Let's be blunt. One hundred and seventy-three Toyota dealers in the United States are plainly, simply un-American. They are the members of an association that covers five Southeastern states, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina, that have decided to pull their advertising from ABC affiliates in their coverage area. Why? Because ABC news has been giving what they've determined to be "excessive stories on the Toyota issues.” As I said, un-American.

John Murtha was one of those guys whose influence didn’t really translate that well in today’s media culture.

He was a rock-ribbed former Marine who had two key objectives in his congressional career: support the troops and take care of his district.

He attracted his fair share of controversy in his time. He was implicated in the infamous Ab-Scam controversy in the late 1970s. He was caught on tape thinking very carefully about a possible bribe attempt from an FBI agent posing as a Arab sheik. He narrowly escaped prosecution in a scandal that netted several politicians.

Sarah Palin gave a great speech Saturday night in Nashville at the Tea Party convention. She is preparing to engage on a national level in a significant way, on Fox News, campaigning in primaries and possibly general-election campaigns this fall and staying on the speaking tour. According to Sunday's New York Times, Palin has created a circle of advisers who probably wrote that speech and keep her informed on the issues of the day. She is admittedly prepping herself for a new role: someone prepared to talk about policy, not just about herself.

They paid Sarah Palin $100,000 — for what?

If I were the organizers of that event — or one of the “grassroots” teabaggers who shelled out $349 for a steak-and-lobster dinner — I’d demand my money back.

For 45 minutes, all Palin did was string together a lame collection of clichés and cheap shots, without offering one idea of her own. Three times, she called for “common-sense conservative solutions to problems” — without suggesting even one of them.

No heart attack from digging out. That was a good thing, but there was little to do but spend the weekend mostly hunkered down inside. There were no newspapers, no delivery, but who missed them? We could read them just as easily online. And then, those of us who didn't lose power had plenty of TV to help pass the time.

As the anchors and frozen reporters repeated ad nauseam what we already knew, that it sucked outside, it would not have been much of a surprise to see a crawl at the top or bottom of the screen informing that the meeting of the Global Warming Action Group had been canceled. But the weather coverage was just one of the highlights.

Sarah Palin’s speech to the Tea Party Convention at Nashville brought to my mind the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, when Doc Watson and Bob Dylan were just anybody. It was raw and unpretentious, unformed and unscripted, informal and from the heart, but the beginning of something purely original and of vast and natural willfulness which appears to just now be awakened and will not be held back.

The Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday night was funky and alive. And what a contrast to the formulaic and phony interview with President Barack Obama — a government/network joint-venture infomercial really — that Katie Couric and CBS interjected inappropriately into the Super Bowl pre-game programming.

When I was writing Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, I spent many hours interviewing physicians about the work Bill Clinton was doing, mostly in Africa, and mostly, at that time, helping to bring down the cost of drugs used to treat HIV-positive children. No matter what one thinks about Bill Clinton, it was good, necessary and effective work. And if he continues with it — one of the smartest of the physicians I interviewed told me that he is always worried that Clinton’s interest will wane and that he’ll find something flashier on which to focus — he might even win that Nobel peace prize he so covets.

UPDATE: just got factchecked, report and raw data

(Courtesy of howardweaver)