Dorothy Rabinowitz on Newt Gingrich: “His greatest asset lies in his capacity to speak to Americans as he has done, with such potency, during the Republican debates. No candidate in the field comes close to his talent for connection. There’s no underestimating the importance of such a power in the presidential election ahead, or any other one… Mr. Gingrich’s qualifications all ’round could well make him the most formidable contender for the contest with Barack Obama.” [WSJ]

So, is there a Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy to keep Herman Cain! from the White House? His smokin’ campaign manager has proof!

Herman Cain campaign manager Mark Block, in an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox News just now, insisted that a relative of the second woman to publicly accuse the candidate of sexual harassment in the 1990s works at POLITICO.

“Her son works at POLITICO,” Block said of Karen Kraushaar, whose name POLITICO printed earlier today after other media outlets made her identity public.

As it happens, Josh Kraushaar was indeed a Politico reporter last year.

But by a nutty coincidence, Josh Kraushaar and Karen Kraushaar are — wait for it — unrelated.

Cain aide wrongly insists they’ve ‘confirmed’ accuser’s son works for POLITICO [Politico]

One of the oddest claims — not weirdest, but oddest — from Herman Cain!’s press conference Tuesday was that dark forces are working to deny him the White House because he’s a “businessman”.

Cain! also said that as the leader of The Other NRA, he spent most of his time giving speeches.

Which leads us to wonder: How long has it been since Herman Cain! was a practicing businessman?

Answer: Sixteen years. He left Godfather’s Pizza in 1995.

In the process of hunting down the date — we were curious when the Statute of Limitations expires on that claim — we stumbled across an interesting article about Herman Cain!’s years in the corporate saddle:

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We don’t normally cover news conferences, but we can’t resist what Herman Cain! has to say about the lovely ladies in his life — which he’ll be doing live on (at least) CNN in fifteen minutes.

Plus, we also can’t resist the really naughty implications of the photo reference.

So welcome to our impromptu Open Thread/Vagina Monologue. Because if you know anything about the movie, you also know it’s famous for, um, deep focus.

“Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials.” [NYT]

Our guest columnist has submitted a request to the White House petitions website.

We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

We the People [White House, via @tomtomorrow]

Photo: White House Flickr feed [via @daveweigel]

We don’t recall whether our career as a high-school journalist lasted one year or two, but we can state with confidence that we were an abject failure: Not once did we piss off the Administration.

Don’t worry — we atoned for our sin in college. Big time. But that’s another story.

Sadly, we lack the confidence to proclaim that we would have handled our Fantasy Indiscretion properly. For all we know, we would have made the same fundamental mistake as our colleagues in Seattle:

A proposal being considered by the Seattle School Board could have a chilling impact on free speech in the city’s high schools, First Amendment activists say.

The proposed policy would give principals the authority to review high-school newspapers before they are published and would allow them to stop publication if they deem material to be libelous, obscene or “not in keeping with the school’s instructional mission and values,” among other criteria.

Do you see the problem here? How about a telling clue?

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