Rick Santorum: I'm Not Crazy, THEY'RE The Crazy Ones

• Oh, Rick "Don't Google Me, seriously, stop it, it's not funny anymore!" Santorum, how we love thee. Santorum has the unique gift of standing out as one of the craziest Bible-humping crazies in a crowded field of serious contender crazies. Like, no matter how far to the right his fellow conservatives go, he goes even farther than that. [contextly_sidebar id="sIMWzN2yIzWLjL4d7vL0BNI0nZDv11sk"]He will throw up at the thought of John F. Kennedy. He will make his children hug the dead fetus. He will wish his Jew friends a Happy Jesus Christmas Chanukah for Jesus. He will go there and do that and then some. But, hey, when it comes to the presidential race in 2016, he wants you to know, he's the serious one, unlike those other nuts. Seriously! 

  “Do we really want someone with this little experience?” Mr. Santorum asked, referring to Mr. Paul, Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is also in his first term. “And the only experience they have basically — not Rubio, but Cruz and Paul because I don’t think Rubio is going to go — is bomb throwing? Do we really want somebody who’s a bomb thrower, with no track record of any accomplishments?”

  Last time we, er, Googled, it seemed that Rick Santorum had basically the same experience as his potential 2016 GOP primary opponents. He served two terms in the Senate, until he got his butt double-digit handed to him on a silver platter. Then he somehow managed to keep himself relevant in the 2012 primary race, mostly because the left had such a good time laughing at him. But lest you think he's considering running again just to make some sort of symbolic statement on behalf of the whackadoodlest wing of his party, think again, because he's totes for-real about it:  

  Though the 2016 Republican field is likely to be crowded with candidates looking to woo conservative Christians, Santorum is not cowed. Asked what unique space he thinks he would fill in the field, he says, “The winner.”

  “If we get in, we’re getting in to win,” Santorum says. “I’m not getting in to play a role. I’d get in because I think I have what it takes to win a primary and because I think I have what it takes to win a general election.” He talks like he’s already announced his campaign. “I’m not just in it to win a primary,” he says.

  We certainly hope so. Seriously.

• Oh, just another state joining the 21st century with the marriage equality, no big:

  The Supreme Court is still weighing taking another same-sex marriage case, but in the meantime, another domino has fallen. A federal judge ruled Monday that South Dakota’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, but she stayed her ruling pending appeal to the Eighth Circuit. [...]

  “The right at stake is not a new right to same-sex marriage, as defendants contend,” [U.S. District Judge Karen] Schreier wrote. “Instead, the substantive due process right is the right to marry, which right is fundamental. South Dakota’s marriage laws significantly interfere with this fundamental right by preventing same-sex couples from marrying and refusing to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.”

•  Ha ha, yeah right, AS IF:

  Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who handled the Eric Garner chokehold case, said Sunday he hopes Democrats won't make the case an issue as he runs for a vacated congressional seat.

  "I would hope that they would respect the fact that there was a man who died, a mother who lost her son and there's a wife who lost her husband and some children who lost their dad," Donovan said on a radio talk show hosted by former mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis.

  The Staten Island Republican Party endorsed Donovan on Saturday as its nominee for the seat of disgraced ex-Rep. Michael Grimm. Grimm resigned last month after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

  Sorry if your craptastic handling of a case in which you couldn't get an indictment -- even though there is actual video of a cop actually killing a man with his actual hands -- just might come up and be used against you, buddy. Sorry not sorry. Schmuck.

•  Unemployed men are like this, unemployed women are like that:  

  Nonworkers spend much more time doing housework. Men without jobs, in particular, spend more time watching television, while women without jobs spend more time taking care of others. And the nonemployed of both sexes spend more time sleeping than their employed counterparts. [...]

  The gender breakdown is striking. Of the 65 people who devoted more of their daytime to watching TV and movies than any other activity, 46 are men versus 19 who are women. [...]

  Over all, women are far more likely than men to devote a significant portion of their time to housework. Housework combined with our next category (caring for others) occupied almost six hours of the average woman’s day in our sample, compared with less than three hours for that of the average man.

• Be on the look-out for a dangerous wanted criminal on the loose in Idaho:  

   Spokane, North Idaho News 

  Post Falls Chief of Police Scott Haug says he was very surprised when an arrest warrant landed on his desk earlier this week. The warrant was for a "failure to appear," not uncommon. But the perpetrator was a nine year old boy. [...]

  What was the original charge? Stealing a pack of gum.

• Life on Mars? Maybe! 

  Without a human scientist roaming the surface of Mars, it's devilishly difficult to find out whether there's ever been life on the red planet. Current robotic explorers aren't really built to answer that question.

  But in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, a scientist describes patterns in Martian rock that she says look uncannily like the fossil signatures from primitive microbial life on Earth.

• So, helpful tip, you'll want to stay away from drinking poisonous crocodile bile:  

  At least 69 people died after drinking poisonous beer at a funeral in southeastern African country Mozambique, health authorities confirmed. The beer was locally brewed and is believed to have been poisoned with crocodile bile during the funeral.

  The toll of the people affected did not stop there. At least another 169 victims remain at the hospital according to Paula Bernardo, the district director for Health, Women and Social Action, quoted in Reuters.

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