Tim Pawlenty, still looking for a buyer to acquire his heavily discounted soul, decides to pick on a girl to show his manhood:

While repeating his previous comments that he’d defer to doctors on Bachmann’s particular health situation, Pawlenty said broadly that presidential hopefuls have to be up for the rigors of the job.

“All of the candidates I think are going to have to be able to demonstrate they can do all of the job all of the time,” he told reporters after an event in Indianola.

He added: “There’s no real time off in that job.”

Of course FDR fought World War II from a wheelchair, but that’s nothing compared to a headache.

Pawlenty says WH hopefuls must be able do the job [Politico]

Our guest columnist is Nelson Rockefeller, speaking to the 1964 Republican convention.

The time has come for the Republican party to face this issue realistically and take decisive action. It is essential that this Convention repudiate here and now any doctrinaire, militant minority, whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Bircher, which would subvert this party to purposes alien to the very basic tenets which gave this party birth.

Precisely one year ago today on July 14, 1964, I issued a statement wherein I warned that:

“The Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed and highly disciplined minority.”

Read more »

ABC’s Brian Ross, curious about Michele Bachmann’s self-medication regimen, thought he would engage her in a little chat at a campaign rally. Hilarity ensued:

Ross dashed after Bachmann, repeatedly asking whether she had ever missed a House vote due to a migraine. She ignored him. Ross pursued her into a parking area behind the stage. Her aides grew alarmed. When Ross made a beeline for the white SUV waiting to carry Bachmann away, two Bachmann men pounced on him, grabbing and pushing him multiple times with what looked to me like unusual force. In fact, I have never seen a reporter treated so roughly at a campaign event, especially not a presidential one. Ross was finally able to break away and lob his question at Bachmann one more time, but she continued to ignore him.

Afterward, I asked Ross — a hard-nosed pro who nevertheless seemed slightly shaken — whether he had ever been treated so roughly. “A few times,” he told me. “Mostly by Mafia people.”

This of course puts Marcus in a new light. We’re thinking of casting him as Junior.

Reporter Accosted After Bachmann Comments on Migraines [Time]

Tom Coburn’s debt-reduction proposal: “The Treasury Department should phase out use of the $1 bill and replace it with the $1 coin. Paper-based currencies wear out faster than coins, and so cost taxpayers more in the long run.” The pocket-bursting savings would be $184 million a year. [ThinkProgress]

We suppose, if we thought about it, that we could twist a font designed for dyslexics into a statement about Our Great National Train Wreck Debt Debate, but that would require making sense of the irrational, and we fear that if we crossed our eyes just so, they’d never become unstuck.

Project Dyslexie [Studio Studio, via Kottke]

[Fox]

“‘We cannot elevate nature above people,’ explained Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. ‘That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.'” The cause of her ire? Manatee protection. [St. Petersburg Times, via JWMcSame]