A simple yes or no would have sufficed, but when House Speaker John Boehner was asked whether anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist was a positive influence on his caucus, he feigned ignorance.

“It’s not often I’m asked about some random person in America,” he said.

The strange case of the missing Mitt Romney YouTube video has been solved, Team Romney says: Turns out CNN did it.

In an email to TPM, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul said her campaign pulled down the tough attack on Perry at the request of the news network.

Jon Stewart is famous for his legendary take-downs of Fox News, but in an interview with Rolling Stone, he says The Daily Show and Fox are not so different from one another.

Anthony Weiner‘s seat, which includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn, should be safe for Democrats, but the September 13 special election to replace him is proving surprisingly competitive. Democrat David Weprin is losing ground to Republican Bob Turner. Making matters worse for Democrats, Weprin has turned into a gaffe machine right as voters are tuning in for the final stretch.

Call him crazy, but former Utah Gov. and former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman is doubling down on his criticism of climate change skepticism as “not a winning formula” for the GOP in 2012, while calling out his opponents in the Republican presidential primary on their willingness to let the US default on its debt. [...]

Rick Perry is facing a full-on assault from former Bush aides over his comments on Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, pushing a long-rumored rivalry between the two ex-governors’ camps out into the open.

Acknowledging to TPM that “there is no love lost between the W camp and the Perry camp,” one Bush veteran appealed for detente.

“I do not think it serves any purpose for any Bushy to fuel to fire or resentment,” the person said. “The goal for us sh

You remember Ted Haggard. He’s the former leader of the New Life Church who was forced from the pulpit amid charges he used drugs and paid a masseuse for gay sex. Haggard’s hardly running from the limelight, however, telling GQ earlier this year he’s bisexual and now, doing a cameo in a preview for a yet-to-be-filmed “Christian sex comedy” called “The Waiting Game.” Yes, really.

It was a fitting end for the America’s most wanted man. As President Barack Obama‘s Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan told it, a cowardly Osama bin Laden used his own wife as a human shield in his final moments. Except that apparently wasn’t what happened at all.

Hours later, other administration officials were clarifying Brennan’s account. Turns out the woman that was killed on the compound wasn’t bin Laden’s wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using a human shield. And he might not have even been holding a gun.

Ratings for Donald Trump‘s NBC series The Apprentice have sagged the last couple of weeks, prompting a wave of speculation among the pundit class that his birther crusade is turning off the show’s viewership. In fact, his viewership has fluctuated wildly over the past several years, making such pronouncements premature.

Nearly half of usual Republican primary voters in Iowa think President Obama was not born in the United States, while barely one-quarter believe he was, according to a PPP poll released on Tuesday.

In the poll, 48% of registered Republican voters said Obama was not born in the U.S., while 26% said he was. Additionally, 26% said they were unsure.

A deputy prosector in Johnson County, Indiana, has resigned his job after it was revealed that in February, during the large protests in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker‘s anti-public employee union bill, he e-mailed Walker’s office and recommended that they conduct a “false flag operation” — to fake an assault or assassination attempt on Walker in order to discredit the unions and protesters.

Quick, which group has the U.S. government helped out the most? Wall Street, maybe? Or the unemployed? Oh, how about all those defense contractors? Wrong, says Fox News contributor John Stossel. As far as Stossel is concerned, it’s Native Americans.

“This American Life” host Ira Glass went on NPR’s “On The Media” show on Friday to discuss the organization’s current public troubles, and questioned why NPR is not responding head on to conservatives’ charge that it has a left wing bias.

For Rep Ron Paul (R-TX), education and medical care are not rights but rather “things that you have to earn.”

In an exchange about U.S. credit policy with MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur on Wednesday, Paul was asked whether people should be able to borrow money to buy a house, or car. “Oh, in a free market, you can do that,” Paul said, but only so long as that credit is backed up by real money, and not something that “comes out of thin air.”

Here’s how the Republicans’ power over the purse could lead to an insoluble fight over spending, and, potentially, a government shutdown.

In a presentation at CPAC on Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called on Republicans to hold the government hostage until President Obama abandons his dream of reforming the nation’s health care system.

Or to put it in King’s words: Republicans should do to “ObamaCare” what Democrats did to the Vietnam War.

Fox News reported, and Republicans decided: Only Fox News can be trusted.

According to a new PPP poll, a majority of Republicans nationwide distrust every major news network except for Fox News, Rupert Murdoch‘s right-leaning cable powerhouse. Over six in ten Republicans say they don’t trust ABC, NBC, CNN, and CBS, while a near majority of 48% find something suspicious about PBS as well.

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), a potential Republican presidential candidate, has an interesting perspective on the tumults of the civil rights era that swept through his Deep South state.

The national Tea Party Nation group is planning to send a letter to Sarah Palin asking the former governor of Alaska and John McCain sidekick to run for chair of the Republican National Committee.

Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips says in his letter to Palin that without her at the helm of the RNC, the party will fall back into “establishment” hands.

Thomas Shultz says it’s time for a change at the Republican National Committee. A 22-year-old student at Brigham Young University in Utah and the brother of Iowa’s Secretary of State-elect, Shultz plans to use the power of the grassroots to topple RNC chair Michael Steele, who has touted a connection to grassroots as a cornerstone of his tenure at the top of the committee.

Talking Points Memo celebrates its tenth anniversary this week with some news hinting at its future and its position in the online news ecosystem. The pioneering left-wing political blog, launched by Josh Marshall on November 13, 2000, has grown tremendously over the last ten years — expanding from one man to dozens of staffers, winning awards for its coverage, and establishing itself as one of the most innovative online news organizations.

Claremont Graduate University tells TPM that Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell did not attend the Southern California school despite listing it under education on her LinkedIn profile

Billionaire Warren Buffett thinks that the Bush-era tax cuts for the superrich have had their day. Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest people in America,
told Politico’s Mike Allen after a small business program commencement ceremony at LaGuardia Community College, in Long Island City, Queens that it takes time for economic “wounds” to heal. He said he still supports President Obama.

Long before Tea Party backed candidate Christine O’Donnell won the Republican primary in Delaware and became the GOP Senate nominee, the conservative firebrand was arguing that the government was spending too much money fighting AIDS and said condoms wouldn’t stop the disease from spreading.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said today that he opposes a Florida church’s plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11, and said he accepts “totally” that President Obama is a Christian. “I do not think well of the idea of burning anybody’s Koran, Bible, Book of Mormon or anything else,” Barbour told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

J.D. Hayworth is a former conservative radio talk show host who is now running for U.S. Senate against Republican stalwart John McCain. On his own website, he refers to himself as the “consistent conservative” and claims “no greater danger to the security of our nation than our national debt.” Yet now it appears that Hayworth once participated in an infomercial promoting a conference designed purely for attendees to take advantage (get rich!) of government grants (quickly!) Perhaps Hayworth should rethink the moniker of “consistent conservative?”