"The House of Representatives passed a $26 billion measure Tuesday afternoon to help avoid teacher and emergency-responder layoffs"

"The measure, which passed the House on a largely party-line vote, is designed to save the jobs of approximately 160,000 teachers across the country, as well as create and save positions for police officers, firefighters and nurses, according to Democratic leaders.

Republican leaders have blasted that bill as an irresponsible union giveaway that will impede prospects for a long-term economic recovery"

She sounds proud, defiant, maybe a little wistful. You might be inclined to think of what she says as the lament of an abandoned wife, but that would be a mistake. There is shockingly little bitterness in her, and she often speaks with great kindness of her former husband. She still believes in his politics. She supports the Tea Parties. She still uses the name Marianne Gingrich instead of going back to Ginther, her maiden name.

But there was something strange and needy about him. "He was impressed easily by position, status, money," she says. "He grew up poor and always wanted to be somebody, to make a difference, to prove himself, you know. He has to be historic to justify his life."

She says she should have seen the red flags. "He asked me to marry him way too early. And he wasn't divorced yet. I should have known there was a problem."

Within weeks or months?

"Within weeks."

That's flattering.

She looks skeptical. "It's not so much a compliment to me. It tells you a little bit about him."

And he did the same thing to her eighteen years later, with Callista Bisek, the young congressional aide who became his third wife. "I know. I asked him. He'd already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked."

He told you that?

"Yeah, he wanted to -- "

But she stops. "Hey, turn off the tape recorder for a second. This is going to go places ..."

Back in the 1990s, she told a reporter she could end her husband's career with a single interview. She held her tongue all through the affair and the divorce and even through the annulment Gingrich requested from the Catholic Church two years later, trying to erase their shared past. Now she sits quietly for a moment, ignoring her eggs, trying to decide how far she wants to go.

SNIP

He thinks of himself as president, you tell her. He wants to run for president.

She gives a jaundiced look. "There's no way," she says. She thinks he made a choice long ago between doing the right thing and getting rich, and when you make those choices, you foreclose other ones. "He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new ... you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way."

She stops, ashes her cigarette, exhales, searching for the right way to express what she's about to say.

"He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," she says. "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."

Sitting on a bench, she squints against the light. "He always told me that he's always going to pull the rabbit out of the hat," she says.

Gov. David Paterson (D) said today that if the developers behind the controversial Cordoba House agree to move their planned Muslim community center farther away from Ground Zero, he would "look into trying to provide them with the state property they would need."

At a press conference today, Paterson said that while he supports the Cordoba House and thinks the developers have a right to build it at the proposed site, he is "very sensitive to the desire of those who are adamant against it to see something else worked out."

TPM

Well there is a great site 1/2 mile away, and closer to where I live, that is scheduled for a three district 17 story garbage plant...  It is a large plot with unobstructed river views...  I would love to have the community center there instead of the garbage plant.

The Smoking Gun has dug up some entertaining testimony from the trial of David Kernell, the 22 year-old hacker convicted of breaking in to then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's email in 2008.

Specifically, it's the testimony of Christopher 'Moot' Poole, founder and administrator of 4Chan, the image board on which Palin's password was posted.

Q. Is there a certain language that is commonly used for users of 4chan?

A. In what sense?

Q. Certain terms have a meaning unique to 4chan?

A. Yes.

Q. Like "OP," what is "OP"?

A. OP means original poster.

-----------

Q. And is there any significance to "new fags"?

A. That is the term used to describe new users to the site.

Q. What about "b-tard"?

A. It's a term that users of the b random board use for themselves.

Q. What about "troll"?

A. Troublemaker.

--------------

Q. And what about "peeps"?

A. People.

Q. "Rickroll"?

A. Rickroll is a meme or Internet kind of trend that started on 4chan where users -- it's basically a bait and switch. Users link you to a video of Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up.

Q. And the term "rickroll", you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going to be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. He was some kind of singer?

A. Yes.

Q. It's a joke?

NEW YORK -- New York City's transit agency has approved a bus advertisement that depicts a plane flying toward the World Trade Center's towers as they burn along with a rendering of a proposed mosque near ground zero.
The ad was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization that opposes radical Islamic influence in the United States. The group's executive director says she doesn't find the ad offensive.

msnbc

Health authorities in China have ordered an investigation into claims that a batch of powdered baby milk has caused children as young as four months old to grow breasts.

leggings, plaid shirts, ripped jeans, blazers, and bangles.

Dear god, I wish I hadn't looked, but I swear I've seen this before, and it ain't pretty.  I'm looking at you 1991.  Glad this time I'm old enough to avoid you entirely.