Esquire punks World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah with a slick satire imagining Farah convinced by the long form birth certificate that Obama is legit. In real life Farah is not only unconvinced but reacts to the piece with his usual aplomb and good humor … by threatening legal action against Esquire.

Newt: You have to understand, I didn’t support mandates in the ’90s, I supported “mandates.”

In the launch of this new Republican “Super PAC,” you get a taste of why — thanks to Citizens United and an emasculated Federal Elections Commission — 2012 will be the biggest election free-for-all since at least the Watergate-era reforms. Responding to watchdogs’ complaints that his new Super PAC is illegal even on the now-virtually-lawless campaign finance frontier, Republican uber-lawyer James Bopp growls (I’m imagining the chewed stubb of a cigar dangling from his lips): “The Supreme Court doesn’t care, and I don’t care, and the [FEC] doesn’t care. No one that matters cares.”

In a bold laying down of the gauntlet tonight on Fox News, Newt Gingrich banned Democrats from attempting to retrieve his Meet the Press quotes from the memory hole he’s spent the day consigning them to. And he formally decreed that “any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.” Watch.

Examining the Gingrich wreckage this evening, I’m starting to wonder if we might simply be in the filming stage of Gingrich’s own version of “I’m Still Here”, the in-character ‘mockumentary’ Joaquin Pheonix and Casey Affleck made about Pheonix’s phony descent into personal and professional self-immolation.

Who’ll give me 3 to 1 that Gingrich shows up in Cannes next year clean-shaven and lucid recounting how he had everyone going?

Newt on the David Gregory interview: “I didn’t go in there quite hostile enough, because it didn’t occur to me going in that you’d have a series of setups.”

“I didn’t go in there quite hostile enough.” Nope. Me neither.

I was traveling and in meetings most of the day. So unlike most every other day, I was almost totally off the news grid. I caught a few headlines here and there on my iPhone about the unfolding Newt implosion. But, my God, I couldn’t quite grasp the scope until I got back to my hotel room and started reading our stories. And now it comes out that this afternoon Newt was compelled to personally call Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to apologize for questioning and criticizing Ryan’s Medicare phase-out plan. His spokesman publicly stated that Newt apologized. Publicly. On the record. Voluntarily.

I mean, wow. Watching TV just now, I see that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is now lashing out at Gingrich as some sort of GOP health care policy traitor. Read More

Senate Republicans successfully filibuster oil company subsidy repeal bill.

The thing about Newt that I admit I had forgotten from the ’90s is that he was more often a political blessing to Democrats than a bane. He was the perfect foil for Clinton then, and today Democrats on the Hill admitted to TPM they couldn’t be happier with the TV ad fodder Newt is now providing them to use against his fellow Republicans.

Newt Gingrich is now explaining to conservative bloggers that he didn’t go into his Meet the Press interview Sunday prepared for the grilling he would get from that notorious attack dog David Gregory. Because, you know, Newt just isn’t that experienced with TV interviews.

We just confirmed with NBC that Sunday’s was Newt’s 35th appearance on MTP.