Remember a few weeks ago the "lame" stream media told us the Presidential election was over and Obama had won. Now that Mitt Romney beat Obama in the first debate, lo and behold, the race has tightened and it's anyone's to win! It's interesting how things quickly change.

If you wonder why this happened, it's because the left wants to discourage conservatives into not voting as their candidate is a loser or not worthy. This election is too important to stay home. Make sure you vote this year, conservative candidates from the top of the ballot to the bottom are counting on your support.

Did you hear that recently that former Democratic Senator Evan Bayh and Jim Webb have expressed doubts about the wisdom of supporting this monstrosity? Recall also that it passed with no margin to spare in the Senate. And as a brief refresher course of how bad Obamacare is, thanks to the Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Anderson: "...it will increase federal spending by $2 trillion over the next decade...it will impose 20 new or higher taxes, fees, or fines, totaling $1 trillion. It will raise annual health care premiums by thousands of dollars per family for policies purchased on the open market. It will siphon $716 billion out of Medicare. It will cut Medicare reimbursement rates...(so)Medicare providers would be paid less then Medicaid providers by the end of this decade... ." And this is just the beginning of the disaster for our broken health care and for us. And that's why we need to elect Mitt Romney in November.

With the national debt back in the headlines, let's look at a preview of what's coming soon. The debt is now over $16 trillion and growing at more than $1.2 trillion a year. It is unsustainable, so what can we do? Cut spending and entitlements and/or raise taxes sky high for everyone, because if the rich are taxed at 75%, they can only pay our government's bills for a month or so. This solution does not solve the deficit however. So it's fair to say the easiest solution is devaluing the dollar via inflation and currency debasement which makes the debt easier to deal with and over time the value of the dollar will decline. It will then require more and more money to buy everyday goods. The way to protect yourself is the one form of wealth the government can't debase, gold. Our suggested dealer is Jerry Williams in Phoenix at 1-800-522-4653.

It has been a political priority for the State Democratic Party of Texas to launch an all out assault against the integrity of the Voter Roll since 2008. By that year they had sued the Texas Secretary of State three times and lost, and then filed election contests in Dallas and Harris Counties. While they and other plaintiff allies lost both election contests due to lack of any evidence, their attempts at Trial Restraining Orders against election officials in both counties were denied, as well. What the state SDPT legal counsel, Chad Dunn, was successful in doing was getting local Democrat County Attorneys, like Vince Ryan, to agree to lawsuit "settlements" about election issues after the fact. This started the process of Politicizing the Voter Roll in Texas as a constant campaign issue.

Four years later, nearly every independent action Voter Registrars around the State can take will be litigated at some point, all to cast a pall over the Voter Roll in Texas. The Political debate has moved from electing legislators that vote on election issues to filing lawsuits. Because of state law, lawsuits can be filed in the "People's Republic of Austin" or Travis County Courts where partisanship is so rampant that one recently elected Democrat judge didn't even listen to the arguments by the Texas Secretary of State's office or the Attorney General's office before enjoining the state from giving any advice whatsoever to Vote Registrars for 14 days about taking Dead Voters off the rolls.

We have lawsuits not only on Redistricting lines and Photo ID, but all the way down to routine actions being taken by Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson in Galveston County following recent measures passed by the Texas Legislature. For example, what's wrong with restricting Deputy Voter registrars to be Texas residents as they handle private information like Social Security Numbers and driver's license? I do not know, but there's a suit filed about it!

Recently, Harris County Voter Registrar Don Sumners didn't make the correct decision when his office mailed nine thousand "weak" death match notices from the voter roll. It means that instead of reviewing the nine thousand records first to check to see if the information was correct like Bexar and Tarrant Counties did, about three thousand live voters got unnecessary death notices. Also, he refused to mail one thousand additional "strong" matches that had actual Social Security Numbers or Drivers License numbers of deceased persons. Eventually that resulted in the Houston Chronicle writing a front page headline story saying that "Black Areas of the County" got a disproportional percentage of the letters once again casting dispersion on the integrity of the voter roll. The fact that Mr. Sumners told the truth that the voter roll is race neutral and no stats are kept, didn't prevent the liberal editor from blasting out the charge to a few hundred thousand readers anyway. Oh, the paper never mentioned the strong list of 1000 actually deceased voters in this lastest story!

Sadly, these one thousand, 99.8% probably dead voters in Harris County, are still on the voter roll because the Voter Registrar and now another political "settlement" in a Travis County case won't let them be purged before the election. Look in 2000, my office took 50,000 deceased and felon registrations off of the voter roll because it was the right thing to do! In Houston Chronicle coverage at the time it was noted that about 1% of these had recent voting history. Could 500 fraudulent votes in Texas matter in a national election? Ask Florida, as the margin of victory was 537 in the Presidential race.

My how things have changed! So when you see these stories know they are politically motivated. Anyone that has a real registration issue in an election can vote a provisional ballot under federal law. Each early ballot board in Texas counties will review the registration history on 40 points or so, trying to see if your vote should count. Only 0.3% of voters out of nearly two million registered in Harris County had to use that form of ballot in 2008, and each one was reviewed individually by law. Does this sound like a system that disenfranchises voters? Stop Politicizing the Voter Roll in 2012!

Jim Lindeman, a respected attorney, former prosecutor and a conservative Democrat passed away suddenly this week. He was a wonderful lawyer, husband and father who will be missed. In another political era he would've been a prime conservative Democratic candidate for high office.

Red, White & Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland, liberal commentator David Jones and moderator Linda Lorelle on Fridays at 7:30 pm on PBS Houston Channel 8.1, replaying Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on Channel 8.1, Mondays at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpbs.org.