The Romney campaign has gone on the warpath against Newt Gingrich, and as they try to win the battle in Florida, a common refrain at every speech and in every ad has become that the former Speaker “resigned in disgrace.” The rhetoric is designed to give the impression that even if Gingrich didn’t resign as a result of his ethics violation — after all, he resigned two years after the fact — his unpopularity was a result of it, and that his unpopularity is eventually what drove him out of office.

However, as governor, Romney had to deal with his own ethics charges; filing ethics complaints by then had become a common tool of political warfare. As a sign of what was to come, the governor who he was replacing herself had ethics violations, fined $1,250 for asking staffers to watch her daughter; something that became known as the “baby-sitter scandal.”

The escape of almost 500 Taliban prisoners is just the latest blow in the effort to secure Afghanistan from insurgents. It couldn’t come at a worse time, as Afghan troops are apparently finally ready to take on the monumental task of defending their country. Umm, okay, sure.

What gets me is that the Taliban’s escape hole took five months to dig, and apparently nobody noticed the work on it.| MORE ›

This post first appeared at NewsReal Blog.

I’m expecting a lot from disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s federal corruption trial, for which the jury selection started today.| MORE ›

Rey Guerra, the former sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pleaded guilty May 1 to a narcotics conspiracy charge in federal district court in McAllen, Texas. Guerra admitted to using information obtained in his official capacity to help a friend (a Mexican drug trafficker allegedly associated with Los Zetas) evade U.S. counternarcotics efforts.| MORE ›