“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.

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Georgia State Rep. Terry England has managed to outdo Stinque’s Department of Lady-Bits’ previous Georgia highlight, the Peach State Uterus Police with a new piece of legislation that made my jaw drop, which is saying something, given I’m at least a Lieutenant or a One Star General in the Lady-Bits Army.

Rep. England splained on the floor of the Georgia Legislature that women who learn they are carrying a fetus that has died or is near death should carry the festering fetus around inside of them, because that’s what cows and pigs do.  Oh, and he knows somebody named Jethro who is a cockfighter who will give up all of his chickens if the ladies just stop killing the unborn zygotes.

/face palm, head smash, great concern about Reporter Cub’s sanity

Video after the jump

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“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]

Playgoers like to feel that they care about the world and their place in it.

They like to feel that they are on the side of the angels.

Some years ago there was an unaccountable fashion for the plays of Athol Fugard. A fine writer whose sudden popularity on Broadway was puzzling till one turned one’s gaze from the stage to look at the audience. There they were. Well-dressed New Yorkers deploring the horrors of apartheid without having to actually do anything about it. They’d bought a ticket which proved they cared so they could ignore with a clear conscience the racism that waited outside the theatre. It got so bad that Mr. Fugard refused to write any more on the subject. He felt that he was becoming part of the problem as his work merely exploited the suffering of others, making him rich at their expense. Which, it seems to me, is precisely what Mr. Daisey has done.

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