Report: Romney Mines Personal Data

Mitt Romney has managed to raise buckets of money by using a secretive project that mines Americans' personal data, tracking everything from their retail purchases to church attendance, the Associated Press reported on Friday. The firm the campaign has hired to do the mining, Buxton Co., once did marketing work for a former Romney colleague connected to Bain Capital, which the candidate defended in a Wall Street Journal editorial today. The project analyzes databases of consumer data that are usually bought and sold among corporate marketers, and include info on credit accounts, voter registration, family, charitable contributions, and property-tax records.