The GOP's 'fiercely combative' final debate: 5 talking points

Wednesday night's Republican debate turned into a grudge match between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. And one candidate clearly came out on top On Wednesday night, the four remaining Republican presidential candidates congregated in Mesa, Ariz., for their 20th, and likely last, debate. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul sat at side-by-side desks, while CNN moderator John King peppered them with questions on everything from foreign policy to congressional earmarks. But with pivotal votes looming — Arizona's and Michigan's primaries on Feb. 28, and make-or-break Super Tuesday on March 6 — much of the debate devolved into "fiercely combative" bickering. Here, five key takeaways:

1. Romney and Santorum really dislike each other
There may have been four candidates on stage, "but the main event was Santorum versus Romney," says Paul Begala at The Daily Beast. With Santorum, leading in most polls, enjoying frontrunner status, Romney did his best to reclaim the edge. Throughout the "painfully long and often personally biting" debate, says Maggie Haberman at Politico, "Romney and Santorum made clear their visceral dislike for the other." Each man "chuckled and smiled as the other spoke. They interrupted and talked over one another." And "Romney, especially, came off snippy, and at times a bit nasty."

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2. In the end, Romney won
Snippy or not, Romney kept Santorum on the defensive all night, says Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post. "Romney's staff must have worked overtime" digging up dirt on Santorum, including past subsidies for the airline and steel industries, a propensity for earmarking, and an endorsement for party-switcher Arlen Specter. Romney used it all to make Santorum sound like just "another weasely senator." The attacks flustered Santorum, says Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast, and left him mumbling lawmaking minutia. Meanwhile, "Romney kept getting off soundbites," which is how you win the audience, and the debate.

3. Mitt got a big assist from Ron Paul
The Texan was mostly a non-factor in the debate — except when he paired up with Romney to double-team Santorum, says Politico's Haberman, at one point branding the Pennsylvanian a "fake conservative." This is a "role he's played in past debates, slamming Santorum almost whenever he could and joining Romney in piling on." No wonder Paul's "'bromance' with Romney is now an openly discussed fact of the 2012 campaign." Santorum certainly noticed, telling a reporter afterward that he should ask the two men "what they have going on together."

SEE MORE: The 'old, white' voters picking the GOP nominee: By the numbers

4. A suspiciously friendly audience helped Mitt, too
"Romney was buoyed, as he was in the Florida debates, by a crowd that favored him," says Politico's Haberman. The audience cheered Romney repeatedly, and Santorum "seemed to get ground down" by repeated booing. Romney clearly filled the room with supporters, says Will Wilkinson at The Economist, and his "success at hall-packing made him look like a winner." But offstage, in the real world, he's still "losing to Rick Freaking Santorum."

5. Newt floated above the fray... and out of the race?
"Gingrich didn't have a game-changing moment" in the debate, says Ginger Gibson at Politico. He attacked the media, of course, says Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice, but "half-heartedly," as if he knew prolonging the schtick would open him to ridicule, "like a comedian telling the same joke to the same room." It's clear Newt has "pretty much given up," says Michelle Cottle at The Daily Beast. "Gingrich the attack dog" was replaced by an "enthusiastic, vigorously nodding wingman," someone who is obviously angling for an advisory position should any of his rivals win in November.

SEE MORE: The 'most volatile race in history': Why GOP voters can't make up their minds

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Fining students for untied shoelaces: Harassment or discipline?

An overachieving Chicago charter-school network makes kids pay, literally, for breaking even the smallest of rules Ten charter high schools in Chicago have come up with a novel — and controversial — way to raise extra cash. The Noble Network of Charter Schools is now imposing fines on students who repeatedly break campus rules. Administrators at the network's schools, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel has praised as models of academic excellence, seem thrilled about the windfall, but parents aren't quite so happy. Here's what you should know:

How do the fines work?
Students get demerits for breaking school rules — four for having a cell phone, for example, and one for having their shoelaces untied, or failing to tuck their polo shirt into their uniform khakis. Any kid who piles up four demerits in a two-week period has to serve detention after school, which means forking over a $5 detention "admission" fee. Anyone who gets 12 detentions in a year has to attend a summer behavior class. Cost: $140.

SEE MORE: Arizona's plan to fire teachers for swearing… outside the classroom

Is this really necessary?
It certainly brings in much-needed money. The network raked in $190,000 from the fines last year. In part, the cash went toward defraying the cost of having to pay teachers to supervise the detention hall. But the money's not the main thing, says Noble founder and CEO Michael Milkie. This policy teaches discipline and helps keep the network's overwhelmingly poor, minority students focused on their studies. "[By] sweating the small stuff," he says, "we don't have issues with the big stuff."

Does it work?
Perhaps. At the very least, nobody can deny that Noble schools have high achievement levels. Noble's ACT scores are higher than the city average, and 90 percent of its graduates go on to college.

SEE MORE: 'If Fred got two beatings per day...': The 'outrageous' slavery-themed math quiz

So what's the problem?
Noble is charging its mostly low-income students a hidden tax their families can't afford, say Jasmine Sarmiento and Julie Woestehoff in the Chicago Tribune, and "pushing these young people out of school" to boost test results. "Fining someone for having their shoelaces untied ... goes to harassment, not discipline," Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, tells the Associated Press. Give me a break, says Susan Graybeal at Yahoo News. "It's called accountability, and it's how life works."

Sources: AP, Babble, Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, Yahoo News 

SEE MORE: The Tebow laws: Should home-schooled kids play sports for public schools?

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Wounded Journalists Plead for Evacuation From Homs

Updated | 11:20 a.m. Edith Bouvier and Paul Conroy, two foreign journalists who were wounded on Wednesday during an attack on a media center in the Syrian city of Homs that killed two of their colleagues, appealed for help in new video messages posted online by activists on Thursday.

In her video, Ms. Bouvier, who reports for the French newspaper Le Figaro, described her injuries and asked that she be allowed to leave the city, which is besieged by Syrian government forces, and travel to Lebanon for medical treatment. Her French-language appeal was echoed by a doctor and an activist who spoke in Arabic and English.

According to Ms. Bouvier, her message was recorded on Thursday, at about 3 p.m. in Homs, which means that it was posted on YouTube just an hour later.

William Daniels, a Paris-based photographer working for Le Figaro and Time, also spoke in the video. He explained that Ms. Bouvier urgently needs an operation she cannot have in the embattled neighborhood of Baba Amr. Mr. Daniels added that, despite her injuries and the scarcity of food and electricity in the area, Ms. Bouvier’s morale remains high.

Asked by an activist to make it clear that the journalists were not being held prisoner, Mr. Williams said that they had been treated very well.

Near the end of the message, Khaled Abu Salah, a spokesman for the Revolution Leadership Council of Homs who has narrated several of the video reports posted online by activists, appealed to the French government and the Red Cross to evacuate the injured journalists. An English-speaking activist urged the international community to take the responsibility for the care of the injured foreigners off the shoulders of the besieged city’s residents.

In a second video message posted online a short time later, Mr. Conroy, a British photographer, said that he was wounded in “a rocket attack” that killed his colleague Marie Colvin, a correspondent for London’s Sunday Times, along with Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer, on Wednesday. Mr. Conroy appealed for help and said that he was being treated by “the Free Syrian Army medical staff.” He also said, “it’s important to add that I’m here as a guest and not captured.”

So far, the Syrian government has shown little sympathy for the plight of foreign journalists who have been wounded or killed while reporting on the conflict. On Thursday, Syria’s official news agency posted a statement from the government in response to the death of three journalists in the past week under the headline: “Foreign Ministry Calls on Foreign Journalists to Respect Journalistic Work Laws in Syria and Not Enter It Illegally.”

According to the news agency, the foreign ministry advised reporters to work only with the explicit permission of the government and “stressed the necessity for foreign journalists to respect the laws regulating journalistic work in Syria and avoid breaching laws and entering the Syrian territories illegally to access turbulent and unsafe places.”

In an apparent reference to the attack on the rebellious quarter of Homs that killed Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik on Wednesday — and the death of Anthony Shadid, the New York Times correspondent who died in northern Syria last week — the foreign ministry spokesman said, “On the human level, we offer condolences to the media institutions and the families of the journalists who died on the Syrian territories.”

According to the government news agency, the spokesman, however, rejected “all statements that hold Syria accountable for the death of journalists who infiltrated Syria at their own risk without the Syrian authorities’ knowledge of their entry and whereabouts.”

Late on Wednesday, Syrian activists posted video of a rally in Homs in honor of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik.

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Einstein wins: Debunking the 'faster-than-light' neutrinos

Science lovers crack wise after a glaring error undermines a much-hyped discovery that supposedly proved Einstein wrong Light is once again the speediest thing in the known universe. Last September, OPERA, a project organized by an international group of physicists, boldly proclaimed that it had clocked some neutrinos moving faster than light. It was a shocking result, since Albert Einstein's longstanding theory of relativity says that nothing is faster than light. Well, it turns out Einstein was right all along. Late Wednesday, Science Insider broke the news that OPERA's experiment was flawed — its results compromised by a faulty connection between a GPS receiver and a computer. Indulging in schadenfreude, critics are scoffing at the respected scientists' screw-up. Here, a sampling of the reaction:

Thank God
This "distinctly ordinary" error is certainly convenient, says Tom Chivers at Britain's Telegraph. We no longer need to rewrite "the laws of the universe."

The first commandment
As a bunch of brainy scientists should know, says David Coursey at Forbes, you "always check the cable before doubting Einstein." The "problem is always a cable until proven otherwise. Home entertainment installers also know this truth. Likewise, all my ham radio buddies."

It could happen to anyone
Physicists supposedly checked and rechecked their results last year before announcing their "puzzling observations," says Robert T. Gonzalez at io9. But then, "fatal flaws" do have a tendency to hide in plain sight.

Whew!
Thank goodness we know longer need to question "our very basic idea of physics," says Eyder Peralta at NPR. In a manner of speaking, the original results suggested "you could be shot before a bullet left a gun."

My hero
Indeed, "the universe as we know it was saved today," says Jeffrey Kluger at TIME. "The instrument of its salvation, and that of the very edifice of physics itself? A fiber optic cable." Hallelujah!

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If Santorum's faith is fair game, why isn't Romney's?

Aides to Rick Santorum say it's unfair to question his beliefs without also targeting Mitt Romney's Mormonism Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, has recently been forced to defend his religious beliefs on the GOP presidential campaign trail. First he took flak for suggesting that "liberal Christian" is an oxymoron, then he had to deflect criticism this week over his 2008 warning that "Satan has his sights on the United States of America." Noting that Santorum's chief rival, Mitt Romney, has not faced similar grilling about his faith, a frustrated Santorum aide asked the Washington Examiner: "Why is Mormonism off limits?" Is it fair to make Santorum's religion a campaign issue, but not Romney's?

Santorum brought this on himself: Rick Santorum should stop "whining" about being persecuted, says Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly. "Mitt Romney is not on record suggesting that his campaign is part of God's Own Resistance to the takeover of America by Satan," or that President Obama is "trying to abolish Christianity in the pursuit of a secularist 'phony theology.'" If Santorum wants to attack Romney's Mormonism, he should do so at his own risk — and not expect the media to do it for him.
"Never mind Satan: How about the angel Moroni?

Actually, Team Santorum has a point: "Specifically religious questioning of Romney" has indeed been rare, says Byron York at the Washington Examiner. And that may be because he hasn't broadcast his religious beliefs the way Santorum has, but it's easy to understand why Santorum's advisers are "frustrated and angry." Critics used his Satan remark, for example, to cast him as a crank outsider, yet a 2007 Gallup poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe in the devil.
"Team Santorum: U.S. is with Rick on devil belief"

Hey, Romney has taken his lumps, too: Romney's rivals have mostly evaded the topic of his Mormonism, says David A. Graham at The Atlantic, but "the same cannot be said for pundits and voters, both Republican and Democrat." An erstwhile supporter of Rick Perry once flatly dismissed Mormonism as a "cult." But if Santorum's "picking a fight about Romney's faith," he'll regret it. He'll only taint his campaign, damage his party, and save Democrats "the trouble (and risk) of dog-whistling on Mormonism later on."
"Does Santorum really want to make a stand on Mormonism?"

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Obama and the case of the missing watchdogs

Confoundingly, the president has failed for years to find capable Inspector Generals to bust government waste, fraud, and misconduct. Why? If Sherlock Holmes worked in Washington, I would hire him immediately to investigate a troubling phenomenon in the federal government. Let's call it the case of the disappearing watchdogs, also known as Inspectors General (IG). 

IGs oversee an army of talented auditors and investigators who independently bust waste, fraud, and misconduct within government agencies. In the past, IG-led investigations have exposed torture supported by the Bush Administration, misuse of the controversial Patriot Act, and Humvee "death traps" in Iraq. These watchdogs are vital to keeping federal agencies honest, and informing Congress of wrongdoing. They also save taxpayers up to $18 for every dollar invested in IGs, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. 

SEE MORE: Obama's recess appointments: Unconstitutional?

But some of the most important agency posts — for example, an IG for the State Department — are vacant, and have been for years. Many of these "missing watchdogs" require an appointment from President Obama before the Senate can confirm them, but the White House has been downright sluggish, if not outright negligent, in taking action. 

If Obama expects us to take his open government promises seriously, he needs to make Inspector General appointments a priority.

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"Every president, including Obama, talks about the need to root out government misconduct," says Dr. Paul C. Light, a New York University professor and former Brookings Institution fellow. "But when it comes to strengthening the IGs and appointing highly-qualified individuals, they go M.I.A. It just curls my hair." 

Light says he "can't imagine" any of the Republican presidential candidates addressing the problem, either. So with ineptitude from both parties, how do we solve this? As Sherlock — the Robert Downey Jr. version, of course — would say, "Never theorize before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

SEE MORE: The New Yorker's dissection of the 'Obama memos': 5 takeaways

Here are some facts: According to a new tracker published by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), there are now 12 IG vacancies, including the Department of State (vacant for nearly 1,500 days), the Department of Justice (nearly 400 days), the Department of Homeland Security (more than 360 days), and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (nearly 400 days).

Former State Department IG Clark Ervin told me via email that "it's incredibly important to have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Inspector General for every (applicable) agency, but certainly for one as crucial to national security as the State Department." 

SEE MORE: William Daley's resignation: Will it help Obama?

Indeed, the State Department is a prime example of an agency that is in desperate need of a permanent watchdog. Since Ervin left in 2003, the State Department has only had a permanent IG for two years. Acting or deputy IGs (like ambassadors) have filled the position instead, a practice that anonymous employees of the State Department have called a conflict-of-interest "disaster," as the temporary IGs often take management positions again after leaving the IG gigs — meaning their future jobs are dependent on the people they should be evaluating. Additionally, temporary IGs don't undergo the thorough congressional vetting process that is required for permanent IGs. 

Unfortunately, now that the U.S. has pulled out of Iraq, this "disaster" of an IG office is expected to oversee the State Department's management of thousands of contractors. And we all know how well-behaved (NSFW) contractors in contingency zones can be. This is a critical task. But Obama hasn't bothered to even nominate a candidate in his entire term in office. 

The State Department may be the agency that most urgently needs an IG, but it's not the only one. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has been without an IG for more than a year, despite being responsible for unearthing waste and misconduct in Afghanistan — a gargantuan task. Remember the "Fast and Furious" scandal? That bloody, botched U.S. gun-smuggling plan was allegedly covered up by the U.S. Justice Department, an agency that hasn't had a permanent IG for over a year. 

This begs the question: What the heck is going on? 

Ervin told me he thinks the Obama Administration may be failing to promptly appoint IGs because of a variety of factors, including "the difficulty of recruiting capable people from the private sector nowadays," a "toxic political environment," and "the complexity of the financial disclosure process."

However, it appears that there is more to the story. Light believes there is no shortage of highly-qualified auditors and investigators that would be honored to take on this tough job. Instead, he said the White House is failing to pursue candidates because it doesn't think it's a priority, and federal agencies, which can be hostile towards Inspector Generals, offer no encouragement. The result has been an appointment process that Light calls "nasty, brutish, and not at all short."

Fortunately, this is a problem with a fairly simple solution. If Obama expects us to take his open government promises seriously, he needs to make Inspector General appointments a priority, by recruiting and nominating strong, capable candidates. The Senate then needs to confirm them promptly. Procrastination is no longer an option — with billions of taxpayer dollars lost to waste and fraud abroad, it is imperative that the U.S. invests in oversight.  

On second thought, I'm not sure Sherlock would be impressed by this particular case, after all. Solving it is pretty elementary. 

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Petty controversy: Newt Gingrich vs. the Chevy Volt

The former House speaker suggests that the hybrid vehicle is too wimpy to handle a gun rack, provoking a smackdown from GM The story: Newt Gingrich was all up in General Motors' grill this week. The Republican presidential candidate branded GM's hybrid Chevy Volt an "Obama car" because "you can't put a gun rack in a Volt." His remark, clearly intended to tap into the Right's aversion to subsidizing green technology, prompted GM spokesman Selim Bingo to shoot back that you can equip the Volt with a gun rack. "The real question is, 'Why would you?'" he asked. "Seriously, when is the last time you saw a gun rack in any sedan?" To prove GM's claims, one enthusiastic Volt fan even created a video demonstrating the relative ease with which he installed a shiny gun rack in the hatch of his beloved hybrid. (Watch the clip below.)

The reaction: "See Newt? We're Americans, not American'ts!" says Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. "There are few problems we can't MacGyver our way out of with a trip to the hardware section of Target." Seriously though, says David Kiley at Aol Autos: Targeting hybrids as "weak, unmanly, or illegitimate" will only push consumers toward "gas-thirsty" cars that are bad for the environment. As for GM, says Fred Meier at USA Today, it had better be prepared to be "punch drunk" by the end of the campaign. "Democrats and Republicans both think they can score" political points with their respective positions on the auto bailout. Check out the Volt gun rack:

SEE MORE: G.M.'s record-smashing profits: 6 talking points

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