Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor covering national politics at The Atlantic. More
She was previously national web politics editor at The Washington Post, and has also worked at The American Prospect, The Washington City Paper, The New Republic and National Journal magazines. At The Prospect she won the 2007 Hillman Prize awarded to its group blog, "Tapped."
In 2006, she was fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass., and in 2007, a summer fellow with The Iowa Independent, based in Des Moines, Iowa.
Garance has lectured at the Kennedy School, the Harvard Art Museums, Williams College, Wellesley College, Brandeis and Georgetown Universities, and taught in Georgetown's Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program. She also has made numerous appearances on national and regional television and radio programs.
Born in the South of France, Garance grew up in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico; New York City, New York; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has resided in Washington, D.C., since graduating from Harvard in 1997.
Not much of a surprise, this outcome, as he'd been signaling for weeks he didn't have the fire in the belly for a presidential bid, but South Dakota Sen. John Thune (R) made it official today: he's not running for president.
"At this time, I feel that I am best positioned to fight for America's future here in the trenches of the United States Senate," he said in a statement released by his senate campaign organization.
"For months now, my wife Kimberley and I have received encouragement from family, friends, colleagues, and supporters from across South Dakota and the country to run for the presidency of the United States. We have appreciated hearing their concerns about where the country is headed and their hopes for a new direction," he said.
Through a process that "involved lots of prayer," Thune and his wife and two children considered his path forward and were "reminded of the importance of being in the arena, of being in the fight."
"There is a battle to be waged over what kind of country we are going to leave our children and grandchildren and that battle is happening now in Washington, not two years from now," he said, explaining why he was choosing to focus on his current job, rather than seeking a new one.
Thune's declaration leaves a full field of potential Republican presidential contenders, some of whom also have said they will soon declare their intentions one way or another. At a minimum, the field of those considering a bid includes: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Donald Trump, John Hunstman, Haley Barbour, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and John Bolton.
Image credit: AP Photo/Cliff Owen The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm. We join the international community in strongly condemning the violence in Libya. Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been lost, and with their loved ones. The government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of the people, including the right to free expression and assembly. Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed. We are working urgently with friends and partners around the world to convey this message to the Libyan government.
Questioned by reporters Tuesday in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn't think Mississippi legislators will approve the [Nathan Bedford] Forrest license plate proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The group wants the car tag in 2014 as part of a series of Civil War license plates. Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson has called on Barbour to denounce the license plate idea. Asked about that Tuesday, Barbour replied: "I don't go around denouncing people."Barbour has previously come under fire for remarks making light of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi when he was a young man -- remarks he later recanted. For more on the present controversy, see earlier: "Will Haley Barbour Condemn Effort to Honor KKK Founder?"
On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS Correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy. In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering. There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.Most mainstream American news outlets have a policy of not naming the survivors of sexual assault and it is hard to imagine that CBS would have issued this statement, which landed like a thunderbolt in the close-knit media world, without Logan's permission. That makes her one very brave woman, as news of the attack ricocheted across Twitter and newspapers with lightning speed. The Columbia Journalism Review in 2007 published a lengthy look at the risk of sexual assault and harassment female foreign correspondents face while on assignment overseas. Its lede describes a situation that sounds similar to that faced by Logan, though with a quicker intervention from Good Samaritans:
The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers. "My first thought was my cameras," recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. "Then it was, 'Oh my God, I'm going to be raped.' " With her faced pressed into the soil, she couldn't shout for help, and no one would have heard her anyway above the mob's taunts. Suddenly a Good Samaritan in the crowd pulled the photographer by the camera straps several yards to the feet of some policemen who had been watching the scene without intervening. They sneered at her exposed chest, but escorted her to safety.CJR doesn't have the whole thing online but a full version of the story can be read via this PDF (via @lizzieohreally). Politico notes that Logan, who was detained with her crew in Egypt earlier in the month and forced to leave the country, went back out of a sense of personal obligation to tell the story of the uprising:
TIME magazine reported on February 3 that Logan was detained and, on February 7, she told Charlie Rose that she was accused of being a spy. "There was no question after what we were subjected to that we were not safe and were, were now targeted," said Logan, adding that that "can very easily get you killed and you better take it seriously." Still, she told that she was disappointed in herself as a journalist over the episode and upset that she was unable to keep reporting. "It's very hard for me to be away from this story," said Logan. "I feel in one sense like a failure professionally. I feel like I failed because I didn't deliver and I take that responsibility very seriously. ... Fundamentally it is in my blood to be there and to be on the streets and to be listening to people and to do the best reporting that I can." "You try to be smart about these things and, yes, I would go back. It would depend entirely on the circumstances."
The Mississippi NAACP has called on Gov. Haley Barbour to publicly denounce an attempt by a Confederacy group to honor a Ku Klux Klan leader, the organization said Monday. The Sons of Confederate Veterans has launched the campaign to recognize Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest on a specialty license plate. Forrest, a popular and controversial figure, is best known as a leader of the KKK, the white supremacist group known for terrorizing blacks in the South after the Civil War. He is also praised and criticized for an 1864 raid at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, where hundreds of black Union Army members were killed during the war. The controversy over whether Forrest conducted or condoned the massacre is still a matter for heated debate. Mississippi NAACP leaders feel a state-sanctioned license plate honoring a man with ties to the KKK sends the wrong message to people in the state and across the country. "Any individual who was a traitor to our country and our constitution should be treated as such," said Derrick Johnson, president of the state NAACP chapter.... Barbour has not responded to the controversy since it began making headlines last week.... A call to the governor's office from CNN on Monday has not been returned.Yes, the NAACP goes out of its way to make life difficult for some Republican leaders, and the tensions have also gone the other way -- who can forget the fraught relationship between the national group's leaders and George W. Bush? -- but this is the kind of thing that would be an easy call for the leader of a state with a less toxic racial history. And it's the kind of thing anyone with national political ambitions should have an easy answer to. Barbour, uniquely among the potential 2012 presidential candidates, is poorly situated on questions of race in America thanks to not just the history of his state, but its present political realities.
The results of the CPAC straw poll of presidential candidates are in, and the winner is Ron Paul, with 30% of the vote. Mitt Romney was the runner-up with 23%, and all other candidates tied with about 6% each. 84% of the voters identified themselves as fiscal conservatives, placing their highest priority on economic growth and restraining the growth of government.Kasie Hunt explained in Politico this morning why Paul -- who also won last year -- was likely to win again, and how Paul's supporters have pursued a strategy of swamping straw polls at conservative and Republican events around the country. She writes:
While his ardent supporters aren't numerous enough to win him actual primaries or caucuses, they've mastered the unofficial straw poll format and they've decided those informal polls send an important message. Case in point: The Paul forces are already organizing for June's Republican Leadership Conference and Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration straw poll and Iowa's traditional Ames straw poll in August.... The Paul supporters are almost obsessive about the polls, and they have one goal: to get the media's attention in an attempt to prove Paul is a viable candidate for president.... The results of the grass-roots straw poll efforts speak for themselves: Paul won the 2010 CPAC poll and finished second behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference poll -- by just one vote. He also placed second in New Hampshire's WMUR/ABC News straw poll of state Republican Party activists in January. During the 2008 presidential election, Paul won small straw polls in at least 10 states. He rarely broke into double-digits in the real caucuses or primaries that year, but he would often win by a landslide in the straw polls -- he took 4 percent in the Arizona primary, for example, but swept a Phoenix straw poll with 80 percent of the vote.National Review assessed the meaning of the win:
CPAC brass played down the results. "The straw poll is not a poll; the straw poll is entertainment for the people that are here," says David Keene, the former president of the American Conservative Union, in an interview with National Review Online. "He won it last time because he was the only one running. Even I could win it if I was the only one running. He is the only one who seems to focus on it exclusively." Grover Norquist, the influential taxpayer advocate, tells NRO that Paul's win is far from meaningless. "If you are running for president, you need to be able to connect with the activists," he says. "This is a measure of how connected you are to activists, especially the young activists. Some people talk about the money primary -- this is the activist primary." Paul's growing following on the right, Norquist predicts, could shake up the 2012 race, especially on issues close to the Texas congressman, like monetary policy. "It's like 1988, when Pat Robertson ran for president," he observes. "Robertson brought a whole collection of people into the Republican party." While acknowledging that some Republicans find Paul supporters "strange" for their dogged focus on the Federal Reserve, the fresh faces, Norquist says, are "very healthy" for the future of the GOP.Thumbnail image credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
OK, so it's not really The New York Times, it's a Web ad that was served to me when I was reading Gail Collins' column on Chris Lee online, but still. The ad appears to be designed to entice click-through to online gaming site Mighty Magoo and the Cartoon Doll Emporium. I was not actually able to find a working "Dress Up Sarah Palin" online game through the sites, which is not surprising as many ads of this sort pull a bait and switch using edgy political content to win clicks. Still, hard to imagine a similar game for Mike Huckabee. Sign up to receive our free newsletters

