Gov. Romney can resolve this in 10 seconds – they can release the tax returns. Why don’t they just put this to rest? What is it that he’s hiding?

David Axelrod on Fixxed News

Romney could give us the proof that he has paid taxes consistently. The fact is, Bob, Mitt Romney wants the American people to trust him with the presidency, but he won't trust us with his tax returns. All he has to do is release his tax returns. The question that I think is this: why is Mitt Romney refusing to give us his tax return?

Ted Strickland on Face The Nation

I don't know whose Harry Reid's source was, but I do know that this is a question that has swirled around Mitt Romney for this entire campaign. I do know that he could clear it up just like that, lickety-split, by releasing his tax returns, which every major candidate for president of the United States has done except for Mitt Romney. I do know that there are massive questions about why he has a Swiss bank account, why he has investments in the Cayman Islands and a Bermuda corporation that he has transferred to his wife's name one day before he became governor of Massachusetts.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz on ABC's This Week

We could put all this stuff to rest tomorrow. You know what, we wouldn't talk about this tomorrow. We wouldn't say "is he paying taxes?" "What's he paying?" The whole world would know exactly what loopholes he's taking advantage of.

Robert Gibbs on CNN

I think people are coming to see Governor Romney, as a person who has been born into and lived in privilege, has made a lot of money by closing factories, and laying off workers, and taking away pensions and benefits, sending jobs overseas, wanting tax reform that will benefit himself to the detriment of the working middle class in this country.

PRIEBUS: As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, I know you might want to go down that road, I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar, who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money, but lives in the Ritz-Carlton here down the street. So if that’s on the agenda, I’m not going to go there. This is just a made-up issue. The fact that we’re going to spend any time talking about it is just ridiculous.


STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you’re not gonna respond, but you just called him “a dirty liar.” You stand by that? You think Harry Reid is a “dirty liar?”


PRIEBUS: I just said it.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We now have a couple of responses, Anderson. Let me read you the first one, that is, "Senator Reid stands by his comments. Governor Romney's continued refusal to release his tax returns raises legitimate questions about what he is hiding and whether he paid any taxes at all. Governor Romney can easily end this debate by following the precedent set by his father and releasing his tax returns."



And as you were coming on the air, Anderson, I got a follow-up like the statement, which also stands by what they call his credible source that Romney has not paid taxes for 10 years, and he's calling Romney playing tricks, many tricks at his disposal for avoiding taxes. So not backing down at all.



I got to tell you, covering Harry Reid for a lot of years, there are times when he says things off the cuff that make his aides wince, like talking smelly tourists in the capitol. I'm not making this up. This is not one of those times.


This is one of those times where he knows exactly what he's doing. He's doing it on purpose. He's doing it for political reasons because he wants this issue, Romney's taxes, to be talked about on programs like yours, and wants it to be headlines in newspapers, and wants Mitt Romney to respond on this issue, which they think is a negative for Romney as opposed to issues that Romney wants to talk about.



COOPER: And I go back and forth, I'm with Paul Begala in a moment, who just tweeted out saying it's -- I cannot, that it's unfair for me to compare what Reid is saying to what Bachmann did to Huma Abedin. But I'm not even arguing about the tax return issue here. To me, it's just a question of making allegation like this for -- you know, a powerful senator making allegations like this without any evidence.



That's what I am trying to focus on. We'll talk to Begala and Mary Matalin about it in a second. But in that interview that Reid gave to "Huffington Post," he says about Romney, quote, "his poor father must be so embarrassed for his son," what does that tell you? I mean that's a very personal comment.



BASH: It's very personal and it is very Harry Reid. Look, first of all, let me just back up and say you pointed out the interview he gave with the "Huffington Post." Again evidence, it's a friendly outlet. They did it -- he did this very strategically.



In terms of the personal, that is Harry Reid. I mean he -- when he wanted to go after Alan Greenspan, he called him the partisan hack. When he went after President Bush, he called him a liar and a loser. He apologized for the loser part, not for liar.



But this is -- when Harry Reid doesn't like somebody, he goes for the jugular. And that is what he is doing now. He is an old boxer and he still likes to be a political street fighter. He knew full well that he was going to be questioned over and over again on who his source was. And he said -- he's told people close to him who I have spoken today that he didn't care. He's not telling going to tell who his source is.



But I did speak, I just have to tell you, that I did speak to one source who's very close to Senator Reid who claims to also know who this Bain investor is that Reid spoke with, and insists that this is a credible person and this person if we knew the name we would understand that they would have the authority and the ability to know about Romney's tax returns. Whether we'll find it out ever, who knows. But they're doing this on purpose so that this is the discussion.



COOPER: Dana Bash, appreciate the reporting. Dana, thanks.

Dear Colleague:

As we will discuss on today's Victory Coalition call, an opportunity has arisen to begin to push back on the insidious Muslim Brotherhood influence operation mounted by Grover Norquist and his Brotherhood-affiliated protégé, Suhail Khan. It comes in the form of the upcoming October 4 Conservative Political Action Conference in Denver. I believe that, by using this event as leverage, we have a shot at raising enough hell in Colorado and elsewhere about Norquist and Khan that we can force the ACU Board, at a minimum, to rescind the resolution it adopted last September condemning me and a endorsing them. If we create enough of a stir, it might even be possible to induce the Board to force their resignations and that of the third Board member who enabled that resolution, Cleta Mitchell, from the ACU leadership.

To that end, I am forwarding for your consideration a letter that might usefully be sent, individually or collectively, to the ACU's President, Al Cardenas -- who I have reason to believe would be personally sympathetic to such a campaign.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this initiative on the call today.

All the best, F

Scalia told Wallace “…Nobody ever thought that the American people voted to prohibit limitations on abortions…there’s nothing in the Constitution that says that.”

Wallace: “What about the right to privacy that the court found in 1965?”

Scalia: “There’s no right to privacy in the Constitution — no generalized right to privacy,”

Wallace: “Well, in the Griswold case, the court said there was.”

Scalia: “Indeed it did, and that was wrong.” The Constitution “…simply doesn’t cover that…which means it’s left to — it’s left to democratic choice as most things are, even important things like abortion.”