“That’s a big lava lamp, congratulations.” —Mitt Romney to an employee, while visiting the Chicago Google office today. [Politico]

“Rick Santorum said President Obama set a bad example and potentially endangered American tourists by letting his daughter Malia go to Mexico on a spring break vacation… There is no State Department travel warning in effect for Oaxaca.” [TPM]

“The carnage was horrific. I saw more people stuffed into that cellar than was humanly possible. One man caressed his dead listings, crying ‘Why me, God? Why me?'”

We interrupt Mike Daisey’s absolutely true one-man show of the first weekend of the NCAA tournament with this breaking news: The Stinque Losers Braquet is now open for epistemic closure!

Braquet Queen Mellbell has stationed armed guards outside the Gates of Yahoo Hell to gather your pitiful stories. Click the Join Group button and spill your guts:

Group ID: 6698
Password: marchsadness

You have until 7:15pm ET Thursday to enter. As always, losers will be publicly shamed by an Ira Glass impersonator.

Our guest columnist has submitted the following affidavit to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse” investigating Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Allen Hulton, being duly sworn, on oath deposes and says:

I am a resident of Belvidere, Illinois. I have personal knowledge of the facts contained herein.

I was employed by the United States Postal Service in DuPage County, Illinois, as a letter carrier from March 28, 1962 to March 30, 2001, on which date I retired. Attached hereto as Exhibit A are documents that support that I was employed with the United States Postal Service.

From late 1986 to 1997, I served at the Glen Ellyn, Illinois post office, postal zip code 60137. My primary duty at the time was to deliver mail on Route 6.

During my time at the Glen Ellyn, Illinois post office, I delivered mail to [redacted] Glen Ellyn, Illinois, the residence of Thomas and Mary Ayers, who were the parents of Weather Underground activist, Bill Ayers. The area in which they lived was upper middle to upper class. Thomas Ayers was the president of Commonwealth Edison at the time.

Read more »

“A child born to a U.S. citizen overseas through the increasingly common practice of in vitro fertilization with embryos from donor eggs and sperm is not American, unless an American is one of the donors.” [USA Today, via @daveweigel]

“According to the dictionary, ‘nigger’ does not mean black. It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.” —Paula Smith of Hinesville, Georgia, explaining why she’s cool selling “Don’t Re-Nig 2012” bumper stickers. [Forbes, via ThinkProgress]

We once knew a guy who was involved with the local recycling scene in Eugene. One night he took us to a warehouse — a giant, cavernous space — where materials were collected. At one end was a mountain of plastic milk jugs.

They were going to be shipped to Asia, our friend explained, because that’s where the facilities existed to deal with them. And the energy expended to process them — “carbon footprint” wasn’t yet in the language — negated any benefit from recycling them. It would be another fifteen years before Dick Cheney sneered that “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue”, but we were already looking at the waste product of Good Intentions.

To be an American in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is to be an agent of destruction. No matter how lightly you tread, you’re stepping on something. No matter how virtuous your life, to be a Caucasian in Our Exceptional Nation is to be the beneficiary of some pretty nasty business conducted in your name a century or three back. We’re historical trustafarians, decrying our ancestors but reaping the benefits. You learn to live with it.

Read more »