I've got to wonder how this story is going to sit with so-called pro-life advocates if it manages to gain some more traction during this presidential election cycle. David Corn joined Lawrence O'Donnell and Karen Finney to discuss his latest article at Mother Jones on Romney's time at Bain Capital and their investments in a medical waste firm that disposed of aborted fetuses:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999. Read on...

No matter what comes of this story, one thing is pretty clear and that's Mitt Romney and his partners at Bain were more worried about lining their pockets than anything else and as David Corn pointed out in the interview with Lawrence O'Donnell, this is not the only time the Romney campaign has tried to say that he was no longer with Bain when it's clear that he was, in order to avoid taking responsibility for many of the firm's actions.

So much for Republicans being the party of personal responsibility. Romney not only wants to avoid taking responsibility for his time at Bain, but also wants everyone to forget every political position he's taken on every issue as well. I guess that might explain why his campaign has decided he's going to retreat to the extremes on the right and try to avoid any actual journalists that are left out there as Think Progress reported this week: Romney Advisers Reveal Strategy: Ignore Journalists, Pander To Right-Wing Conspriacy Websites.