The Mitt Romney campaign said the candidate would stop telling a story about meeting Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was killed last month in the Libya attacks, after Doherty's mother said she didn't want her son to be part of Romney's "political agenda."

In multiple stump speeches, Romney has talked about meeting Doherty at a party and connecting with him. "You can imagine how I felt when I found out he was one of the two Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi on September 11," Romney said in one speech. 

In the same speech, Romney went on to describe how Doherty was actually in a different building across town from the consulate, but went there to help once he heard about the attack. "This is the American way," Romney said. "We go where there's trouble. We go where we're needed. And right now we're needed. Right now the American people need us."

Rachel Maddow Wednesday night took issue with Romney's ham-fisted effort to compare Doherty's sacrifice with his own run for office. "Part of the problem is, here, Mr. Romney equating his running for office with the bravery Mr. Doherty had displayed trying to save lives in the armed attack in Benghazi," she said.

Doherty's mother, Barbara, told WHDH 7 that she, too, objected to the use of her son as a campaign prop: "I don't trust Romney. He shouldn't make my son's death part of his political agenda," Barbara Doherty said. "It's wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama."

In response, Romney's campaign said he'd stop telling the story.

Maddow noted that this is hardly the first time Romney has tried to profit politically from the Libya attacks, recalling his bungled response to the Obama Administration's handling of the attack, while it was still going on.

"Since before the attack was even over in Benghazi," Maddow said. "the Romney campaign has tried and tried and tried to make some political hay out of it, to take political advantage of the fatal attack on the American consulate in Libya. It started before the attack was over, before American deaths had been confirmed there. It has continued with Mr. Romney's efforts to loop into his campaign now one of the Americans killed in that attack, as a sort of unwilling political surrogate after he's died."

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told Chris Matthews today's House hearing on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was "rushed" in order to "give Governor Romney some ammunition against the President." And he noted that it was Republicans who cut funding for embassy security.

The hearings, called by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, a Republican, focused on last month's attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Some Republicans have charged that the Obama administration covered up the fact that the attack was by terrorists, instead blaming a riot sparked by an anti-Islam film, and that the government didn't spend enough to protect the foreign officials who were killed. 

Cummings said on Hardball that he felt the hearing "was a bit premature."

"With regard to this kind of matter," Cummings said, "it needs to be bipartisan and it needs to be a thorough hearing. I think basically what the Republicans did here, and it pains me to say it, but they rushed to have a hearing, basically, I think, to give Governor Romney some ammunition against the president."

Cummings also pointed out that Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer for Libya, "complimented" the efforts of the State Department, and told the committee that he believed extra people at the embassy would not have prevented the attack.“Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra half-dozen guards or agents, would not have enabled us to have responded to that kind of assault," Nordstrom said.

Even so, Cummings said, it was the Republicans who made “hundreds of millions of dollars” in cuts to embassy security funding over the past few years. "Then they come in and they say, 'oh we should have more security, and they're all upset."

Mitt Romney has been modifying his stance on abortion depending on who the audience is, in what the Rev. Al Sharpton on PoliticsNation called "the almost shameless shifting by Romney."

It began with Romney's comments Tuesday to the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, which seemed to signify a shift to the middle on abortion. “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” he said.

Later, Romney spokesman Andrea Saul "clarified" to the National Review Online, a key outlet for reaching conservatives: “Governor Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”

Then: “Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life, and he will be a pro-life president,” Saul reiterated to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, whose record is even farther to the right on abortion than Romney's, told reporters in Florida that "our position's unified. Our position is consistent and hasn't changed."

The Obama campaign charged that Romney is trying to mislead voters because his stance on abortion is unpopular. “We’re saying he’s trying to cover up his beliefs,” said Obama's deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. “They know that his anti-choice position, his anti-Roe v. Wade position, is bad for his campaign.”

On Tuesday's The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow ran down how racial undertones have once again become an issue in the campaign, in part due to two recently excavated videos of Paul Ryan and President Barack Obama.

The first video, footage of Obama addressing a predominantly black audience in 2007, is being promoted by Fox News' Sean Hannity, the Drudge Report's Matt Drudge, and the Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson. The three prominent conservatives seem to be arguing, Maddow said, that the footage shows Obama "revealing his secret plan to be way more black than he seems to you now."

On Tuesday's edition of his Fox News show, Hannity described the video as a "glimpse into the mind of the real Barack Obama." The Daily Caller called it a “racially charged and at times angry speech” in which Obama talks about “a racist, zero-sum society.”

Maddow said that the implication behind these conservative objections was, "people didn't actually know he was this black, and if they had known he was this black they wouldn't have elected him."

But Steve Schmidt, former advisor to John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, thinks that the video is "old news," meant to distract from the high expectations for Mitt Romney ahead of the debate. This video "changes the subject a little bit," he told Maddow. "It's a bright shiny object, diverts attention away from the huge expectations." 

"I think there's almost zero chance that we're going to be talking about this tape on Thursday," he said.

In another recently released video, recorded in 2011, Paul Ryan echoes Mitt Romney's "47 percent" attack, criticizing the 30 percent of the population that he says is perfectly happy to continue living off of the government.

"Today, 70 percent of Americans get more benefits from the federal government in dollar value than they pay back in taxes," Ryan said. "So you could argue that we're already past that tipping point. The good news is survey after survey, poll after poll, still shows that we are a center-right 70-30 country. Seventy percent of Americans want the American dream. They believe in the American idea. Only 30 percent want their welfare state. What that tells us is at least half of those people who are currently in that category are there not of their wish or their will."

The video was uncovered by Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post, and shows a speech Ryan gave at an American Spectator gala. Grim told Maddow that "the idea that that is your preferred state of being just shows the lack of understanding that people like Ryan and Romney have for people in that situation."

As Maddow pointed out, though the video is from 2011, the Romney campaign has repeatedly used a similarly-themed line of attack against Obama, erroneously claiming that he tried to gut welfare reform by getting rid of the work requirement.

As Republicans scramble to cut ties to Nathan Sproul, the consultant with a long and colorful history of alleged voter registration fraud, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) has called for Sproul to be brought to Washington so Congress can "bring him to justice."

"What we're trying to do, Reverend," Cummings told host Rev. Al Sharpton on Tuesday's PoliticsNation, "is get to the bottom of why the national Republican party hired this man, who they know has a history with cheating with regard to voter registration."

The RNC and state Republican parties in Florida, North Carolina, and a number of other states hired Sproul's firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, to do voter registration work this election cycle. In previous election years, there have been a number of lawsuits and investigations into allegations that Sproul's employees at previous firms were instructed to destroy registration forms filled out by Democrats. SAC, Sproul's latest venture, was formed at the RNC's request in June to avoid the stigma associated with previous incarnations of Sproul's consulting firms. 

Cummings said the Democrats hope to call in Sproul for a hearing in Washington on October 12. "These are very, very serious allegations that carry some very severe penalties. We want to get to the bottom of this, we're going to bring him to justice," Cummings said.

Nancy Pelosi told Rachel Maddow Wednesday that she thinks Florida governor Rick Scott's voter purging tactics are "ridiculous beyond words," and that Republicans are "afraid of the people, afraid of their votes."

Maddow reported that during Rick Scott's voter purge last spring, 82 percent of the names on the list were minorities, and 98 percent who responded to the demand for proof of citizenship wound up being citizens.

The Miami Herald reported today that Scott sent Florida counties a list of another 198 potential non-citizens who he wants purged from the voter rolls, including 36 who might have voted illegally. 

Asked about these tactics during a live interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Maddow: "Don't agonize, organize." She added that Democrats should "shine a bright light on" these tactics, because they're "just plain wrong."

Republicans, Pelosi continued, are trying to "suffocate the airwaves, suppress the vote, poison the debate, [so] people throw up their hands and say, 'I just don't even know if I want to participate in this.'" But, "we have to keep the campaign positive."

"Governor Scott is ridiculous beyond words in what he is trying to do to his own people," Pelosi continued. "They're afraid of the people. They're afraid of their votes, and they have to suppress them."

The Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, called on Sen. Scott Brown to apologize after video surfaced of Brown campaign staffers at a rally mocking his opponent, Democrat Elizabeth Warren with "war whoops" and tomahawk chops.

"I call upon Sen. Brown to apologize for the offensive actions of his staff and their uneducated, unenlightened and racist portrayal of native peoples," Baker said.

Brown has not apologized—though he did say the actions of his staffers are "not something I condone"—but his campaign spokesman issued a statement on the video: "Senator Brown has spoken to his entire staff—including the individuals involved in this unacceptable behavior—and issued them their one and only warning that this type of conduct will not be tolerated...He regrets that members of his staff did not live up to the high standards that the people of Massachusetts expect and deserve."

On The Ed Show, Ed Schultz pointed out that Democrats are shopping around another video of Brown supporters making chants during a Brown campaign stop. In the video, Brown brings up Warren's heritage, and people in the crowd start making the "war whoops."

Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley said on the show that this is "consistent with Scott Brown. He has been running scared." She added: "I'm offended as an American. Scott Brown is not just a candidate, he is a sitting U.S. Senator."

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan reunited on the stump this week, and, as Al Sharpton put it on PoliticsNation Wednesday, the reunion "didn't quite go as planned."

When Romney introduced his running-mate, the crowd began chanting, "Ryan, Ryan, Ryan." That prompted Romney to object, and try to get them to instead chant "Romney-Ryan, Romney-Ryan." It's not clear how well he succeeded.

Watch:

As Al said: "You know things are bad when the nominee has to remind people he's the one on the top of the ticket."