NASA Launches New Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’
Snarky Tweet About Brownback Lands Student In Principal’s Office
Team Obama Maps Out The Path To Victory
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Unintended Consequences
Congressional Republicans' proxy war against Solyndra (and the federal loan program that supported it) has put them on a collision course with the Pentagon.
For The Record
Union Leader endorses Newt in New Hampshire.
Curiosity
The largest and most ambitious Mars rover was launched Saturday by NASA. It is scheduled to arrive on Mars in August.
Here's the launch:
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What Could Go Wrong?
At this week's debate (and actually before) Newt Gingrich said that mass deportation of all illegal immigrants currently in the United States would be neither feasible nor humane, especially when it involves breaking up families long resident in the US. But for anyone who thought this sounded uncharacteristically sensible, Gingrich has now followed up with the fine print, which will leave to community boards of local worthies to decide who gets the boot and who doesn't.
The boards are to be modeled on the local draft boards of World War II.
Harmonic Convergence for Newt
Bringing together Gingrich's two great ambitions -- being president and selling books.
Eeeesh! Now Tasers
Pepper spray isn't the only non-lethal crowd control technique taking off at Wal-Marts today. Now we have a shopper Tasered at a Wal-Mart in Alabama. Watch.
Day of Spray
Cop, Shopper turn to pepper spray to brave Wal-Mart Black Friday.
A Brief, Shining Moment
Campaign in 100 Seconds: Whatever Happened to Michele Bachmann.
Douchedom on the Interwebs
The office of former Senator and now-Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) complains about a critical tweet from a Kansas high schooler, lands the teenage girl in the principal's office.
Can This Be True?
According to an interview in The New York Times, Mitt Romney's longtime hair stylist, Leon de Magistris, there is no gel, mousse or other 'product' in Mitt's hair.
So either this is a white lie on the part of the stylist or we need to seriously consider the possibility that Mitt's body has naturally occurring shellack-o-genic properties.
Thoughts?
Now That's the America I Know
Woman uses pepper spray to fight off competing shoppers at Wal-Mart.
How Obama Gets To 270
Benjy Sarlin does the electoral math.
Is Newt the End of Boom & Bust?
Is Newt's rise to frontrunner status just the last or latest in the boom and bust cycle of would-be Mitt-slayers in the GOP presidential contest? Or is he the end of it?
TPM Reader MO thinks it's Newt's to lose ...
Read More →A Sight to Behold
After the Bachmann surge and the Perry flameout, the boom and bust pattern of would-be Romney-slayers in the GOP primary battle became familiar to most election observers. After Cain's moment in the sun it became conventional wisdom. And now with Newt it's almost a cliche.
But it's one thing to see it in general and it's another to see it graphed out in front of you. The charts below are from the beta version of the new TPMPolltracker, slated to be released next month.
First is Iowa.
Read More →Hard to Watch, But Must See
It starts with a professor mocking a congressman for going to a community college. Then the congressman started ordering the professor around like a servant. And then, well, if it weren't already bad enough, it went down hill from there. Watch.
Special Thanksgiving Edition!
The top 5 turkeys of the 2011 pre-campaign season.
Tough Times in Bergholz
The Feds moved in this morning and arrested seven members of the so-called 'Bergholz Clan', a cult-like breakaway Amish group responsible for a harrowing wave of beard-cutting incidents in Amish Country aimed at religious backsliders. Federal charges are under the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The FBI affidavit also alleges additional 'cult-like' practices such as leader Samuel Mullet "'counseling' the married women in the Bergholz clan and taking them into his home so that he may cleanse them of the devil with acts of sexual intimacy."
Memory Lane
If you watched closely, the questioners at the GOP debate were like a walk down memory lane of the Bush foreign policy and national security team. David Addington, Paul Wolfowitz and more.
"It's Going to be a Really Different Campus."
UC Davis students reflect on the pepper spray incident that has transfixed the country and transformed the campus.
Rivals Assail Gingrich On ‘Humane’ Immigration
Newt Gingrich’s call for selective and “humane” immigration policy lands him in hot water with conservatives and rivals.
Campaign In 100 Seconds: The End of Bachmann?
Remember when Michele Bachmann was a major rival to Mitt Romney? Oh, how things change in the GOP presidential race.
Most Recent Latest news stories from TPM reporters
Durban Climate Talks To Determine Kyoto Protocol's Fate
EMILY GERTZ Two weeks of international climate treaty talks kick off on Monday in Durban, South Africa. The location for the conference, an annual two-week confab, is a nod to this developing nation's increasingly robust economic and political influence. The big question going into this year's U.N. climate summit is whether or not international negotiators will, finally, formally create a successor to 2007's Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Read More →Biggest Paper In New Hampshire Endorses Gingrich
Mitt Romney has been hanging out in New Hampshire for years, building up support and racking up endorsements. But when it came time for it to get behind a candidate, the Granite State's biggest paper went with the guy who just returned to the GOP's good graces weeks ago. The headline in the New Hampshire Union Leader Sunday: "An Editorial: For President, Newt Gingrich". How big a deal is this? Potentially very big, according to the AP: [Poll] numbers could shift based on the backing of The Union's ... Read More →Solyndra Hearings Pit Republicans Against Defense Dept.
TINA CASEY If House Republicans expected the Solyndra investigation to focus public attention on their opposition to President Obama's energy policies, by any measure they have succeeded. However, in gunning after the Department of Energy and its solar power loan program they have fallen prey to the law of unintended consequences, and are now heading on a collision course with the Department of Defense. Read More →NASA Launches Mars Rover 'Curiosity'
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Saturday, launching a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered NASA rover toward Mars to look for clues on what could sustain life on the Red Planet. ... Read More →Walmart Touts Crowd Experts It Used To Develop Black Friday Plans
If you're looking for bad news on this Black Friday, you're probably Googling "Walmart." The massive discount retailer has been the scene of injuries, arrests, pepper-spraying and general pandemonium at locations across the country today. Asked about the stories of fights over sale items and arrests, Walmart touted its pre-planning for the biggest shopping day of the year, though acknowledged the chain is "always learning" about how to deal with the crowds that pack its stores. Read More →Wis Dems Shopping For Recall-Walker Signatures On Black Friday
Black Friday is a big day for the American economy, with businesses starting off the holiday shopping season with big deals. And in Wisconsin, another bargain is on offer: Signing petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker! On Wednesday, the state Democratic Party announced that volunteers would be collecting signatures near shopping centers during Black Friday, in their effort to recall Walker. Read More →Day Of Spray: Cop, Shopper Turn To Pepper Spray To Brave Black Friday (VIDEO)
Pepper spray: It's not just for peacefully protesting college students anymore. The usual Black Friday shenanigans across the country were marked by the emergence of a new trend: pepper spraying people at Wal-Mart. On both coasts, shoppers scrambling for video games at the discount retailer were met with a face full of burning as clouds of Megyn Kelly's "food product" were blasted into the unruly hordes. Read More →Campaign In 100 Seconds: Whatever Happened To Michele Bachmann?
Remember when Michele Bachmann was a heavyweight rival to Mitt Romney, even winning the Ames Straw Poll and being referred to by CNN as "a viable contender for the White House"? So do we, vaguely... But only very vaguely. So we got to reflecting on what happened to Michele Bachmann. Obviously a large part of it has to do with the rise of Perry and Cain, and the consequent fracturing of support from the tea party and evangelicals. But TPM's Thomas Lane thinks that something else is at work... and he... Read More →Newt Gingrich Faces The Predictable Music After Expressing Compassion For Immigrants
Updated at 1:10 PM As expected, Newt Gingrich is taking a lot of hits from his opponents and the conservative right following his decision to risk it all by professing compassion for a subset of illegal immigrants. Social conservatives are freaking out, and Gingrich's decision to insert the word "humane" into an answer about illegal immigration at the last presidential debate seems to be putting some Iowa voters on edge weeks before the caucus vote. But, importantly, while Gingrich's opponents attack... Read More →Brownback Complaint About Student Tweet Lands Kansas Teenager In Principal's Office
A Kansas teenager got in some trouble with her school for comments she posted on her Twitter account -- in which she claimed to have trashed Gov. Sam Brownback (R) to his face during a field trip. Emma Sullivan, an 18-year old high school senior, was at an event in Topeka this past Monday for Kansas Youth in Government, which was addressed by Brownback. During the event, Sullivan posted to her Twitter account: Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot ... Read More →The Road To 270: Team Obama Maps Out Their Victory Plan
President Obama sure looked like a two-term president in November 2008 as he presided over an electoral map more dominant than many thought possible after two ultra-polarized contests in 2000 and 2004. But with a weak economy that shows little signs of serious improvement before election day, things are going to be a whole lot tougher this time around. Will his wide playing field from 2008 hold up again four years later? The good news for Obama is that even though he's heading for a tough fight, few of ... Read More →Google Waves Goodbye to Wave Via Gmail
Google announced Tuesday it was discontinuing seven products as part of an effort to streamline the company, including Google Wave, a chat-email hybrid introduced in 2009 that was supposed to revolutionize online communications, but never really caught on. On Wednesday, Google sent out a mournful final email to users of the service (including yours truly, although I hadn't ridden the Wave in quite a while) thanking them for testing the product and informing them of the steps needed to preserve their... Read More →After 27 Years, Tetris Still Putting The Pieces Together
There's no question that few games - not just videogames, but games, pure and simple - have achieved the ubiquity of Tetris, the addictive falling-block puzzle videogame created in 1984 by Russian computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov in the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It has since gone on to sell hundreds of millions of copies and been ported to practically every computer system since. But 27 years later, having arguably launched the portable and casual videogaming industries, the bitterly... Read More →Future Car Manufacturers Schooled By Fish
STEPHEN BEALE There's something fishy about the design of futuristic, eco-friendly cars like the Toyota Prius, Mercedes Benz concept Bionic and the Nissan concept EPORO, namely that their designs seem to be inspired by marine animals. In the case of the Bionic, one animal in particular was the model: The humble boxfish. This is the unlikely story of how the little fish came to be seen as a symbol of technological progress and prowess by one of the world's most prestigious automobile manufacturers. Read More →Wind Power Gets Huge Boost With Pennsylvania Project
Another 140 megawatts of wind power, enough to power over 38,000 homes, is set to be up and running in Pennsylvania by 2013 thanks to German wind turbine company REPower Systems, which on Wednesday announced it had inked a deal with American wind developer EverPower to provide 68 wind turbines for a planned wind farm in Somerset. "This is one of the largest single orders for REpower," said Andreas Nauen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of REpower Systems, in a statement. "We appreciate the confidence our ... Read More →FEC To Tell Mike Lee He Can't Form His Very Own Super PAC
The Federal Election Commission is set to tell Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), a member of the Tea Party Caucus, that he can't become the first politician in the country to form his very own "super PAC" during their public meeting next week. A draft ruling posted by the FEC on Wednesday in response to a request for an advisory opinion Lee filed last month would deny the Utah Republican and his leadership PAC, the Constitutional Conservatives Fund PAC, the ability to create a separate account for unlimited... Read More →Watch A Historian Mock GOP Rep. Don Young For Going To Community College
Historian and Professor Doug Brinkley made Alaska Rep. Don Young (R) really really mad during a heated exchange at a House hearing, when Brinkley mocked Young for going to community college. Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and author of "The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960," was testifying last week at a House Natural Resources Committee meeting over the effects of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Things went south when Young... Read More →New Walker Ad: 'I'm Not Big On Recalls'
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is out with his second TV ad against the effort by state Democrats to recall him, featuring a teacher seeking to persuade the state's voters to stick with Walker and not sign recall petitions. This follows Walker's first ad, which was released last week just as the Dems were officially kicking off the petition campaign. The key for Walker in these ads is that there is no such thing as a petition to not hold a recall election. Thus, there is no base of his own supporters... Read More →The Ron Paul Reaction Reel
As the candidates' talking points become more and more familiar, the seemingly numberless GOP debates are becoming tougher to mine for substance. However, that doesn't mean we can't get our kicks elsewhere, and in Tuesday night's debate, much of the fun came from Ron Paul's facial expressions. His reaction shots are particularly golden. Watch for yourself below: ... Read More →Microsoft Gets More Serious About Buying Yahoo
The Yahoo acquisition rumor mill has been sent buzzing again with the news that Microsoft signed a non-disclosure agreement with Yahoo, which would allow Microsoft to gain more detail on Yahoo's assets but prevent Microsoft from talking to other potential bidders, according to the New York Times Dealbook. Not only that, but in a savvy move, before it signed the non-disclosure agreement, Microsoft in October held talks with other potential bidders, including Silver Lake and the Canadian Pension Plan... Read More →Editor & Publisher
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