Three quick links.

* The Michigan GOP gets spanked over their illegal scheme to disenfranchise foreclosed homeowners.

* Green recovery watch: California’s emphasis on energy efficiency has created more than 1.5 million jobs over the last 30 years and boosted payroll in the state by nearly $45 billion, according to a report from the University of California, Berkeley.

* Is college for everyone? Marty Nemko argues in The Chronicle of Higher Education no, it's not. As a PhD candidate looking to go on the job market in the next few years, I must strenuously, strenuously disagree.

In Michigan, Republicans think if your house is foreclosed, you should lose your right to vote.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

...

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

We saw these tactics before in 2000 and 2004, and I imagine we'll keep saying them in 2012, 2016, 2020, and on and on, until somebody starts prosecuting officials who screw with elections.

Undercutting the foundation of our democracy is not part of the campaign game.