History has taught us that it's never good to wait until after the election to challenge the results. Combating the voter fraud before it happens, Barack Obama's campaign has filed suited in federal court to stop the Michigan GOP from using home foreclosure lists to discount votes in the hotly contested state.

Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, announced the lawsuit in a conference call with reporters this afternoon… Bauer called the GOP plan to use foreclosure lists “a new and especially repellent version of caging.” Caging is a technique of challenging voters where they take lists of addresses, mail to them with a “do not forward” marking and if for whatever reason those mailings are returned, they use this as a basis for claiming that the voter no longer lives at the address at which they are registered.

Michigan had 11,000 foreclosures in July alone, and Bauer said that the GOP wants to "wants to add insult to injury” by taking away their votes. [MM]

There are a number of reasons one can give for why Barack Obama isn't doing as well in a traditionally blue state like Michigan as one would think he would. Experience could be one, although McCain's pick of Sarah Palin sort of makes that argument moot. But in some regions of the country — 95-percent-white Iowa is one notable exception — there's one obvious reason why so many Democrats are not that into for the Democratic candidate. And it doesn't have anything to do with the content of Barack Obama's character or his resume. In Michigan, the AP reports that racial "tensions" could be the factor that costs Obama the state. No! Really? Before Nov. 4th, expect a matching story for every swing or "barely blue" state outside of Appalachia (we already beat that dead horse in the primaries).

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If you're living in Michigan and your home has been foreclosed, the Michigan Messenger says you can expect to run into some trouble at the voting booth, courtesy of the state's GOP. The party leaders have a list of home foreclosures and plan to challenge voters registered under these addresses.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners. Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

I can't find the states on race and foreclosures on Michigan, but since foreclosures are disproportionately affecting blacks and Latinos across the country, it couldn't be much different in Michigan. It's a key swing state, where every vote will count. Unless your home has been foreclosed, and then it looks like you're on your own.

Al Gore stayed far, far away from the primaries, but, now that they're over, he happily endorsed Barack Obama at a rally in Detroit yesterday. It wasn't a big surprise. The extremely popular Gore told the crowd, "After eight years of incompetence, neglect and failure, we need change. After eight years when our Constitution has been dishonored and disrespected, we need changes."

Obama and Gore were introduced by Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who was a Hillary Clinton supporter. The crowd booed when she mentioned the former candidate's name. Is that really necessary these days? [HP]

During the two days when I relish getting a break from topics such as these, my inbox was flooded with news alerts, I received excited/dejected/disappointed texts from politically-minded friends, and I found myself scouring the internet for news during hours I usually try to spend out of doors and away from the laptop. In other words, it was a big weekend in political news.

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SORRY, HRC The DNC's lawyers today advised the DNC rules committee that they can seat half but not all of Michigan and Florida's delegates, based on the party's rules. The committee meets Saturday to decide what to do about the mess (that everyone knew about and agreed to) they got themselves in. [NYT]

JUST SUPER Barack Obama told a group of undeclared superdelegates from Florida yesterday that he was committed to seating the state's delegates at the national convention, although they have been stripped of their relevance by the DNC after the state violated the party's rules. It's the first time Obama has made a clear promise to do this. In a letter to Obama yesterday, Hillary Clinton wrote, "It is not enough to simply seat their representatives at the convention in Denver. The people of these great states, like the people who have voted and are to vote in other states, must have a voice in selecting our party's nominee."

It's been a long road, y'all. A long hard road filled with combativeness, divisiveness, lies, "misspeaking," media-manufactured scandals, race cards, sex cards, pandering, and foot-in-mouth moments, but after last night, it's finally over. Barack Obama won North Carolina by 16 points, and he lost Indiana, where he was expected to lose by 5-7 points, by fewer than two points. Seeing that there was no way for her to win the nomination by any means that will sit well with a majority of her party, Hillary Clinton has announced that she has gracefully bowed out of the race and will commence supporting Barack Obama's presidential candidacy immediately.

Oh, wait. That was just a dream I had last night. Clinton's still in (it's probably better for Obama that she is such a fighter) and is getting revved up about West Virginia, a shoo-in state for her. Commentators will continue to ask, "Why can't Barack Obama win those white, blue-collar voters? How will that play out in the general election?" They will continue to not ask (or to not ask as much), "Why can Hillary Clinton barely pull 10 percent of the black vote? How will that play out in the general election, especially if she wins the nomination using tactics that, perceived or otherwise, stole the nomination from Barack Obama?"

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The Michigan and Florida problem. You know what it is. Michigan and Florida decided to hold their primaries before Super Tuesday, the DNC stripped the states of their delegates, the states had the primaries anyway, Hillary "won" both of them, and now after all is said and done Floridians, Michiganers (?), Hill, and Julian Bond are pissed that the votes won't be counted. Everyone is scrambling to find a solution, and Michigan might have come up with one. A committee of state democrats (including the Kwame Kilpatrick's mama) has proposed a primary paid for with private funds. The proposal has to be approved by the state legislature, and since the primary cut-off is June 10th, there's a bit of a rush.

In Florida, the idea is to have a joint mail-in and in-person vote. But no one there seems really happy with it, including Obama's camp, and it might not happen. But as upset as their constituents are about not having their votes counted, members of the legislature — who knew this was going to happen — seem less than willing to compromise or come up with ideas. [MSNBC]

• Black Mormons stay faithful to their religion even after it tells them they're inferior. [NCT]

• The ebonics discussion is back, and it's just as ridiculous more than ten years later: "Lanehart believes that understanding and accepting African American language as a variation of language in the United States is important from both a cultural and educational standpoint." [MySA]

• "…some analysts think it's possible Obama's heavy black support is nudging some working-class white Democrats into Clinton's camp." [AP]

• Some African Canadians are getting dumped on, literally. [CHNS]

• A federal lawsuit has ruled in favor of blacks forced from their homes in urban renewal sweeps in the 50s. [Freep]

As I mentioned briefly earlier today, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, sent a letter to the DNC calling on officials to solve the problem of Michigan and Florida's delegates, which won't have a seat at the convention because Florida and Michigan election officials defied DNC rules by holding their primaries before Super Tuesday.

In a Feb. 8 letter to DNC Chairman Howard Dean, NAACP chairman Julian Bond expressed "great concern at the prospect that million of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted." Refusing to seat the states' delegations could remind voters of the "sordid history of racially discriminatory primaries," he said.

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Michigan-born Mitt Romney won the state's primary yesterday. Along with his win in Wyoming, this puts him in the lead over Mike Huckabee and John McCain. On the meaningless Democratic side — the DNC stripped Michigan of its delegates as punishment for having the primary too early — Hillary Clinton won. She was also the only frontrunner on the ballot. According to exit polls, 70 percent of black voters chose "uncommitted" on their ballots instead of voting for Clinton. The group overwhelmingly favored Barack Obama, who, had he been on the ballot, would have won 73 percent of the African American vote, as opposed to the 22 percent who said they would have voted for Clinton either way. We've all learned some valuable lessons about polls in recent weeks, and it should be taken into account that the Dems didn't even campaign in Michigan. But, you know. Black voters are all the rage!

• Bobby Brown's wanted for cocaine possession. Also, the sky is blue and grass is green. [EUR]

• Great moments in air-travel discrimination. [MSNBC]

• Want a free ticket to Africa? Try listening to this guy's music. [CL]

• Six DC social services employees are out of a job after numerous calls to the office concerning four children with a mentally-ill mother were ignored. When someone finally entered the house, the four girls were found dead and had been for at least 15 days. Ah, the system. [CNN]

• Michigan's disaster of a primary is tomorrow. [J&JP]

• Sherri Shepherd never disappoints. [Jossip]

ROMNEY'S FICTIONAL "MARCH ON GROSSE POINTE" Mitt Romney has taken to mentioning that, as a young man, he watched his father George, a former Michigan governor, participate in a march with Martin Luther King, Jr. The only problem is, no one can find any evidence that George Romney ever marched with MLK or that such a march ever occurred in Grosse Pointe, MI. Mitt Romney only just started talking about this in campaign speeches, so the fictional event must have come to him recently in a moment of inspiration. Too bad political reporters like to research such things.