Citizenship Matters

I got in a bit of an argument on Twitter earlier this week about my belief in the importance of unitary citizenship – or to put it another way, thinking dual citizenship is really not okay.

Finding Signals In The Noise

Researchers hunting for the elusive Higgs Boson particle are going to have to wade through an unprecedented volume of particle collision data now that the Large Hadron Collider powered up to a higher level.

Great Moments In Geraldo History

Geraldo on Fox and Friends this morning: “The last time I flew to Afghanistan, I got manually raped by a guy.”

Video after the jump.

No ‘Counterculture’ Hair At Liberty U.

Mitt Romney makes the required pilgrimage Saturday to the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, where “Hair and clothing styles related to a counterculture (as determined by the Student Affairs Deans’ Review Committee) are not acceptable.”

Backed Into a Paradox?

Is Mitt’s lack of any political core or center, paradoxically, making it hard to tack to the center post-primaries?

Question of the Day

I think virtually anything can be written off from a politician’s high school days, as long as there’s some reckoning with it. What surprised me most about yesterday’s revelations was that the Romney campaign did not choose to address this on its own terms.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

I started to do a post yesterday on how muted the right wing response has been to President Obama’s same sex marriage shift. Back in the day, the House conference would have held a candlelight vigil for traditional marriage on the Capitol steps, protests would have been organized, right wing groups would have leaped at the fundraising opportunity, and the entire wingnut Wurlitzer would have been cranked up to maximum volume. It’s a sign of how far we come that not even Fox News could rouse itself to make a big deal about it, as Jon Stewart brilliantly points out. Watch.

Pressure Makes Dimons

If you’re playing catch-up on the JPMorgan debacle like I am, Heidi Moore’s explainer is a good place to start.

Been Here Before

The Justice Department went after Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio back in the ’90s in a case depressingly similar to the one it filed against him yesterday, but DOJ let him slip through its grasp back then in what nearly everyone agrees was a big failure. The U.S. attorney in Arizona at the time? A rising star named Janet Napolitano.

Backstage

President Obama preparing to slow jam the news.

Inside The Sausage Factory

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) describes to a billionaire contributor – captured on video – how dismantling collective bargaining for public employees is the first step in his strategy to “divide and conquer” labor unions and turn Wisconsin into a right to work state.

Leave Sheriff Joe Alooone!

Fox News knows who the real victim is in the DOJ’s lawsuit against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for alleged abuse of Latinos’ civil rights.

That would be… Sheriff Joe. Watch.

What It Looked Like

New photo of Biden getting “out a little over his skis.”

The Tyranny Of Jonah Goldberg

The Jonah Goldberg takedown is an old and tired genre, but Alex Pareene breathes new life into it and makes it pleasurable again.

Is It Possible Not to Remember?

TPM Reader WB has another angle on whether it’s credible that Mitt Romney doesn’t remember this incident from high school …

I think the question of whether Romney remembers this incident is a really interesting one. I do think it is possible he doesn’t remember the event, but in many ways that is a more troubling proposition than assuming that he’s lying about not remembering it.

No Argument

Romney on alleged bullying incident: “I’ve seen the reports, I’m not going to argue with that.”

There’s Also This …

Benjy Sarlin has the story of what happened to the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth during Mitt Romney’s time as Massachusetts governor.

Is Mitt Romney a Bully?

I’ve seen other publications refer to these incidents from Romney’s childhood years as ‘pranks’. I was in high school. I pulled pranks. These alleged incidents don’t strike me as remotely things I’d describe as pranks or hijinks. As reported, they come off as vicious and disturbing, even the sort of stuff that was seen as pretty unaccepted in a very, very different era.

She’s One of Us Again!

Bachmann renounces her Swiss citizenship.

In all seriousness, I find it stunning that someone could have run for president only months ago and did not disclose this or think it would be a problem.

Mafiosos and Masterpieces

The unsolved 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is such a good story that it deserves a great ending – and it just might be getting one.