In a powerful three-point punch to her opponent Todd Akin's damning remarks on "legitimate rape," Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill released a blitz of TV spots featuring testimonials from rape survivors.

One ad features Diana—a self-described Republican, pro-life mother, and rape survivor. Another stars Rachel who shares how she was "brutally raped in a home invasion." A third highlights Joanie, another pro-life mother and survivor of an "extremely violent sexual assault."

All three women are uniting with McCaskill to take down Akin in the Missouri Senate race. 

"What Todd Akin said was offensive, but what he believes is worse," Diana says in the ad. "I have never voted for Claire McCaskill. But because of Todd Akin, I will now."

With just four weeks left in the general election, McCaskill is directly hitting Akin on his now infamous remarks that rape victims are able to "shut that whole thing down," in a bid to exemplify not only his character, but the types of policy he would be inclined to initiate. Akin has already voiced opposition to emergency contraceptives—with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest—and McCaskill leaves the door open on the implications for victims of sexual assault.

"Todd Akin apologized for implying there is such a thing as legitimate rape," Joanie says in one TV spot. "He may have misspoken, but I believe he showed his true colors and his true intent of what he intends to do if elected."

"As a woman of faith, I must forgive Todd Akin," Joanie adds. "But as a voter, it's not something I can forget."

Watch Diana's ad above, or Joanie's here, and Rachel's here:

Marty Lederhandler / AP

Jobs numbers released on Friday showed unemployment dropped to 7.8%—the lowest it has been since January 2009. After an awful debate performance Wednesday night, the numbers were a boost for President Obama.

That prompted some conservatives to suggest there must be something fishy going on. Less than hour after the news broke Friday morning, Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE and a Romney backer, sparked an uproar over Twitter by suggesting the Labor Department was cooking the books to make Obama look good.

Fox News's Stuart Varney got into the act too. "There is widespread mistrust of this report and these numbers because there are clear contradictions," he said. "Oh how convenient the rate dropped below 8% for the first time in 43 months, five weeks before the election."

And conservative columnist Conn Caroll tweeted:

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis called Welch’s comments “ludicrous” on CNBC Friday morning. “I have the highest regard for our professionals who do the calculations,” she said.

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

George Soros.

Earlier this week, we brought up just how much super-PAC spending is in this election season -- almost four out of every five dollars, total. Now, today, it became apparent that deep-pocketed Democrats are catching up in the money race.

The New York Times reports that billionaire George Soros will be handing off $1 million to the pro-President Obama super-PAC Priorities USA Action. Soros has notably stayed on the sidelines for much of the election, but according to the Times, a longtime political adviser to Soros announced the billionaire’s seven-figure commitment to the president’s re-election efforts, in addition to $500,000 for super-PACs aiding Congressional Democrats.

The move signals a departure from how many liberal donors have addressed qualms with the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United. The advent of super-PACs left many liberals to scoff at the law and pursue alternatives in grassroots organizing, by comparison to conservatives who largely exploited it as an anonymous piggy-bank of unfettered cash.

Soros attributed his late donation due to the Supreme Court ruling, but told specific members of the Democracy Alliance in an email that the Romney campaign's threats to the social safety net were worth combating (hat tip to the New York Times’ Nicholas Confessore):

“I fully support the reelection of President Obama,” Mr. Soros said in the email. He had not contributed until now, he wrote, because he opposed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which paved the way for super PACs and unlimited money in politics. But since then, Mr. Soros wrote, he had become “appalled by the Romney campaign which is openly soliciting the money of the rich to starve the state of the money it needs to provide social services.”

Soros’ cash infusion comes after Priorities USA reported that it had for the first time raised more than its Mitt Romney-supporting counterpart Restore Our Future with $10.1 million to $7 million. NBC News’ Michael Isikoff noted a rise contributions from the president’s inner circle of supporters - particularly trial lawyers - who are concerned with the number of federal judge appointments to be decided by the next occupant of the Oval Office.

"October is going to look like Christmas for the Democratic super-PACs," Isikoff told NBC's Chuck Todd yesterday. That may be true, but at the end, how much difference will it all make?

Gavin Aronsen asks whether super-PACs are overhyped in a new piece in Mother Jones. He answers with five reasons why they're not, one of which is that they've kept the Republican nominee's candidacy afloat:

The Obama campaign has raised $150 million more than Romney's. However, the $143 million already spent by outside groups opposing Obama has tilted the money game in Romney's favor. "We helped leave this race a statistical dead heat," Steven Law, president of Karl Rove's American Crossroads super-PAC, told the Wall Street Journal. "Obama has gotten almost nothing for all the money his campaign has invested." Likewise, Gary Bauer, the former GOP presidential candidate who runs the anti-gay marriage super-PAC Campaign for American Values, told the Journal, "If Romney didn't have the help from the outside groups that he's had, this race would be over."

Super-PAC spending or not, is it over, anyway? That will be a question Melissa will tackle in tomorrow's show. Tune in at 10am, on msnbc.

Evan Vucci / AP

Last night, Mitt Romney suddenly embraced Massachusetts’ health care law, a topic he’s previously left in the ditch somewhere along the campaign trail between his time as governor of a moderate state and his decision to be “severely conservative.”

Never mind that Romney and his campaign have recoiled from linking the GOP presidential nominee to his record as governor of Massachusetts, in light of an unearthed video showing Romney write-off 47% of the electorate, chatting about universal health care doesn’t seem too bad. So long as he sounds empathetic.

"I think throughout this campaign as well, we talked about my record in Massachusetts, don't forget -- I got everybody in my state insured," Romney told NBC's Ron Allen. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record."

But perhaps there is a record that shows more empathy and care about the people of the country: affordable health care for “100% of kids” in not just Massachusetts, but also for the entire country. It's called the Affordable Care Act, signed by one President Obama.

It appears that Romney is sprinting away from fears that touting his accomplishment would undermine the GOP’s message to "repeal and replace" every inch of Obamacare. After all, Massachusetts’ universal health care law was used as the foundation of Obama’s own federal law.

Early on in the Republican primary, presidential dropout Tim Pawlenty who made the shortlist of Romney’s vice presidential picks this year, was the first to coin “Romneycare” as a riff off of the partisan name-calling that condemned Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The topic was such a four letter word for both the candidate and the party that Romney’s spokesman made waves in August for merely mentioning the Massachusetts health care plan. The gaffe made conservatives like RedState’s Erick Erickson say “OMG. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election. Wow” on Twitter.

The strategy in avoiding all talk of an issue that could simultaneously appeal to the middle of the electorate while giving substantive resume-building accomplishments came to a halt after his now infamous remarks on the "victims" of society. Cue the general election pivot, and pander to score some much-needed empathy points as Romney slides down the polls.

But even Ann Romney veered off-track this week in characterizing her husband as an empathetic man. During her appearance on "The Tonight Show," Mrs. Romney responded to the backlash from her husband’s remarks on the 47% by building up his character and referencing a nameless, perhaps hypothetical, dying boy.

“This is a guy that cares for the 100%,” Ann told Leno.  “And there's things I've seen him do when he was a busy, busy executive, and just starting our family and all of these boys, and all of this confusion. But where do you find Mitt? You'll find him at the bedside of a dying boy. And who is he bringing there with him? He's not talking about doing something, he's the guy that does.”

And with only 40 days left in the general election, the Romneys have little time to make caring about the “100%” a new tagline. There is just under one week until Romney and Obama square off in their first presidential debate, and leading into the homestretch Obama is already edging ahead in polls from key swing states.

Women add to the list of voters who are potential casualties of disenfranchisement from restrictive voting laws, as reports show that women have an increasingly difficult path to obtaining proper photo ID.

Discrepancies over a voter's legal name and the name displayed on their photo ID could stand in the way of their ability to cast a ballot in states that have enacted strict photo ID laws. That means if a woman's name or address has changed due to marriage or divorce and her photo ID does not reflect the change, she could be turned away at the polls.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as 34% of voting-age women—who have proof of citizenship—do not have documents with their current legal name.

And as MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry points out, in Pennsylvania where a controversial voter ID has returned to a lower court, recently married or divorced women face an uphill battle in order to vote.

In an asterisk section at the bottom of the Pennsylvania Department of State Voter ID rules, the requirements reads:

 *In this example a voter who recently changed her name by reason of marriage presents a valid Pennsylvania driver's license or Pennsylvania ID card accompanied by a PennDOT update card, which is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the Voter ID law regarding proof of identification.

"You need not one, but two forms of ID if you are a [woman]—there is officially a tax on being a woman in Pennsylvania if you want to vote," Harris-Perry said.

Ari Berman, who has covered voter ID laws extensively for The Nation magazine, added that Pennsylvania voters would also be subject to the individual discretion of workers at over 9,000 different polling places.

"We're talking about, at the very least, a lot of chaos on election day," he said.

Steve Helber / AP

Protesters hold signs as they wait for the Virginia Board of Health meeting on abortion clinic regulations in Richmond, Va.

Anti-abortion activists looking to set a nationwide precedence in pro-life causes must now continue to chipping away at a woman's access to abortion services through technicalities at the Republican-led state level. But perhaps as a hallmark theme of the 2012 local elections, the state level strategy may work.

The nation's first criminal prosecution against Planned Parenthood came to a close last Friday when Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt dismissed the last of the charges against the abortion provider.

The initial investigation was a crusade led by former Attorney General Phill Kline, who filed a 107-count criminal complaint against the Planned Parenthood clinic in 2007. Kline, who is also known for investigating late abortion doctor George Tiller of Wichita, was not able to see through his complaints against Planned Parenthood after failing to win re-election.

A national anti-abortion groups responded to Schmidt's decision by slapping the Republican with an ethics complaint on Tuesday for dropping the criminal charges against the clinic under alleged "false pretenses." The group that filed the complaint, Operation Rescue, had already singled out similar grievances two weeks ago against the Johnson County District Attorney, Steve Howe.

And though the Planned Parenthood clinic is safe for now, other abortion clinics in Virginia are now under threat of being forced to shut down thanks to targeted and stringent regulations on building codes.

The Virginia Board of Health last Friday succumbed to political pressure and voted to reverse abortion regulations they had already approved just months ago, now mandating all existing abortion clinics to adhere to strict building standards required of new hospitals. 

The requirements—based on the state's guidelines for outpatient surgical facilities—set architectural standards mandating everything from the width of hallways; the placement of bathrooms, phones in waiting rooms, and drinking fountains; and even the number of parking spaces outside the clinic.

Opponents to the regulations see the red tape as a backdoor ban on legal abortion services that could cost clinics thousands of dollars. Abortion rights groups estimate that as many as 15 of the 20 existing abortion clinics would be forced to go under due to the costs involved in making dramatic structural changes to buildings.

Back in June, the board's 7-4 ruling adopted an amendment allowing existing abortion clinics to be grandfathered in under the new regulations. Only newly licensed clinics were subject to the strict building codes.

Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli however rejected the provision, saying the board "exceeded its authority" in changing the rules. He followed up by issuing a memo to the board threatening to deny state legal representation should members ignore his advice and get sued.

Gov. Bob McDonnell added to the pressure shortly after the board's amendment by appointing an outspoken pro-life advocate, who serves as vice chair of the group "OBGYNS for Life," a seat on the board.

And with that, just months after ruling on the amendment, Virginia's Board of Health completely reversed course in a 13-2 decision.

As our own Rachel Maddow explained on her show Friday night, the regulations—called "trap laws" for having targeted outcomes —apply only to abortion clinics. 

"These are regulations that do not apply to any other form of medical facility at all. The law would not apply for dental surgeons or outpatient plastic surgery clinics—it's just abortion clinics and it's very obviously designed to shut them down," Maddow said.

Maddow went on the emphasize that the strict regulations appeared in direct conflict of the Republican party's oft-championed ideals of liberty and small government (or as Melissa called it on the Maddow Show in August, "government small enough to put on the end of a vaginal probe").

And as you may recall, Virginia is the state that launched the word "transvaginal" into political discourse earlier this year when lawmakers passed a bill requiring women to undergo an invasive ultrasound prior to being able to obtain an abortion. McDonnell, who initially voiced support of the bill, was inevitably forced to back away from  it in the midst of national criticism.

When speaking before the Values Voters convention this Saturday morning, Cuccinelli vowed to "continue the fight for liberty." But for many women in Virginia, that liberty—the ability to control one's own actions—is not extended to their ability to decide on what they can or can't do with their own bodies. And perhaps Virginia women are starting to take notice.

In the latest NBC/WSJ/Marist poll out this week, Obama inched ahead of his presidential opponent Mitt Romney in key swing states—including Virginia. And there, 14% more women who are likely to vote said they would rather re-elect the president than choose the Republican nominee.

Office of the Ohio Secretary of State

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.

When faced with a court ruling calling to restore early voting for the November elections, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted responded saying you can’t make me. And to that, the Obama campaign is responding with, "yes, we can."
  

So is Judge Peter Economus, who last Friday ruled to restore Ohio’s early voting days for the weekend before the November 6 election, and yesterday ordered Husted to appear before the court -- in person -- to explain himself in why he plans to delay the federal court order.
  

After not getting the answer he was looking for in the court’s ruling last week, Husted has since lobbed threats to defy the court’s decision, saying there was “no valid reason” for his office to comply. Husted issued a directive to all 88 county election boards that “strictly prohibits” acknowledging the early voting hours as the last three days before the election. “Announcing new hours before the court case reaches final resolution will only serve to confuse voters and conflict with the standard of uniformity,” Husted directed officials.
  

According to Husted, rather than notify voters that a U.S. federal judge gave a nod of approval to Ohio’s early voting hours, the state was to hold out on the chance Economus’ ruling could be overturned. 

The Obama For America team fired back to Husted’s directive as an overstep of authority, and filed a motion calling on the courts to enforce the ruling:

"Having sought no stay, either in this Court or the Court of Appeals, the State appears to believe it can issue one on its own authority," the motion reads. "Nowhere in this Directive does the Secretary identify the legal basis for this extraordinary action."

As previously reported, almost 100,000 Ohio voters showed up during the last three days of voting in 2008. And Democrats suspect that many African-Americans in particular utilized the extended hours to vote on the Sunday before the election -- just after attending church.

Meanwhile, there was big early-voting news in Florida today:

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday endorsed eight 12-hour days of early voting in five key Florida counties, including Hillsborough and Monroe, all but ending a long-running legal battle that threatened to disrupt the November election.

Read more about this in the Tampa Bay Times, then see below the "MHP" conversation about voting rights from last weekend. Watch for new editions of This Week in Voter Suppression this weekend on "MHP," and into the future.

The Republican National Committee is upgrading the image of President Obama as an invisible man in an empty chair, to a cardboard cut-out—in an empty chair.

Rather than run from actor Clint Eastwood's heavily ridiculed rendition of a prime time political speech, the RNC appears to be doubling down. And as women's issues—including abortion and health care rights—continue to play a central role for Democrats in their convention message, Republicans in a new web video are highlighting another choice for women: to "break up" with Obama.

The video portrays a woman sitting across a restaurant table from a cardboard cut-out of Obama.

 "You think I didn't see you with Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney?" the woman asks. 

"It's not me, it's you."

But perhaps it is the woman. The actor depicting a disillusioned Obama supporter from 2008 is actually the RNC's Director of Hispanic Outreach Bettina Inclan.

“You’re just not the person I thought you were,” Inclan tells cardboard Obama in the ad, while pretending to be someone she is not.

Inclan, who started as an RNC staffer in January 2012 after years of working for Republican leaders and organizations, made waves with the Romney campaign earlier this year when she suggested that the GOP presidential candidate was “still deciding” on his stance with immigration. Inclan's gaffe forced Romney officials to aggressively walk back.

And as for the RNC ad, officials responded to criticism questioning its honesty, telling Talking Points Memo:

“It’s a lighthearted ad to show how millions of Americans feel about President Obama — he’s not the person we thought he was and it’s time to break up with him,” an RNC official told TPM. “But let’s be clear, it is an ad.”

Mitt Romney today fielded what he called "small-minded" questions from reporters on his taxes, and claimed that he has never paid less than 13% in taxes in the last ten years.

"I just have to say, given the challenges that America faces – 23 million people out of work, Iran about to become nuclear, one out of six Americans in poverty – the fascination with taxes I’ve paid I find to be very small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face," Romney said at a press conference in Greer, South Carolina.

The former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive has been the target of attacks from Democrats, and even members of his own party, for refusing to release his tax returns. Last month, Romney said he had put out as much in returns as he was going to, but his decision to remain mum on the topic received a firestorm of backlash, notably from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who charges that Romney has not paid his taxes in a decade.

"Harry Reid's charge is totally false. I'm sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was who told him what he says they told him. I don't believe him for a minute by the way," Romney addressed on Thursday.

"I've never paid less than 13 percent,” Romney said, adding that in the most recent year it was closer to 13.6%—or “something like that." He also remarked, "If you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent.” (How that happens when charitable donations are tax-deductible is a follow-up the reporters never got to ask, as Romney ended the press conference shortly thereafter.)

Evan McMorris-Santoro of Talking Points Memo on the implications:

The tax conversation is an awkward one for Romney, exposing both his vast personal fortune and facilitating Democrats’ charge that he’s hiding something by talking about the returns’ contents without actually releasing them. That’s why a vocal chorus of conservatives and Romney supporters has urged Romney to release his tax returns. That’s something he still says he won’t do, even after he raised new questions about them Thursday.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post warns of trouble for the Romney camp on this issue, then gives it a brand name:

What we’re looking at here is an extraordinary gamble by the Romney camp — call it the “just trust me” campaign. In essence, Romney is betting he can withhold huge amounts of detail about his finances and his major policy proposals without the public knowing or caring about it enough to matter.

You can see the full Romney remarks below.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., left, confers with Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., right, following a weekly House GOP strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington.

Mayor Vincent Gray is not very popular in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post released a new poll yesterday indicating, in fact, that most D.C. residents want him to resign, his term in office having been stained by a campaign corruption scandal. If the people get what they want, perhaps Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona will want the job. Officially, that is -- considering he's already making policy for the city.

A bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy for women in the District of Columbia -- where the sole delegate is not granted voting rights in Congress -- is set to go to the full House floor for a vote. Guess who's leading the effort? Yes, the Republican Congressman Franks.

Franks ushered the restrictive bill on abortion rights through the House Judiciary Committee along party lines on Wednesday, effectively clamping down on reproductive rights in the only region in the continental United States which is denied of full Congressional representation.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s single delegate, chalked the bill up as a legislative threat to both physicians and reproductive rights, not to mention the voters whose rights are not represented.

“Anti-choice, far-right forces hope to use D.C. women as puppets in their effort to undermine Roe v. Wade by abusing federal authority over this city to get a phony federal imprimatur for their ongoing campaign to get similar bills passed in states across the nation,” Norton said in a statement.

And not only is Norton not allowed to vote on a bill that directly affects her constituents, and her constituents alone, but she was also denied the opportunity to speak before her colleagues with full voting powers during hearings over the bill this spring.

“And so an Arizona Congressman is reproducing this colonial model about ‘I will tell you, people of D.C., how to govern this issue,’” Melissa said on her show in May, after Norton was barred from testifying. And as Melissa noted during the segment, late-term abortions account for very few instances of the procedure - roughly 9 in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 months of pregnancy according to the Guttmacher Institute.

But according to the author of the bill -- one that had ratcheted up to as many as 193 co-sponsors -- argue that the "inhumane" nature of late-term abortions are "the greatest human rights atrocity in the United States today."

"This is a bill to protect children from being tortuously dismembered while they are fully capable of feeling pain," Franks said on Wednesday.

Find our May coverage, as referenced above, after the jump. Join us again on Saturday when we'll be covering this issue once again.

AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Jackson Women's Health Organization owner Diane Derzis, walks past abortion opponents protesting outside Mississippi's only abortion clinic in Jackson, Miss.

A federal judge extended the block on Mississippi’s anti-abortion bill on Wednesday, once again buying time for the state's last remaining abortion clinic to fight for its survival.

U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III, a George W. Bush appointee, extended the temporary restraining order against an anti-abortion bill that, once enforced, would require any licensed abortion provider to be an OB-GYN with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. Jordan had blocked the law from going into effect at the start of this month, but he has yet to say for how long that hold would remain in place.

The extension temporarily prevents Mississippi's lone abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization, from being forced to close its doors. The clinic has been combating conservative efforts to effectively ban legal abortions through a technicality, and argues that it would face "irreparable harm" should the law go into place. The clinic's two out of state OB-GYNs have yet to be granted hospital privileges and say local hospitals have yet to respond to requests. 

"If they're denied or if the hospitals are dragging their feet, that's going to be more clear evidence that there's a substantial obstacle," clinic attorney Robert McDuff said.

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

Attorney General Eric Holder addresses the NAACP on Tuesday.

It's not just Rick Perry rejecting health care reform; Texas is also in the news this week for its state legislature fighting for for harsher voter-ID laws.

After being shot down for failing its pre-clearance test required of states with a history of racial discrimination, the Lone Star State's latest voter-ID law is currently facing a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. that will decide whether or not to deliver the final KO to a law that could disenfranchise as many as 1.4 million people.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder fanned the flames against the legislation when speaking before the NAACP on Tuesday, likening them directly to a relic of Jim Crow:

Under the law passed in Texas, Holder said that "many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them."

"We call those poll taxes," Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery's abolition to disenfranchise black people.

The Texas legislature passed the bill in 2011 in a move that upped the ante on voting requirements, mandating residents to show photo identification in return for a ballot vote. As Holder reminded the NAACP, registered gun owners could legally present their gun licenses to vote, while student IDs didn’t make the cut.

“There was a deliberate effort to pass this," State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, told the three-judge federal panel on Tuesday, "and pass this in record time.”

More than 60 amendments, seven points of order, and 11 hours of debate may have proved hasty in the bill’s conception after the Department of Justice denied pre-clearance approval for discriminating against voters. The Department of Justice's response argued that a registered Hispanic voter was potentially 120 percent more likely to be affected by the law than a non-Hispanic voter.

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card issued by DPS, and that disparity is statistically significant,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez wrote to Texas’ director of elections.

Attorney General Greg Abbott sued the court for the ruling.

“There’s far more evidence of voter fraud than there is of voter suppression,” Abbott told the Houston Chronicle this week. “I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped, and that voter-ID is one way to prevent cheating at the ballot box and ensure integrity in the electoral system."

(For all of that "evidence," take a look at a write-up we did last week, which includes the Mother Jones stat sheet that proves that allegations of UFO sightings are more frequent than actual instances of voter fraud.)

Ed. note: As for the guy who addressed the NAACP today, we'll have more of that later today on the blog.