Golden Snowball Challenge: Maitland, Huttner with the win

Posted at 5:27 PM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

I bought one of those reflective snow sticks this year, part of my civic duty to help the snowplow operators see where the side of the road ends and the News Cut winter estate begins.

Alas, it's about to be swallowed by the flotsam of winter.



There's no place left to put the snow.

Here are the preliminary results of this round of the Golden Snowball Challenge (details here). We have a National Weather Service advisory that a trained spotter measured 8.4" at Como Park. And the NWS reports a cooperative weather observer reports 7.7 at the U of M St. Paul campus. The 7.7" total was reported at 2:30 this afternoon, so preliminarily, I'm using that as the official measurement.

These numbers may well be challenged, but for now here are the results:

Meteorologist	Range	Average	Diff	Points
Erik Maitland (KMSP)	5-10	7.5	-0.2	9
Paul Huttner (MPR)	5-10	7.5	-0.2	9
Chikage Windler (KSTP)	5-11	8	0.3	8
National Weather Service	6-10	8	0.3	8
Mike Fairbourne (WCCO)	6-8	7	-0.7	7
Craig Edwards	6	6	-1.7	-5
Ron Trenda (WCCO)	9-13	11	3.3	-8
Sven Sundgaard (KARE)	3-6	4.5	-3.2	-8
Ian Leonard (KMSP)	4-6	5	-2.7	-8

And the updated season standings (again, these are prelimianry):

Meteorologist	Rounds	Total Points	Average
Patrick Hammer (KSTP)	3	25	8.3
Chikage Windler (KSTP)	2	15	7.5
Mike Fairbourne (WCCO)	2	14	7.0
Paul Huttner (MPR)	5	26	5.2
Erik Maitland (KMSP)	2	9	4.5
Jonathan Yuhas (KARE)	2	7	3.5
National Weather Service	5	12	2.4
Paul Douglas (MinnPost)	3	1	0.3
Sven Sundgaard (KARE)	2	0	0.0
Chris Shaffer (WCCO)	2	-2	-1.0
Don Moldenhauer (BMTN)	1	-5	-5.0
Belinda Jensen (KARE)	1	-5	-5.0
Mike Augustyniak (WCCO)	2	-10	-5.0
Dave Dahl (KSTP)	2	-10	-5.0
Keith Marler (KMSP)	3	-18	-6.0
Ron Trenda (WCCO)	2	-13	-6.5
Craig Edwards (MPR)	2	-15	-7.5
Ian Leonard (KMSP)	3	-24	-8.0

Craig Edwards again placed first in the senior division.

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Fresh Eye on the Radio - 2/9/10

Posted at 4:36 PM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Fresh Eye on the Radio (with Mary Lucia)

More faulty Toyotas, how to get an electronic monitoring bracelet off your ankle, and why are we still having the same, old political arguments? Those are the highlights from today's news discussion with The Current's Mary Lucia.

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or by going here.

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Tim Pawlenty's XFL moment

Posted at 1:16 PM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

In the wake of MPR reporter Tom Scheck's story that Gov. Tim Pawlenty acted as the delivery man for a big campaign contribution from a Texas Republican to someone in Alabama, it's possible that some Jesse Ventura-style attention will now be focused on where/when a sitting governor stops being a governor during the course of a week.

Up until now, Pawlenty's role as both a governor and a likely presidential candidate/courier have gone largely unexamined from an ethical/appropriateness standpoint.

Why is a governor from Minnesota, picking up a check from a donor in Texas, and delivering it to someone in Alabama? Pawlenty told Scheck that he was acting in his capacity as vice chairman of the Republican Governor's Association.

Can you be both? Is it unseemly to have a state's governor being a courier for campaign donations?

When Jesse Ventura was in office, Republicans and Democrats upbraided him for spending weekend time as a broadcaster of the XFL football games.

Former congressman Tim Penny, who was a Ventura ally, tried to alert us to the double standard in a September article in his hometown paper:

In contrast, the media was routinely and extremely tough on Governor Jesse Ventura for his out-of-state trips. For example, Ventura left the state - only occasionally - to show up on the David Letterman or Jay Leno shows (and for a few Saturdays to announce games for the fated and short-lived XFL football league). But without exception on each of these occasions, the Minnesota media loudly blasted Ventura!

My question is this: How are Ventura's out-of-state excursions any different - or any worse - than Pawlenty's purely political travels? In both cases these trips have NOTHING to do with our state's business. Yet, the Minnesota media seem to write only glowingly about Pawlenty's trips (apparently because they believe the trips are evidence that he is a contender on the national scene). Whether he has the potential to be a presidential contender (a disputable assumption), is also largely beside the point.

What matters is this: There are serious challenges to be dealt with here at home (like honestly balancing the state budget rather than burdening the next Governor with cleaning up the budget mess). Yet, Pawlenty, instead of providing leadership and solutions, is essentially using the time remaining in his current job to seek another job. Most people would at the least have their pay deducted for the days they don't show up for work. In contrast, the Minnesota media provide Pawlenty with flattering headlines. Go figure.

Let's go to the Wayback Machine. It's March 2001, and not-yet-governor Tim Pawlenty is on CNN talking about Jesse Ventura's extracurricular activities.

Well, I think that our governor is a media supernova, and I think when people elected him, they knew they were signing up for something unusual. The moonlighting, though, perhaps was a step over the line, and I think it's not a technical conflict of interest or anything like that, but it is bad judgment. I think when people elect a governor, they more or less expect him or her to be around full-time.

... as a general proposition, if you're going to be governor, it's probably a full-time job, and we think you should full-time time and energy to it.

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Billboard mystery partly revealed

Posted at 11:41 AM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (57 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

Update on the great billboard mystery.

Mary Teske, the general manager of Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising reports, "The Bush Miss Me Yet? billboard was paid for by a group of small business owners who feel like Washington is against them. They wish to remain anonymous. They thought it was a fun way of getting out their message."

Various people have stepped forward around the country to claim credit -- the latest was a gentleman in upstate New York from what I can tell in his e-mail. But, it's all local, folks.

There's a post to be written someday about the viral nature of trivia and how it gets attention at the expense of more meaningful stories (this one, for example), but I guess I'll wait on that one.

FYI: Closing the comments at 6:30 p.m. CT. I can't stay at work to moderate them tonight. Sorry.

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Five at 8 - 2/9/10: Trying to make sense

Posted at 7:28 AM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Five at 8

1) One of the MPR producers made a very good point after listening to the interview on All Things Considered with members of Ben Larson's family. Words on a page are nice, but a voice on the radio is much more compelling. Larson was killed in the earthquake in Haiti.

"I stuck my head in the hole, and I heard Ben," she said. "He was singing." The tune was from the hymn, "Where Love and Charity Prevail," but Renee is pretty sure he was making up the words.

Renee yelled for him: She and Jon were OK. She loved him. And keep singing!

She heard Ben sing "God's peace to us we pray." Then the singing stopped.

"I knew I couldn't get to him," Renee said.

It's impossible to listen to the interview without thinking about the role of God in Ben's life, an invitation to try to make sense of his death. I heard members of the New Orleans Saints claim that God's plan was for them to win a Super Bowl. In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, a country of very devout people and very devout people who wanted to help them, what was the plan?

Here's the full interview. Take a moment.



An uplifting angle on Haiti: A woman who lost her husband in the I35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis has adopted two young children from Haiti.

2) We have an early candidate for the News Cut our lawsuit-of-the-day. A Boston woman is suing her real estate broker because neighbors in her condo building smoke and she has asthma.

"I'm certainly not a person who's on a soapbox saying people shouldn't smoke,'' she said in the Back Bay office of her lawyer. "But when it affects somebody else, that's where the line needs to be drawn. It's an awful thing to not be able to escape from something that's hurting your health.''

If she wins, it opens up a new front in the second-hand smoke war.

3) What can we learn from the suicide of Phoebe Prince? From Slate:

In January, Prince, who was 15, hanged herself. Both school officials and students connected her death to the bullying that preceded it, and the school committee meeting that followed her suicide was packed with 300 people. Many of them were parents, and some of them blamed the school. One father, whose daughter had also been bullied in ninth grade said, "This is not a new problem," according to the local paper.

None of the usual prevention plans -- similar to ones employed in Minnesota -- worked. Letters to parents about cyberbullying, student handbooks, workshops -- nothing worked. It's not so much that the schools don't have any cyberbullying policies; it's that they don't know how to implement them in a way that will work.

4) Killer karaoke. In the Phillipines, people are dying over disputes about the way people sing "My Way."

Says the Times:

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country's culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks. And the country's many Sinatra lovers, like Mr. Gregorio here in this city in the southernmost Philippines, are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

5) OK, I'll say it. Political coverage isn't making any sense. The Star Tribune has a story today about how Republicans are making a comeback, thanks in part to the influence of the Tea Party. This means that in 15 months, people's political philosophy has swung from the left to the right. Maybe. Maybe not. Public opinion usually swings over the course of, say, a decade.

But how to square this notion with fivethirtyeight.com statistics guru Nate Silver's post today which claims that Republicans are usually on the wrong side of public opinion? He identifies 25 issues -- big issues -- and finds that polling shows people favor the Democrat philosophy over the Republican brand on 14 of them.

Obviously, this analysis is superficial in certain ways. All issues are by no means created equal, and health care in particular, which is unpopular, has weighed heavily upon the public's perception of the Democrats. In addition, there is probably another layer of 'meta-argument' that goes beyond specific issues, and at which the GOP has tended to excel.

Nevertheless, it runs in contrast to the objective evidence when one asserts, as Hanson does, that "On every issue ... the Obama position polls 5-15 points below 50 percent." Rather, the votes taken by the Republican Congress have far more often been out of step with those of the median voter.

Is the answer somewhere in between? Perhaps we don't know what we want? Oh, and the horse-race coverage of politics isn't making us any more informed.

Bonus: Research, but what does it mean? Discover reports that "compared with songs that had no mention of sexual activity, songs with degrading sex were more likely to contain references to substance use, violence, and weapon carrying. Songs with non-degrading sex were no more likely to mention these other risk behaviors."

TODAY'S QUESTION

The space shuttle Endeavor blasted off yesterday, leaving only four more planned launches in the shuttle program. After that, the United States plans to rely on private contractors to ferry astronauts into space. Should NASA give up its dominant role in human spaceflight?

WHAT WE'RE DOING

Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) - First hour: With the state facing a $1.2 billion budget shortfall, aid to local governments could again be on the chopping block. The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul join Midmorning to talk about what those cuts could mean, and how they plan to fight them.

First hour (outstate Minnesota): Forty years into the war on cancer, the death rate for many cancers has not changed significantly. Scientists say a new approach is needed. Midmorning talks with two cancer researchers about the latest and most promising research.

Second hour: In 1973, Rosanne Cash's father gave her a list of 100 songs every young musician should know. She puts her own spin on a handful of those songs in her latest album.

Midday (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.) - First hour: As part of MPR's "Red Bulls: Beyond Deployment" series, Midday hosts a call-in about returning soldiers and the challenges they face back in the civilian world.

Second hour: Former Vice President Walter Mondale, speaking about presidential power and congressional power.

Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) - First hour: TBA

Second hour: A preview of the Winter Olympics.

All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) - PTSD and the military. MPR's Jess Mador introduces us to Randy Lundborg, an Iraq war veteran who battled mightily to regain some semblance of normalcy after returning from deployment in 2005. He's doing well now but still suffers from some symptoms. The story is online now.

National Public Radio looks at how employees are searching for their own health care when their jobs don't provide it.

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When a judge is gay

Posted at 8:23 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

Does it matter that the judge in the California case on whether the state's ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional is gay?

The San Francisco Chronicle has "outed" U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker.

Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say the 65-year-old jurist, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, has never taken pains to disguise - or advertise - his orientation.

They also don't believe it will influence how he rules on the case he's now hearing - whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters to ban same-sex marriage, unconstitutionally discriminates against gays and lesbians.

The blog, Above the Law, concurs mostly. If this were the 1860s and the civil rights case was about slavery, there wouldn't be a question of whether a black judge could rule impartially, would there?

Some commenters at the site disagree:

"The judge is gay? That's a lose-lose situation for the gay marriage people. If he rules it unconstitutional, opponents will say it's a biased outcome. If he rules it constitutional, opponents will say 'even a gay judge doesn't think your position is valid.'"

But there's also a pragmatic response. The case, no matter how the judge rules, is going to end up being decided for good in some other court higher up the judicial food chain.

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Emotional barriers in U.S. history

Posted at 3:56 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below the 10,000 mark for the first time since November 4, 2009. The mark was a psychological barrier, as Wall Street in the last year has been one of the brighter spots in an otherwise gloomy economy.

Here's some napkin calculations comparing Wall Street performance over the first 54 weeks of a presidential term in recent history.

President	Inauguration Day	2/8 one year later	Diff.	Pct.
Barack Obama	7949.09	9908.39	1959.3	24.6%
Bill Clinton	3241.95	3906.03	664.08	20.5%
George H.W. Bush	2235.43	2644.37	408.94	18.3%
George W. Bush	10587	9744	-843	-8.0%
Ronald Reagan	950.68	833.43	-117.25	-12.3%
Jimmy Carter	959.03	782.66	-176.37	-18.4%

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Third-hand smoke

Posted at 3:06 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health

Now that Minnesota has had the debate over second-hand smoke in passing a statewide smoking ban, we can move on to the next topic: third-hand smoke.

New Scientist reports on research that nicotine collecting on carpets and furniture poses a hazard to young children. The researchers reportedly are suggesting people who have smoked in their homes, remove both.

That paves the way for the ELA ("elusive local angle"):

Stephen Hecht at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota thinks that this could be an overreaction. There is as yet no direct evidence that chemicals formed in this way have proved harmful. "I personally feel that exposure by this route would be minimal, but the studies need to be carried out," Hecht says.

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Murtha dies at 77

Posted at 1:57 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, has died. The Pennsylvania congressman wielded power the old-fashioned way at the Capitol, often with accusations of ethical lapses.

But he became a household name because of a particularly raucous session of the House in 2005 when Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio singled him out when saying "cowards cut and run."

Murtha was a decorated soldier and long-time automatic vote for defense spending.

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Super Bowl as management tool

Posted at 1:09 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

When Harvard considers the New Orleans Saints decision to start the second half with an onside kick, the American business community must take notice.

Andrew O'Connell, blogging on the Harvard Business Review Web site, considers the real-world business applications of Saints coach Sean Payton's thinking. He cites research showing "if a CEO simultaneously viewed the coming event as potentially both positive and negative -- and if those simultaneous convictions were intensely held -- the leader was more likely to take organizational action in response."

A top executive's ambivalence about an issue does not get in the way of reacting," Plambeck and Weber write in a recent issue of Organization Science, nor does it "paralyze organizational action responses." Instead, the leader's view of a situation as both good and bad creates what psychologists call "emotional arousal" and heightened alertness. That's partly because CEOs, like the rest of us, typically are quick to categorize developments as good or bad, black or white. When an issue shapes up as both positive and negative, there's a resulting "sense of unusualness" that stimulates "a more creative and deliberate" search for responses, Plambeck and Weber write.

Let's translate that into English. If a CEO is ambivalent to the point of not being sure what to do, there is a great chance of a creative (and risky) approach to the problem.

(h/t: @khortenbach)

Of course, for the math and stat freaks, it's a little simpler to figure out as Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com did. It made statistical sense to try it, he writes.

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Cue the baseball fever

Posted at 12:59 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Sports

The end of the football season, the snow, and this Super Bowl ad probably have many people thinking green lawns and baseball.

So I shot an e-mail over to the Twins today to determine the next benchmark date for a return of the summer game: the date on which the Twins equipment truck leaves Minnesota for spring training.

The truck will be packed up on Friday. It leaves on Saturday.

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The mystery billboard

Posted at 10:40 AM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (107 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

It was late at night and I wasn't sure I'd seen the billboard correctly as I whizzed past it on I-35 in Wyoming last week on the way back from Wrenshall. But an e-mailer confirms I saw what I thought I saw.

It's beginning to sweep along the Internet, accompanied by various claims that it's a Photoshop fake. But it's not. It's real.

There's no billboard ownership plate on this particular billboard, making tracing the person who had the cash to post it difficult to find. It's time to crowdsource this puppy.

Update 11:44 a.m. - An e-mail to Wyoming Mayor Sheldon Anderson yields no further clue:

Wish I could take credit for it. Calls every day asking if it was me. If you find out let me know.

Update 11:46 a.m. - Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed thought he had a lead on the owner, but alas....

The person who I thought did not put up the billboard. He has been contacted about keeping it up if the current owner takes it down due to money.

We may have to offer a News Cut coffee mug to smoke the owner out. Sadly, we don't have News Cut coffee mugs.

Update 7:43 a.m. Tue 2/9 - FoxNews asked me to be on today to talk about the billboard. I declined, noting I don't know anything other than that there's this billboard. But it's interesting how the story has spiraled from the blog, to the NPR blog, to a couple of national blogs, to Drudge etc. True, I'm intrigued by the mystery of it all, but it's also a reminder of how the truly trivial can grab our attention. I write about deeper, more meaningful news, too. Maybe that's the bigger story here: Can blogs exist without the trivia?

By the way, for those of you visiting News Cut for the first time via the national blogs, stay for awhile. Look around.

7:52 a.m. - Colleague reports MSNBC just called looking for me. Dear MSNBC: "No." Now go find out who paid for this billboard, willya?

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Five at 8 - 2/8/10: A kid on the streets

Posted at 7:17 AM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Five at 8

Monday Morning Rouser has a classical theme today... classical as in "class," that is.



John Dankworth died on Saturday.

1) There's nothing sadder than stories about homeless teens, about kids who get messed up because of parents who helped mess them up. It often involves an abusive parent who -- eventually -- leaves, leaving children who are well on their way to hopelessness.

In the end, as a Duluth News Tribune story reveals, everybody had a believable story, but only the kid is on the streets:

When her son started running away, Oie said she put missing child posters in spots he'd be likely to go, staying up nights terrified about how to find him. They took him to doctors, she said, put him through treatment programs. The state took custody of Zach to pay for his treatment at centers across the state, she said.

He was in and out of foster homes. While at one, he lit another kid on fire, causing him third-degree burns on his stomach and chest, Brooke Oie and her husband said. Between foster homes, they would sometimes bring Zach back to live with them, only to encounter so many problems that they'd send him away again.

On a given night, there are another 649 like him in Minnesota.

2) The MPR NewsQ team has done a nice job assembling the radio stories you'll be hearing this week and providing some additional material for the focus on the National Guard's Red Bulls. One of the most insightful elements is Madeleine Baran's history of post-traumatic stress disorder.

3) The story behind the story on last evening's Super Bowl ad in which Jay Leno appeared in an ad for his competitor, David Letterman. From the New York Times.

As Mr. Burnett described it, Mr. Letterman had the idea to invite Mr. Leno to participate, playing off a similar ad he put together with Ms, Winfrey the last time CBS had the Super Bowl in 2007. "Dave wrote the bit himself," Mr. Burnett said. "He just thought: it's the Super Bowl, you're supposed to entertain people."

Meanwhile, if only dogs could talk.



4) This sounds serious. Two cans of pop per day week can double your risk of pancreatic cancer, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota. But none of the stories on the subject I've ready today have mentioned what is my risk of cancer anyway? If it's 1 in a million, 2 in a million isn't a big deal, is it? Here's a calculator from the Washington University School of Medicine. In my case -- a 56-year-old man with no history of cancer, not fat, non smoker -- shows I am at "average" risk. But what's average?

Next, I turn to the Harvard report on cancer risk and am told:

One concern with an index such as this is the potential for inappropriate precision to be conveyed to the user.

That's good advice, but how often do we hear of studies that some activity raises your risk of cancer?

Still searching, I turn next to the Oncology Channel reports the five-year survival rate is only 5%, but says nothing about the risk.

A WebMD slideshow says the risk of getting pancreatic cancer is 1 in 76.

Dr Ang Peng Tiam, medical director, Parkway Cancer Centre in Singapore, said: "I drink more than two soft drinks in a week so indeed, I'm not going to change my habit just because of this report."

What if people like a can or two of Coke a day? In a corn syrupy kind of way, it gets to an age-old question. What's the point of life? To enjoy it, or to live longer? 5) We have another round of the Golden Snowball Challenge underway. Here are this storm's contestants:'

Meteorologist	Range	Average
Chikage Windler (KSTP)	5-11	8
Craig Edwards	6	6
Ron Trenda (WCCO)	9-13	11
Erik Maitland (KMSP)	5-10	7.5
National Weather Service	6-10	8
Sven Sundgaard (KARE)	3-6	4.5
Paul Huttner (MPR)	5-10	7.5
Ian Leonard (KMSP)	4-6	5
Mike Fairbourne (WCCO)	6-8	7

What if the weatherpeople actually delivered their forecasts like this:



WHAT WE'RE DOING

Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) - First hour: President Obama is pushing the U.S. to build clean energy to remain competitive in the 21st century global economy. But following a recent boom in green investment, China will soon be in the lead. Midmorning discusses the race to develop green technology.

Second hour: As education secretary, Rod Paige promoted No Child Left Behind as the best way to reduce the achievement gap between black and white students. In his new book, Paige argues the persistent gap is the most important civil rights issue.

Midday (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.) - First hour: State economist Tom Stinson will be in the studio to discuss the condition of Minnesota's economy.

Second hour: Live broadcast from the National Press Club with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) - First hour: The future of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Second hour: The U.S. will be home to 400 million Americans by 2050. And that rise in population -- is the key to our economic strength. Joel Kotkin discusses the next 100 million Americans.

All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) - The state's latest report on the construction contracts going to women and minorities still doesnt hit MnDOT goals. However, when it comes to stimulus spending on construction contracts, Minnesota is doing better than the states as a whole. MPR's Dan Olson will have the story.

Maj. Jeff Howe, a member of the Minnesota National Guard Red Bulls 34th Infantry Division, returns soon from his second deployment. Ambar Espinoza talked with him from Iraq about his deployment and activities as well as what he anticipates from his reintegration. His wife Sheri, says it will be good to have him home, but having been through this once before, there are some aspects of his return that she dreads.

NPR will report on how social networking has changed the "break up." Is it harder to cut ties to your ex when Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Linked-In have you in a virtual bind?

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On Bourbon St.

Posted at 6:37 PM on February 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Sports

If you've got your laptop with you while you're watching the Super Bowl -- and who doesn't? -- here's a live Webcam from Bourbon St. in New Orleans. (The above image is one I grabbed during play in the first half)

Odd, isn't it, that I can't find a Webcam from a happening spot in Indianapolis?

Update 9:07 p.m. - If you'd like to hear the New Orleans Police Department control this celebration, go here.

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Tempest in a Tea Party

Posted at 9:06 AM on February 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Sarah Palin gave a speech to the Tea Party convention on Saturday.



The day-after analysis is focusing on allegations she read notes written on her hand.



This Web site has put together the evidence. But it's evidence of what, exactly? That politicians' answers aren't spontaneous and unrehearsed?

Oh.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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