English stabbies are so bored with their usual bedlam that they've begun robbing famous prisons. The Tower of London, the British Empire's beloved historical place to torture its political dissidents, was the target of a bold thief who stole the Tower's keys on Guy Fawkes Night. The keys open not only the locks on the drawbridges, but also the doors to the tourist restaurant and a conference room—perhaps the very conference room where Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn executed in 1536.

Opposition research—political Dumpster diving perfected by Lee Atwater and Roger Stone—has been a part of American politics for nearly 200 years. Your familiarity with Willie Horton, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and John Edwards' $400 haircut is a tribute to its irritating persistence as a campaign tool. What follows is oppo research, but we do not aim to inflict damage. In fact, The Awl's effort, a collection of early media mentions of the Republican candidates (sometimes appearing under their given names), may actually endear these Presidential hopefuls to you. Or am I the only one charmed by 11-year-old zoo booster Newton Gingrich?

MITT ROMNEY New York Times
—February 28, 1960

By [...]

"In 2012, Ron Paul has missed 136 votes while casting only 15…. Paul has missed 91.8 percent of roll call votes for the first quarter of 2012, the highest in his career. He went long stretches this year without setting foot on the House floor and then would show up to vote on a high-profile bill before jetting off again. During the longest of these stretches, from Jan. 19 to Feb. 27, he was absent for 69 votes in a row." —Living large!

You could have attended all of the speeches by the 15 or so potential presidential candidates who appeared at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference and only had the slightest notion that anything of note was happening in Egypt. The young conservatives gathered there have their own leaderless revolution to foment. The long-time president of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors CPAC, stepped down the day before the conference began to become the head of the National Rifle Association. And the CPAC Straw Poll, the first of many basically meaningless contests for all those 2012 Republican hopefuls, gave attendees a baffling array of candidates to choose from. There was [...]

They are young—so young. Impossibly young for attendees of a political rally that does not happen on a street. The slowest moving of the thousand or so streaming into the Minneapolis Convention end up standing for Ron Paul's address on the eve of the Minnesota caucuses. But they're young enough to handle it.

A Ron Paul rally is an experience every cynical, bedraggled, politics-reporting cur should take in at least once in a career. Plus, in the GOP 2012 field, Ron Paul supporters easily hold the title of most bangable.

The event was set to begin at 7:00 p.m. The first "End the Fed!" chant started at 7:03 [...]