Teddy Partridge

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, saying she must do the right thing for Arizona and herself in order to continue her healing, will resign from Congress this week.

So much for all the “making history” chutzpah of the Romney campaign — and their pet news media — on the night of the New Hampshire primary, when pundits were spellbound by a GOP candidate for president winning both the Iowa caucuses and that night’s first-in-the-nation event in the state where Mitt lives and governed next door.

Romney actually lost Iowa to Rick Santorum.

The cast for the West Coast one-night production of Dustin Lance Black’s “8″ has been announced, and it’s rather hottie-intense.

Another American cliche bites the dust, thanks to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (who hasn’t done a lot I like until this). Faced with overwhelming outrage, voiced eloquently and led by poet Maya Angelou, over a misleading and truncated quote of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr carved into his national memorial on the Mall, Secretary Salazar decided that “carved in stone” needn’t mean irrevocably permanent, when a wrong has been done.

It amazes me that bland candidate-robot Mitt Romney stirs such antagonism — nay, passion — from his fellow GOPs, especially among the conservatives who formed the bedrock of his 2008 campaign to leapfrog Grampa Walnuts for his party’s nomination. Mitt appears to have spurned his formerly supportive wealthy right-winger in his party; they now seem very afraid their party is about to nominate a business-school clone of Barack Obama: a Massachusetts moderate, as Newtie calls him.

Faced with long-standing agreement about what he said about same-sex unions being like “man-on-dog” as well as clear video evidence that he said he didn’t want to give “black people” more government money, Rick Santorum has taken the best GOP refuge: he’s denying that’s what he said. It’s the best refuge because it’s worked for others in his party.

Bradford Wells and Anthony John Makk, whose story was first featured at Firedoglake here, have got a reprieve from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, organized and announced by their Congressional representative, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Writing an opinion piece for the Lincoln (NE) Journal-Star, civil engineer Mike Klink calls TransCanada’s predecessor Keystone XL pipeline, for which he was a construction quality inspector, a “lemon” and a “proven loser.” Klink was fired from his job and is seeking Department of Labor whistleblower protection.

How to say the date this year? Judging by last night’s New Years Eve broadcasts, I think American media may have finally abandoned the “Two-thousand” construction when saying the name of the year. I heard a lot more “Yippee, it’s Twenty-Twelve!” than “Two-thousand-twelve” on the teevee machine.

So, the big story out of Iowa today: Newt Cries! Reminiscent of the moment Hillary Clinton snatch victory from surging Barack Obama in 2008, when she [didn't actually] cry when speaking about the effort to run a presidential campaign, Newt cried. About his dead mom.

In response to a question no voter would ask in a roomful of Iowa moms.

So Frank Luntz, message man to the GOP stars, had to ask it.