Rick Santorum

Richard John "Rick" Santorum, born May 10, 1958 is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum is a member of the Republican Party and was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative. He is known for his stances on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design, homosexuality, and the Terri Schiavo case.
In March 2007, Santorum joined the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC. He was to primarily practice law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. offices, where he was to provide business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. In addition to his work with the firm, Santorum also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a contributor to Fox News Channel.
Santorum is a candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011 and formally announced his candidacy on June 6.

Santorum was born in Winchester, Virginia, and raised in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and Butler County, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Aldo Santorum (born 1923) and Catherine Keane (née Dughi; born 1918). His father was an Italian immigrant, and his mother was of half Italian and half Irish descent.
Both of Santorum's parents worked at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Butler, and the family lived on the VA hospital post. His father became licensed as a psychologist in August 1974. He attended schools in the Butler Area School District, where he gained the nickname "Rooster", allegedly because he "always had a few errant hairs on the back of his head that refused to stay down", and he was "noisy, showy, dogged and determined like a rooster and never backed down.


Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have seven children: Elizabeth Anne (born 1991); Richard John ("Johnny"), Jr. (born 1993); Daniel James (born 1995); Sarah Maria (born 1998); Peter Kenneth (born 1999); Patrick Francis (born 2001); and Isabella "Bella" Maria (born 2008). Bella was subsequently diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a serious genetic disorder which is fatal before birth in 90 per cent of cases. In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Oxytocin to speed the birth.
Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum. In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital. The anecdote was also written about by Michael Sokolove in a 2005 New York Times Magazine story on Santorum. 


After earning his Juris Doctor, Santorum became an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Doyle Corman (until 1986). He was director of the Pennsylvania Senate's local government committee from 1981 to 1984, then director of the Pennsylvania Senate's Transportation Committee until 1986.
In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 18th District, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset, defeating a seven-term Democratic incumbent, Doug Walgren. Although the 18th was heavily Democratic, Santorum attacked Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. He was reelected in 1992, in part because the district lost its share of Pittsburgh as a result of redistricting. In Congress, as a member of the Gang of Seven, Santorum worked to expose congressional corruption by naming the guilty parties in the House banking scandal.
In 1994, at the age of 36, Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Harris Wofford, who was 32 years older. The theme of Santorum's 1994 campaign signs was "Join the Fight!" Santorum was re-elected in 2000 defeating Congressman Ron Klink by a 52.4% to 45.5% margin.
In 1996 he endorsed Arlen Specter for president.
In a 2002 PoliticsPA Feature story designating politicians with yearbook superlatives, he was named the "Most Ambitious".
In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is a three-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he purchased for $87,800 in 1997 and is located next to the home of his wife's parents. But since 2001, he has spent most of the year in Leesburg, Virginia, a town about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border, in a house he purchased for $643,000. The Penn Hills Progress, a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife paid about $2,000 per year in property taxes on their Pennsylvania home ($487.20 per year to Allegheny County, 2006 through 2008, based on a 2007 value of $106,000, plus Penn Hills School District tax). The paper also found that another couple—possibly renters—were registered voters at the same address.
At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.
When news reports showed Sen. Santorum was renting his Penn Hills home, Santorum withdrew his five children from the cyber education program that Penn Hills School District paid for. That saved Penn Hills taxpayers about $38,000 a year. Although Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, he insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. Once the controversy surfaced, the children were withdrawn from the cyber school and were then home schooled.


In June 2006, Santorum declared that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had been found in Iraq. The specific weapons he referred to were chemical munitions dating back to the Iran–Iraq War that were buried in the early 1990s. The report stated that while agents had degraded to an unknown degree, they remained dangerous and possibly lethal. Officials of the Department of Defense, CIA intelligence analysts, and the White House have all explicitly stated that these expired casings are not part of the WMDs threat that Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched to contain.
Santorum's declaration was based in part on declassified portions of a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Portions were declassified in a summary that made six key points:
Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded or vacant mustard or sarin nerve agent casings.
Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre–Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled warheads are believed to still exist. They have no viable military capability, however.
Pre–Gulf War chemical munitions could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups could have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq.
The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectile casings.
The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, the residue could be hazardous upon dermal contact.
It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical
weapons.


In 2005 a coalition of animal rights groups, spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) mounted a failed effort to push the Pet Animal Welfare Statute of 2005 (PAWS) through Congress. The bill was proposed by Senator Santorum and sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (then-R-PA). PAWS would have reclassified most small and hobby breeders as commercial breeders subjecting them to USDA regulations, allowed home inspections and placed fees and compliance expenses on pet breeders. Fellow Congressmen were told that PAWS was "the puppy mill bill". This was Santorum's third failed attempt at pet-related legislation.


In 2005, four teenagers were ejected from a bookstore in Wilmington, Delaware, where Santorum was scheduled for a book signing, after they were overheard expressing critical opinions of the senator. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, which was settled in 2007. As a result of the settlement, the Delaware State Police were required to pay legal fees for the plaintiffs and provide training to officers on free speech rights. The Santorum staff members who requested the ejection were required to apologize and to relinquish their salaries for the event—$2,500.00—to plaintiffs in damages.


In reference to the Iraq war in 2006, Santorum drew an analogy with The Lord of the Rings in one of his addresses:
As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.Rick Santorum
Santorum informed senator John Ensign that Ensign's affair with a staff member was about to become publicly known.


In the fall of 2009, Santorum hinted that he was considering a run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. On September 11, 2009, Santorum spoke to a group of Catholic leaders in Orlando, Florida. He told them, "I hate to be calculating, but I see that 2012 is not just throwing somebody out to be eaten, but it's a real opportunity for success." He scheduled appearances with political non-profit organizations that took place in Iowa on October 1, 2009.
Santorum repeated his consideration of a 2012 run in an e-mail and letter sent on January 15, 2010 to supporters of his Political Action Committee saying, "After talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids – I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race. I'm convinced that conservatives need a candidate who will not only stand up for our views, but who can articulate a conservative vision for our country's future," Santorum writes. "And right now, I just don't see anyone stepping up to the plate. I have no great burning desire to be president, but I have a burning desire to have a different president of the United States". He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011.
On May 26, a staffer close to the Santorum camp told CNN that Santorum will formally announce his candidacy on June 6, in the same town where his father worked in a coal mine.

Santorum formally announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination on ABC's Good Morning America Monday, June 6, 2011. Santorum, who will make an official announcement at 11 am in Somerset, Pennsylvania, said he's "in it to win."
On June 15, Santorum resigned from the board of Universal Health Services, a for-profit hospital chain receiving 38% of its income from taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid services.He was paid $168,000 in cash and stock in 2010 for attending board and compensation committee meetings.

Stephen Hawking, An Unfettered Mind by Kitty Ferguson

The cosmic curios of the world's best-known physicist went on display today at a London science museum, chronicling the amazing 70 years of Stephen Hawking's life. Over the decades, the quadriplegic genius has popped up in so many pop-culture settings that some of those curios require a little explanation.
That's what we found when we ran a picture of the professor in his Cambridge office as the first installment of a "Where in the Cosmos" series on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. There's such a generous assortment of gewgaws that it's a wonder Hawking gets anything done.


It turns out that the scene was arranged to show off Hawking's stuff for the exhibit at the Science Museum in London. Take the bronze statue on the desk, for example. I was particularly intrigued by the out-of-focus statue because it seemed to hold such a prominent place in the picture.
"I believe the statue is of the pope," Tracey Walters wrote. "But the picture is kinda fuzzy, so who knows which one?" Others wondered if it was the theologian Erasmus, or maybe King Midas.


“Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind” by Kitty Ferguson
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By Marcia Bartusiak, Saturday, January 21, 2:34 AM


On Jan. 8, Stephen Hawking turned 70. Diagnosed at the age of 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, he had been expected to live no longer than two or three more years. He beat the odds by half a century.


In celebration of this noteworthy event, science writer Kitty Ferguson has brought out a new edition of her 1991 biography of the British theoretical physicist, then titled “Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of the Universe.” Although more than half of the book remains essentially the same, new information about Hawking’s private life that came to light over the last two decades makes for a more thorough account. Ferguson has fleshed out the story, enhancing her earlier narrative appreciably.


Born during World War II, Hawking grew up in an Addams-family-style house with his two sisters and an adopted brother in the town of St. Albans, just north of London. It was a “highly intelligent, eccentric family,” writes Ferguson, “their noses buried in their books” during dinner. Outgoing and playful, Hawking as a child didn’t make the best marks in grade school, for he stubbornly absorbed only those subjects he believed worth knowing.


In college at Oxford, Hawking was recognized as brilliant but underchallenged. Hawking himself admits that it was his ensuing illness — the possibility of an early death — that put an end to his academic laziness. And after he moved to Cambridge University for his doctoral studies, it was his marriage to Jane Wilde, a student of languages, that gave him the will to live.


Hawking chose to specialize in cosmology at a time when it was more speculation than science, a risky choice. Yet, upon obtaining his Ph.D in 1966, he found almost immediate success. First, he proved that the Big Bang not only appeared to emerge from an infinitely dense point of mass-energy, but that it must have. Then he discovered a vital link between gravity and quantum mechanics, two fields completely incompatible before then. He saw that black holes, the ultimate gravitational pits, should slowly evaporate as they emit radiation generated in the quantum turmoil at their outer boundaries. Here Ferguson provides engaging and helpful explanations of the physics behind these triumphs.


The author also reveals what (she confesses) she could not report the first time around: Behind the curtain during the 1980s was a marriage in distress. As Hawking’s condition worsened — he was no longer able to write, walk or speak well enough to be understood — and Jane was pushed into the shadows amid his growing fame, strains grew between them, particularly regarding their views on religion (she for, he against). Jane in response, with Hawking’s knowledge, engaged in a platonic romance with a musician friend (whom she later married). Hawking himself found solace with one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, whom he eventually wed in 1995 (and divorced 11 years later in the wake of allegations that Mason was abusive).


Hawking’s life at this stage stands in sharp contrast to his earlier years. With the 1988 publication of his phenomenal bestseller “A Brief History of Time,” Hawking became an international celebrity — more than that, a pop icon. He now inspired operas, film documentaries and plays. Ferguson’s book almost becomes a travelogue as Hawking jets around the world to attend conferences, collect myriad awards, guest star on “Star Trek” or lecture on space travel and extraterrestrial intelligence.


Along the way, Hawking’s science became less rigorous and more exploratory. According to his friend and fellow theorist Kip Thorne, Hawking’s search for certainty had turned into a quest for “high probability and rapid movement towards the ultimate goal of understanding the nature of the universe.”


The new material that Ferguson provides appears caught up in this whirl; a section on the newfound accelerating universe, for example, swiftly shifts to Hawking’s appearance in an episode of “The Simpsons. And as Hawking’s ideas grow more speculative, her translations of the science become more labored. Moreover, newcomers to cosmology will not realize that Hawking’s most current ideas that she so carefully explains are just a few of the many theories now filling physics journals on such subjects as wormholes, multiple universes and the emergence of space and time. Missing is a succinct overview of present-day theoretical cosmology and Hawking’s exact place in it.


But Ferguson, who once assisted Hawking on a book project, is an unabashed acolyte. She declares him “one of the intellectual giants of our modern world — and among its most heroic figures,” a mindset that suffuses all that she writes. She even spends three pages praising his latest three-part television series. What still awaits is the definitive biography of Hawking, one that more objectively captures both the complex man and his complex science.

Rangers introduce Yu Darvish

ARLINGTON, Texas — Yu Darvish leaned over and looked at his name and the No. 11 on the back of his Texas Rangers jersey. Then he looked up and smiled.


“Excited, that’s all I feel right now,” Darvish said through a translator. “Just excited going forward.


Japan’s best pitcher is now officially a member of the two-time defending American League champions, with his formal introduction Friday night in Texas coming two days after the right-hander agreed to a six-year contract that guarantees him $56 million.


The 25-year-old Darvish, who exceled in Japan’s Pacific League the past seven seasons, said he wasn’t prepared to go into specifics about the several different reasons why he decided to make the move to United States now.


But he said he felt no pressure and planned to keep an open mind and be relaxed — with his new team and in a new country.


25-year-old was presented with his No. 11 jersey in a Friday news conference at Rangers Ballpark, which was broadcast live in Darvish's homeland in Japan.
Darvish says the Rangers made him feel like family when he made his first visit to Texas two weeks ago. He says their passion made him feel strongly toward the team.
MORE: Rangers betting $112M Darvish can be their ace
Rangers general manager Jon Daniels says there haven't been many bigger off-the-field moments in team history than the signing of Darvish.

Elizabeth Smart engaged

Elizabeth Smart, the young Utah woman who was kidnapped at age 14 and survived nine months of captivity.
“I’m so excited,” Smart told ABC News exclusively. ”We are looking forward to a bright future together.”
A paid contributor for “Good Morning America,” reporting and providing analysis on issues related to missing and exploited children, and a music student at Brigham Young University, Smart, 24, got engaged last weekend and is planning a wedding for ”later this year.”
“She is in seventh heaven,” said her publicist Chris Thomas of Intrepid Communications. “She’s excited, she’s enjoying life. It’s been an adventure.”
Thomas would not reveal anything related to the proposal, groom or upcoming wedding. He only said that Smart and her family were “still working to finalize some details.”
“While [Smart] plans to be involved with her public advocacy work, she really feels she needs to keep her personal life private,” Thomas said.
Smart’s father, Ed Smart, told the Associated Press his future son-in-law is a “fine young man,” and that he was pleased for his daughter.


With the family’s penchant for privacy, the wedding celebration probably won’t be a big splash reminiscent of William and Kate’s royal affair. But it’s not likely the reception following the temple ceremony will take place in a ward gym, with crêpe paper flowing from the basketball hoops, either.


Smart has become increasingly visible as an advocate for crime victims following her nine-month kidnapping ordeal at the hands of Brian David Mitchell in 2002 and 2003.


In November, Smart held a press conference at the state Capitol in the wake of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal, suggesting the Penn State victims could have benefited from a program Smart would like to see implemented in elementary schools called radKIDS [Resist Aggression Defensively]. The program teaches children about calling 911 and making defensive moves against attackers.


Smart has also implored President Barack Obama to appropriate more resources into investigating sexual abuse crimes against children.


She sent a letter to Obama on Nov. 9 asking the president to provide more funding to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which investigates sexual exploitation of children on the Web. She also asked the president to declare a "national emergency" and allot resources for a "massive search and rescue operation" to help children trapped in abusive situations.

Elizabeth Smart

Elizabeth Ann Smart,born November 3, 1987 is an American female activist and contributor for ABC News. She first gained widespread attention at age 14 when she was kidnapped from her home and recovered nine months later.


Smart was abducted from her bedroom on June 5, 2002, at age 14. She was found nine months later on March 12, 2003, in Sandy, Utah, 18 miles from her home, in the company of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee. Her abduction and recovery were widely reported and were the subject of a made-for-TV movie and non-fiction book.
On October 1, 2009, Smart testified to being threatened, tied, and raped daily while she was held captive.
On November 16, 2009, Barzee announced she would plead guilty to assisting in the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, as part of an agreement with prosecutors. On May 19, 2010, Barzee was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. As part of a plea deal between the defense and federal prosecutors, federal Judge Dale Kimball gave Barzee credit for seven years that she already has served, the U.S. attorney in Utah said.
On March 1, 2010, Mitchell was found competent to stand trial for the kidnapping and sexual assault charges in federal court by judge Kimball; his trial began on November 8, 2010, and on December 10, 2010, the jury found Mitchell guilty on both counts. On May 25, 2011, Mitchell was sentenced to two life-terms in federal prison.


On March 8, 2006, Smart went to Congress to support Sexual Predator Legislation and the AMBER Alert system, and on July 26, 2006, she spoke after the signing of the Adam Walsh Act. In May 2008, she traveled to Washington, D.C., where she helped present a book, You're Not Alone, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has entries written by her as well as four other recovered young adults. In 2009, Smart commented on the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard, stressing that dwelling upon the past is unproductive. On October 27, 2009 Elizabeth spoke at the 2009 Women's Conference in California hosted by Maria Shriver, on overcoming obstacles in life.
On July 7, 2011 it was announced that she would be a commentator for ABC News, mainly focusing on missing persons.


Elizabeth Ann Smart was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Ed and Lois Smart. She has four brothers and a sister and is the second-oldest child in her family. Smart attended Brigham Young University (BYU), studying music as a harp performance major. On November 11, 2009, Smart left to go on her Mormon mission in Paris. Smart returned temporarily from her mission in November 2010 to serve as the chief witness in the federal trial of Brian David Mitchell. After the end of the trial she returned to France to finish her mission. She finished her mission and returned to Utah in the spring of 2011.In March 2011, Smart was one of four women awarded the Diane-von Furstenberg Award. The award included a $50,000 prize, which Smart announced she will use to start The Elizabeth Smart Foundation, aimed at helping young people avoid or recover from violent events. On January 20, 2012, it was announced that Smart became engaged to be married.

Crack Blind Quantum Computing, We Dare You

Quantum computing will use the inherent uncertainties in quantum physics to carry out fast, complex computations.


A report in Science shows the trick can extend to "cloud" services such as Google Docs without loss of security.


This "blind quantum computing" can be carried out without a cloud computer ever knowing what the data is.


Quantum computing has been heralded as the most powerful potential successor to traditional, electronics-based computing.


One of the peculiarities of the branch of physics called quantum mechanics is that objects can be in more than one state at once, with the states of different objects tied together in ways that even Albert Einstein famously referred to as "spooky".


Instead of the 0 and 1 "bits" of digital computing, quantum computing aims to make use of these mixed and entangled states to perform calculations at comparatively breathtaking speeds.


Other quantum trickery comes in cryptography, the art of encrypting data. Data is encoded in delicately prepared states - most often those of single particles of light called photons - and the data cannot be "read" without destroying them.


While other researchers have described a blind quantum computing protocol, Barz's team appears to be the first to have actually demonstrated one working.
The researchers from Austria, Ireland, Singapore, Canada, and the U.K. write that their findings could pave the way for "unconditionally secure quantum cloud computing." The team reports that it was able to "exploit the conceptual framework of measurement-based quantum computation that enables a client to delegate a computation to a quantum server" and thus create input, computation, and output processes on the target system in such a way that it "all remain[s] unknown to the computer."
In less rarified terms, what this means is that in the future you might be able to use a cloud service like Google Docs to do some computational business on someone else's servers, secure in the knowledge that there is literally no way for the servers' owner or even the server itself to detect what you're doing.
Thank the Uncertainty Principle for that—simply by observing a quantum computational operation, you would change it. In the case of Deutsch's algorithm and Grover's algorithm, which the researchers sent to their quantum computer to perform and then send back to them, it would mean that if you somehow could get a peek at those operations, the intelligibility of what was transpiring would be destroyed before you ever got a chance to look at it.
And the process is actually blind going both ways. According to the scientists, whoever sent an algorithm to a quantum computer for it to perform wouldn't be able to see inside that system either.

Eli Manning Is Not an Elite Quarterback

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — One day last week, a visitor walking by the weight room at the Giants’ practice facility could look through the glass windows and see Eli Manning, in a gray T-shirt, slowly and deliberately doing bicep curls with medium-sized dumbbells. Half a room away, offensive lineman Chris Snee was also lifting weights — with a barbell that looked to be sagging from all the pounds plated at each end.


The scene was a visual reminder of an oddity in football terminology: Manning, as the Giants’ quarterback, is the only player on the team who regularly has his “arm strength” scrutinized. But when it comes to the football version of the term, a player’s, well, arm strength, actually matters little, if at all.


li Manning is 31 years old, and this is his eighth NFL season, yet his apologists are still talking about his potential. They may be right—Eli may have the potential to be as good or better than Aaron Rodgers (who will probably be voted this season's MVP and whose Packers Eli's Giants defeated last Sunday, 37-20), Tom Brady (who has won three Super Bowls and who Eli may be facing in this year's big game), or his brother, Peyton, in whose shadow he has played for much of his career. He may be as good or better than all of them, particularly if he continues to perform as he has down the stretch in the last few New York victories. But all other quarterbacks in NFL history who reached the stature of elite did it well before they turned 30. When Tom Brady and Peyton Manning turned 30, people weren't talking about their potential, they were talking about what they had already accomplished.


The current issue of Sports Illustrated has a story by Damon Hack: "Eli As An Elite." The subhead pretty much sums up the sports media's attitude towards him right now: "Quarterback Eli Manning has put to rest all questions of his leadership and clutch ability, outgunning the Packers' Aaron Rodgers to lead the Giants to their second NFC title game appearance in five seasons.

Trail Blazers scorch Raptors

LaMarcus Aldridge had a season-high 33 points and a career-best 23 rebounds, and the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Raptors 94-84 on Friday to hand Toronto its seventh consecutive loss.


Raymond Felton scored 14 points, and Marcus Camby and Gerald Wallace each had 10 rebounds as Portland won its seventh straight over Toronto. The Trail Blazers have not lost to the Raptors since a 101-100 overtime defeat on Dec. 22, 2006.


Portland outrebounded Toronto 55 to 40.


Aldridge had 23 points and 11 rebounds in the first half. His previous career high in rebounds was 19 against Milwaukee on Dec. 20, 2010. His career high in points is 42, set against Chicago on Feb. 7, 2011.


James Johnson had a career-high 23 points and DeMar DeRozan scored 22 for the Raptors, who have lost nine of 10.


Leandro Barbosa scored 17, Ed Davis had 10 rebounds and Jose Calderon 13 assists for Toronto, which opens a five-game trip Sunday at the Los Angeles Clippers.


Heading into the game, Casey said he still believes the Raptors are headed in the right direction despite the continued losses.


“It hurts, it should hurt, to lose six in a row,” he said. “We don’t want that to become the norm or guys to feel like it’s the norm. But big picture-wise, I see growth.


“I see development, in players, in the team, things they’re doing defensively now that I don’t have to yell and jump up and down. That to me is growth.”


As for DeRozan’s performance this year, Casey said the expectations on the 23-year-old heading in were out of whack.


Casey said with the new defensive responsibilities DeRozan has been tasked with this year, he is not surprised the forward’s offensive production has slipped.


“Last year I thought, offensively, he put up big numbers,” Casey said. “But again, he didn’t do his job on the defensive end. Now we have to put it all together and go to the next level.”


After Portland opened up a 47-32 lead by the half, the Raptors played with renewed vigour in the third quarter – especially DeRozan, who scored 14 of his team-high 22 points in the frame, connecting on seven of his 21 jump shots..


A DeRozan three-point play trimmed Portland’s lead to 51-46 before Portland coach Nate McMillan called a timeout to set his team straight.


Raymond Felton, Portland’s speedy point guard, responded with a couple of timely threes and then threaded a smart pass to Nicolas Batum that he accepted in full flight for another layup.

Memorable Etta James Songs

Etta James passed away today at the age of 73 from complications in her battle with leukemia. The legendary soul singer will probably be best remembered for her timeless classic “At Last.” The song is easily one of the top three most popular wedding songs, and holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts. But what most people will remember James for is her contribution to a myriad of movie soundtracks. The use of “At Last” in film over the past few decades has made the song transcend into something much more than a tune played at wedding receptions.


"At Last" may have been the ubiquitous hit, the go-to number for momentous occasions, commericals, movie soundtracks and wannabe pop stars on TV singing competitions.


But the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, who died today at the age of 73, had an arsenal full of slow-dance worthy tunes, some songs tailor-made for when you're in love and others that make perfect accompaniments for a good cry.

Etta James Dead at 73

In the wake of Etta James' death Friday at age 73, Beyonce and other celebrities expressed their sympathies over the singer's passing.


"This is a huge loss," Beyonce, who played James in the movie "Cadillac Records," said in a statement on her website. "Etta James was one of the greatest vocalists of our time. I am so fortunate to have met such a queen. Her musical contributions will last a lifetime."


Beyonce said James' music inspired her to be a stronger artist.


"When she effortlessly opened her mouth, you could hear her pain and triumph. Her deeply emotional way of delivering a song told her story with no filter. She was fearless, and had guts. She will be missed."


James, whose condition was pronounced terminal in December, succumbed to complications of leukemia Friday morning at a hospital in Riverside, according to her son Donto and her personal doctor. Best known for the song "At Last," she had battled serious infections for years and also suffered from dementia.


Beyonce was far from alone in expressing herself.


"Some of you young'ns may not be too familiar with Etta James but ... many of you are definitely familiar with her biggest hit song At Last (which Beyoncé performed at the inauguration of President Obama back in 2009)," Pink explained Friday on her website.


Many historians consider “Work With Me Annie” and the string of replies to be the big bang of rock 'n' roll — and a bold invitation for a young African American female singer in 1955. James' explosive voice, coupled with her innocent presence belting out such relatively bawdy lyrics, made for a disconnect that James and Otis took full advantage of.


To say that James was a magnetic presence would be an understatement: It's been speculated that blues legend B.B. King wrote “Sweet Sixteen” with her in mind, and as James grew, her voice and delivery also matured, allowing her a range that nailed ballads with the same passion as rockers.


In fact, despite her rise as a rock 'n' roll singer and her eventual induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, James was called “The Queen of R&B” for a reason: It was in her less raucous, more romantic ballads where she and her voice burned the brightest. Her first Grammy nomination in 1960 was given to her for a heartbreaking ballad called “All I Could Do Was Cry,” where she sings of watching her true love get married as she stands outside the church.


And then there's “At Last,” the song she will forever be associated with. Written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, the original version was recorded in 1941. A life-affirming fairy tale of true love recorded gently by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the emotion that James packs into the song is urgent and real. Her phrasing of the first line, a throwaway in lesser hands, is only seven simple words but conveys a novel's worth of feeling: “At last,” she sings, sounding both relieved and overjoyed as a candle-lit string section supports her voice, “my love has come along.” It's one of the great singing moments in the American musical canon.

Etta James

Etta James,born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012 was an American singer whose style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in the mid 1950s, she gained fame with hits such as "Dance With Me, Henry", "At Last", "Tell Mama", and "I'd Rather Go Blind" for which she claimed she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems including drug addiction before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album, The Seven Year Itch.
She is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.




Jamesetta Hawkins was born on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles to Dorothy Hawkins, who was only 14 at the time. Her father has never been identified, but was rumored possibly to be white (Caucasian). James speculated that her father was the pool player, Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, and met him briefly in 1987. Due to her mother being often absent carrying on relationships with various men, James lived with a series of caregivers, most notably "Sarge" and "Mama" Lu. James called her mother "the Mystery Lady".
James received her first professional vocal training at the age of five from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir, at the St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles. She became a popular singing attraction at the church, and Sarge tried to pressure the church into paying him money for her singing, but they refused. During drunken poker games at home, he would wake James up in the early hours of the morning and force her through beatings to sing for his friends. As she was a bed-wetter, and often soaked with her own urine on these occasions, the trauma of being forced to sing meant she had a life-long reluctance to sing on demand.


James's musical style changed during the course of her career. When beginning her recording career in the mid-50s, James was marketed as an R&B and doo wop singer. After signing with Chess Records in 1960, James broke through as a traditional pop-styled singer, covering jazz and pop music standards on her debut album, At Last! James's voice has deepened and coarsened in the past ten years, moving her musical style in these later years into the genres of soul and jazz.
Etta James had once been considered one of the most overlooked blues and R&B musicians in American music history. It wasn't until the early 1990s when James began receiving major industry awards from the Grammys and the Blues Foundation that she began to receive wide recognition. In 2011 James was voted one the Best Singers On Earth by viewers to Btoe the multimedia website founded by Colin Larkin creator of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music. In recent years, she has been seen as bridging the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. James has influenced a wide variety of American musicians including Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, and Hayley Williams of Paramore as well as British artists The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Elkie Brooks, Amy Winehouse, Paloma Faith, Joss Stone and Adele.


James encountered a string of legal problems during the early 1970s due to her heroin addiction. She was continuously in and out of rehabilitation centers, including the Tarzana Rehabilitation Center, in Los Angeles, California. Her husband Artis Mills, whom she married in 1969, accepted responsibility when they were both arrested for heroin possession and served a 10-year prison sentence. He was released from prison in 1982 and was still married to James at her death. She was also arrested around the same time for her drug addiction, accused of cashing bad checks, forgery and possession of heroin. In 1974, James was sentenced to drug treatment instead of serving time in prison. She was in the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital for 17 months, at age 36, and went through a great struggle at the start of treatment. She later stated in her autobiography that the time she spent in the hospital changed her life. However, after leaving treatment, her substance abuse continued into the 1980s, after she developed a relationship with a man who was also using drugs. In 1988, at the age of 50, she entered the Betty Ford Center, in Palm Springs, California, for treatment. In 2010, she received treatment for a dependency on painkillers.
James had two sons, Donto and Sametto. Both started performing with their mother in 2003 – Donto on drums and Sametto on bass guitar.


James was hospitalized in January 2010 to treat an infection caused by MRSA. During her hospitalization, her son Donto revealed that James had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2008, and attributed her previous comments about Beyoncé Knowles to "drug induced dementia".
She was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2011. The illness became terminal and she died on January 20, 2012, just five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside, California.


From 1989, James received over 30 awards and recognitions from eight different organizations, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences which organizes the Grammys.
In 1989, the newly formed Rhythm and Blues Foundation included James in their first Pioneer Awards for artists whose "lifelong contributions have been instrumental in the development of Rhythm & Blues music". The following year, 1990, she received an NAACP Image Award, which is given for "outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts"; an award she cherished as it "was coming from my own people".1993, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
2001, Rockabilly Hall of Fame
2003, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Hollywood Walk of Fame, star at 7080 Hollywood Blvd, and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Lifetime Achievement Award
2006, Billboard R&B Founders Award
Grammys
James has received six Grammy Awards. Her first was in 1994, when she was awarded Best Jazz Vocal Performance for the album Mystery Lady, which consisted of covers of Billie Holiday songs. Two other albums have also won awards, Let's Roll (Best Contemporary Blues Album) in 2003, and Blues To The Bone (Best Traditional Blues Album) in 2004. Two of her early songs have been given Grammy Hall of Fame Awards for "qualitative or historical significance": "At Last", in 1999, and "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)" in 2008. In 2003, she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Blues Foundation
The members of the Blues Foundation, a non-profit organization set up in Memphis, Tennessee, to foster the blues and its heritage, have nominated James for a Blues Music Award nearly every year since its founding in 1980; and she has received some form of Blues Female Artist of the Year award 14 times since 1989, continuously from 1999 to 2007. In addition, the albums Life, Love, & The Blues (1999), Burnin' Down The House (2003), and Let's Roll (2004) were awarded Soul/Blues Album of the Year, and in 2001 she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

How Many Stephen Colberts Are There

CHARLESTON, S.C. - The day before South Carolina's January 21 primary, the comedian Stephen Colbert had some instructions for an exuberant crowd of about 3,000 people: "I want you to vote for Herman Cain," he said. "Because Herman Cain is me."


The host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report"-- who also says he's running to be "President of the United States of South Carolina" -- rushed onstage singing "This Little Light of Mine" before thanking a handful of conservative South Carolina politicians not in attendance, and making fun of the current GOP presidential field.


After a lengthy introduction, he brought in Herman Cain -- his co-host and, as he put it, "the man we're all gathered here to see introduce me." (This assessment ultimately proved accurate.)


Cain, Colbert hammed, is similar to him in many ways: "We both flout convention when it comes to things like taxes and debt and how many Ubekis there are in Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan."


But, he added, "he possesses the one thing I don't think I will ever have: A place on the South Carolina primary ballot."


Taking to the stage for his share of the spectacle, Cain was unapologetic about participating in an event that, ostensibly, means to make a mockery of the very presidential race from which he only recently withdrew.


But "the Hermanator," as Colbert referred to him, stopped short of actually encouraging the thousands of young people on hand to actually vote for him.


"Stephen Colbert asked you to vote for Herman Cain," he said, "I'm going to ask you to not vote for Herman Cain and here's why. I don't want you to waste your vote. Every vote counts and yours still matters and you still matter.


Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington on Oct. 30, 2010, didn’t really resonate with me: it was too close to the cults of personality he was lampooning to actually feel like a condemnation. Stephen Colbert, by contrast, intervenes in ways that can be uncomfortably aggressive and that are starting to force the system to step in and shut him down, as it did when he tried to buy the naming rights to the South Carolina Republican primary.


I’m interested in that kind of pranksterism, or, as the article puts it about Colbert’s improv teacher Del Close, “more nearly a philosophy or a way of life than just a way of getting laughs.

Stephen Colbert "campaigns" in South Carolina

Herman Cain at the  Stephen Colbert  rally here Friday was laughing with him. But he didn’t mind being the butt of jokes, he said, if only Americans could learn how to take one. His message? “As I said in one of the debates, America needs to lighten up.”


Colbert’s message, on the other hand, was as serious as its delivery was lighthearted. Politicians in both parties promise to bring Americans together, but Colbert actually does, through comedy. And this rally on the campus of the College of Charleston, the day before the state’s presidential primary, was an extended riff on the serious subject of money in politics.


With Spanish moss framing the backdrop of a campus that not only looks like an Old South movie set but has served as one many times, the Comedy Central host bounded onstage, sang “This Little Light of Mine,” with a gospel choir as backup, then gave a history lesson.


Calling himself the “ Martin Luther King Jr.  of corporation civil rights,” Colbert said that in a time maybe not everyone in the audience could remember — two years ago — corporations were sadly limited in the amount of money they could pour into political campaigns.


Part of Colbert's fun makes a serious point about the growth of new Super PAC funding organizations that are spending huge amounts on attack ads on candidates. Political action committees, or PACs, are groups with great clout in U.S. politics that are legally separate from candidates. A Supreme Court ruling in 2010 allows corporations and unions to raise unlimited funds to buy ads that encourage or discourage the election of specific candidates.


"Faced with this tragic lack of corporate influence in our government, five courageous, unelected justices of the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the constitutional right to spend unlimited money in political speech," Colbert said.


He was backed by a gospel choir that occasionally chimed in, singing, "Corporations are people," a phrase made famous by Republican front-runner  Mitt Romney .


A crowd, comprised mostly of college students, stood in line for up to four hours to get into the event. They held signs that said "Get on the Cain Train" and "Control the bear population" and included a couple of animal rights activists dressed in pig costumes.

Lana Del Rey Interview About Movies

Lana Del Rey's every move and utterance seems to provoke impassioned arguments (both for and against) her breathy, enigmatic persona lately. But sorry internet, the indie songstress' choice in movies doesn't leave much room for debate.


In an interview with NextMovie, Lana revealed her two favorite movies to be The Godfather: Part I and II. She describes the acting as "epic" and places pouty emphasis on the "luxurious and gorgeous" sets, something even the most stringent Lana critics would find impossible to disagree with.


Saturday, but that doesn't mean she should just slink away! No siree, there are fans who want to know things about her -- like what's her favorite movie? And what's her least favorite movie? And what movie soundtrack is her most favorite? And so on and so forth Lana Del Rey movies etc. etc. Right? Aren't those the questions everyone's wondering about right now, and not, say, How much do you hate the internet today?


Luckily, the folks at NextMovie got on the job, asking LDR all the pressing questions of our time. Watch below for a list of favorites that seem plucked right out of the gangster Nancy Sinatra/'hood Lolita handbook.

Lana Del Rey Moves Past 'SNL,' Plans

Lana Del Rey is set to celebrate the one-week anniversary of her near-disastrous (or completely disastrous) debut performance on "Saturday Night Live." And now that the dust has settled a bit, the Twitterverse has calmed and the pundits have spoken, the show business newcomer can survey the landscape and determine who out there has her back and who she can safely delete from her concert guest list for the foreseeable future.


Surprisingly, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams was first out of the gate as a foe. Soon after the performance, the normally impartial newsman purportedly emailed Gawker owner Nick Denton to encourage him to do something on Del Rey, which he described as "one of worst outings in SNL history." (Much to Williams' chagrin, Gawker editors posted his email in full on their site).


Gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who once took a vow to be nicer to celebrities, tweeted, "Just watched SNL. Not only was @LanaDelRey vocally WAY off, but watching her utter lack of stage presence was cringe-worthy. #DontBuyTheHype."


And actress Eliza Dushku just had to ask, "Who.....is.....this wack-a-doodle chick performing on #SNL..? Whaaaa?"


Even record labels came out swinging against the lovely Del Rey. DFA Records, the label co-founded by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, took a pre-emptive foe stance when it tweeted on Jan. 7: "Lana Del Rey plays Saturday Night Live next week... LCD Soundsystem tried for 6 years to play Saturday Night Live. Isn't 'too soon' ok advice?"


Sonically, I always knew exactly what I wanted," Del Rey said. "That's really the only thing I do know. The rest of it was sort of up in the air. I've been a writer for a really long time, and a sort of bad composer, but a composer nonetheless. It was something I did alone for some time and then became a collaborative effort as I met better and better people."


Those people include Brit Justin Parker, who composed much of the music on the album, Philadelphia legend Larry Gold, who's arranged strings for the likes of Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, and producer Emile Haynie, best known for tracks by Kanye West and Eminem. Del Rey calls them "her crew," and they helped shape her ideas into an album that mixes both the light with the dark, the sadness with the sweetness.


"Justin started lacing the tracks with melancholic chords, brought out the bittersweetness that I wanted, and Emile kind of kept it really dark and f---ed up with his heavy beats, and Larry kept it soaring and gorgeous with his strings," Del Rey explained. "Everyone knew the direction I was going in, and it was very much a collaborative effort."


And of course, though she's been suffering the slings and arrows of her critics following her "SNL" performance, Del Rey is most definitely planning on spending the next few weeks promoting Born to Die with a spate of TV appearances. And she's also making plans for a full-blown tour tentatively scheduled for October — one that she's already making special arrangements for. And given the past few weeks, perhaps that's a good idea.


"I'm capping every venue at 900 capacity, because I don't want to perform for more [people] than that," she said. "So what I want to do is do three nights in New York, at like Irving Plaza, and then three nights at the El Rey in L.A., and then, in between, do 15 cities, and cap it at 900 venues. And everybody at her label, Interscope is onboard, so that's what we're going to do.

Newt Gingrich takes aim at Mitt Romney for ‘07 Castro gaffe

For months,  Mitt Romney 's rivals in the Republican presidential race have hammered him as a closet moderate, especially on third-rail social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.


"Mitt Romney: Not conservative," charged one recent and typical television commercial sponsored by supporters of  Newt Gingrich .


Is that true? Is Romney really more liberal than he'd have GOP voters believe?


I've been looking back over Romney's history, and for better or worse, the former Massachusetts governor has a more consistently conservative record than he's given credit for. Only in the hothouse atmosphere of a Republican primary campaign could he be considered soft on social issues.


Take gay marriage. Because Massachusetts began allowing same-sex couples to wed while Romney was governor, he has been portrayed by some as soft on the issue.


But the shift came because of a court decision, not legislation, and accounts from the time make it clear that Romney did everything in his power to head off the court's action. Failing in that, he decried the ruling, saying it went against "3,000 years of recorded history." And for the rest of his time in office, he fought the law, at one point ordering county clerks not to perform weddings for gay couples who lived out of state.


In its minute-long radio ad, news of which was first reported by the Miami Herald, Gingrich’s camp opens with a clip of the slogan. A narrator then intones in Spanish:


“Amazingly, this phrase was also used by Mitt Romney.”


The spot goes on to allege that Romney is “the most anti-immigrant candidate” and charges that he is “a liberal” in the same style (and from the same state) as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).


It also states that Gingrich fought alongside “Ileana and Lincoln” – that’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and former congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) – to pass the Helms-Burton Act, the 1996 measure aimed at strengthening the embargo against Cuba.


Not mentioned in the Gingrich ad? Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart have endorsed Romney in the 2012 race, and they appear in a Spanish-language Romney campaign TV ad currently airing in the Sunshine State.


The Gingrich spot is a sign that the former House speaker’s camp is aiming to stay in the race beyond Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, where the candidate has seen a surge of support in recent days. Florida holds its nominating contest on Jan. 31.


But in Florida, Gingrich will likely face the same problem as he has elsewhere when it comes to his effort to unseat Romney as the GOP frontrunner: the former Massachusetts governor has a vast campaign warchest at his disposal.

The perils of projection

Rick Santorum, who once took fire from Rick Perry for seeking earmarked spending while in Congress, lashed back after a town hall meeting in South Carolina.


On Jan. 11, 2012, eight days before the Texas governor suspended his presidential campaign, Santorum said: "Rick Perry requested 1,200 earmarks as governor of Texas," according to a blog posted by MSNBC. "It’s sort of hard for somebody who’s been in public life and elected office for 25 years to be the outsider when he also requested over a thousand earmarks from Washington," he added.


We wondered how Santorum arrived at Perry’s 1,200, a figure the former Pennsylvania senator aired again a few days later, according to a Jan. 16, 2012, post on ABC News’ blog The Note.


A refresher: According to the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense, an earmark is a legislative provision that sets "aside funds within an account for a specific program, project, activity, institution or location. These measures normally circumvent merit-based or competitive allocation processes and appear in spending, authorization, tax and tariff bills."


Earmarks, which Congress banned from its budgeting and appropriations process in 2011, draw fire in some quarters because they enabled individual lawmakers to carve out funding for pet projects without public scrutiny. Some advocacy organizations say they’re still finding earmarks--sometimes called pork--in legislation.


Even Bill Clinton, who was less forthcoming and therefore, at least initially, less sympathetic, came to be viewed as a victim following months of investigation and the airing of sordid details only voyeurs could enjoy. Starr, as King, was merely doing his job, yet he became less likable than Clinton among Regular Joes watching television in their kitchens. However nobly Republicans may have considered their mission, everyday Americans -- particularly men -- saw persecution.


A Catholic friend captures the operative sentiment in terms Gingrich surely would appreciate. When she sees someone succumb to temptation or betray some other human frailty, she says: "I have those weeds in my garden."


To err is human; to forgive divine. We like that way of thinking because we all need others' forgiveness. When Gingrich turned to his audience and said we all know pain -- we all know people who have suffered pain -- he instantly morphed from sinner to savior, the redeemer in chief. He correctly counted on the empathy of his fellow man, if not necessarily womankind, and won the moment.


But a moment is just that, and projection of the sort experienced by the Charleston audience can be fraught with peril. Over-identification clouds judgment and, though we are all sinners, we are not all running for president of the United States. Gingrich's sins of the flesh ultimately are of less importance than the narcissism and grandiosity that compel his actions.


Voters would do well to think less of what they would do in his shoes than what  Newt Gingrich  will do should he win the prize. As the reality of his astonishing self-regard sinks in and one imagines where his unflagging certitude might lead, it is less easy to identify with the weeds in his garden. As projection falters, empathy finds no place to land.

White reporters report on white candidates

The South Carolina Republican presidential primary is often a free-for-all, but this year's contest probably sets a new standard for volatility. Not surprisingly, Palmetto State GOP insiders see a close finish in the primary Saturday between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker  Newt Gingrich , according to a CNN survey.
Less than 48 hours before voters would go to the polls, they were buffeted by a sudden announcement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry that he was withdrawing from the Republican presidential race and endorsing rival Gingrich. And as Perry was dropping out, the political world was buzzing with reports that Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, said that her then-husband proposed an "open marriage" before they divorced. Then, a fiery Gingrich struck back at the opening of the CNN debate in Charleston, attacking the "liberal media" for bringing up the story in the first place.


Not that  Mitt Romney  is any better. If there are actually people out there who need to watch this donkey show in order to figure out who to vote for, then Romney's days as the GOP frontrunner have likely come to an end. When John King asks the governor if he will release all of his tax returns like his father George Romney did, Mitt replies with a "maybe," and the audience inside the arena boos. More telling, inside the press room there are gasps. Something unscripted has occurred. Something that was truly unexpected. My fellow journalists are only momentarily fazed. They quickly gather themselves and get back to penning their regularly scheduled reports in which they act as if they are providing a service to democracy by reciting conflicting poll numbers and quote-whoring the night's catchphrases. ¡Ay, caramba! To the Batmobile, Robin. Pow, right in the kisser.


Once the debate is over, the lily-white horde of reporters comes face to face with the lily-white horde of campaign staffers and supporters, guys like our own Jack Hunter and former South Carolina GOP chair Katon Dawson. For some reason, the press corps still treats Dawson with respect despite the fact that he's an asshole who was a member of an all-white country club in Columbia and who was the state campaign chair for Rick Perry, a racist dickhead who owns a house out in the boonies called Niggerhead Ranch.


And that more than anything symbolizes the GOP's problem: they not only still allow bigots among their ranks, but they think one of them is fit to be chairman of the Republican Party or, even worse, the president of the United States.

Will Romney and Gingrich hog the spotlight

The CNN host stepped on a land mine named  Newt Gingrich  when he opened Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate by asking him about his second ex-wife’s allegation that he suggested she accept his the affair as part of their marriage.


Gingrich’s now-famous response practically blew back King’s hair. “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office,” he said to thunderous applause during the forum in Charleston, S.C. “And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”


To even more enthusiastic applause, the former House speaker added, “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”


Gingrich’s shoot-the-messenger answer may be one of the most memorable moments of the campaign and a potential boost for his candidacy against front-runner Mitt Romney.


As of Friday evening, both candidates had scheduled events at Tommy's, a Greenville breakfast restaurant, at the same time on Saturday morning. The event was a late addition to Romney's daily schedule; Gingrich's campaign said they but they booked the establishment first.


"We've had this event on the books. Our schedule went out first," said Gingrich aide Nathan Naidu. "We are confirmed at our event ... We would be more than happy to treat Gov. Romney to ham at our event."


The Romney campaign said the booking is "pure coincidence," and that it was still planning to hold their meet-and-greet with voters at the Ham House.