I met Bill Nye, the global warming guy. READ MORE

Rick Santorum, eager to show that he will stand up for Catholic values, has been saying things about the recent Health and Human Services regulation that now requires Catholic universities and hospitals to provide access to contraception and the morning-after pill. Santorum has accused the Obama administration of being "hostile to people of faith, particularly Christians and specifically Catholics.” He's even gone so far as to vow that he "will make it an issue every day of this campaign," until the Obama administration reinstates conscience protections. Santorum has also spoken up forcefully against same-sex marriage, which the Pope has—yes, again—recently condemned (in some really extreme terms, too). READ MORE

Lol ok RT @doug_hanks: @Skraw_Berry Thanks Skraw_Berry. Check out tomorrow's People page in the Herald for the final write-up. READ MORE

"It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. 'Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is,' said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week." READ MORE

Florida's Republican primary is tomorrow (AKA two weeks ago, since everyone votes in advance or by absentee ballot or from beyond/near the grave), and so the Mainstream Media is yucking it up in the Republican districts! For instance here is Politico's Mike Allen in South Beach today with some likely Republican voters (including a fellow named BurgerBillionz) who are having a 6 a.m. nightcap-dinner while "Morning Joe" prepares to live-broadcast. (Which looks less interesting.) Word of advice: don't actually eat at Jerry's Deli. (Picture by MSNBC's Lauren Skowronski.)

"Look at my picture and ask yourself 'Would he really do that for money?' YOU CAN TELL I WOULD!" READ MORE

I arrived back in New Hampshire a couple days after Christmas, attending a Mitt Romney event at Geno's Chowder & Sandwich Shop on a wharf at the port's mouth in Portsmouth. A few hundred people showed up too, the usual Republican mix of dyed-blonde women in furs, size-38-pants men, Brooks Brother-y bros, and girls in those knee-high brown storm-trooper boots that have recently invaded the suburbs. READ MORE

In a campaign field that includes a twice-divorced anti-gay-marriage candidate who took an oath against adultery and who believes in mining the moon, it takes a special candidate to stand out. Michele Bachmann is just that special. READ MORE

In October of 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was about to give a speech in Milwaukee in support of his reelection campaign under the newly created Progressive “Bull Moose” Party when a bartender named John Flammang Schrank walked up and shot him in the chest. Roosevelt of course was not killed, but neither his survival nor Schrank’s claim that he was instructed by the ghost of William McKinley to prevent a third term for the two-term former president were the most extraordinary parts of the whole affair. It was the fact that Roosevelt decided to deliver his speech in the Milwaukee Auditorium anyway, for an hour and a half, with blood seeping through his clothes. “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible,” he began, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” READ MORE