memeorandum: Everyone's Got a Right to Their Own Opinions... (Jared Bernstein/On the Economy)

11:05 AM ET, January 14, 2012

Top Items:

Josh Lederman / Ballot Box:

What does Ron Paul want? — Ron Paul is on track to end the GOP presidential race in second place. But his refusal to directly take on the man who's ahed of him — Mitt Romney — has Republicans wondering: What does Ron Paul want? — Paul has already ruled out a return to the House …

Discussion: Booman Tribune

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:
Romney leads in SC, Paul gaining

Discussion: Don Surber, newt.org, The Politico, nation.foxnews.com, Hot Air, GOP 12, Fire Andrea Mitchell!, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and Ballot Box

Emily Schultheis / The Politico:
Judge rules against Rick Perry's Virginia ballot suit

Discussion: Scared Monkeys, Outside the Beltway, Firedoglake, Los Angeles Times, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog and Guardian

ABCNEWS:
Coming Up on ‘This Week’: Gov. Rick Perry and Stephen Colbert

Discussion: The Politico and CNN

A.Killough / CNN:
Romney back on top in new CNN national poll

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, Ballot Box and Hot Air

A.Killough / CNN:
Rep. Trent Franks backs Gingrich

Discussion: The Politico

Emily Schultheis / The Politico:
PPP: Mitt first, Newt second in South Carolina

Discussion: CNN, American Prospect and Ballot Box

Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:

Under voter pressure, members of Congress backpedal (hard) on SOPA — The public outcry over the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act seems to have gotten so loud that even members of Congress can hear it. On Thursday we covered the news that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was expressing second thoughts about SOPA's DNS provisions.

Discussion: Mashable!, VentureBeat, Threat Level and Balloon Juice, more at Techmeme »

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents — In a move the technology sector will surely see as a victory, a controversial antipiracy bill being debated in Congress will no longer include a provision that would require Internet service providers to block access to overseas Web sites accused of piracy.

Discussion: Boing Boing, PC Magazine, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Techdirt, The Raw Story, Firedoglake and Patrick Leahy

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:

Chronicling Mitt's mendacity — Paul Krugman noted this morning that Mitt Romney tells so many falsehoods so often, he seems determined to rehabilitate George W. Bush's reputation “by running a campaign so dishonest that it makes Bush look like a model of truth-telling.”

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Balloon Juice and Political Mojo

Jared Bernstein / On the Economy:

Everyone's Got a Right to Their Own Opinions... ...but not to their own facts. — When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney asserted that federal low-income programs are administered so inefficiently that “very little of the money that's actually needed by those that really need help …

Discussion: Applesauce

Paul Krugman:
Untruths, Wholly Untrue, And Nothing But Untruths

Discussion: US Politics

cbpp.org:
Romney's Charge That Most Federal Low-Income Spending Goes for “Overhead” and “Bureaucrats” Is False

Discussion: Political Mojo

Henry / Crooked Timber:

The New Gmail Sucks — Doesn't it though? It looks horrible. The interface is badly designed. Keyboard short cuts do unexpected things like e.g. make your email disappear irrevocably. And while you can temporarily revert back to the old look, they make it clear that they are going to impose …

Kevin Drum / Political Mojo:

Beyond Good and Google — I don't use Gmail, but Henry Farrell does and he's pretty unhappy with its latest iteration: … Just out of curiosity, did anyone ever really believe that “don't be evil” stuff? I mean, Google's a big corporation. They've been a big public corporation for nearly eight years.

Discussion: Modeled Behavior, American Prospect and Slate

Daniel Halper / Weekly Standard:

Allen West on the Marines Incident: ‘Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell’ — Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video, and has given us permission to publish it. — “I have sat back and assessed the incident …

Discussion: Big Journalism, VetVoice, News Desk, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, The Mental Recession, Post on Politics, Weasel Zippers, Outside the Beltway, LewRockwell.com Blog, The Gateway Pundit and The Politico

Dana Loesch / Big Journalism:
Correcting the Progressive Spin on My Defense of the Marines

Discussion: The Right Scoop, Hot Air, The New Civil Rights Movement, Little Green Footballs, Don Surber, St. Louis Activist Hub, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Politico, Taylor Marsh and Battleland

The Daily:

TV chef famous for Southern-fried decadence to reveal she has diabetes — Paula Deen's “brunch burger” uses a donut instead of a bun. — Deen, with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” could make millions endorsing a Novartis diabetes drug, sources say. — Paula Deen — the queen of high-calorie …

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette, Washington Post, Outside the Beltway, BuzzFeed, Boing Boing and Gothamist

Mark Perry / Foreign Policy:

False Flag — A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. — Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos …

Discussion: Informed Comment, Wall Street Journal, Taylor Marsh, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, War in Context, ThinkProgress, Daniel W. Drezner, Gawker and emptywheel

CNBC:

S&P Cuts Credit Ratings for Nine Euro Zone Nations — Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro zone countries, stripping France and Austria of their coveted triple-A status but not EU paymaster Germany, in a Black Friday 13th for the troubled single currency area.

Discussion: Firedoglake, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post and Questions and Observations

Telegraph:

France credit rating cut puts eurozone bail-out fund at risk — The €440bn (£365bn) eurozone bail-out fund faced fresh threats last night after France, its second-largest contributor, was stripped of its AAA credit rating for the first time. — The French downgrade casts …

Discussion: Guardian

Tanya Somanader / ThinkProgress:

GOP Rep. Berates Student Concerned About Pell Grant Cuts, Tells Her To Join The Military — To avoid a government shutdown at the end of 2011, Republicans succeeded in their campaign to cut the federal Pell Grant program by effectively kicking up to 100,000 low-income students off the rolls.

Discussion: Crooks and Liars and Campus Progress

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Fighting Antipiracy Measure, Activist Group Posts Personal Information of Media Executives — The online activist group known as Anonymous, which has targeted opponents of the Occupy Wall Street movement and businesses that stopped providing services to WikiLeaks, has set its sights on a new adversary: media executives.

Discussion: Deadline.com and The Snitch

Matt Cover / CNSNews:

Obama Campaign to Host Dance Party in Boston — (CNSNews.com) - The Obama campaign's under-40 organizing arm, Generation 44, is hosting a dance party on Jan. 18 to raise funds for the president's reelection campaign. — The party, held at Boston dance club The Goodlife …

Discussion: Hot Air and The Right Scoop

Associated Press:

Edwards' trial delayed because of heart condition — GREENSBORO, N.C. — A federal judge on Friday delayed John Edwards' trial on alleged campaign finance violations for at least two months because the two-time Democratic presidential candidate is suffering from a heart condition.

Discussion: CNN, UrbanGrounds, Scared Monkeys and Raleigh News & Observer