“It cost us about $50,000 when all is said and done to produce the NPR video. If you help us raise over $50,000, it will go toward our next video — after we pay off our credit cards, of course.” [TPM]

Newt Gingrich, March 7:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening… The United States doesn’t need anybody’s permission. We don’t need to have NATO, who frankly, won’t bring much to the fight. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.

Newt Gingrich, today:

The standard [Obama] has fallen back to of humanitarian intervention could apply to Sudan, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, to Syria this week, to Yemen, to Bahrain… We could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

We presume you’d prefer not to see Fucking Newts, so we’ll save that Google Image search for another occasion.

Our guest columnist is Judy Taylor.

In the summer of 2007, I responded to a Call to Artists sponsored by the Maine Arts Commission. The call was to create an artwork depicting the “History of Labor in the State of Maine”. After a reviewing process, I was selected to do the commission. Along the way, I met some wonderful and dedicated people. I also got an excellent education in Maine History.

The 11-panel mural was painted on 4 x 8 sheets of specially prepared MDO board. The panels were applied to adjoining walls in the Dept. of Labor reception area. In total, the mural measures 36 feet in length, and is nearly 8 feet tall.

Excellent work, Ms. Taylor. Too bad Maine’s governor wants to tear it down because it’s “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals”.

Gov. LePage Orders Removal Of Labor Mural [WMTV, via Political Wire]

The Maine Department of Labor Mural [Judy Taylor Studio]

The ravishingly gorgeous actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career was often overshadowed by a tumultuous life of multiple marriages, great tragedies, addiction, and various health ailments, died this morning in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure at the age of 79.

Her seven decades in front of the public’s eye is well-documented in an excellent obituary from the LA Times, but her most lasting legacy will likely be her early advocacy for people with HIV, and for additional research and destigmatization of the disease.

Read more »

QUESTIONER: “What is more important though to American values–being friends with Israel still or knowing there are jailed dissidents and journalists [in Egypt]?” the woman asked.

ANN COULTER: “What do you mean knowing that there are jailed journalists?” Coulter said. “I think there should be more jailed journalists.” This prompted a huge round of applause from the crowd.

Ann Coulter answering a question at the CPAC conference held earlier this year. Read more »

As we browse a voluminous list of non-paywalled news sources each evening, looking for a story we feel like riffing on worthy of bringing to your valuable attention, we’ll often bookmark an item or two “just in case” — just in case, that is, we can’t find it in our soul to launch into a 2,000-word discourse analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of policy positions held by the most prominent of Our Nation’s hack bloviators public intellectuals.

Which is why, this fine spring morning, we’re proud to present fucking frogs.

[via Sully]

[via Jezebel/RML]