As chase martyn just posed on Breaking Blue, the Clinton campaign got caught planting questions.

Chase Marytn's story here

And the original scoop from the Grinnell College newspaper below the fold.

UPDATE2: The Clinton campaign has CONFIRMED that this happened. Unbeiveable. And the campaign is claiming that Hillary didn't know anything about it. 

I did a bit of election-day GOTV canvassing for Craig Johnson's successful NY state senate campaign. While I have a strong aversion to being yelled at by strangers and long ago gave up on phone banking, I was asked to canvass targeted Democratic-registered voters a neighborhood and decided to give it a try. While the experience was not without interesting moments, it was, on the whole, extremely unpleasant. It also got me wondering whether the traditional, intrusive GOTV tactics of canvassing and phone banking in a media-saturated world may be ineffective at best and strategically detrimental at worst.

I'm curious whether anyone in the MyDD community has hard, empirical evidence about the effectiveness of canvassing and phone banking. While there are a wide variety of anecdotes of individuals who seem to have responded positively to calls or visits, I wonder whether there is any data that can isolate the contribution of canvassing/phone-banking to actual votes within the context of a larger campaign effort and larger social and political forces. It's something we just seem to accept as part of politics without ever asking whether it makes a positive contribution toward the larger goal.

Checking election 2006 results, one cannot help but do a jaw-dropper on the results of Arizona's anti-gay Proposition 107, the Protect Marriage Arizona amendment, which failed at the ballot box 49% to 51%. (Some votes are still being counted, no change in the outcome is expected.) Once reliably-red Arizona, ground zero in the illegal immigrant-bashing business, supports gay marriage? The very first state in the union to reject an anti-gay marriage initiative? At the same time seven other states approved similar initiatives on the same day? So, Arizona stands alone against 27 other states on this issue? Say what?

Say what, indeed. This is a great story about smart and gutsy progressives, campaign strategy and tactics and sticking to your guns when the national Big Dogs were giving the `local yokels' the Big Crunch over money. Rahm-style arm-twisting. Follow me on the jump and I hope you'll leave with a big smile on your face.

As the November election draws closer, I have been thinking about how progressives can send a message to President Bush when he comes to their area to stump for one of his rubber stamps in Congress.  From everything I've seen and read, I know that this is a President who avoids contact with the "real public" like the plague and only speaks to carefully selected, sympathetic audiences.  That means that people like me would not be welcome.  I know I will never get close enough to the President to tell him with words what I think of his policies.  So how could I send him a message that he would remember?  Then an idea hit me.

It occurred to me that what most disturbs me about this President is his utter disregard for the Constitution.  He holds the first branch of government, Congress, in utter contempt and browbeats the Republican leadership into serving as his buttboys when it comes to passing legislation that benefits his rich friends.  He packs the courts with activist, right-wing ideologues who do his bidding.  And, when he sees a law he doesn't like, like the FISA law, he ignores it and tells the nation that he's protecting them by ignoring one of their most basic constitutional rights.  So how do you send a message to the President that he will understand and what should the message be?  The answer......toilet paper.

I am urging my fellow patriots to tell the President, "Quit wiping your a-- with the Constitution and use toilet paper instead."  If he comes to your town, you should be able to find out where he will be speaking and how he will get there.  Greet his arrival with toilet paper.  Toss it off the overpasses!  Line the streets with it!  Cover the trees along his route!  Let your imagination go wild!!

I'm convinced that the creative use of toilet paper, one flying, patriotic roll at a time, will send a message to this President that he won't soon forget.  Could you get arrested for doing it?  Maybe.  But it would be a price I would gladly pay to let this President know what I think and to wipe that smirk off his face.