Garance Franke-Ruta

Gonzo journalism lives. In a stunt reminiscent of the time a Montreal radio comedian interviewed Sarah Palin while pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Buffalo Beast's Ian Murphy prank-called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pretending to be conservative megadonor David Koch wanting to talk about the union protests in Wisconsin. The two conversed for 20 minutes, and The Beast posted their conversation to YouTube Tuesday night. On the recording, Walker admits he'd considered planting troublemakers in the pro-union throngs protesting in Madison before rejecting the idea. "We'll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers," the fake Koch said on the recording. "You know, well, the only problem with that -- because we thought about that. The problem -- the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I've talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this," Walker replied. "My only fear would be if there's a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems," he added. "Let 'em protest all they want.... Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting." Walker's office confirmed the recording was real. "The governor takes many calls everyday," Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said in a statement. "Throughout this call the governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having." Walker also blamed the agitation on outsiders, saying on the recording, "amazingly there's a much smaller group of protesters -- almost all of whom are in from other states today." The call went through to Walker via his Executive Assistant Dorothy Moore and Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes, according to The Beast. Listen to the "David Koch" - Scott Walker conversation: Part 1 and Part 2. Walker detailed for Koch his plan for ending the crisis in the state: "The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they're doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we're going to ratchet it up a little bit.... The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning--he told the Senate Democrats about and he's going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don't show up for two consecutive days on a session day -- in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk -- it's a little procedural thing here, but -- can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted into your checking account and instead -- you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he's instructing them -- which we just loved -- to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate." "Now you're not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?" asked the fake Koch. "Ah, I-- there's one guy that's actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he's worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn't going to budge," replied Walker. And he laid out a plan to go even further after the unions: "One of the things we're looking at next.... We're still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there's at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony." "Well, they're probably putting hobos in suits," the fake Koch replied. "Yeah," Walker agreed. At another point, the fake Koch instructed the governor to "bring a baseball bat" to his negotiations. "I have one in my office; you'd be happy with that," Walker replied. "I have a slugger with my name on it." On the call, Walker described how he was coordinating with other Republican governors on the anti-collective bargaining issue: "Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said -- he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, 'Scott, don't come to Nevada because I'd be afraid you beat me running for governor.' That's all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day -- John's gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder -- if he got a little more support -- probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there's a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big." "You're the first domino," fake Koch said. "Yep. This is our moment," said Walker. The Buffalo Beast is an online news and entertainment site that began life as an alternative biweekly paper co-founded by Matt Taibbi in 2002. Taibbi went on to become a Rolling Stone writer and is now well-known for his gonzo journalism and colorful writing.

How's our president doing? If you lived inside the Beltway, you may have gotten a distorted picture of how he was perceived in 2010. A Gallup survey released Wednesday found that residents of the District of Columbia gave President Obama a higher level of support last year than any other measured jurisdiction. The president's home state of Hawaii gave him the the highest average job approval rating in 2010 -- 66 percent -- of any of the 50 states, surpassed only by the 84 percent approval he found in Washington, D.C. Yes, yes, we know: D.C. is a city, not a state, and other major cities within measured states likely also would have shown high levels of support for the president if compared in a head-to-head matchup. The survey in the end shows little more than that the District is a Democratic stronghold. Still, 84 percent is a high figure, even for a stronghold. And it's significant, because D.C. is the seat of government, the epicenter for American political journalism, and the place a lot of opinion makers socialize with like-minded sorts. Also, the state with the second highest approval of Obama's 2010 performance was D.C. neighbor Maryland, where many government workers and contractors live, along with journalists and political consultants. Obama's 58 percent 2010 approval in the state was even higher in 2009; that number represents a drop-off of nearly 11 percent. Virginia, for its part, was not as keen on the president last year. Approval of Obama there dropped 11 percent between 2009 and 2010, down to 47 percent. In only 12 states did approval of the president top 50 percent. No word on what the figure was in the Northern Virginia suburbs that abut D.C. The 2010 approval averages were based on data from daily tracking and other interviews Gallup conducted from January through December 2010 that reached 179,000 people.

Updated 11:01 p.m. The results are still coming in, but the race has been called. Former congressman and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel will be the next mayor of Chicago. With 97 percent of precincts counted, Emanuel had won 55.1 percent to 24.2 percent for Gery Chico, his next closest competitor. Emanuel needed a final result of more than 50 percent to forestall a runoff election in April. "Thank you Chicago! Your hard work & support got us here. Looking forward to working together as your next mayor," Emanuel tweeted around ten minutes after 9 p.m. Eastern. See also in National Journal: "Emanuel Builds Wide Coalition, Wins Chicago Mayorship"

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

As the situation in Libya worsened Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued her strongest statement yet on the escalating violence. Said Clinton:

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.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who is testing the waters for a potential 2012 presidential bid, declined to denounce a proposal by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to honor a Civil War general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan on state license plates. The AP reports:

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?"

CBS News issued a chilling statement Tuesday about a horrific attack on one of its correspondents while she was reporting from Egypt last week:

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."

We expect a lot from our political leaders, but the one thing we tend not to expect them to be is musically hip. What with two wars, multiple international crises and the economic downturn to manage, the last thing anyone can reasonably expect from President Obama is that he be downloading the latest from Yeasayer. But as perplexed Americans from Rosie O'Donnell on down erupted on Twitter in response to Canadian indie group Arcade Fire's Grammy win for Album of the Year last night, asking, "Who is Arcade Fire?", it's worth noting that our president is one person who would know. To be in politics is to be in constant need of money, and fundraisers need entertainment. As well, Barack Obama was uniquely appealing as a political figure to a range of American -- and international -- cultural figures from the earliest days of his presidential campaign. Arcade Fire was an early support of Obama's presidential bid, playing two concerts for his campaign in March 2008 in Ohio. There are some pretty low-res clips of the shows on YouTube. From the Cleveland show: And from the Nelsonville, Ohio, one: Obama's White House also has proved itself a sophisticated patron of the arts, and during one of its first events, in February 2009, featured Esperanza Spalding -- winner of the Grammy last night for Best New Artist -- performing for the president and first lady: The performance was broadcast on PBS, on which she was described as "the brightest young star on the jazz horizon." She returned to the White House in May of that year for its poetry jam:

If Exhibit A for why it's hard to imagine the present governor of Mississippi as the next president of the United States was his (retracted) comment making light of civil rights struggles in his state, Exhibit B is today's story that Haley Barbour had no immediate response to an effort by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to recognize Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a 19th century Ku Klux Klan founder, on a Mississippi specialty license plate. There are some bright shiny lines in American political life at the national level. One of them is that it's an easy call to say negative things about the KKK when asked to do so, and that this does not require any particularly complex level of thought or strategy. If you're not ready to cross that line, you're not ready to be president. Period. CNN reports:

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.

Human Events scooped the outcome:

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.