FromJim Messina’s interview on ABC this morning. Yep, they were freaked by the first debate too … Read More

I finally saw Zero Dark Thirty last night. Liked it a lot as a movie. Found it sort of hard to imagine in retrospect how Argo (which I also liked) beat it for Best Picture. But then I thought Les Miserables should have won and I never saw Lincoln. So who knows? But it’s the issue of torture that makes me bring it up. Read More

Here’s a sort of surreal video package of Pope Francis meeting today with his predecessor, Benedict XVI, at the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. Benedict seems even more frail than he looked a few weeks ago. After the jump … Read More

When Chris Christie met Shaq.

Top Saudi cleric indicts Twitter as unjust place for “jokesters”.

By popular demand, we’ve added comments to the mobile version of TPM stories.

Cable news seamlessly splits their time between the indictment of a groundhog and a flurry of Senate activity, known as “vote-a-rama”

Full-size version.

Why did Tim Noah just get fired from The New Republic?

So, yes, a lawyer in the Dominican Republic says that a mystery man named Carlos who purported to rep The Daily Caller offered him $5,000 to help to find women who would say that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) paid them for sex. But … he also claims three other media outlets — Telemundo, Univision, CNN Espanol — also enlisted him to help find such women. And he tells Univision, on camera, that he can’t remember who from that network contacted him. Straining credulity much?

Alas, this still doesn’t augur very well for The Daily Caller. The same lawyer figured prominently in its original story on Menendez’s purported sexual escapades, as a lawyer for the women who was present for their interviews with The Daily Caller.

This Christie-Shaq pic is officially epic.