question about Romney and the tax pledge was raised in late 2007, when the Democratic National Committee released a ...

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Jim Geraghty, National Review
I would underline that Obama is using a familiar strategy because it’s not really clear that he’s ever had to use any other one. Once he won the Democratic primary for his State Senate seat in 1996, he had the seat for life, representing Hyde Park, an ultra-liberal neighborhood. He lost a House bid in 2000 against Democrat Bobby Rush, and then his next genuinely difficult fight was the 2004 Senate primary… when revelations from sealed divorce records doomed his best-funded opponent. Many of you are thinking, ‘wait, Jim, no, you’re thinking of...

Geoff Shepard, RealClearPolitics
Jeff Himmelman’s revelation in his April 29th New York Magazine article ("Red Flag in the Flowerpot") -- that Carl Bernstein really had interviewed a Watergate grand juror -- is breath-taking in its implications. It’s not just that Woodward and Bernstein have lied about this for 40 years, it's that interference with a grand jury threatens the integrity of our judicial system.Himmelman was researching Ben Bradlee’s papers for his authorized biography of the flamboyant Washington Post editor ("Yours in Truth, a Personal Portrait of Ben...

It seems for the moment that the arc of the moral universe is bending toward equality. On the heels of the president's historic announcement supporting marriage equality last week, several officials and even rap mogul and philanthropist Jay-Z have come out on the right side of history. In a CNN interview Jay-Z stated, with regard to marriage equality, "I've always thought [of] it as something that was still holding the country back."

Exhibiting praise for inequality is not a business plan, nor should it be a campaign slogan, yet Mitt Romney seems comfortable playing the bigotry banjo as the rest of his camp claps and sings to the beat. Romney had a great opportunity when Richard Grenell, his openly gay national security spokesman, was being attacked by the far right for being gay, to speak out against such vitriol -- especially given that Grenell was so highly qualified. But instead of standing up to the bullies on the right, Romney took Grenell's resignation after just two weeks on the job.

What kind of leadership does that show? Not only did Romney reaffirm his support for inequality after the president's announcement last week, stating that "marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman," but he recently reversed a statement he made on gay adoption. Last week Romney said that he was "fine" with gay adoption, adding that "that's something that people have a right to do." But just when he was starting to make sense, he quickly did a political two-step and retracted his statement: "Actually, I think all states but one allow gay adoption. So that's a position which has been decided by most of the state legislatures, including the one in my state some time ago. So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one."

Not only did Romney recant his earlier televised interview, but he did so by misstating the facts. Only 18 states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex parents to petition for joint adoption -- that's a far cry from "all states but one."

Romney reminds me of a kid who is trying his damnedest to get the "cool kids" to like him, but he's failing miserably to convince them he's "down." It's essentially a role reversal from his high-school days as "bully-in-chief," when he led a group of kids in holding down another student as Romney cut his hair while the victim cried and yelled for help. Now, instead of being his own man and showing that he has grown past the "pack mentality," he's decided instead to adopt the role of sheep, following the rest of the conservative right's flock -- right of a cliff! This is the same man who took to the Bay Windows paper in 1994 stating that he would "be better than Ted [Kennedy] for gay rights." Really? But like the right has said about Romney's bullying incident, you can't judge someone on things they did (or said) decades ago -- ain't that the truth!

Danielle Moodie-Mills is the Advisor to LGBT Policy and Racial Justice at the Center for American Progress. Read her musings on politics and pop culture at threeLOL.com, and follow her on Twitter @DeeTwoCents.

ALBION, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska's hearings on the new proposed route for TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline from Canada are drawing big crowds.

The Columbus Telegram reports that more than 160 people attended Wednesday's meeting in Albion.

Pipeline opponents objected to the original route through the Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer, a massive groundwater supply. TransCanada proposed a new route that avoids the Sandhills.

Some landowners offered praise for the project. Nick Gasper says he thinks project opponents have used scare tactics, and he thinks the pipeline offers more benefits than drawbacks.

Pipeline opponents also attended the hearing. Ken Winston, with the Nebraska Sierra Club, says his group still worries about the pipeline possibly contaminating the aquifer.

These hearings are one of the first steps in the state's review of TransCanada's new proposed route.

___

Information from: Columbus Telegram, http://www.columbustelegram.com

How long can the Republicans keep up the pretense that they plan to come up with their alternative health-care-reform plan? I'm going to go with "forever." Robert Pear and Jonathan Weisman report in today's New York Times that the party is really working hard on that alternative plan:

Alec MacGillis, The New Republic
One of the rewards of being a loyal Wall Street Journal subscriber is that one gets to read things one might not see anywhere else. For instance, in Wednesday's paper there was a chilling front-page scoop about the fact that it was an American drone that had tipped off the Turkish military to a suspected caravan of Kurdish militants near the Turkey-Iraq border last year—a caravan that turned out to be nothing but local penny-ante smugglers carrying gasoline and other goods, a fact that was discovered only after Turkish planes killed 34 of the 38 of the men. 

Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
Prices were out of control at the end of third-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned speculation and established price ceilings for a wide range of goods and services. But the ambitious law failed. Though violators could be punished with death, inflation and speculation persisted. Goods were hoarded, or sold on the black market. The economic crisis worsened. Eventually the law was abandoned. Like countless rulers before and since, Diocletian discovered the hard way...

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- With only two hours allotted to each side to make closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors and defense lawyers neared the end of a month-long trial into whether former presidential candidate John Edwards violated campaign finance laws.

Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts related to campaign finance violations stemming from nearly $1 million secretly provided by two wealthy donors that helped hide his pregnant mistress during the 2008 Democratic primary. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted of all charges.

Prosecutors likely will argue the payments were intended to influence the outcome of an election by keeping Edwards' political hopes viable. Defense lawyers will counter that Edwards had limited knowledge of the cover-up and that the payments were gifts intended to keep his cancer-stricken wife from leaning about the out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles set the two-hour limit for closing arguments. The jury is expected to begin deliberating Friday.

On Wednesday, Edwards' team wrapped up their defense without calling him, his mistress or daughter to testify, a move experts said was intended to shift focus from a political sex scandal to the nitty-gritty of campaign finance law.

"The defense wasn't sexy, but the defense doesn't want sexy. It wants an acquittal," said Steve Friedland, a professor at Elon University School of Law and former federal prosecutor who has attended much of the trial.

Experts said Edwards' bare-bone defense, which lasted just over two days, may be enough to avoid conviction on charges he authorized more than $1 million secretly provided by two wealthy donors to help hide an affair with pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter as he sought the White House in 2008.

The prosecution presented nearly three weeks of evidence and testimony from a former Edwards aide and campaign advisors that painted Edwards as a frequent liar, but showed no direct evidence he intended to break federal campaign finance laws, the experts said.

Many observers believed Edwards would testify so the jury could hear directly from the former U.S. senator and trial lawyer, who had a reputation for his ability to sway jurors. But putting Edwards and Hunter on the stand would have exposed the defense to withering cross-examination about Edwards' past lies and personal failings.

"The defense may very well have felt that their case was solid enough to go to the jury without the risk of the personal testimony of these witnesses, which would undoubtedly resurrect the salacious details of the affair for the jury," said Catherine Dunham, another Elon law professor who has been attending the trial.

The defense also elected not to call Edwards' oldest daughter, Cate, a 30-year-old lawyer who has sat behind her father nearly every day, as a character witness to help humanize him.

At one point during the trial, Cate Edwards ran out of the courtroom in tears during testimony about her cancer-stricken mother, Elizabeth, confronting her father about his extramarital affair.

The former Democratic presidential candidate has sat quietly at the defense table throughout his trial, whispering with his lawyers and rarely showing reaction to the often emotional testimony from witnesses who were once among his strongest supporters and closest friends.

He has made no public statements since October, following a pre-trial hearing where a judge refused to throw out the case.

At the trial, prosecutors have shown two members of Edwards' inner circle, campaign finance chairman Fred Baron and once-close aide Andrew Young, engaged in a yearlong cover-up to hide the married presidential candidate's mistress from the media.

The married Young falsely claimed paternity of his boss' baby and received $725,000 in secret checks from an elderly heiress, using some of the money to care for Hunter.

Baron, a wealthy Texas lawyer, provided Young and Hunter with more than $400,000 in cash, luxury hotels, private jets and a $20,000-a-month rental mansion in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Prosecutors have introduced phone records, voicemails and other evidence showing Edwards in frequent contact with Baron, Young and Hunter while Hunter was in hiding.

Former members of Edwards' campaign also testified that Baron spoke of "moving Hunter around" in the candidate's presence and that Edwards told his speechwriter he knew "all along" what Baron was up to.

But in 14 days of testimony, no witness ever said Edwards knew he was violating campaign finance laws, a key element of criminal intent the government must prove to win a conviction.

"There was no direct evidence that John Edwards knew he was violating campaign contribution laws," Friedland said. "Juries like smoking guns. There were no smoking guns here."

By Peter Henderson

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama was famously effective in using new technologies to raise money, mobilize voters and target his message of change.

In this year's campaign, his opponents are determined to turn the tables.

Republican political operatives, some with deep financial backing from the billionaire Koch brothers and others, are unleashing about a half dozen major projects that take advantage of advanced database technologies to manage campaigns and target voters with personalized messages.

Few doubt that political parties and factions that can gain an edge in the data wars will be in a good position on election day - and could potentially build institutional advantages that will pay dividends for years to come.

IPhone apps, Web-based campaign management and micro-targeting of voters with personalized messages are a few of the services built around database technology that the left has used to find and motivate voters, most impressively in 2008.

People in the increasingly competitive political technology business say the industry is still in an early phase, with the massive data-collection potential of social media and mobile computing only beginning to be tapped.

Nevertheless the field is already creating tension between grassroots activists suspicious of big, centralized databases and political professionals who say they are essential.

"If you are talking to anybody on the ground, Tea Party activists, they are tired of centralized control," said Steven Kuivenhoven, a Michigan Tea Party organizer who is avoiding Washington-based tech groups.

The Republican and Democratic parties have passed the banner of technological leadership back and forth over the past decade. The Republican Party built a massive database of voters for the 2004 election, then Democrats in the last presidential election pulled together an independent database called Catalist that improved cooperation among allied groups. This year outside groups are leading the charge, especially on the conservative side, a nod to the rising power of political action committees and advocacy groups.

Shoestring startups are competing with efforts funded by billionaires, which some conservatives embrace as a triumph of laissez-faire. "God bless the free market," said Constantin Querard, an Arizona political consultant who uses one of the startups, rVotes, for managing volunteers and voter data. "We are probably two two-year cycles from weeding out the software that was well done and the software that wasn't as well executed."

THE KOCH COUNTERPUNCH

In 2008, Catalist helped the left win the technology battle. The database allowed unions and the Obama campaign to manage volunteers without stepping on each other's toes. Meanwhile, analysts could look for patterns in oceans of data that had been held in small pools by separate groups.

Now, Charles and David Koch, who have quietly bankrolled libertarian organizations such as the Cato Institute and the influential Mercatus Center at George Mason University, are behind an effort that aims to do for the right what Catalist did for the left.

Called Themis, the independent group is the most ambitious of the many conservative political technology projects now in development. People with direct knowledge of the group as well as political technology industry veterans say it is backed by the Koch brothers, although their names do not appear on an annual regulatory filing and Koch Industries spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

The Kochs own Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kansas-based natural resources conglomerate that refines oil, produces chemicals and owns the paper products company Georgia-Pacific. Chief Executive Officer Charles Koch and his brother David are worth $25 billion each, according to Forbes.

Themis staffers in their twenties and thirties, clad in jeans and checked shirts, work out of a suite in a nondescript office building in Alexandria, Virginia. City records indicate that the company expanded recently, and a federal filing shows millions of dollars in the bank.

Themis operates like many other Koch projects - in secrecy. A reporter retrieving a federal filing from the company was not allowed inside the unmarked front door, and Themis executives declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Themis raised $7.7 million in its first year, according to its 2010 return to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt 501 c(4) organization, which it released this year after successfully petitioning for the maximum possible delay. As a 501 c(4), Themis can work with advocacy groups but cannot coordinate with candidates.

The federal filing does not list financial backers, but people with direct knowledge of the group say it is backed by the Kochs. Ben Pratt, the chief operating officer, describes himself on LinkedIn as a former Koch Industries executive who is now a management consultant and executive coach teaching the business theories developed by Charles Koch.

Themis's ambition to become an analytical powerhouse for the right is clear from its list of business partners, including several heavy hitters in the computer analytics world. Its top contractor in 2010, paid $1.1 million, was voter database company Intell360, which employed former Republican National Committee Network and Online Services Director Steve Ellis at the time, according to LinkedIn.

Intell360's website describes services ranging from finding email and phone numbers for voters to "data mining" for voters likely to respond to tailored messages to targeting ads "down to the zip code, census block or individual level." Neither the company nor Koch Industries responded to requests for comment. Pratt declined to speak when reached by phone.

Despite the vast resources behind it, Themis may find it difficult to reach its goal this year. One person close to the group predicts it will not catch up to the left in the current campaign cycle; the Obama campaign is engaged in complex modeling and scouring social media data for information, people in the industry say. Another conservative data industry person said there is no sign of high-end modeling by Themis.

Themis does not have to catch up to make an impact, though. It is building its database and signing up advocacy groups to use its services and contribute data. The person close to Themis said its work focuses on identifying active supporters - those with a propensity to attend rallies or engage their representatives, for instance - and discovering the "cream of the crop" - persons active in several allied groups.

AN ALTERNATIVE SOURCE

The other major database effort on the right is a for-profit group called Data Trust, which is updating the Republican Party's somewhat dusty national file of voters. Modeled on Catalist, Data Trust hopes to make a profit by selling data to advocacy groups, candidates and business groups, incorporating clients' information into its database when they agree.

The party will keep its database, but Data Trust will be able to pay for updating and expanding the data in a way that Republicans have not had the resources to do in recent years, people familiar with the project say. However, it will leave the high-end analysis of data to clients.

Themis and Data Trust will be competitors at times. But there may be room for both: Themis caters to a conservative crowd that distrusts what it sees as the politically expedient instincts of the Republican Party. And some groups may want more than one database provider. "Never trust any one source 100 percent," said Gary Marx, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a religious group in Duluth, Georgia, that is planning to find and contact 27 million potential conservative Christian voters in swing states this election cycle.

American Crossroads, a Washington D.C.-based conservative advocacy group led by former Republican Party officials and associated with Karl Rove, is not choosing sides, even though its chairman, former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, helps run Data Trust.

"We plan to be a client of Data Trust. We also have a good relationship with Themis," said Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio.

GROUND GAMES

Themis and Data Trust may have trouble getting some potential allies on board. Plenty of grassroots groups say they don't need the help of a big, Washington-based database outfit and say they have what Republicans need most: real-time data. They are turning to new technology systems that let campaigns and groups manage volunteers and donors.

A plethora of new tech tools with names like Gravity, rVotes and NationBuilder can help organize door-to-door campaigns, harvesting the type of information that feeds a successful database. All the companies behind them are for-profit.

"If the local county group is knocking on people's doors, and identifying pro-life or anti-immigrant or anti-health-care voters, they could be flagging that information on the database and instead of having that information be in an activists' basement somewhere, it's flagged back on this master file and available to other organizations, which are wanting to organize around those issues," said Ken Strasma, head of data analysis firm Strategic Telemetry, which works for Democrats. "That's what could make this a very powerful tool."

Many grassroots activists are wary of big databases, however, especially if they are linked with Washington. Conservatives, like liberals, are not a monolithic group. Some factions would prefer to retain control of their data.

"I wish I had the Koch brothers' money, but I don't want to be beholden to them," said Peter Wolf, an Ohio Tea Party organizer. He supports rVotes, a program marketed to the right that intends to offer a national database in which campaigns control data they add.

Smaller groups may also be immune to the lure of the big databases because they can get low-cost help from companies such as Aristotle, an unaligned commercial vendor that sells voter records for 3 cents each and offers analytics and social media as well.

Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch failed to win his party's endorsement at the recent state caucus after a Tea Party campaign against him. He now faces a run-off primary battle. FreedomWorks, a group that has severed Koch ties, was a major instigator of the anti-Hatch effort. It used commercial database and analytics vendors to find likely caucus delegates. "What it took Orrin Hatch a year to do in terms of preparation for the caucus, we were able to do in a month and a half," said Russ Walker, vice president of political and grassroots campaigns for FreedomWorks for America. "I really do think the commercial world is ahead of us."

Whether the Kochs or any other group make a major leap forward will depend on how many allies they find. Querard, the Arizona political consultant, sees the technology race as a question of critical mass.

"Whoever's got the most users will probably see the most improvement," he said.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Cohen in Washington, DC; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Douglas Royalty)

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
At first blush, it looked so deftly orchestrated on Tuesday"”Mitt Romney giving his blistering "prairie fire" speech on the debt, and John Boehner telling Pete Peterson and crowd that he relishes forcing another debt-ceiling showdown. The old one-two. Dominated the headlines. The speeches appeared to reflect a shift in focus to debts and deficits. But is this really where Romney wants to go? And in the company of Boehner? What's next, an ethnic sensitivity speech at Mel Gibson's place? Chip Somodevilla / Getty ImagesFirst of all, Romney's...

Rich Karlgaard, Wall Street Journal

Alex Roarty, National Journal
In this Nov. 4, 2008 file photo, young supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voice their support for him early on election day in New York. The day was a huge moment for Obama with some saying it was a defining moment for a generation of youth who played a key role in electing him. By Alex RoartyThe Great Recession took a sledgehammer to young job-seekers. As a Rutgers University study released this week reported, only half -- 51 percent -- of college graduates since 2006 are employed full-time. Eleven percent of them, the study found, are unemployed -- a...

* White House/Treasury step up talks

* Discussions signal political impact of big loss

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - The White House, following a trading loss of more than $2 billion by JPMorgan, wants to ensure a tough interpretation of a regulation aimed at preventing banks from making bets with their own money, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said White House officials have stepped up talks with the Treasury Department in the several days since the staggering loss was disclosed by the bank.

The discussions, according to the report, represent the first tangible political impact from the trading debacle. Obama said this week the huge loss illustrated the need for Wall Street reform and warned that the same kind of error at a less stable bank may have required government intervention.

The issue was one of Obama's signature domestic policy achievements, but he has faced opposition in trying to implement and enforce it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law would strengthen the ability of banks to absorb losses like those disclosed by JPMorgan last week.

A key provision of the law, the Volcker rule, bans banks from making speculative bets with firm money, but includes an exemption for trades done to hedge risk.

"It is because of the president that the Volcker rule is a part of the law, and our administration has worked since the day it passed to ensure it and the entire law is implemented in a tough and effective way so that taxpayers never again have to bear the burden of risky behavior on Wall Street," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said when asked about the Journal report.

Regulators are crafting the final language of that rule.

George Will, Washington Post
Bipartisanship, the supposed scarcity of which so distresses the high-minded, actually is disastrously prevalent.Since 2001, it has produced No Child Left Behind, a counterproductive federal intrusion in primary and secondary education; the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act); an unfunded prescription drug entitlement; troublemaking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government-directed capitalism from the Export-Import Bank; crony capitalism from energy subsidies; unseemly agriculture and transportation bills; continuous bailouts of an unreformed Postal...

Michael Barone, DC Examiner
Is it panic time at Obama headquarters in Chicago? You might get that impression from watching events -- and the polls -- over the past few weeks.In matchups against Mitt Romney, the president is leading by only 47 to 45 percent in the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls. A CBS/New York Times panelback poll, in which interviewers call back respondents to a previous survey, showed Romney leading 46 to 43 percent -- and leading among women.

Charles Blow, New York Times
You gotta have faith. Democrats have it. Republicans don't. That is the finding of a USA Today/Gallup poll that was released on Tuesday. The poll found that:

At a fundraiser in Elbert County last weekend, Colorado Republican Congressman Mike Coffman shared some startling thoughts about President Barack Obama, raising the issue of the president's United States citizenship.

Toward the end of his speech, after citing the downturn in the U.S. economy, Coffman said:

I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American.

Listen to a clip from the Elbert County fundraiser speech that was uploaded to YouTube above, the remarks about Obama begin at 3:21.

9News, which first reported about Coffman's statement and has complete audio of his speech from Elbert County, spoke to Elbert County Republican Chairman Scott Wills who was in attendance and said that the comment was met with "deafening silence" at first, followed by applause.

Coffman apologized on Wednesday night, completely walking back from his original statement about Obama's citizenship. "I misspoke and I apologize," Coffman said about the comments in Elbert County in a written statement. "I have confidence in President Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy as President of the United States."

Coffman went on to say in his written apology: "However, I don't believe the president shares my belief in American Exceptionalism. His policies reflect a philosophy that America is but one nation among many equals. As a Marine, I believe America is unique and based on a core set of principles that make it superior to other nations."

Fox31 reports that the Democrat challenging Mike Coffman's seat, Rep. Joe Miklosi, slammed Coffman saying, "These outrageous comments once again make clear that Mike Coffman is Colorado’s version of Rush Limbaugh."

In 2011, a Colorado judge ruled in favor of Democratic-drawn redistricting map and in the process made Coffman's once solidly Republican suburban Denver seat (District 6) much more competitive by including a relatively even split of Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated voters, 7News reported.

Congressional boundaries are redrawn every 10 years by the state legislature to accurately reflect population changes.

House Republican leaders are quietly hatching a plan of attack as they await a historic Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law.

If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that employers provide insurance or face fines.