He continued that Mitt Romney in particular was one of those bad candidates. “Mitt Romney appeared like a kid who showed up for his science project and the teacher said, ‘Explain it,’ and Mitt couldn’t do it,” Sessions said. “His ‘dad,’ Paul Ryan, explained it to him, but Mitt didn’t get it. … That’s why we lost the last election.”

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From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

An affidavit reviewed by the committee on Wednesday showed that former Bachmann chief of staff Andy Parrish said Bachmann approved plans to indirectly pay Sorenson $7,500 a month to work on her campaign. The alleged payments could violate an Iowa Senate ethics rule that prohibits members from accepting payments for work on political campaigns.

Parrish’s affidavit included copies of e-mails between him and other staff members discussing plans to use a company run by Bachmann’s then-national political director, Guy Short, to funnel payments to Sorenson. Sorenson has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He filed an affidavit from an attorney who claimed to have reviewed his bank account and found no payments from the Bachmann campaign, her political action committee or Short’s company, C&M Strategies.

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dubbed the national debt a "burden for our children for life."

Ex-Rep. Dennis Kucinich vilified Republicans for adding, by his calculations, $4 trillion to it.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, predicted debt will precipitate a future of "indentured servitude to foreign lenders."

What unites these and other presidential candidates is that they themselves are in debt. Campaign debt.

It's a dubious distinction shared by Democrats and Republicans, eccentric nonagenarians and White House occupants.

Such debt isn't really hurting anyone but creditors — certainly not the nation nor its creditworthiness.

But it is a reminder that despite candidates' soaring rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, they often fail to follow their own prescription for sound budgetary management amid the relentless rush to remain competitive with political rivals during election seasons that are longer and more expensive than ever.

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The New York Times reports on the Kochs' recent conference in Palm Springs, Calif., during which the Kochs reportedly discussed strategy for the next election cycle:

They have not yet decided whether to intervene in Republican primaries, people involved in the discussions say. But the brothers want their network to play a bigger role in cultivating and promoting Republican candidates who hew to their vision of conservatism, emphasizing smaller government and deregulation more than immigration and social issues. They are also seeking closer control over groups within their network, purging or downgrading those that did not deliver last year and expanding financing for those that performed well.

Also in attendance at the conference were Republican superstars like Dr. Ben Carson, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and John Kasich, the Times reports.

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"Of course you regret it," he said in the interview. "You think, what it would have been like if I hadn't done that."

Akin also took the opportunity to make a dig at Karl Rove, whose Super PAC American Crossroads launched a new project to make sure that another candidate like Akin doesn't win the Republican primary, only to prove unelectable in the general election. "Karl Rove has made himself an expert," Akin said. "I think I lost one race. He managed to lose about 12 of them in one night."

Watch:

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From the FBI's press release on the arrest:

According to the affidavit, from May 2012 through February 2013, Adam Paul Savader sent anonymous text messages using Google Voice numbers to 15 women stating that he had nude photographs of the women and threatening to distribute the nude photographs to the women’s friends and family members unless the women sent him more nude photographs of themselves. Savader sent some of the victims links to a photo-sharing website where nude pictures of the victims had been posted.

From the New York Daily News:

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David Ottenwess, an attorney for McCotter, who represented Michigan, filed a suit against Don Yowchuang and Dillon Breen on Thursday. From the Associated Press:

Elections officials discovered bogus signatures on the Livonia Republican's petitions, keeping him off the 2012 primary ballot. McCotter quit Congress in July. Yowchuang pleaded no-contest to forgery charges and was sentenced Jan. 18 to probation and community service. Breen was not charged.

In a statement, Ottenwess said the two men "purposefully submitted forged petitions in order to keep McCotter off the ballot and, thereby, denying him the opportunity to appear on the August 2012 Republican Primary ballot." The lawyer said he said he would use the subpoena power in the civil proceeding to "get to the bottom of what really happened to sabotage ... McCotter."

As Salon's Steve Kornacki wrote last May, the four-term congressman was "the first incumbent congressman in seven decades not to qualify for his party’s primary ballot."

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Obama didn’t talk about it when he first campaigned for the job -- if he had, he surely wouldn’t have won the Democratic nomination, and may not even have beaten John McCain, since not even Republican presidential candidates publicly campaign to weaken what their party calls “entitlements.” Everyone sensibly had assumed that no Democrat would want to weaken or reduce the crowning achievements of Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, not to mention of the Democratic Party itself. But immediately after getting elected, Barack Obama admitted he wanted to do just that.

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The press conference with Nienow, R, was "to discuss problems with Medicaid reimbursement rates paid to doctors in Minnesota.  Both are introducing legislation increasing accountability and transparency," according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

But when reporters tried to ask about a Congressional Ethics probe into alleged campaign finance violations by Bachmann's 2012 presidential campaign, Bachmann, R-Minn., darted away, assisted by aide Deb Steiskal, who blocked reporters. You can see pictures taken by the Star Tribune here.

Bachmann has recently made similar moves to avoid questioning by CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash, who tried to ask about seemingly erroneous statements in Bachmann's CPAC speech.

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As travel arrangements were set,

Rafalca had reason to fret,

When Romney explained,

To get to the Games,

She'd be strapped to the roof of the jet!

Pete DeVriese

Oakland, Calif.

The Romney's were off with a start.

Regrettably, Seamus had farts.

So into the crate,

If he makes it that's great.

If not, Mitt will sell off the parts.

Michael Peterson

Willowbrook, Ill.

Mitt’s not vulgar, profane or salacious.

He would never offend! Good gracious!

But in unctuous perfection,

He seeks his election,

In a manner sublimely mendacious.

Quentin Sullivan

Haverhill, Mass.

Paul Ryan is sure that it's true.

All abortions are wicked to do.

Not for rape, or incest,

Even death - Paul knows best.

For a zygote's worth much more than you.

Paul Bamborough

Norway

RNC speakers begin to assemble,

And their rhetoric starts to dissemble.

From Rubio to Ryan.

There'll be no shortage of lyin'.

Causing fact-checkers all over to tremble.

Jim Brown

Scarsdale, N.Y.

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With President Obama embarked on his second term, and Democrats seeing their future in the alliance of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, college-educated women and young people he assembled, I sometimes find myself asking “What’s the matter with white people?” in a different way – as in, “don’t they have a place in this new multiracial coalition?” As whites become just one of several American minorities in the near future -- brown babies already outnumber white babies in the nation’s nurseries – I’ve been thinking more about the ways language can ease our transition to a multiracial America. The paperback version of my book comes out April 16 – you can pre-order it here --  and I got to take on a lot of these post-election thoughts in an afterword.

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Ryan Grim from the Huffington Post reports:

Only retiring Democrat Gary Ackerman of New York was more generous with public money, barely topping Akin's 98 percent increase in pay, the website shows. Allen West, a Tea Party favorite from South Florida, was the fourth biggest giver of taxpayer bonuses after he lost reelection to Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.). Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) was the third most generous, according to LegiStorm.

West and Akin routinely decried wasteful and out-of-control government spending, calling for major cuts to social programs.

The numbers were taken from LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional salaries. The site also shows that nine out of  the 10 House members who gave out the biggest bonuses were Republicans, while 14 of the top 20 were outgoing members of Congress.

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"You see what they're doing to Michele Bachmann?" Beck asked. "Michele Bachmann is under all kinds of ethics investigations now. Why do you suppose that is? She's evil? She is uber-clear on what's going on. Uber clear."

He continued that the State Department is "pushing" Somalis into Minnesota, and Bachmann tried to find out why. "She hasn't gotten any answers, and now she's under investigation," Beck said.

Watch, via Right Wing Watch:

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David Freedlander of the Daily Beast reports:

The three-day boycott lasted Thursday morning through Sunday morning, and is the second time this group of activists have gone Fox-free in an effort to steer the coverage. Organizers say a two-day boycott earlier this month knocked 20 percent off of the network’s regular viewership. (A Daily Beast analysis of the same data showed that the boycott had little effect.)

A spokeswoman for Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

A leader of the boycott, Kathy Amidon, of Nashville, declined an interview, instead directing The Daily Beast to a website, Benghazi-Truth. The website, a single-page, 23,000-word manifesto complete with multicolored fonts, supposedly incriminating videos of Fox News’s complicity in a coverup, and communist propaganda photographs, is kept by someone who identifies himself online as “Proe Graphique,” and who other members of boycott described as someone who works “in New York media.”

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Josh Green from Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

“We were close,” former Representative Bob Walker, a Gingrich ally, says. “Everybody thought there was an opportunity.” “It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign,” says John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist.

But the negotiations collapsed in acrimony because Gingrich and Santorum could not agree on who would get to be president. “In the end,” Gingrich says, “it was just too hard to negotiate.”

“I was disappointed when Speaker Gingrich ultimately decided against this idea, because it could have changed the outcome of the primary,” Santorum told Green. “And more importantly, it could have changed the outcome of the general election.”

Read the full report here.

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All the requests were detected and rejected, but the incident has nonetheless raised concerns about cyberthreats to online voting systems. The improper requests came from a small number of computer IP addresses overseas, which drew the attention of election workers. As NBC noted, "it is not clear whether the bogus requests were an attempt to influence a specific race, test the system or simply interfere with the voting." The originators of the phantom requests could not be traced, the grand jury report noted, as they used proxy servers that make Internet activity untraceable.

NBC noted that while there have been allegations of U.S. election system rigging in the past, experts believe this incident to be the first (although long-anticipated) documented cyberattack attempt. Via NBC:

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The report, which analyzed the GOP's losses in the 2012 elections, said that many of those surveyed described the party as "narrow minded" and a party of "stuff old men."

"Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country," the report says. "When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us."

The report recommends that the GOP "stop talking to itself" and that "If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them, and show our sincerity." On social issues, the RNC concludes that Republicans need to be more "inclusive and welcoming."

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In 2009, with the fiery Tea Party movement on the rise, a Yoda-like Romney warned conservatives against giving in to anger; in 2010, as a slew of young politicians was about to be sent to Congress, Romney was well received as a seasoned statesmen; in 2011, angling for the GOP nomination again, he tossed out right-wing red meat about Saul Alinksy and socialism to keep Ricks Perry and Santorum at bay.

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John Aglialoro, the producer of the series, says he hopes to have the third installment ready for a release in the summer of 2014, Politico reports, adding that he is looking to make this version “something closer to the book." The second movie, Aglialoro says, was rushed so that it would be ready by October 2012, before Election Day.

"I wanted to get some things in that Ayn Rand said of her characters,” Aglialoro said. “I want to take the time so that the screenplay can say things, so that it’s a conversation.”

The first film, released in April, 2011, was pushed by Tea Party groups like Freedomworks, natural fans of Ayn Rand, whose original work mirrors Tea Party lines about individual responsibility, capitalism, and opposition to big government.

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The anonymous person who filmed the tape turns out to be a bartender with a local catering company who is coming forward now that the election is over. He'll reveal his identity tomorrow in an hour-long interview on "The Ed Show" on MSNBC, but in an interview with the Huffington Post Tuesday night, he suggested that he was disappointed that Romney never thanked the wait staff, as Bill Clinton had years before at a different event the same bartender happened to staff. Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis report:

Romney, of course, did not speak to any of the staff, bussers or waiters. He was late to the event, and rushed out. He told his dinner guests that the event was off the record, but never bothered to repeat the admonition to the people working there.

One of them had brought along a Canon camera. He set it on the bar and hit the record button. The bartender said he never planned to distribute the video. But after Romney spoke, the man said he felt he had no choice.

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