From Salon:

Remember those abusive Republican robo-calls and the sample ballots that suggested -- falsely -- that Michael Steele is a Democrat? The soon-to-be Senate majority leader does, and he's prepared to do something about them.

In a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Prospect, Harry Reid told reporters today that the calls and the phony campaign literature were "absolutely wrong," and that one of the first 10 bills he introduces in the next Senate will deal with such abuses. "We need to make these criminal penalties," Reid said, saying that civil liability was apparently not enough to deter what happened in the run-up to last week's election.

Reid's legislation seems like it will be targeted against harrassing robo calls like the ones the NRCC deployed. But as we noted yesterday, there's movement against all robo calls on the state level.

Which nefarious election stunt from 2006 will live on in greater infamy, the NRCC's robo calls, or Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's recruitment of out-of-state homeless men to hand out misleading campaign literature in African-American neighborhoods?

The Washington Post makes the case for Ehrlich and Steele (who made an apparently unsuccessful bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee) in today's paper, even including a picture of the now-famous fake ballot that the men were handing out, which showed Ehrlich and Steele as Democrats. So check it out.

A highlight:

On the eve of this month's election, the mailers began landing in Prince George's mailboxes. One was a glossy red, black and green flier -- the colors that represent African American power -- sporting pictures of County Executive Jack B. Johnson, his predecessor, Wayne K. Curry and past NAACP president and former U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume.

Above the pictures of the three Democrats the flier read, "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats," and underneath it announced: "These are OUR Choices."

None of the three candidates had endorsed the governor, and only Curry had declared his support for Steele.

There were other fliers, too. A similar "Democratic" guide with Ehrlich's and Steele's photo on the front appeared in Baltimore. Another distributed in Baltimore County identified the Republican candidate for county executive as a Democrat.

An Ehrlich aide who agreed to discuss the strategy on the condition of anonymity said the purpose of the fliers was to peel away one or two percentage points in jurisdictions where the governor would be running behind. No one inside the campaign expected a strong reaction.

Here's another thing to keep in mind as Michael Steele makes his bid for Chairman of the RNC, a position that requires frequent contact with the press -- not to mention loyalty to the party.

Back in July, Michael Steele granted a briefing to reporters, during which, under the cover of anonymity, he spoke of the burden of running as a Republican this election, famously referring to "R" as "the scarlet letter" and saying that he wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him. Dana Milbank wrote about Steele's remarks in his column, dropping a few clues about the identity of the speaker. A fury of speculation followed, and Steele was finally unmasked.

But instead of owning his remarks, Steele furiously backpedalled (saying that Bush, in fact, was his "homeboy"), even lying about the nature of the briefing, accusing Milbank of printing "off the record" remarks. But as an email to Milbank from Steele's spokesman made clear, the remarks had been "on background" -- meaning they could be used anonymously.

Just a foreshadowing of the straight-dealing one can expect from Steele as the spokesman for the Republican Party. (I wonder how he handled that "scarlet letter" comment in his job interview?)

Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a failed GOP Senate hopeful, has been asked to take the helm of the Republican National Committee, the Washington Times reports this morning.

Steele's Senate campaign, you may recall, has twice bamboozled homeless people to campaign for him. The first time the "volunteers" never got paid; the second time they were told to hand out literature so misleading, the men were verbally assaulted by the voters they interacted with.

In that literature and elsewhere, Steele has repeatedly portrayed himself as a Democrat. Not by adopting Democratic stances -- but by literally labeling himself "Democrat" in the material. That's a curious habit for a guy who's set to run the Republican party, don't you think?

Observers have been shocked and outraged by two Maryland Republicans' use of homeless and poor Philadelphians to pass out misleading campaign material at the polls on Election Day. Now it turns out the duo had tried this sort of thing before.

This past Tuesday, for $100 and the promise of three meals, the GOP candidates for governor and senator recruited dozens of the least fortunate from Philadelphia's shelters -- all or most of whom were black -- to come to Maryland for the day and pass out fliers portraying the two hopefuls as "our choice" for African-American voters. (Steele is black; Ehrlich most definitely is not.)

The tactic was brazenly amoral, but also logistically curious. Why did the candidates go all the way to Philadelphia for homeless people, when there are thousands in Baltimore and nearby Washington, D.C.? If they wanted deniability, why did Ehrlich's wife -- Maryland's current first lady -- meet the buses and pass out hats?

It turns out the duo pulled a very similar stunt at least once before, in 2002, according to the New Republic. Then, they pulled homeless people from D.C. shelters, and black students from nearby Bowie State, and the candidates kept their distance from the operation. Instead of telling them to distribute literature, the campaign instructed the recruits to go door-to-door in predominantly black neighborhoods, telling residents that they were "volunteers" trying to get Maryland to elect its first black lieutenant governor.

It was a debacle:

About 250 recruits, drawn by the promise of free meals and a day's pay, participated in what one recruit later called a "scam from the start." The students didn't get their meals, and they didn't get paid. The homeless recruits also weren't paid, and, that night, the van that had taken them at dawn to Prince George's County and was supposed to transport them back to Washington, D.C. never showed up.

Some of the homeless workers reportedly staged a protest that night in front of the Democrats for Ehrlich headquarters in New Carrollton, Maryland. The next day, they enlisted legal help from the homeless center to get the money they had been promised. But the protest had alerted the state prosecutor, and when one of Ehrlich's campaign workers finally showed up with the money, investigators were on hand to witness the homeless recruits being paid.

A Philadelphia Daily News columnist tracked down one of the unfortunate locals who had been tricked by the Michael Steele for Senate campaign to hand out deceptive pamphlets outside Maryland voting places. The result: a refreshingly candid indictment of the failed GOP candidate Steele, who now hopes to head up the Republican National Committee.

"I might not have a home," an outraged Yusuf El-Bedawi told the Daily News' Ronnie Polaneczky, "but that doesn't mean I don't care about right and wrong. No one has the right to use me that way."

The Steele campaign recruited six busloads of poor and homeless Philadelphians to hand out flyers to Maryland voters portraying Steele and his ticketmate, governor Bob Ehrlich, as Democrats. Steele is currently Maryland's lieutenant governor; Ehrlich is governor.

"People started screaming, at us, 'Do you think we're that stupid? What are you trying to pull?' " El-Bedawi told the writer. "I said, 'I didn't know it was a lie! I'm from Philly!' And they said, 'Then go back to Philly!' "

"I am so angry and upset, I don't know what to do," said El-Bedawi, who's particularly shattered that he and at least 200 other Philadelphians didn't get home from Maryland in time to vote here.

"These people think we're too stupid to understand the magnitude of what we did."

What they did, said El-Bedawi, was cheat an entire community of unsuspecting voters.

And just because they didn't know they were doing it doesn't mean it doesn't feel awful.

Misleading flyers were handed out at several Maryland polling places by men and women recruited by the GOP governor's campaign from out-of-state homeless shelters, the Washington Post reports. The flyers, given to voters in a heavily Democratic area, showed GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Ehrlich as a Democrat:

Erik Markle, one of the people handing out literature for Ehrlich, who is seeking reelection, and Steele, the current lieutenant governor who is campaigning to replace retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D), said he was recruited at a homeless shelter in Philadelphia.

After a two-hour bus ride to Maryland, Markle said the workers were greeted early this morning by first lady Kendel Ehrlich, who thanked them as they were outfitted in T-shirts and hats with the logo for Ehrlich's reelection campaign. Nearly all of those recruited, Markle said, are poor and black. Workers traveled to Maryland in at least seven large buses.

Ehrlich's GOP ticketmate, Senate candidate Michael Steele, is also listed as a Democrat on the flyer.

Update: Maryland's Gazette newspapers have more. "We’re just down here trying to make some money," one Philadelphia homeless man tells a reporter. Then, pointing to a picture of Ehrlich: "I don’t even know if this cat’s a Democrat or Republican."

Looks like the Maryland Dems are planning to have a field day with TPMmuckraker's story yesterday about Michael "Scarlet Letter" Steele. Steele tried to double back on his disloyalty by claiming that his comments to The Washington Post's Dana Milbank were off the record.

Accused of a journalistic sin, Milbank was quite happy to send us over an email from Steele's flack proving that the comments were made on background, not off the record.

Here's a press release the Maryland Dems sent out earlier today:

Maryland Democratic Party Obtained Secret Email Between Steele Campaign and Washington Post That Discussed Quotes BEFORE Story Was Published

Steele LIED THROUGH HIS TEETH About “Off the Record” Interview; Whole Incident is Naked Political Stunt

TODAY Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman to Release Secret Email at 2pm Press Conference in Baltimore

Who: Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman

What: Lierman releases Steele campaign email to Washington Post revealing that Steele knew the “anonymous” story would be published and the campaign approved the use of those quotes in advance. This proves Steele and his campaign lied and that the whole incident has been a pre-meditated political stunt.

When: 2pm TODAY

Where: On top of Federal Hill, Federal Hill Park, Baltimore

What a pathetic climax to the days-long controversy following Dana Milbank's column about the "Scarlet Letter" Republican.

As everyone now knows, Milbank wrote a column Tuesday, relating the comments of an anonymous Republican carping about the burden of being a GOPer during Bush's second term. All day Tuesday, bloggers and pundits took turns guessing at the mystery Republican's identity. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, Michael Steele admitted to ABC News that it was him.

And now, he takes it all back. Bush is his "homeboy," he said during a radio interview this morning. Whereas before (when he was under the guise of an anonymous "GOP Senate candidate") he said that "to be honest," he probably wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him, now he says that "If the president wanted to come and help me in Maryland, he is more than welcome, because I'm not going to turn my back on a friend."

But it gets even better.

Backpedaling furiously, Steele also said this morning that the interview with Milbank and other reporters was supposed to be off the record. That would mean that Milbank wasn't supposed to quote his remarks, anonymously or otherwise.

But it turns out that's just not true. Steele appears to be lying through his teeth. As Milbank clearly stated in his piece, Steele spoke to reporters "under the condition that he be identified only as a GOP Senate candidate."

This afternoon I contacted Milbank to find out what happened and he confirmed that the meeting, done over lunch, was not off the record. "The luncheon was one in a regular series, and they are all on background. It was announced at the start of the lunch that this one, too, was on background," he said.

As proof, Milbank forwarded me an email from Steele's flak Doug Heye, who in response to an email from Milbank checking whether he could run certain quotes from Steele in his story, responded, "since it was a backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you'd like to use, can you email them to me so I could sign off?"

So case closed.

Late Update: Here's the email as forwarded to me by Milbank (I've redacted their email addresses):

From: "Doug Heye" To: "Dana Milbank" cc: Subject: RE: Reconsider? 07/24/2006 03:38 PM

Won't waste your time, and know deadlines are tight.

I'd probably be fine with those you sent, but since it was a
backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you'd like to use, can you
email them to me so I could sign off?

I can hold off on signing off for other press for the time being, as
well.