As noted last night, Campaign 2012 has fallen into another one of those temporary, mindless, and mostly meaningless outrage-a-thons. Ann Romney will be going on Fox this morning to defend her honor against Hilary Rosen’s criticisms of her not having worked outside the home. The Romney camp has a conference call with reporters later in the morning to try to keep the fire burning. Read More

CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo blows it trying to hammer Gene Sperling on the Obama budget — but doesn’t let that get in the way of being truly obnoxious.

The Justice Department seems to be running out of patience with Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Already-contentious negotiations over addressing DOJ’s findings of systematic civil rights abuses by Arpaio’s department have broken off. The next step is for the feds to file suit to, among other things, seek a court-ordered appointment of an independent monitor to oversee Arpaio’s operations. Ryan Reilly has the latest salvo from DOJ.

Barney Frank on pundits’ love affair with the Ryan budget:

Here’s the deal. They don’t want to consider themselves to be siding with the Democrats. It’s important for their self-image that they be seen as centrist. The problem is the Republican Party has given them fewer and fewer things that they can identify with, because they’ve moved so far to the right. … So they have to find something they can support on the Republican side to maintain this self-image that they’re somehow independent of the parties. And so they pick up the Ryan budget.

More from Sahil Kapur’s interview with Frank here.

The Obama administration’s program to assist needy homeowners is foundering badly, a new inspector general’s report shows.

Looks like Best Buy may have its own Bobby Petrino problem.

Yesterday was a good example that running for a year against a very weak GOP field has not prepared the Romney campaign to run against President Obama.

I haven’t wanted to say too much about this Hilary Rosen story because she’s a friend. So I can’t be wholly objective. But I will say that I’ve heard enough smackdowns telling Hilary that raising children is in fact hard work. She’s a mother. I think she knows that.

My take is that the whole thing won’t turn out to be that big a deal. I’m sure Hilary would phrase things differently if she had another bite at the apple. But I think the Romney camp’s response is more a sign of desperation to find some way to peal back terrible numbers with female voters.

That’s all I have to say.

Romney surrogate claims Hilary Rosen revealed President Obama’s secret anti-stay at home mother message.

Hilary Rosen releases statement on the recent unpleasantness, after the jump … Read More