The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:U.S. News

Robo-mule: The military's rugged new wilderness beast

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:52:00 -0600

The video: Move over, PetMan. The military has a new walking robot: The LS3 (Legged Squad Support System), a big, fast, "rugged" machine that can carry over 400 pounds of supplies (without refueling) over 20 miles of tough terrain where wheels wouldn't cut it. The robo-mule, designed by the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is equipped with sensors that allow it to auto-correct its balance. (Watch a video below.) The machine's creators say they'll soon teach their robotic pack animal how to understand spoken commands like "stop," "sit," and "come here" — and...

Good day, bad day: February 9, 2012

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:19:00 -0600

GOOD DAY FOR:

Kicking and screaming
Security cameras catch a 7-year-old girl successfully fighting off a would-be kidnapper in Walmart. [Opposing Views]

Lovers who love carbs
Pizza Hut offers $10,010 engagement packages, complete with ruby ring, limo service, fireworks, a photographer, and a $10 Pizza Hut dinner box (including a pizza, breadsticks and cinnamon sticks). [The Daily What]

Chinese worker rights
More than 250,000 Apple users sign two petitions demanding that Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturing company, improve working conditions for employees. [The Consumerist]

BAD DAY FOR...

The 'disturbing' rise of super PACs: By the numbers

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:50:00 -0600

President Obama got some grief this week when he reversed course on super PACs, suddenly encouraging wealthy supporters to contribute to the political spending behemoths that can accept unlimited donations from individuals and organizations. (Read a quick primer on super PACs here.) Obama campaign manager Jim Messina explained the change of heart as a nod to reality, saying Democrats can't "unilaterally disarm" while cash pours into Republican coffers. How much cash? A lot, say Kenneth Vogel and Abby Phillip at Politico. A new report from two public-interest groups confirms fears "that...

Will the culture war shape the 2012 race?

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:06:00 -0600

"Everyone thought that the 2012 election would be about jobs, jobs, jobs," says Michael Brendan Dougherty at Business Insider. "They were wrong." The unemployment rate has dropped for five straight months to its lowest point in three years (8.3 percent), and, for the moment, headlines are dominated by social issues, from Komen vs. Planned Parenthood to Catholics vs. President Obama's birth-control coverage mandate. And social warrior Rick Santorum just trounced business-savvy Mitt Romney in three GOP presidential nominating contests. Will the culture war define the campaign in unexpected ways?...

Did CNN's Roland Martin deserve a suspension for 'homophobic' tweeting?

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:34:00 -0600

CNN prides itself on reporting breaking news as quickly as possible, says Erik Wemple at The Washington Post. But "it's apparently a little slower in responding to in-house crises." CNN political analyst Roland Martin sent out "unequivocally homophobic tweets" during Sunday's Super Bowl, but CNN didn't suspend him until Wednesday. One tweet in particular — "If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!" — provoked the ire of gay rights groups. Martin apologized, claiming he was mocking soccer players, not...

The Romney revolt: Has the GOP base turned on him?

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:19:00 -0600

What was behind "Mitt Romney's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad night on Tuesday"? asks Eric Kleefeld at Talking Points Memo. That's simple: "A deep-seated dissatisfaction among conservative base voters." When Romney won Nevada and Florida last week, he was supported by a broad cross-section of the GOP electorate, including the conservative base. In Tuesday's contests in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota, conservatives — the same pool of GOP base voters who gave Romney huge 2008 wins in the latter two states — fled en masse. Is Romney really facing a revolt from his party's rank...

4 ways Rick Santorum can hang onto his momentum

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:37:00 -0600

Rick Santorum roared back into the Republican presidential race on Tuesday with a stunning sweep of contests in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. Santorum spent Wednesday raising money and brainstorming ways to build on his momentum — and avoid a replay of Iowa, where his win produced only the smallest and short-lived of bumps. "We are smart enough to know that this is no time to celebrate," senior Santorum strategist John Brabender tells The Washington Post. Facing a much better-funded, better-organized rival in Mitt Romney, and a tenacious splitter of the conservative vote in Newt Gingrich...

Are House Republicans Mitt Romney's 'biggest liability'?

The Week — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:15:00 -0600

Tuesday was a terrible day for Mitt Romney. Conservatives abandoned him in droves for once-insignificant rival Rick Santorum, who won three statewide presidential contests. Still, the former Massachusetts governor remains heavily favored to win the GOP nomination. If (or when) he does, he'll surely be associated throughout the campaign with the one branch of the federal government his party controls, the deeply unpopular House. That may not be good news for Mitt. House Republicans don't seem too keen to moderate their more controversial policy prescriptions in order to help their nominee appeal...

The problem with outsourcing the military

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:25:00 -0600

It's not every day that a senator gets "god-damn mad," at least in public. But that's exactly what happened a few months ago, when a federal commission released a report that was so alarming, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, dropped a "god-damn" in a congressional hearing. What worried her? The final findings of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, a bipartisan coalition formed in the spirit of the legendary Truman Committee, which exposed massive waste in World War II-era defense contracting. The modern commission found that these problems...

Michelle Obama's 'charming' media assault: A video roundup

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:28:00 -0600

If you've tuned into a talk show recently, odds are you've caught a glimpse of First Lady Michelle Obama, who's been granting a slew of light-hearted interviews to promote her Let's Move fitness initiative, her campaign on behalf of military families, and, above all, herself. Perhaps it's an effort to combat her portrayal as an "angry black woman" in Jodi Kantor's controversial book The Obamas, or a move to make herself more relatable to voters as her husband's re-election campaign kicks into high gear. Regardless, Michelle Obama has danced, hula hooped, and joked through a series of "charming...

Good day, bad day: February 8, 2012

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:18:00 -0600

GOOD DAY FOR:

Maids in Manhattan
New York City hotels agree to give housekeepers panic buttons they can use to call for help should they feel endangered in a guest's room. [Reuters]

Sportsmanlike conduct
The New York Jets take out a newspaper ad congratulating the New York Giants on their recent Super Bowl win. [BuzzFeed]

Getting off the hook
A Florida judge orders a husband to take his wife out to dinner and buy her flowers after the couple got into a physical fight triggered by the man's failure to wish his wife a happy birthday. [Huffington Post]

BAD DAY FOR:

Inner peace
Officials in Sarasota County...

An L.A. school's sex-abuse scandal: The extreme fallout

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:32:00 -0600

It all started when students at Los Angeles' Miramonte Elementary School and their parents learned last week that a longtime third-grade teacher, Mark Berndt, had been arrested for allegedly committing lewd acts on 23 kids in his classroom. A few days later, a second-grade teacher at the same school, Martin Springer, was arrested on charges of groping a 7-year-old girl. Then, late Monday, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy yanked every single one of the school's 128 teachers, janitors, administrators, and cafeteria workers, placed them in another school, and brought in...

Obama's birth control mandate: 4 ways it helps his campaign

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:24:00 -0600

President Obama is taking flak from religious institutions and Republican presidential candidates over his decision to make employers, including Catholic universities and hospitals, cover contraception in their employees' health insurance plans. Hoping to avoid a backlash, White House aides are promising to look at ways to make the policy "more palatable" to religious-affiliated institutions. While many pundits claim this controversy will hurt Obama's re-election effort, others aren't so sure. Here, four reasons Obama's birth control mandate might actually help him secure a second term:

1. It exposes...

Is the Prop 8 ruling merely 'a limited win' for gay marriage?

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:23:00 -0600

Everyone agrees that Tuesday's decision by a federal appellate court to strike down California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, is a big win for marriage-minded gays and lesbians in California. But what about gays outside the Golden State? The ruling, by Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, is explicitly narrow and California-specific, punting on the "broader question" of "whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry." Does that mean gay-marriage proponents are celebrating, and opponents mourning, too much?

This is only "a limited...

Tuesday's 'stunning' Santorum sweep: 6 takeaways

The Week — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:40:00 -0600

The Republican presidential race just got a lot more interesting. On Tuesday night, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) scored "stunning" upset wins in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses, and in Missouri's nonbinding "beauty pageant" primary. It was a clean sweep nobody saw coming — "probably not even Rick Santorum," says The New Yorker's John Cassidy. As recently as a week ago, Mitt Romney was expected to win all three contests, and political analysts expected him to win Colorado even as the votes were being tallied. Here, six takeaways from Tuesday's surprising outcome:

1. Santorum scored...

The latest tweets about the GOP presidential contest

The Week — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:07:00 -0600