news blog 521 items | updated Feb 10 2012

The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway, giving conservatives an opportunity to compare American flag lapel pins, laugh at their own teleprompter jokes and sprinkle in a touch of hate and intolerance. 

I didn't set out today to do anything about CPAC, but after seeing some of what's coming out of this meeting of the conservative minds I couldn't resist pulling together some of the most inane things that were actually said out loud and into microphones by people at the conference.

To be clear, it can sometimes be difficult to parse which quotes by conservatives are real and which are made up by the funny folks on the Internet, but I've done my best here to keep fiction from reality -- no matter how unbelievable that reality might be...

Each week, we post a buzzworthy image and ask you -- the creative minds of our community -- to submit the perfect caption. We'll pick our three favorites and put them up for a vote on Current's Facebook page on Monday afternoon. The top-voted caption will be featured on the current.com home page Tuesday afternoon.

The Republican party has never had much of a reputation for being environmentally friendly. But the news from The New York Times of a resolution against a sustainable development measure from the U.N. goes even further.

A look at some stories on the environmental front that caught our attention this past week...

Spurring energy-friendly products is also being hampered by negative attention on Solyndra, a solar energy company which went bankrupt after getting a $528 million loan guarantee. Over the last few months, Republicans in Congress have been sounding the trumpets that there was something wrong about the way the Obama administration invested in the company. But regardless of whether any ethics were breached in the loan guarantee, the negative attention on the company has chilled funding in the solar energy sector. Republicans say it should be up to private venture capitalists to make these types of environmentally-positive energy bets, but according to a report by NPR, both the federal government and VCs are now steering clear in the wake of Solyndra.

By Michael Grabell / ProPublica

This story was adapted from "Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History," which will be published Tuesday by PublicAffairs.

A common criticism of President Obama's $800 billion stimulus package has been that it failed to produce anything 2013 that while the New Deal built bridges and dams, all the stimulus did was fill some potholes and create temporary jobs.

This week, the race for the GOP nomination tightened as Mitt Romney won by double digits in Florida and received the nod from Donald Trump as the contest moves to Nevada for Saturday's caucus. And unrest in Egypt and Syria continued to plague the Middle East. Get caught up with The Week in Photos:

LINK: http://current.com/photo-galleries/the-week-in-photos/020312

Catch up on news from around the globe as we take you around the world in eight links. This week: riots in Egypt, famine over in Somalia and an icy winter in Europe.

UPDATE, Feb. 7: We will have a much better idea of how much longer Newt Gingrich will be in the race after today's primary caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. But if this week's winning caption is any indication, Herman Cain may actually be the biggest loser.

Your top pick:

"If I win, I'll make you ambassador to the moon!" -- by Kenneth Hinegardner

* * * 

Factory farmed livestock are routinely administered antibiotics to keep them from becoming sick. But the daily dosing has some side effects, including the rise of drug-resistant superbugs in people. Salon reports on this story that has been slipping under the radar.

We're taking a look at some of the stories affecting our planet. Here's some news you shouldn't miss.

China reports it saved drinking water for tens of millions from contamination
Chinese officials report containing a potential catastrophe by halting the spread of poisonous cadmium flowing through the Longjiang River. The word from local media is that officials were able to dilute the toxic metal which threatened drinking water for tens of millions of people. Can the reports be trusted that the disaster, stemming from a leak from a mining company in Guangxi, is under control? Hard to say, but in another report from The New York Times this week, Chinese officials are said to be struggling now that the “edifice of environmental propaganda is collapsing.” That story dealt with denials about urban air pollution.

Catch up on news from around the globe as we take you around the world in eight links. This week: a building collapse in Brazil, ACTA protests in Poland and the Year of the Dragon begins.

UPDATE, Jan. 31: We won't know for sure if Mitt holds on to his lead in Florida, but at least we know who won this week's top voted caption:

"Can someone please do me a favor and wind me up? I've appeared to have stopped working." -- maasanova

In a piece of news that has gone largely unnoticed, American Banker reported that JPMorgan Chase quietly halted suits to collect consumer debt. The move comes after a few defeats in state courts and whistle-blower allegations that the company falsely overstated balances on delinquent accounts that it sold to third-party agencies.

August Walter Jr., who was tasked with helping lead BP’s plan to cleanup an oil spill off the Gulf Coast, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit that accuses BP of falsifying data to make it look like Mississippi beaches were cleaner than they actually were. The plaintiff says he was fired from his job after telling federal authorities that BP’s $14 billion cleanup efforts had shirked responsibilities on oil debris that had drifted to the coast. The allegedly falsified data was used to convince an assessment team that certain beach areas had been sufficiently “cleaned.” A BP spokesperson says that Walter’s claims are without merit.

by Lena Groeger ProPublica, Jan. 24, 2012, 5:02 p.m.

In response to growing pressure from voters and competitors, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released 550 pages of tax returns [1] Tuesday, covering two years of income. As one of the richest men ever to run for President, Romney's filings are enormously complex, and the subject of close scrutiny. News organizations are making their way through the returns. Here's our guide to where to look to make sense of the numbers.

By Eriq Gardner
current.com 

Some things change and some things won't ever.

When President Obama gave the 2012 State of the Union speech Tuesday night, he spoke proudly about "America," talked about reclaiming the "American" way, and expressed the wish to help "Americans" throughout the country. Patriotic fervor is a hallmark of State of the Union addresses. Obama is not the first and won't be the last U.S. president to speak repeatedly about what makes this country great.

But as our word-cloud visualization below shows, "jobs" was the top issue expressed by President Obama on Tuesday. No other issue came up as frequently during the speech, and the leader of this nation cited "jobs" more times in this year's speech than in State of the Union addresses from years past. Up first is a look at the words most used in tonight's speech (and for a larger version, click it).

Having trouble seeing the tweets? Click here.

Clearly, the lasting image of the night:

By Eriq Gardner
current.com 

Tonight, President Barack Obama delivers the fourth and last State of the Union in his first term. The speech is being delivered amid intense partisan bickering and an economy that might be improving, but still is a long ways off from delivering anything near equality and stability for the country’s 300-plus million citizens.

What to expect? No doubt the rhetoric will be sharp, and the pomp and grandeur high. Will it be powerful as well? Lyndon B. Johnson, who delivered the first SOTU in primetime, once complained that his speechwriters had given him “50 pages of vomit.” We’ll trust Obama’s keen sense of oratory won’t let that happen. Will it be succinct? Jimmy Carter’s last SOTU was 33,667 words long and Bill Clinton once droned on for nearly an hour-and-a-half. Unfortunately, in past SOTUs, Obama has shared the tendencies by his Democratic predecessors to go long. Will it be entertaining? Harry Truman in 1947 was the first one to give his SOTU on television, and unfortunately, the production values haven’t greatly improved since then.

But there’s still reason to tune into Obama’s big speech tonight for the chance it will be memorable.

Here are some big things to watch tonight:

Last week, the Internet launched into activism to defeat SOPA and PIPA, bills which threatened the way the Web works. But even with SOPA and PIPA shelved, for now, it isn't time to rest easy as a treaty that could seriously impair the Internet is in the works.