RELATED: NY Times Buries The Lede: Anderson Cooper’s Ratings Surge At 8PM

Tennessee attorney John Wolfe, who is an official candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2012, is drawing a surprising amount of support among Arkansas voters in the state’s fourth congressional district.

A Hendrix College-Talk Business poll of Democrats from May 10 showed Wolfe drawing 38 percent support to Obama’s 45 percent. 17 percent of fourth district Democratic voters remain undecided in that race. The poll sampled 418 likely Democratic voters and has a +/- 4.8 percent margin of error.

Talk Business notes that the poll was taken the day after President Obama’s highly publicized interview with ABC in which he expressed support for gay marriage rights.

Wolfe told Weekly Standard that “the momentum is good.”

Wolfe predicted that the voters would move his way in the final days before the May 22 primary, despite his shoestring campaign budget. “There’s not been a single TV ad. There’s not been a single radio ad,” he said.

Wolfe is also on the ballot in Texas’ May 29 Democratic primary.

h/t Weekly Standard

RELATED: Joe Scarborough In Disbelief Over Romney’s Lead Among Women: What Happened?!

“While The Times and CBS regularly conduct fresh random sample surveys on a variety of issues, we occasionally employ a short-term callback method of previous respondents when we are interested in analyzing changes in public opinion on timely subjects, as we did, for example, upon the death of Osama bin Laden. As we pointed out when we published the article, results on subgroups from call back surveys have a larger sampling error.”

The Obama campaign has called foul on the way the poll was conducted.

“The methodology was significantly biased,” Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter told Chuck Todd. “It is a biased sample.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was astonished earlier on Tuesday that Romney had made up the difference:

“Remember the gender gap, Mark Halperin? What happened?” Scarborough asked. “Romney had the latest CBS/New York Times poll, you look inside the numbers, 6% more of the respondents were Democrats than Republicans. This poll was tilted Democratic. Still, more women supporting Romney right now.”

RELATED: Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank Calls Obama’s Constant Campaigning ‘Sleazy’

In a take on Newsweek columnist Andrew Sullivan’s latest piece titled “The First Gay President,” Milbank called Obama the first female president. But the comparison was not flattering – Milbank wrote that Obama’s appearance at Barnard College on Monday “veered into pandering, as Obama brazenly flaunted his feminine mystique.”

He speculated that “Congress would get a lot more done” if more women were there. He speculated that, although no women signed the Constitution, “we can assume that there were founding mothers whispering smarter things in the ears of the founding fathers.”

He announced that “more and more women are out-earning their husbands. You’re more than half of our college graduates and master’s graduates and PhDs.” He told them that they are “poised to make this the century where women shape not only their own destiny but the destiny of this nation and of this world.”

And they can look good doing it! “You can be stylish and powerful, too,” he said. “That’s Michelle’s advice.” The first lady, the couple’s two daughters, and the president’s mother and mother-in-law had recurring roles as “strong, remarkable women” in the speech.

Milbank noted that Obama’s myriad applause lines received passionate ovations from his crowed of newly minted female college graduates. “The tone seemed more suited to campaign than campus,” Milbank wrote.

President Obama went on to join the cast of ABC’s The View to further target female voters which most polls have shown are supportive of Obama’s reelection effort. However, a highly publicized poll from CBS/New York Times, which resampled registered voters from a previous poll in mid-April, showed women are moving in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s direction. In that poll, Romney took the lead over President Obama among female registered voters — they support Romney over Obama by 44 to 42 percent in that poll.

h/t Washington Post

It wasn’t immediately clear whether their cover outing President Obama would go on to become as iconically controversial as some of their others, but it wasn’t the first time that Newsweek had made headlines for a provocative cover photo in recent times. In fact, it is pretty clear that part of the Newsweek/Daily Beast strategy for the ailing weekly is to get people talking about them. Good and bad. So like any good lemmings might, we are here to oblige.

Here are some of their most notorious modern-era covers:

RELATED: National Review Ends Relationship With John Derbyshire

Writing for VDARE.com, a website in which you have to click through a splash page with a content warning in order to reach their content, Derbyshire published “Who Are We? – The ‘Dissident Right’ on Thursday.

“White Nationalist,” which has a fairly healthy currency here on the Whadda-We-Call-Ourselves Right, strikes me as even more problematical. What is the nation to which “nationalist” is the referent? “White” isn’t a nation, nor likely to become one.

I don’t mind the word “white” in either of those expressions. Conservatism, Inc. or otherwise, is a white people’s movement, a scattering of outliers notwithstanding.

Derbyshire goes on to suggest that the phrase “white supremacy” is, essentially, redundant:

Leaving aside the intended malice, I actually think “White Supremacist” is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don’t see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.

VDARE is raising tax deductible donations for Derbyshire’s chemotherapy treatments, which Gawker notes is admirable. However, they note in callous Gawker style, that they support this effort only to postpone their having to eulogize him should he pass away.

If anything, this post proves that it was not short sighted of National Review editor Rich Lowry to end their relationship with Derbyshire in early April after he published a disturbing diatribe on the inherent intellectual deficiencies with which African Americans wrestle in a site called Taki Mag.

h/t Gawker

RELATED: Book Alleges Bill Clinton Called Obama An ‘Amateur,’ ‘Incompetent’ And Begged Hillary To Run Again

On Sunday, the New York Post published a column by Klein in which he reveals a conversation that Wright where the pastor claims the campaign tried to keep him silent during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.

“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”

“He offered you money?”

“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”

“How much money did he offer you?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.

Wright claims that then-Senator Obama paid a visit to Wright in which he urged Wright to cancel his speaking engagements that year.

“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’

“And what did you say?” I asked. “I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive.’

“Barack said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem to have. That’s a good problem for all preachers to have. That’s why I could never be a politician.’

The White House and a spokesperson for President Clinton have said that revelations in Klein’s book are false. Clinton’s spokesperson called Klein a “known liar.”

h/t The New York Post via The Blaze

RELATED: Top Republican Pollster Advises Party To Embrace Gay Marriage

In response to Obama’s Tuesday interview with ABC in which he embraced the issue of gay marriage as a concept, Newsweek‘s May 21 issue described Obama the country’s “first gay president.”

In a blog post, earlier this week on The Daily Beast, Sullivan wrote that Obama will benefit from his embrace of gay marriage. Sullivan wrote that Obama “will be looking to the future generations as his opponent panders to the past.”

I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn’t know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.

Sullivan continued, saying that while the announcement had no tangible policy implications, Obama’s embrace of gay marriage will have many intangible benefits for millions of gay Americans:

The interview changes no laws; it has no tangible effect. But it reaffirms for me the integrity of this man we are immensely lucky to have in the White House. Obama’s journey on this has been like that of many other Americans, when faced with the actual reality of gay lives and gay relationships.

h/t Politico

RELATED: NY Times Buries The Lede: Anderson Cooper’s Ratings Surge At 8PM

Liberty University, founded as a socially conservative learning institution by the late Rev. Jerry Fallwell, restricts certain interaction between male and female students.

According to the handbook that outlines expected behaviors by Liberty students, “The Liberty Way,” students can be fined for entering the bedroom of a student of the opposite gender and are subject to disciplinary action if they are caught watching R-rated films.

Just knowing a film’s rating may not be enough to avoid punishment. Many “PG-13” and some “PG” movies, although not prohibited, may also be inappropriate.

Liberty has strict guidelines for the hairstyles of their students. For men:

Hair and clothing styles related to a counterculture (as determined by the Student Affairs Deans’ Review Committee) are not acceptable. Hair should be cut in such a way that it will not come over the ears, collar or eyebrows at any time. Ponytails for men are unacceptable

For Women:

Hair and clothing styles related to counterculture (as determined by the Deans’ Review Committee) are not acceptable. Dresses and skirts should be no shorter than the top of the knee (sitting or standing). Skirt slits should be modest; open slits should be no higher than the top of the knee, closed slits should be no higher than two inches from the top of the knee. Shoulder straps should be no less than two inches wide. Anything tight, scant, backless, see-through, low in the neckline or revealing the midriff (in any position) is immodest and unacceptable. Slips should be worn under thin material. Earrings and plugs are permitted in ears only. No other facial piercings or plugs are allowed, including tongue.

In 2004, Andrew Garib outlined many practices at the university that some find objectionable with portions taken directly from the handbook. For example, Liberty has had, since 1988, a system of mandatory, random drug testing:

To participate in this drug-testing program, which permits the University to test any student (hair, urine or blood as specified by the administration), irrespective of the method by which that student was selected. Student selection will be accomplished both on a random basis and on the basis of suspected use and/or drug possession as defined in the “The Liberty Way.”
NOTE: Students who test positive for drug use will be responsible for covering the cost of the drug test.

Students are also expected to observe a strict curfew – midnight on weekends (except Thursday, when the curfew is at 10 p.m.) and 12:30 a.m. on weekends.

h/t Talking Points Memo

In one chapter of the book, obtained in advance by the Huffington Post, Powell writes about his well-known 2003 speech before the United Nations in which he presented what was later found to be misinformation about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. He explains that by the time he delivered that speech, war was already imminent.

“By then, the President did not think war could be avoided,” Powell writes. “He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met — and never would meet — to discuss the decision.”

In hindsight, Powell describes the speech as “one of my most momentous failures.”

These revelations echo other stories told by former Bush officials in recent years about how the administration had very little internal discussion about the merits of invading Iraq. In 2007, former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in his own memoir that “there was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat [...] Nor was there ever a significant discussion,” about avoiding war as a means to contain Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In the book, Powell also describes how he felt about the Bush White House’s original WMD case. “It was a disaster. It was incoherent,” he writes. “I learned later that Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, had authored the unusable presentation, not the NSC staff. And several years after that, I learned from Dr. Rice that the idea of using Libby had come from the Vice President, who had persuaded the President to have Libby, a lawyer, write the ‘case’ as a lawyer’s brief and not as an intelligence assessment.”

Powell also reveals that he fought Dick Cheney‘s attempts to add “assertions that had been rejected months earlier to links between Iraq and 9/11 and other terrorist acts.”

(H/T Huffington Post)

*Some news outlets print their websites onto paper, and sell them to old people and hotel guests.

It’s no surprise that someone like Sean Hannity or Eric Bolling would subscribe to some strange conspiracy theory (Bolling told Hannity last night that one of WaPo’s named sources “worked for” then-Senator Obama’s 2008 campaign, not mentioning that he was a volunteer, and that the WaPo article disclosed that fact), but it is a bit surprising that the Bully Truthers count Mitt Romney among their number.

They should all have a good bit of fun with this revelation, from HuffPo‘s Mike Calderone:

Post print subscribers — greeted Thursday by a two-column headline touting President Barack Obama’s newly stated support for marriage equality, “Historic step by Obama on gay marriage” — wouldn’t find the 5,500-word piece in the paper, even though it was ready to go. Post editors were concerned about placing the Romney story on the front page alongside pieces about Obama voicing his support for same-sex marriage, a lead story joined on A1 by a news analysis piece, a reaction story and a tease to the Post‘s editorial praising Obama for his “statement that is both symbolically important, enormously cheering.”

“We’re mindful of the news going on this week, particularly yesterday,” Post political editor Steven Ginsberg told The Huffington Post. “We thought it was better not to have it in today’s paper.”

“The stories aren’t really about the same thing,” Ginsberg added, “but the perception among some might have been that putting them together would have created an impression we didn’t want to create.”

Aw, come on, who would ever draw a conclusion like that?

Aside from the Romney campaign’s poor handling of this episode, the way other news outlets have chased this story has emerged as a fascinating storyline. While right-wing reaction has been predictable and, at times, hilarious, Slate‘s Dave Weigel notes that some mainstream outlets are not faring all that much better:

Well, folks, Myrtle Beach’s Sun News just threw all the rules out the window. I’d like to nominate the following headline for “Greatest Headline Ever.” Okay, perhaps that’s hyperbolic — let’s just go with “Greatest Headline of this Particularly Slow News Day.”

“Elvis impersonator charged with assault following dispute over board game rules at birthday party.”

So much going on here! And you don’t even need to read the article, because it’s all right there…in the headline.

Fellow writers, take note: the headline game just got upped.

UPDATE: It looks like Sun News has changed the headline…to something even more bizarre! It now reads: “Elvis impersonator charged with assault over board game, leaves with Blues Brothers.” What?!

(H/T Radley Balko)

RELATED: New Obama Ad: Would Romney Have Ordered Bin Laden Raid?

The New York Post reported on Friday that author and former New York Times Magazine editor Edward Klein’s new book, an unauthorized biography of President Obama entitled The Amateur, contains explosive revelations about President Clinton’s true thoughts about his fellow Democratic president.

According to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.

“The economy’s a mess, its dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.

The book alleges a dramatic exchange between Bill and Hillary Clinton over her political future and the future of the nation:

Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”

But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.

“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.

“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”

“The country needs us!” added Bill.

When Hillary Clinton said that she had the option of running again in 2016 and insisted she had no intention of running in 2012, President Clinton pressed:

“I’m the highest-ranking member in Obama’s Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?” she responded.

“Loyalty is a joke,’’ Bill shot back. “Loyalty doesn’t exist in politics.”

Clinton has recently been tapped by the Obama campaign to help fundraise and increase voter enthusiasm – he recently appeared in a high profile campaign video that touted Obama’s success in ordering the operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

h/t New York Post

Last updated at 4:20 p.m. after receiving a response from Dicks’ office, the Seattle Times piece appears to have been amended several times:

President Obama’s belated if unequivocal support for gay marriges puts him on the same side as at least five all six congressional Democrats from Washington state.

The sixth Democrat, Rep. Norm Dicks of Bremerton, voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)that defined marriage as between a woman and a man. Since then, he has strongly backed gay-rights issues, including voting against an amendment last year that would have barred military chaplains from marrying same-sex couples.

But Dicks has not explicitly endorsed same-sex marriages. His spokesoman did not respond to calls and emails Wednesday.

George Behan, spokesman for Dicks, said Wednesday Dicks plans to sign on as co-sponsor of Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA that he voted for. The other Democrats, Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Reps. Jim McDermott of Seattle, Rick Larsen of Lake Stevens and Adam Smith of Tacoma, already are co-sponsors of the repeal bill.

The original headline has since been deleted. Fortunately, it was preserved in a screen capture and will become social network share fodder for at least the next 24-hours.

h/t James Taranto,

Cavuto noted that the timing of the story “could have been coincidental” but asked Romney to comment on the allegations that he led a hazing incident against a suspected homosexual classmate, in which Romney and friends held the student down and cut his hair.

Romney’s response:

First of all, I had no idea what that individual’s sexual orientation might be. Going back to the 1960′s, that wasn’t something we all discussed or considered. So that’s simply just not accurate. I don’t recall the incident myself but I’ve seen the reports and not going argue with that. There’s no question that I did some stupid things in high school and, obviously, if I hurt anyone by virtue of that I would be very sorry for it and apologize for it.

Cavuto then asked Romney whether he thinks this is a deliberately planted story designed to distract voters from real economic issues. “You’re going to find, throughout this campaign season, that the president’s team will be doing everything in their power to try and hold up very shiny objects,” Romney replied.

Check out the segment below, via Fox News:

RELATED: Redstate Blogger Busts Politico Trying To Blame Black Voters For Amendment One

National Journal writes that the Democratic activists are demanding the party’s nominating convention be moved from Charlotte:

Democrats who already were queasy about the site of their national convention could be excused after Tuesday’s election in North Carolina if they asked, “Tell me again just why we’re going to Charlotte this year?” … Almost immediately after the vote, more than 20,000 people signed a “move the convention” petition being pushed by a New York group called Gay Marriage USA. And Twitter accounts lit up with hundreds of angry tweets demanding the party pull out of Charlotte.

Politico is also reporting that the Democratic National Convention Committee co-chair Jim Rogers is equating the passage of Amendment 1 to the institution of Jim Crow laws – invoking a reviled past that is a living memory for many North Carolinians:

“We’ll look back with a clearer majority in the future, that this is exactly what it is,” Rogers told POLITICO on Thursday. “We’ll be as embarrassed of this Jim Crow law as we were of the Jim Crow laws in the 1860s, 1880s. Any time you deny people rights such as wanting to live together, I just don’t think it’s fair.”

National Journal also notes that there is a conflict of interest in Charlotte’s mega-banking industry and Democratic activists mistrust of large banking institutions – particularly those that were on the receiving end of Temporary Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds:

And, oh yes, there is the fact that President Obama will be accepting his nomination with a speech at the unfortunately named Bank of America Stadium, an occasion that will lead to a run of stories about the $45 billion that the banking powerhouse received in the unpopular TARP bailout.

Charlotte was the scene of a major Occupy protest on Wednesday which targeted Bank of America’s corporate headquarters. Between BoA and Amendment 1, the average Democratic voter could be consumed with hatred for their host state at the time of the convention – leading, potentially, to ugly protests that would project the image of Democratic voters vilifying their host city. This eventuality would almost certainly threaten President Obama’s tenuous hold on the state’s electorate and the negative effects could spill over into its electorally critical neighbor, Virginia.

Of the 4 million votes cast in the Tar Heel State, Obama won by just over 12,000. Many of the 61 percent of voters that cast their ballots for Amendment 1 were Democrats – African Americans voted by a 2:1 margin for Amendment 1 as did seniors, and it is likely that there is at least some overlap between those voters and Obama supporters. Given Obama’s small margin of victory in the state, there is simply no margin for error in this cycle.

The North Carolina convention has the potential to become a contentious affair that could collapse Obama’s polling support rather than provide the bump that conventions usually do for their candidate. The Republican’s preceding Tampa convention would appear the picture of harmony compared to the factious event the Democrats would host in Charlotte.

The Democratic Party is better off embracing the logistical nightmare that is abandoning the Charlotte convention and finding a new home – if they do not, they risk a public relations apocalypse in August.

h/t National Journal

RELATED: Hilary Rosen Defends Her Ann Romney Comment: ‘I Love Stay At Home Moms’ And ‘This Is Not About Ann Romney’

The lead article in Time with the cover image of an “achievement mother,” takes on a new age of parenting in which breastfeeding long after toddlerhood is celebrated and kids are encouraged to sleep in the “family bed” into their schooling years.

The Blaze notes that Time’s piece examines the state of experimental parenting – much of the article is, however, only available to subscribers:

The cover goes with the magazine’s feature story on “attachment parenting” — a philosophy designed to foster a secure bond to the child. Co-sleeping, or the “family bed,” and breastfeeding well past babyhood are sometimes the hallmarks of attachment parenting.

The mother pictured on the cover is Jamie Lynne Grumet of Los Angeles and her 3-year-old son.

“I don’t consider breastfeeding immodest at all—I’m not shy about doing it in public,” she told Time.

Meanwhile, Ann Romney’s op-ed, “Three Seasons of Motherhood,” seeks to reassure new mothers by relating her own fears and her experience as a daughter and attempting to emulate her upbringing for her five sons.

“The day my first boy was born I felt woefully unprepared,” writes Romney. She writes about her experience losing her mother to Ovarian cancer, and the happiness she felt when her many sons took wives and added some daughters to the Romney family.

Cherish your mothers. The ones who wiped your tears, who were at every ball game or ballet recital. The ones who believed in you, even when nobody else did, even when maybe you didn’t believe in yourself.

Women wear many hats in their lives. Daughter, sister, student, breadwinner. But no matter where we are or what we’re doing, one hat that moms never take off is the crown of motherhood.

There is no crown more glorious.

Lest you think this article is not political, watch this Restore Our Future Supers PAC ad which attacks Romney’s critics and highlights her “mom-ness.”

Ann Romney publishes a rather gauzy, pre-Mother’s Day portrayal of maternal tradition. All that’s left is a warm slice of apple pie and you have the genesis of the American ethos down. What’s not to love?

Well, for Atlantic Magazine editor, Garance Franke-Ruta, no statement is non-controversial enough to be beyond criticism:

Ann Romney’s op-ed boo-boo: “There is no crown more glorious” than motherhood. She really wants image of her w a crown? usat.ly/KT2c1m

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) May 10, 2012

So went the latest engagement in the “mommy wars.” I think it’s fair to call it a draw.

Furthermore, unemployment claims dropped by 1,000 claims from the previous week, the lowest since March. That said, they are still at 367,000 new claims for the week ending May 5. One would think such good news for the Obama administration on the economic front would merit some focus – unless, that is, it would take voters focus off the culture wars they have fostered since January and would force voters to actually take stock in the state of the economy.

Hey, did you know that the United States’ reached a milestone trade deficit today, hitting $51.8 billion or 14.1 percent? If you did, you are what they call a “reader” and are not welcome at the debate table, thanks very much.

Given these facts, it makes more political sense that we have a national conversation about the virtue of breastfeeding.

Basically, the story is a couple notches away from revealing that Romney was a member of Cobra Kai.

RELATED: On ‘Evolution Day,’ Mitt Romney Opposes Gay Marriage And Civil Unions

From the Washington Post:

“John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

‘He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!’ an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.”

The article goes on to quote the other students saying that the prank went too far and they still regret it, with one, Thomas Buford, telling reporter Jason Horowitz “to this day it troubles me.”

Unsurprisingly, the story has already been pounced on by Democrats. The Democratic National Committee told reporters, “Key point: ‘It was vicious.’”

And, while the Romney campaign at first called the story “exaggerated” and that the candidate didn’t remember the incident, Romney has since told reporters like the Post‘s Philip Rucker that he “apologizes” for the “dumb things” in his youth.

Romney on h.s. pranks: “Back in high school, I did some dumb things & if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.”

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 10, 2012

Romney: “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize.”

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 10, 2012

Romney: “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.”

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 10, 2012

While a lot of the focus of this story will be on the anti-gay component, it seems unlikely that that will move the dial too much. For one, the story, even if true, is literally 50 years old and even the most staunch progressives have probably said a hateful thing or two in the adolescent daze of a school locker room. Besides, gay voters will probably be much more interested in a more modern quote of the Republican candidates; the one from yesterday where he responded to Obama by saying legal same-sex marriage wasn’t his “preference.”

What I imagine will hurt Romney more in the long run is the image of him as a prep school bully, picking on weaker kids at an elite high school for the rich. If Hollywood has taught American voters anything over the years, it’s that kids like young Romney are evil and deserve to be defeated and have their girlfriend’s stolen before the big dance. They didn’t appreciate her anyway.

Besides, we did get one big piece of information out of this story. We now know the real reasoning behind Romney’s other big decades-old scandal; he didn’t put that dog on the roof because he’s a bad dog owner. He just did it as a prank because the gay hippie’s fur was too long.

That the president has chosen today, when LGBT Americans are mourning the passage of Amendment One, to finally speak up for marriage equality is offensive and callous. Log Cabin Republicans appreciate that President Obama has finally come in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue, but LGBT Americans are right to be angry that this calculated announcement comes too late to be of any use to the people of North Carolina, or any of the other states that have addressed this issue on his watch.

As you may recall, the president was once openly in favor of same-sex marriage before he held elected office. But as with all politicians, his views became quite malleable with the whims of his constituents. The Log Cabin Republicans rightfully call him out for this:

This administration has manipulated LGBT families for political gain as much as anybody, and after his campaign’s ridiculous contortions to deny support for marriage equality this week he does not deserve praise for an announcement that comes a day late and a dollar short.

The other pro-gay Republican group, GOProud, released a similar statement saying:

It is good to see that after intense political pressure that President Obama has finally come around to the Dick Cheney position on marriage equality. I am sure, however, the President’s newly discovered support for marriage is cold comfort to the gay couples in North Carolina. [...] This is hardly a profile in courage by President Obama. For years now, President Obama has tried his hardest to have it both ways on this issue.

Look, despite the fact that this “evolution” reeks of political gimmickry and obvious calculation, as a libertarian I am thankful the president finally put this to rest. It’s nice to have a president “on our side” of this issue for once, however politically-motivated his 360-degree “evolution” was.

RELATED: Jon Stewart Proclaims Winner In Romney/Obama Comedy Showdown

1600 Penn stars Bill Pullman and Jenna Elfman as the first couple, and Book of Mormon actor Josh Gad. The first episodes will be directed by Modern Family veteran Jason Winer.

The Hollywood Reporter writes:

Described as a Modern Family-type show set in the White House where all the kids are far from perfect… Gad will write and executive produce alongside Lovett. Winer will exec produce and direct the single-camera effort from 20th Television.

Upon learning the news, Ben LaBolt, Obama for America press secretary, tweeted “huge” to actor and Obama advisor Kal Penn and Lovett:

Huge MT @kalpennCongrats @jonlovett! MT“@THR: NBC Orders White House Comedy ’1600 Penn,’ to Series j.mp/IVx2cv”

— Ben LaBolt (@BenLaBolt) May 8, 2012

BBC News notes that in September 2011, Lovett left the White House to pursue a career in Hollywood. He will serve as the new program’s executive producer.

In November, after he sold the pilot to NBC, Lovett told The Hollywood Reporter the comedy would not be based on real stories from the White House.

“Obviously, my experiences are going to inform what I do, but this family will have absolutely nothing to do with the president,” he said.

“The idea is that this is a dysfunctional family, and the first family today is so far from that, it’s ridiculous.”

h/t The Hollywood Reporter

RELATED: Round Two: Piers Morgan Invites Back Jonah Goldberg, Promising A Fair Fight

Goldberg said that he had not intended to mislead, when confronted by MSNBC.com and added “I never put it in the bio in the first place.”

MSNBC.com reporter Bill Dedman writes, “What’s surprising in Goldberg’s case is that he has been called out for the same résumé padding before, when his previous book was published.

When Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” came out in January 2008, his employer National Review Online announced that Tribune Media Services, which carries Goldberg’s opinion columns, had “nominated” Goldberg for a Pulitzer in commentary.

The liberal blog Daily Kos then pointed out that the Tribune doesn’t choose Pulitzer nominees, writing about “Goldberg’s faux Pulitzer.”

Commenters on Amazon took up the baton, attaching to Goldberg’s Amazon profile several lengthy notes pointing out the puffery. The book sold well, reaching No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover list in March 2008.

Goldberg’s colleague, Katheryn Jean Lopez had written in 2008 that Tribune Media had nominated Goldberg for a Pulitzer when he had just been submitted. At the time, Goldberg’s bio on the site, according to the Daily Kos, described him as the “Pulitzer-Nominated Conservative Columnist and Editor of the National Review Online.”

Goldberg himself has refused to offer a statement on the Pulitzer claim, but a representative from Penguin Group, who published “Tyranny of Clichés,” issued a statement that assured readers “there’s no conspiracy here.”

In casual conversation, whenever a news organization submits one of their writers for a prize, people say that person was nominated. By that standard Jonah Goldberg ‘has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.’ You’ve brought it to our attention that the Pulitzer authorities don’t approve of that usage, and that technically Jonah was ‘entered’ but not ‘nominated.’
…
However, it would be completely inaccurate for you to conclude that there was any intent to inflate Jonah’s credentials or deceive anyone. His credentials are extremely impressive already and don’t require any extra hype.”

Dedman includes a note at the bottom of the story, having evidently received a message from Goldberg that was inadvertently forwarded by his publisher which read, “It’s a bulls**t story and I think this walks the line between acting in good faith and making that clear,” in reference to the statement from Penguin.

h/t MSNBC.com

Gay rights activists and libertarians will lament this as a regressive move that further sets back the movement for equality, but fear not, I say. To quote Bob Dylan: “The loser now will be later to win, for the times they are a-changin’.”

In other words: Social conservatives, you will eventually lose this supposed “culture war.” The long-term trends show more and more Americans supporting legal gay marriage. I cannot imagine an America in 15 years that doesn’t have a majority of states accepting gay marriage.

Social conservatives seem blissfully unaware that government hasn’t always been involved in the business of defining and “protecting” marriage. Following the Civil War, states began defining marriage in order to protect “the sanctity of marriage” from the scourge of…interracial couples.

Of course, Americas are now over the idea of miscegenation; and eventually America will get over the thought of homosexual marriage.

As a libertarian, I believe government has no place in my wallet OR my bedroom. So long as no one is harmed or defrauded by anything I do, then it is none of government’s business. This applies to marriage as well.

I’ve tried but I simply don’t understand how a gay married couple ruins my eventual heterosexual marriage. And I certainly don’t buy the bunk “slippery slope” argument — we won’t be marrying ducks or turtles anytime soon because the issue comes down to consenting adults.

Since marriage is a religious concept, where exactly does the state get the right to “establish” what a marriage is and isn’t? If a church or synagogue or mosque decides to recognize the marriage between two men or two women — how is it remotely appropriate for the government to choose not to recognize it?

Supposedly “conservative” people like Sen. Jim DeMint have the gaul to say “you can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative,” implying that my advocacy for gay marriage is inconsistent with my fiscal conservatism. But they are the ones advocating for a bigger government, one that defines marriage for us.

The only consistently small-government opinion is to get the government out of the marriage business entirely.

But since that will probably never happen, the best we can do is extend the same privileges and titles to gay couples. You can fight it, social conservatives, but eventually you will lose.

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“When we took office, let me remind you, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran,” said Biden who said this abject falsehood as though he had not served as ranking member and later chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a decade before becoming Vice President.

“We were the problem,” Biden continued. “We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe. The international pressure on Iran was stuck in neutral.” Biden said that Iran’s influence in the region had grown over the course of the Bush administration, but has been halted under the Obama administration.

“America’s leadership was in doubt,” Biden concluded. “We were neither fully respected by our friends or feared by our opponents. Today it is starkly different.”

Biden seemed to signal in this speech an attempt to campaign as a hawkish administration – a steward of American interests abroad as well as at home. But this campaign strategy is nothing if not a stunning rebuke of the Obama administration’s own policy that, until recently, was one the White House felt the need to defend.

There was a time when the Obama administration was proud of their outreach policy towards Iran. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama himself made a video to the people of Iran on their holiday of Nowruz. In that video, he declared his commitment to dialogue and using diplomacy to overcome “old divisions.”

In a press conference, Obama had called for “direct diplomacy” with Iran, highlighting the potential for “renewed exchanges” and “opportunities for partnership and commerce.” In response, Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council said Obama’s policy would lead to an end to “the destructive enmity that has existed for three decades.”

In June, 2009, it was revealed that President Obama sent a letter directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early May, just prior to the Islamic Republic’s disputed presidential elections. The letter was publically confirmed by Khamenei as proof of U.S. duplicity – he believed the U.S. was behind rising anti-government protests in that country that arose after those elections.

“I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs,” said Obama at the time of what became known as the doomed green revolution. “But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.”

Tehran saw the opportunity afforded them by the Obama administration’s weak response to the green revolution to make their nuclear intentions even clearer.

NEXT PAGE

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Since confirming this genealogical information was outside my comfort zone, I forwarded the information to author and genealogist Michael Patrick Leahy, who already had written about and investigated Warren’s genealogy.

Leahy reaches the conclusion, based on a variety of sources, that Jonathan Crawford was indeed a member of the militia which rounded up Cherokees in the prelude to the Trail of Tears.

Leahy lays out the evidence supporting his conclusion in a post at Breitbart.com, Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees for Trail of Tears:

“But the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.”

In my view, this episode could be a problem for the Warren campaign and, facing a moderate Republican who is liked by most and hated by few and makes half-court baskets (albeit, after five attempts), she has squandered her early advantages and now could face an uphill battle to win back Sen. Ted Kennedy‘s seat for Democrats in the fall.

h/t Legal Insurrection

“Cable news and talk radio are making a killing demonizing undocumented immigrants,” he begins the column. “In terms of ratings, few issues resonate as reliably.”

Demonizing undocumented immigrants, Rivera asserts, is good for business. He says the story is “cheap” and “easy to illustrate” because “ample file footage exists in every news outlet’s video library of young Latinos jumping the border wall or wading across the Rio Grande.”

“The typical report,” Rivera explains, “consists of a TV anchor or radio talk host lamenting either how our nation is being drowned by the brown tsunami from south-of-the-border, how they are sucking the nation’s life blood or how one of the invading Latino hordes committed a crime, which is far more egregious than if a citizen committed the same crime, ‘because they had no right to be here!’”

Rivera then takes aim at what he sees as an egregious combination of two pejoratives making the phrase “illegal aliens.” He calls upon cable news networks to stop using the phrase altogether:

I have a lawyer’s reason for wanting media outlets like my own to ban or at least modify the phrase. Absent a finding by a judicial or administrative body, it assumes a legal conclusion, that a person has no right to be in the United States. Given that every person whose resident status is questioned has the presumed right to a hearing on the matter, with an appellate process following a negative result, isn’t the media’s use of the expression as lazy as assuming the guilt of a person accused of every other crime?

It’s not the first time Rivera has criticized cable news networks, including his own, for their coverage of the immigration debate. Several months ago, Rivera got into a heated exchange with co-worker Eric Bolling, saying he found Bolling’s attitude towards illegal immigrants to be “way too hard-lined, way too draconian,” and not “in any sense humane or American.”

RELATED: CIA Foils Al Qaeda Bomb Plot Against U.S. Inbound Jet On Bin Laden Death Anniversary

AP Reporter Adam Goldman wrote on Monday that the AP agreed to White House demands that the report be held for several days due to security concerns:

The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.

Politico reporter Dylan Byers quoteed AP spokesperson Paul Colford who would confirm only what was originally in Goldman’s story and “the piece does make clear that we held off until today because of the White House concerns. We reported on the story once the security concerns were met.”

“AP agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way,” Goldman tweeted. “AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.”

An official comment from the White House is said to be forthcoming.

The AP tweeted this alert on Monday afternoon:

BREAKING: Sources: CIA foils al-Qaida bomb plot against US-bound jet near anniversary of bin Laden death. -EF

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 7, 2012

Moments later, the AP posted this update:

U.S. officials say the plot involved an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009. This new bomb was also built to be used in a passenger’s underwear but contained a more refined detonation system.

The would-be suicide bomber was told to buy a ticket on the airliner of his choosing and decide the timing of the attack. It’s not immediately clear what happened to the would-be bomber.

Osama bin Laden was killed in an overnight raid on May 1, 2011. On the one year anniversary of that operation, President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan on the anniversary of the death of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden to address the troops about the future of the United States’ military engagement in South Asia.

“There couldn’t be a starker contrast on this issue than with Gov. Romney, who has funded efforts to roll back marriage laws in California and other places, who believes that we need a constitutional amendment banning the rights of gay couples to marry and would take us backward not forward,” Axelrod said.

The Daily Caller‘s article is titled “Obama campaign hits Romney on gay marriage — even though both are against it,” suggesting it’s hypocritical for Obama to attack Romney over an issue they supposedly agree on.

Yes, President Obama may be annoyingly slippery on gay marriage (he supported it before holding any office but is now…against it? Or something?), but one thing is for certain: he is not the same as Mitt Romney. They are both personally against same-sex marriage on the surface, but there is a very important distinction to be made.

Last August, Mitt Romney signed a National Organization for Marriage (NOM) pledge, vowing to “support and send to the states a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman.” President Obama is opposed to a federal amendment and has stopped defending DOMA in court.

While Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney was a strong opponent of the state’s efforts to legalize same-sex marriage; President Obama came out against North Carolina’s proposed gay marriage ban.

The distinction is clear: Obama is (perhaps ironically?) opposed to using the government to impose his views — however slippery they may be — onto everyone else.

If only he applied that reluctance to other policy areas.

“Christie is open to it, his family’s comfortable with it, and he’s been vetted before,” one top state lawmaker reportedly told the National Review. “He isn’t going to campaign for it, but it’s no secret that he would relish the opportunity to play at that level.”

Another insider suggested that Romney might hesitate to pick Christie because the New Jersey Governor’s star power may steal the spotlight: “It’s like asking Joe DiMaggio if he wants to play alongside Mickey Mantle.”

Christie’s name has long been speculated for the vice-presidential slot, ever since he announced last summer that he would not seek the presidential nomination. Intrade currently has Christie at a 9.0% chance of being the vice presidential pick, behind Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (16.6%) and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (18.4%).

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Strub told Danger Room reporter Spencer Ackerman that the film “just got to the point where it didn’t make any sense.” Here’s his quote which I suppose he apparently didn’t give while sitting aboard a floating, invisible “helicarrier” and fending off attacks from Norse gods from space.

“We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it,” Phil Strub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison, tells Danger Room. “To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything” with the film.

The weird thing is, the Pentagon often takes pride in working with Hollywood studios to ensure that the depiction of the military’s organization and hardware in feature films are as close to reality as possible. The Pentagon worked on films like Act of Valor, Iron Man and the upcoming Battleship. However, Avengers evidently went too far for the DoD to continue to affiliate with.

So, apparently, this movie is too silly but aliens shooting giant exploding pegs into Naval ships while Rihanna saves the world isn’t.

Strub told Ackerman that the persistent problems that the Pentagon encountered were things like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s constitutional authority, what body oversees the organization and the fact that, as the movie suggest, that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s equipment comes on loan via a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Wait. So, in real life, S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t be run by shadowy council of Powers Boothe and Jenny Agutter? Next thing you’ll be telling me there aren’t evil rock spiders on the moon.

h/t Wired Magazine

[H]alf-white Barack Obama (exactly my age) didn’t say a word, even though he was talking to college kids that day, but make no mistake, MCA was no Jay-Z or Kanye West. This guy was the real deal, groundbreaker, up from his bootstraps, Brooklyn boy made good. Funny the “coolest president ever” doesn’t say a word about the passing of MCA. Weird and kinda sad, actually.

“Yauch was born an only child in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Frances, a social worker, and Noel Yauch, a painter and architect,” Wikipedia says [Andrew Kirell note: YES, HE REALLY DID JUST CITE WIKIPEDIA]. “His father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish.” Kinda like Barack, all over the place, half this, half that, and a tough life ahead from the outset. But nothing from the first half-white, half-black president (MSM has made him black — he’s not; he’s half-and-half. No, Trayvon Martin wouldn’t have looked like his son.)

Oh, please.

I get the sense that Curl’s eyes widened when he realized he had an opportunity to criticize the president on something the “cool” kids were talking about…as opposed to, you know, the usual policy stuff that actually matters.

The best take on this nonsense goes to Reason magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch, who really puts it to Curl:

[A]s both a fan of the Beasties and a non-fan of Obama, what I really want more than anything is to keep those topics separate, because they have nothing to do with one another, on account of politics being a tawdry zero-sum game and music being totally awesome. I’m not sure what’s the sicker impulse here, to seek artistic validation from the White House, to politicize each and every last good goddamned thing about life, or to make this somehow all about race.

Hallelujah!

It is just downright annoying when people expect the White House to comment on matters of pop culture. We really shouldn’t care what the president thinks about anything but policy. I could care less what the president thought of Adam Yauch; and it doesn’t send a thrill up my leg to know that Obama has Arcade Fire on his iPod; and it will always annoy me when the winners of major sports championships meet with any president.

But above all: Is it really not enough to oppose the president on policy grounds? Must we really turn the death of a pop culture legend into a question of race and politics?