MANCHESTER, N.H. — If this is Mitt Romney’s idea of a victory rally, one shudders to think what would have happened if he had lost the Iowa caucuses. The day after his impossibly thin eight-vote victory, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination flew here for a town hall meeting at Manchester Central High School, where he was to bask in the endorsement of his 2008 arch rival, John McCain. Read full article > >

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Mitt Romney out of control

With 50 percent of the votes cast, Fox News is predicting that Newt Gingrich will finish tonight's caucuses in fourth place. That would leave Perry and Bachmann in fifth and sixth place respectively. Talking Points Memo notes that John McCain was the only candidate to win nomination who wasn't among the top three in Iowa's 2008 caucuses.

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Fox News: Gingrich Will Come in 4th

If you thought all the political action is in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, think again: The race is heating up here in Washington social circles. No drama for Democrats officially rallying together to re-elect President Obama . More interesting to watch: D.C.’s prominent Republicans who are trying to cozy up to the party’s nominee. Back the right horse early enough and you get four years hanging out with the winner. Pick the loser and . . .well, you picked the loser: After George W. Bush prevailed in the 2000 GOP primaries, early backers of John McCain were quietly snubbed by Bush insiders. Read full article > >

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GOP primary divides Washington socialites

Four years ago this week, a young and inspirational senator who promised to turn history’s page swept the Iowa caucuses and began his irresistible rise to the White House. Barack Obama was unlike any candidate the country had seen before. More than a mere politician, he became a cultural icon, “the biggest celebrity in the world,” as a John McCain ad accurately, if mischievously, described him. He was the object of near adoration among the young, launching what often felt like a religious revival. Artists poured out musical compositions devoted to his victory in a rich variety of forms, from reggae and hip-hop to the Celtic folk song. (My personal favorite: “ There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama. ”) Electoral contests rarely hold out the possibility of making all things new, but Obama’s supporters in large numbers fervently believed that 2008 was exactly such a campaign. Read full article > >

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Can a messiah win twice?

“Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’” –Then-Sen. Barack Obama, October 16, 2008 We resisted writing about Mitt Romney’s first television ad when it was released just before Thanksgiving, on the grounds that the issue –whether the ad misquoted President Obama—had been thoroughly and quickly discussed. We sometimes also see little need to fact check items that have been already debunked by one political faction or the other. Read full article > >

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Revisiting Romney’s ‘deceitful, dishonest’ ad about Obama

The geologist who conceived it called it the poor man’s space program. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) fumed that it was a waste of taxpayer dollars. Meteorite hunter Ralph Harvey simply calls it work. For the 35th year, the United States is mounting its annual campaign to gather space rocks from the wind-hammered icefields of Antarctica. Read full article > >

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At the bottom of the world, a controversial search for cosmic leftovers

The endorsement by the New Hampshire Union Leader of the presidential candidacy of Newt Gingrich provides the former House speaker with a boost in the Granite State and likely solidifies him as the conservative alternative to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney . “The endorsement gives Newt credibility with New Hampshire voters, and conservatives especially, just when he needs it most,” said Mike Dennehy, who managed the New Hampshire presidential campaigns for Arizona Sen. John McCain in 2000 and 2008. “As with McCain in ‘08, the [Union Leader] has brought to life the comeback for Newt Gingrich.” Read full article > >

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What the Union Leader means for Newt Gingrich (and what it doesn’t)

Ginger McCain, trainer of triple Grand National winner Red Rum, dies at the age of 80 after suffering from cancer.

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Grand National great McCain dies

VIRGINIA BEACH — Jamie Radtke may not yet be well-known to most Virginians, but she was in her element at one event last week. “I’m especially glad to be in a roomful of terrorists ,” Radtke said at a chapter meeting of the Hampton Roads Tea Party, drawing knowing laughter. “And hobbits!” yelled an audience member, a reference to the Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) complaining about the demands of the “tea party hobbits.” Later, Radtke sarcastically told the audience: “You, single-handedly, caused the ‘tea party downgrade.’ ” Read full article > >

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Tea-party candidate Radtke tries to gain traction in Senate race

Arizona’s Sen. John McCain (R) said illegal immigrants may have started some of the wildfires that have forced thousands of people from their homes in his state, but he did not give evidence to support the statement. Read full article > >

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Illegal immigrants set some Arizona wildfires, McCain says, but offers no evidence

Senator John McCain is taking a stand against those who credit “enhanced interrogation” with the killing of Osama bin Laden. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, McCain calls out former attorney general Michael Mukasey for claiming that waterboarding of…

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McCain Slams Waterboarding

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Az.) introduced an Internet privacy “Bill of Rights” Tuesday that aims to protect sensitive information about users online.

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Senators introduce Internet privacy bill

There are Red States and Blue States, rich states and poor states, and Bible and Rust-belt states. But now we must add Globe-trotting and Stay-at-home states to that list too — that is, according to new data on the percentage of Americans who have a passport. The map below — which has been getting a lot of attention on-line (via  Grey’s Blog ) — charts the trend for the fifty states.   New Jersey boasts the highest percentage of passport holders (68%); Delaware (67%), Alaska (65%), Massachusetts (63%), New York (62%), and California (60%) are close behind. At the opposite end of the spectrum, less than one in five residents of Mississippi are passport holders, and just one in four residents of West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas.  It’s a fun map. With the exception of Sarah Palin’s home state, it reinforces the  ”differences” we expect to find between the states where more worldly, well-traveled  people live versus those where the folks Palin likes to call “real Americans” preponderate. Mostly to entertain myself, I decided to look at how this passport metric correlates with a variety of other political, cultural, economic, and demographic measures.  What surprised me is how closely it lines up with the other great cleavages in America today.  The statistical correlations  generated by my colleague Charlotta Mellander are genuinely striking, among the strongest I have seen for virtually any measure.  While my usual caveats stand–our analysis deals with associations only, correlation and causation are not the same thing–the results are intriguing and perhaps provide another window into America’s divide. Let’s begin with income. If one assumes that people with more money are more likely to travel overseas, one would be absolutely correct.   There is a considerable correlation between passports and both median income (.81) and per capita economic output (.70). No matter how you slice it, wealthier states have more passport holders.     It’s also reasonable to assume that more highly educated people would be more likely to hold a passport. And that too is what we find across the states. There is a considerable correlation (.80) between passports and human capital levels (measured as the percentage of a population with a bachelor’s degree or higher). What’s really striking is that this correlation holds even when we control for income, using a statistical procedure called partial correlation analysis.     Passport holding also reflects the structure of state economies. There is a substantial correlation (.70) between the percentage of passport holders and the percentage of the workforce in knowledge-based and creative jobs. Conversely, there is significant negative correlation between passport holders and the share of the workforce in blue-collar working class jobs (-.82). Working class states have considerably less passport holders than creative class states. Again, the correlations hold when we control for income. States with higher percentages of passport holders are also more diverse. There is a considerable correlation between passports and the share of immigrants or foreign-born population (.63) and also gays and lesbians (.54). The more passport holders a state has, the more diverse its population tends to be.  And yes, these correlations hold when we control for income. What about politics? How does passport holding line up against America’s Red state-Blue state divide?  Pretty darn well, actually. There is a considerable positive correlation between passports and Obama voters (.59) and a significant negative one (-.61) for McCain voters.  It appears that more liberally-oriented states are more globally oriented as well, or at least their citizens like to travel abroad. Again, the correlations hold when we control for income, though they are a bit weaker than the others. Passport holding also reflects something about the underlying personality of places.  American states are not only sorting by income, education and political orientation, but by personality type, according to  research  by the Cambridge University psychologist  Jason Rentfrow  and his colleagues.  Passport holding is in fact related to three of the five major personality types.  There are positive correlations between passports and Openness-to-Experience personalities, and negative ones to both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.  “The results suggest to me that this is also linked to Openness,” Rentfrow noted after looking over these findings. “Openness is about curiosity and adventure, so it would make sense that Open places have high numbers of passports.”  And finally, states with more passport holders are also happier. There is a significant correlation (.55) between happiness (measured via Gallup surveys) and a state’s percentage of passport holders.  Yet again, that correlation holds when we control for income.  There are stark cultural differences between places where international travel is common and those where it’s not, and we can see them playing out in the cultural and political strife that has been riving the country over the past decades. Think of John Kerry, who was accused of looking and sounding “French” and George W. Bush, who’d hardly been overseas before he became president, or for that matter Barack Obama, with his multi-cultural global upbringing, and Sarah Palin, who had to obtain a passport when she traveled to Kuwait in 2007. The trends in passport use reflect America’s starkly bifurcated system of infrastructure. One set of places has great universities and easy access to international airports; another an infrastructure that is much further off the beaten track of the global circulation of capital, talent, and ideas. Passport holding provides a window into America’s  big sort –in fact it serves as a robust indicator for all the other things that so divide us.

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America’s Great Passport Divide

Now is not the time to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays serving in the armed forces, Sen. John McCain said at a hearing Thursday.

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‘Don’t ask’ debated in Senate

Senator John McCain continues to stand in the way of history: He argued strenuously against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on Thursday, saying a repeal would be “premature.” He seized on the study’s finding that 60 percent of Marines support the…

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McCain: Don’t Lift DADT