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    New SC Poll

    A new CNN/TIME poll from South Carolina: Mitt just under 40%, a scramble for second just under 20%.

    Josh Marshall

    Question of the Day

    Does the RNC/Romney campaign have a Plan B if the economy is significantly better this year than it was last year?

    Josh Marshall

    Freddie Mac Craps on Newt

    Newt Gingrich has stated that he cannot disclose the terms of his contracts with Freddie Mac because he is bound by a confidentiality agreement. Now Freddie Mac VP Sharon McHale says they're releasing him from that. They're fine with him giving the contracts to the press.

    Josh Marshall

    Unemployment Falls to 8.5%

    The Labor Department announced this morning that the national unemployment rate has fallen to 8.5%. The economy added 200,000 jobs in December.

    Josh Marshall

    Could This Be Over Fast?

    BERJAYA

    There's a real dearth of polling data out of South Carolina at the moment. The last public poll was completed on December 19th, which might as well be a hundred years ago. And remember that in recent years, it's South Carolina much more than Iowa or New Hampshire where you really need to win to secure the Republican nomination.

    Read More →
    Josh Marshall

    Did Santorum Actually Win?

    Did Rick Santorum actually win the Iowa caucuses? KCCI in Des Moines is reporting that a vote counter at one caucus says a counting error gave Mitt Romney 20 more votes than he actually received. Meanwhile Iowa GOP officials say that counter, Edward True, isn't authorized to discuss the results.

    Josh Marshall

    Chart of the Day

    Mitt's new tax plan: Tax hikes if you make less than 40k a year, tax cuts if you make more.

    Josh Marshall

    Bugsy Obama

    Romney's new attack on Obama carries shades of Jimmy Cagney and Kelsey Grammer in Boss.

    Thomas Lane
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    Most Recent Latest news stories from TPM reporters

    TPM2012 Michael Lester

    Day In 100 Seconds: Animal Farm

    Fresh from all the excitement that was the Iowa Caucuses, the circus is now rolling in to New Hampshire. The scrutiny is landing on the new rising star, but the leader of the pack has decided the state is not worth his attention. Because he's already won it. And, as the song says, "the animals came in two by two", now it seems so do the debates. With barely even enough time to blink, the Republicans are dumping two debates within the space of less than a day on us. So, prepare yourself for that...
    Muckraker Jillian Rayfield

    'Letters From Osama': Chicago Man Accused Of Mailing Fake Nuclear Bomb Threats Signed By Al-Qaeda Leader

    A Chicago man was charged with mailing fake nuclear bomb threats all around the country and signing them "Osama Bin Laden," according to federal officials. Timothy P. O'Donnell was charged with nine counts of falsely threatening the use of explosives, in an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury on Thursday. According to a press release from the FBI, between March 18th and 22nd of 2011, O'Donnell allegedly sent dozens of letters -- all with the same wording -- from Chicago to recipients in 16...
    TPMDC Pema Levy

    Obama Administration Expands Definition Of Rape

    On Friday, the Justice Department did something it hasn't done since 1929: it changed the definition of rape. For over 80 years, for the purposes of crime collection data, rape was defined as forcible male penile penetration of a female. This excluded a vast number of sexual crimes including oral and anal penetration, or instances when a victim was unable to give consent. The new definition makes up for these oversights. It also expands the definition to reflect that anyone -- male, female, or...
    Muckraker Ryan J. Reilly

    Rising Republican Star Arrested For Harassing Woman Who Dumped Him

    Update: Roll Call reports he's dropped out of the race. South Carolina state Rep. Thad Viers, who's running for a seat in Congress and was named a one of the National Republican Campaign Committee's "On The Radar" candidates, was arrested on Friday for allegedly harassing a 28-year-old woman who broke off her relationship with him in July. Viers previously pleaded "no contest" and was fined $500 for harassing his ex-wife's boyfriend with threatening and graphic answering machine messages in 2006,The Sun ...
    TPM2012 Pema Levy

    The Dog-Whistle Behind Newt's Food Stamps Rhetoric

    Throughout his campaign, Newt Gingrich has painted himself as the Republican candidate who will reach out to minority voters, particularly the African American community. Gingrich escalated those comments Thursday when he expressed a willingness to address the NAACP on "why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps." When the NAACP called Newt's comments "divisive," Newt appeared baffled by their unenthusiastic response. Here's the problem.
    TPMDC Brian Beutler

    DOJ Files Brief Defending Key Health Care Law Provision To SCOTUS

    Here's the Justice Department's brief defending the new health care law's individual Supreme Court. The arguments track the Obama administration's arguments before lower courts. In this brief, the DOJ argues that the requirement that uninsured people purchase coverage (with government subsidies) is Constitutional both under Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce and because the mandate functions as a tax, which the Constitution provides the Congress wide authority to levy. The argument...
    TPM2012 Michael Lester

    Clip Of The Day: McCain Forgets Romney's Name

    Mitt Romney's been hitting New Hampshire and South Carolina lately with his former rival, Senator John McCain. The idea is to have the grand old man of Republican politics help coalesce support around the current GOP frontrunner. But the moment that caught the attention of the cable networks was when McCain got things, well, a little bit mixed up... ...
    IdeaLab Carl Franzen

    Does Apple Have Grounds To Sue Over Steve Jobs Action Figure?

    An action figure of Apple's late founder and former CEO Steve Jobs being sold by a Chinese company can be legally sold in most parts of the U.S., despite Apple's reported threats to sue over the likeness, according to PaidContent. Apple had reportedly sought to intimidate the company, In Icons, into giving up its efforts to market and sell the uncannily realistic Steve Jobs memorial figure (with 14 points of articulation!) by sending the company a cease-and-desist letter, as the UK media outlet The...
    TPM2012 Eric Kleefeld

    So Who Really Won Iowa? (And Does It Matter?)

    Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses this week, with a very late-night announcement by the state GOP of his eight-vote margin over Rick Santorum -- a percentage difference of 0.0065%. Or did Rick Santorum win? Or a really tricky question: Can we confidently say that either of them won? It all started late Thursday, when a caucus worker in the town of Moulton, located in Appanoose County, told the CBS affiliate in Des Moines that the state GOP's spreadsheet contained an error of his precinct's returns --....
    TPM2012 Evan McMorris-Santoro

    Why Does Rick Perry Think He Can Win South Carolina?

    After his embarrassing result in Iowa, Rick Perry seemed to get the message the polls have been sending him for months: Republican voters just aren't that into him. On caucus night, said he'd go back to Texas and figure out what comes next. But within hours, Perry was sprinting into South Carolina, to make at least one more stand. Given that the TPM Poll Average shows Perry pulling just 4.8% support in the state, a clear question arises: What on earth is he thinking?
    TPM2012 Benjy Sarlin

    Rick Santorum's God And Gays Message Falls Flat In New Hamsphire

    KEENE, NH -- Give Rick Santorum credit, he doesn't change his message just because he's in another state. The most prominent social conservative in the race, Santorum has made no apologies for playing up issues like religion, gay rights, or abortion even as the general election is expected to be dominated by economic concerns. And he has no intention of modifying his playbook for New Hampshire, where evangelicals are a far less dominant force than Iowa. "People said 'Why do you come to New...
    Muckraker Ryan J. Reilly

    Analysis: Minority Voters Overwhelmingly Rejected Mississippi Voter ID Law

    Less than 25 percent of non-white Mississippi citizens voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment to require voter ID at the polls compared to about 83 percent of white voters, according to a newly released report. An estimated 75 percent of the state's minority population rejected "Initiative 27," a constitutional amendment requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, while only about 17 percent of white voters went against the proposal, according to a report by the Lawyers'...
    TPM2012 Kyle Leighton

    South Carolina Polls -- Is Romney Wrapping This Up?

    Is the writing on the wall? Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney eked out a win in Iowa on Tuesday (well, maybe), and he's looking very strong in New Hampshire, leading the field by about twenty points as the state gets ready to vote on the 10th. Now there's new data that shows Republican voters in South Carolina are moving into Romney's corner as well: A new Rasmussen poll showed Romney up by three points in the Palmetto State, a CNN/TIME survey showed an 18 point lead, and Public Policy Polling (D)...
    IdeaLab Carl Franzen

    Mayor Bloomberg Will Learn How To Write Code In 2012

    New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been increasingly vocal about his love for all things tech over the past few years, but now he's taking it a whole new level. On Thursday, Bloomberg (the real one) tweeted that his new year's resolution was to learn how to write code using the handy, free, game-like online courses offered by New York's own Codecademy. "My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me. http://codeyear.com/ #codeyear," Bloomberg tweeted, instantly...
    TPMDC Brian Beutler

    Dems Warn GOP: Don't Strangle Recovery By Screwing With Payroll Tax

    Top Democrats pulled a little stunt Friday morning, when they tried to upend the House's pro forma session to confer about and debate the payroll tax cut. But in their remarks to the press afterward, they parlayed today's positive jobs figures into a serious political warning to the GOP: Don't threaten the recovery by playing games with the economy. In essence, today's positive economic news raised the stakes of the payroll tax cut fight -- if Republicans can't get their act together and the tax cut...
    TPM2012 Pema Levy

    Santorum: Job Rate Going Up Because Of Optimism That The GOP Will Win The White House

    Rick Santorum offered a fantastical explanation Friday morning for why the unemployment rate decreased in December: "optimism that Republicans will take the White House." Though the comment was delivered half-jokingly, it's indicative of the bind Republican candidates find themselves in. Across the board, Republican candidates' campaigns depend on painting President Obama as a job killer. That narrative runs contrary to news this morning that the country saw 200,000 jobs created in December, bringing...
    TPMDC Eric Kleefeld

    Wis. Judge Rules For GOP On Recall Procedures

    A judge in Wisconsin threw a curveball Thursday evening into the recall campaign targeting Republican Gov. Scott Walker, ruling that state election officials must make a greater effort to screen out fake or duplicate petition signatures -- rather than abide by the pre-existing rules, which have placed more of the burden on the Walker campaign. The state GOP's lawsuit filed in mid-December against the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, claims that Walker's 14th...
    TPM2012 David Taintor

    Colbert: The Santorum Surge 'Just Got Real'

    The Rick Santorum "surge" is real, ladies and gentlemen. The former Pennsylvania senator has raised a million bucks since his photo finish in Iowa earlier this week. And, as Stephen Colbert said Thursday, he has "caught the notice of the most influential voice of the 19th century": George Will. The bow-tied Washington Post columnist wrote a pro-Santorum op-ed titled, "Suddenly, a fun candidate," claiming that Republicans "crave fun." "Yes they crave fun," Colbert said. "Because without fun, what would...
    TPM2012 Pema Levy

    Progressive Groups To Raise The Specter Of Ryan Plan During Debates

    It's not the general election yet, but we already know what one key issue will be: Medicare. Republicans in the House voted to basically end Medicare as we know it, a position Mitt Romney fully embraced in December. Progressives think it's never too early to remind voters where Republicans stand on the issue. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America are raising money to air an ad on the issue during the two debates this weekend. The ad, which aired this June, is aimed at New...
    TPMDC David Taintor

    Jon Stewart Takes On Latest Republican Freak-Out

    Jon Stewart on Thursday took on the latest Republican freak-out: President Obama's "unprecedented" power grab. What could that possibly be? "Finally!" Stewart said. "Elected officials and our volunteer punditocracy speaking truth to power, standing up against, I'm assuming, the recent codifying of indefinite detention of Americans, or, perhaps, the unrestricted and secret use of drones that rain death from the sky, or maybe the president's most recent outrage, the institution of mandatory Sharia schooluse...
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