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Iowa’s Democratic attorney general and Republican secretary of state made a show of solidarity last month in announcing they were fighting a lawsuit that challenges the emergency powers the secretary of state has given himself to purge registered voters he isn’t convinced are U.S. citizens.

“We’re working together here to make sure that people who are not eligible to vote don’t vote,” said Attorney General Tom Miller.

For the magazine’s 20th Anniversary, the September issue of SmartMoney has a long section recapping changes in American personal finance -- and on what they got right and wrong -- over the last two decades. 

Their historical review starts with the blunt question:

Who’s responsible for your retirement? You are.

It’s time we change how we think about poverty. The newly released Census report on poverty received a lot of attention from the chattering class. But was it really deserved? 

There are many ways in which the rate understates poverty. The poverty line, individuals making $11,484 a year, has been used since 1964. A CBS report explores its inadequacy: 

How a Facebook get-out-the-vote campaign can have a tangible impact on voter turnout—but only when there’s a certain sort of social component to it.

POLITICO led this morning with a piece arguing that Mitt Romney's clay feet on the subject of national security threaten to turn him into John Kerry. I don't quite buy the comparison, however Kerry-like Mr Romney may be in his stiffness and aloofness; Mr Romney never claimed national security as a core competency, as Mr Kerry did.

A very different kind of organizing campaign than AFSCME’s is going on in states across the country with a single undemocratic purpose: to keep voters away from the ballot box.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday called "The Citizens United Court and the Continuing Importance of the Voting Rights Act." At first glance, this may seem a strange title. Citizens United, after all, was a (flawed) decision about the role of money in politics.

Today, Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would launch another round of $40 billion dollar a month quantitative easing, a decision that analysts expected after his pessimistic appraisal of the recovery in Jackson Hole last week. Bernanke's not only doubling down on quantitative easing, but, unlike in past rounds, the program will be open-ended. The Fed's pledged to continue purchasing until the recovery strengthens.

Here’s one especially for the folks who, while vehemently attacking the Chicago teachers’ strike, insist that they generally love and support organized labor.  Warehouse employees in southern California would greatly benefit from your outpouring of solidarity.