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Finally, I leave you with a secret, just in case you ever find yourself attending a Netroots Nation convention: if you want to guess which state will host Netroots Nation next year, look for a senator attending who is not from the state you're currently in.
Barack Hussein Obama is not exactly the first name that springs to mind when the average person thinks of American politicians with Irish roots, to say the least. But Obama does indeed have Irish ancestry, and he certainly played this up in his recent visit to the Emerald Isle. Today, we are going to print the full text of Obama's address to an ecstatic Dublin crowd.
Matt was worthy of a scholarship last year, and he is just as worthy of a scholarship this year. I encourage everyone to cast your online vote for Matt right now, and after you've done so, keep checking back on the leaderboard page to see how he's doing in the voting. If he makes it into the top three vote-getters, he automatically will be awarded a scholarship.
One person who (assumably) won't be celebrating the fifth anniversary of Romneycare is Mitt Romney himself. This is because the entire issue has become the biggest albatross around his neck, politically, as he tosses his hat in the 2012 presidential ring. So don't look for him to be cutting a "Romneycare fifth birthday cake" today. In fact, as far as Romney is concerned, it would be just fine if everyone conveniently forgot about the issue altogether.
Christina Aguilera is -- quite rightly -- getting a lot of grief these days, because she flubbed a line while singing the National Anthem at the start of last weekend's Super Bowl. But while her mangled version of the lyrics was pretty cringe-inducing, to me what was completely indefensible was her mangling of the tune itself. Because this is one song which really shouldn't be open to "interpretation" -- at least not during such a prominent event.
OK, it's going to a be a quick and disjointed column today, because I have to get tomorrow's Friday column done early tonight. So we return to the "three-dot column" format pioneered by the intrepid Herb Caen of San Francisco newspaper fame (who also famously coined the term "beatnik," by the way...). Today, we've got two Sputnik footnotes, a Sarah Palin chuckle, and a quick note on Obama's "ask the president a question on YouTube" session. Without further ado...
Sometimes it is hard to come up with a metaphor to describe the week that was. This was not one of those weeks.
My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th "Friday Talking Points" column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we're doing so to bring you our annual "McLaughlin Awards," which are even more fun!
We now find ourselves in such a "day after the revolution" situation, to some degree or another, in American politics. The question of whether or not folks will be fooled again is going to grow larger throughout the next two years, over on the Right. The question is inherently impossible to answer at this point, but it hasn't stopped the song from running through my head as we survey the post-revolutionary political scene. And, so far, this "parting on the right" is already causing some headaches for the Republicans in Washington. I speak, of course, of the Tea Partiers.
It's that time of year again... the time when we pre-empt our usual Friday Talking Points column here and instead gather 'round the virtual campfire and shove a metaphorical flashlight under our chin, and proceed to tell two tales of horror guaranteed to make your blood run like ice water in the veins, no matter which side of the political divide you hail from.