Early and Often

Despite skipping out on the CPAC conference (which wrapped up yesterday) and campaigning hard in Maine, Ron Paul still lost to Mitt Romney, who last night was declared the winner of that state's unusually drawn-out caucuses. Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation this morning, Paul said, perhaps for the first time, that he was "a little disappointed." However, minutes after the official results were released yesterday, showing Romney winning by just a 194 vote margin, reporters checking their in=box were greeted by a message titled "Ron Paul Victory in Maine!" But this was not some pre-drafted e-mail accidentally sent out by a bleary-eyed aide. After pointing out that the Texas congressman had just barely been "nudged out" from first place because pro-Paul Washington County had chosen not to vote, the e-mail laid out the campaign's real strategy: "We are confident we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been flexing its political muscles this week, first getting President Obama to pull back from requiring religious institutions to cover contraceptives in their employees' insurance plans, and now pushing for even greater concessions. In a statement, the bishops lay out "two serious objections" they still have with the revised policy, in which insurers foot the contraceptives bill when religious groups opt out. The first: "All the other mandated 'preventive services' prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease." The second, that waivers should be given to any individual "who consider such 'services' immoral." Furthermore, the bishops note a slight catch-22: "at this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate." While the worst of the storm may have passed, the president better keep his anorak on, as it's likely to keep raining angry prelates for some while longer.

After the brouhaha earlier this week over Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra's "DebbySpendItNow" Super Bowl ad, it was only a matter of time until someone did some online-slash-Facebook sleuthing to figure out who the Asian woman (speaking broken English) was. According to Phil Yu, author of the Angry Asian Man blog, her name is Lisa Chan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley graduate, last year's Miss Napa Valley, and a friend of a friend. Chan has yet to confirm she is, in fact, the girl from the ad, but Yu does pass along some "inside information" about how she is taking the backlash that does have the vague ring of truth.