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Newt: iPad owner and satisfied customer

Former House Speaker and self-described tortoise Newt Gingrich stepped into an Apple store, today. The one-time Republican presidential candidate entered the Georgetown Apple store with a broken iPad and left with satisfaction of great times and good service from the Genius Bar. Thanking his Apple geniuses Jim and Ryan, Newt tweeted:

Classy.

We miss you Newt. Come back soon.

Rex Features/AP images

File

Jenna Jameson, the former "Queen of Porn",  is really looking forward to having a Republican back in the White House. The one-time porn star is hoping that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney can beat President Obama this November and usher in a new era of Republican policies that will be good for people like her (i.e. rich people).

While celebrating the 8th anniversary of a strip club in San Francisco (yes, really), Jameson told a CBS reporter, "I'm very looking forward to having a Republican back office. " This endorsement of Romney is a shift from her 2008 endorsement of then Senator Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary - proving that Mitt Romney's five point plan and support of tax cuts for the top 1% does have its appeal.

Although she has appeared in PETA ads and supported Clinton four years ago, Jameson explained, "When you're rich you want a Republican in office."

Charles Krupa/AP Photo

President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara (file)

Former President George H.W. Bush, now 88, has something to say to those who are unwilling to compromise — specifically to Grover Norquist and those who sign his tax pledge. 

"The rigidity of those pledges is something I don't like," the former president said in an interview with PARADE. "The circumstances change and you can't be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. It's — who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?"

At this point, former first lady Barbara Bush interjected, "I think he ought to go back to Alaska [laughs]." This being a reference to a comment she made about Sarah Palin in 2010.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, Bush made a very bold campaign pledge not to raise taxes on the American people. Once he was elected, however, Bush 41 made the choice of compromising with the Democratic-controlled Congress in order to tackle the country's deficit. In doing so, the president broke his famous campaign pledge and alienated members of the Republican party establishment. 

Mrs. Bush summed up their relationship as that of father and son saying, "I think he thinks of George as the father he never had. Truthfully. I mean that as a compliment. He's been very thoughtful about calling and he's a good fellow." 

Associated Press J.Scott Applewhite

File.

It's official: the Department of Justice will not prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress. In a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Deputy Attorney General James Cole  wrote, "we will not prosecute an executive branch official under the contempt of Congress statute for withholding subpoenaed documents pursuant to a presidential assertion of executive privilege."  

The letter comes less than 24 hours after members of the House of Representatives voted to hold the Attorney General in contempt over his refusal to turn over documents related to the "Fast and Furious" gun running operation. Cole's letter goes on to cite two other instances (first in the Reagan and later the George W. Bush administrations) in which the DOJ took a similar position, arguing that the contempt statue doesn't apply to the president's claim of executive privilege.

In refusing to prosecute his boss, Cole states Holder's action, "does not constitute a crime." While the Justice Department won't be sending this case to the grand jury, Republicans (and a few Democrats) in the House have the opportunity to file a civil suit against Holder.

All of this comes on the heels of President Obama's Supreme Court victory on healthcare. The timing of Holder's contempt vote leads some to argue that this was a political move spearheaded by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. This also comes two days after Fortune Magazine published a blistering article on the Fast and Furious operation, claiming that members of the GOP are blowing the gun running operation out of proportion.

In either case, it's not surprising that the DOJ will not prosecute Holder. There's obvious precedent and, really, who wants to make their boss angry by taking them to court?   

President Obama did something when he cracked a joke about Kevin Youkilis being traded to the Chicago White Sox at a fundraiser in Boston. At the close of his speech yesterday, the President of the United States looked into a crowd of Boston Red Sox fans and stated, "Thank you for Youkilis." It was then that the boos started (although some have suggested it could have been chants of "YOUK" for Youkilis.) Anyway, as the President laughed it off he jokingly said Youkilis would, "have to change the color of his Sox." When the booing continued, he smiled and said, "I didn't think I'd get any boos out of here." Dude, really? Have you ever met a Red Sox fan?

The Red Sox aren't exactly having the best season. They're currently six and a half games back in the AL East — making them and the Toronto Blue Jays the worst teams in their division. There are several possible reasons for this (cough Bobby Valentine cough). Not only that but the departure of Kevin Youkilis — Gold Glove award winner, Hank Aaron award winner and two time World Series champion — morale among fans isn't very high.

The Romney campaign has tried to take advantage of the situation. In an email, the campaign called out the president for kicking Red Sox fans while they're down: "The Red Sox have suffered many setbacks over the years — the Babe Ruth trade, the ball through Buckner's legs,  the Bucky Dent home run. Maybe the President should have congratulated the team for  winning  the World Series in 2004 and 2007. Instead, he chose to mock them for trading away one of its favorite players at a time when the team is struggling."

Responding to the dustup over the president's remarks, Press Secretary Jay Carney said eariler today, "There has been some really silly reporting about the president's remarks regarding Kevin Youkilis last night. It is highly commendable, in my view as a Red Sox fan, that the president has always refused to pander on sports. He is a White Sox fan, he owns his fandom of the White Sox." 

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mitt Romney at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday.

Surrogates are supposed be your cheerleaders — the men and women who go out there and support you by lending their name to your cause. However, I'm not sure what we've seen from these so-called surrogates this year can qualify as support. Sure, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have able champions (Michelle Obama and Ann Romney being two of the best), but lately it seems we've seen gaffe after gaffe from a variety of places. Why is this? It's easy to point at former rivals of Mitt Romney and say, 'Well [insert X name here] was a former a rival and is still stinging from their loss' (lookin' at you Newt Gingrich).

The fact is that there will always be hurt feelings left over from a bitterly fought primary season — just look at the 2008 primary race between then Senator Obama and then Senator Clinton. The difference between that campaign and this one is that those two came together once the choice of the nominee was clear, and the current Secretary of State never missed a beat, throwing her political and fundraising skills behind Obama. This season, however, has seen a lot of surrogates (in particular, Mitt Romney's) go on cable news or Sunday morning shows and really blow the message they were supposed to deliver. Below are a list of surrogates who have done a less than stellar job in support of their nominee, Mitt Romney.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump led a campaign last summer to prove President Obama wasn't born in this country. It failed spectacularly because Obama got The Donald pretty good at the White House Correspondents Dinner and then he got Osama bin Laden really good a day later. After that Trump kept quiet. Now that he's holding fundraisers for Romney in Las Vegas, however, he's been doubling down on the birther attacks. With these rants, he managed to steal the spotlight from Mitt Romney on the same day the candidate clinched the GOP nomination. Not cool. Trump reminds me of a crazy uncle you invite to your birthday party — he's supposed to be there for you, but all he can talk about is how it was really him who invented the iPad. Nobody listened to that crazy uncle then. Nobody is listening to Donald Trump now. 

What can you say about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich that hasn't already been said? He's an ideas guy, he speaks his mind regardless of the consequences and he's an amazing public speaker. He also holds grudges and has an ego so large that it's kind of sad to think that he won't be the one debating President Obama in the fall. As for his support of his current... err... formal rival Mitt Romney, it's going to be a tough sell for Newt to convince the American people that he feels anything but disdain for the former Massachusetts Governor.

Michele Bachmann

Last month saw the return of the Tea Party Queen Michele Bachmann. (NOTE: "Tea Party Queen" is also my professional wrestling name). Anyway...where were we? Oh yeah. Michele Bachmann: former presidential candidate and Mitt Romney rival. During the primary Congresswoman Bachmann slammed Mitt Romney for his Massachusetts health care plan and claimed, several times, that there was no way Mitt Romney could beat Barack Obama. During debates, on the trail in Iowa, and on the Sunday morning shows, Bachmann laid into Romney on how his record didn't survive the "falling off the chair laughing test." Seeing as how she was the first to drop out after Iowa, it's no surprise she became one of the first former presidential candidates to come out in favor of Mittens. She stood side by side with Romney and gave him the greatest praise she could muster, putting her hands in the air to weigh the options: "President Barack Obama or President Mitt Romney." It's clear she thinks Romney is a better than Barack Obama. It's clear she thinks everyone else is, too.

Eric Fehrnstrom
We have Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, for these awesome etch-a-sketch memes. I can't imagine anyone in the campaign thanking him, though. Not after he went on CNN and claimed that everything Mitt Romney said during the primary would be wiped clean once the general election came along. The image of Mitt Romney the flip-flopper continues.

Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani has been doing a lot for Willard lately. Last month, the two appeared together in the completely unpolitical setting of a New York City firehouse to mark the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. This weekend, "America's Mayor" went on CNN and threw his support behind his friend. By "threw" I of course mean he took the back of his hand and slapped Romney across the face. When asked to explain his criticism of Romney's job creation record, Mr. Giuliani opened his eyes so wide I thought he was going to turn green and tear my TV apart. What he said is considered "support" for Mitt Romney's record on job creation...I guess. 

SPECIAL MENTION!
Cory Booker: Former Obama surrogate
I love bipartisanship. This country really, really, needs it right now. I also dislike negative advertisements (I don't care how many times people say it works — promoting a positive message is always better than a negative one. What can I say? I'm an optimist.)

Here's the thing, trying to fly above the fray and criticize your own party for negative advertising during a very tight election season isn't going to win you any points with anybody except your opponents. Cory Booker, hero Mayor of Newark, did just that on Meet The Press a few weeks back, saying that the negative attacks coming from both sides "nauseated" him. It was then that Booker, heroically managing to keep his lunch down, continued to talk about how he didn't want to attack private equity, which is the profession Mitt Romney used to work in and is the basis for many of the Obama campaign's negative attack ads. Look, here's the deal, I hate negative campaigning as well — I watch a lot of it for a living — but when your job is to go out and give your full support for the president it's probably best not to criticize his campaign's strategy. He tried to clean it up, but I mean come on dude, really? 

Nobody's perfect. We can't expect these surrogates to go out there and stick to the party line all the time. But this year it seems like the ego, ambition and bitter feelings toward the nominee are getting in the way of getting Romney elected. Again, there will always be bitter feelings left over after a tough primary. I'm sure those high profile speeches that both Hillary and Bill Clinton gave at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2008 weren't the easiest speeches to give. But they gave them. Brilliantly. Can anyone really imagine Newt Gingrich swallowing his pride long enough to deliver a warm spirited endorsement of Mitt Romney at the RNC in a few months? He very well might, but if the last few weeks have been any indication, it's going to be tougher for him than it was for Hillary Clinton.  

Score one for corporate America. This morning at 8:56am the SpaceX Dragon, a privately owned space module, became the first of its kind to dock with the International Space Station. This is the first step in NASA's latest strategy (due to budget cuts) that will allow private companies to handle orbital and "routine" operations. It is NASA's goal to focus on larger projects, such as Mars exploration, while the private sector focuses on bringing supplies to and from the station without having to rely on the Russian Soyuz rocket.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the head of SpaceX — PayPal creator Elon Musk — is very pleased with this morning's historical event. He even went so far as to project that they will be able to transport astronauts within the next three or four years. SpaceX, which is short for Space Explorations Technologies Corp., is the first among several private companies that are trying to buy their way into the space race since the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis last July.  

If all goes well the Dragon will remain docked in orbit until next Thursday when it will be released and return to earth carrying experiments from the station.

Earlier this afternoon, first lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address at Virginia Tech. Standing before thousands of graduating college seniors in Blacksburg, Virginia, Mrs. Obama told the Class of 2012 to stay true to themselves saying, "It is up to each of us to define ourselves." She also went on to note the resilient nature of the school after violent events happened on campus, including the 2007 shooting spree that took the lives of 33 people.

Included in the two-minute clip above is a message of perseverance to the graduates — listing the attributes that make the land-grant university one of the best schools in the country. Despite its violent past, the first lady urged the graduates of Virginia Tech to "carry their Hokie pride with them for the rest of their lives."

K.C. Alfred/Zuma Press

Daniel Chong (file)

Anyone who "celebrates" the 420 holiday will most likely tell you the last thing they want is to be arrested. Anyone who actually is arrested might tell you the last thing they want is to be forgotten in a cell for five days. That's exactly what happened to 23-year-old UCSD student Daniel Chong last month after he was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents on April 21, a day after what considered to be the "pot smoker's holiday."

Chong says he went to hang out and smoke marijuana with friends on the night of April 20. The next day, DEA agents raided the home and found 18,000 ecstasy pills and various weapons, promptly arresting Chong and eight other suspects. After they were processed at DEA headquarters, seven of the nine suspects were taken to a county prison and one other was released. That left Chong alone in a 5-by-10-foot cell. Where he remained. For five days.

The UCSD student told the local NBC affiliate that he was left for those five days without food or water and allegedly had to drink his own urine to survive.  According to his attorney, Gene Ireldale, when Chong was finally discovered he was close to kidney failure and spent an additional five days in the hospital — three of them in an intensive care unit. The acting Special Agent in charge for the DEA issued a statement saying, "I extend my deepest apologies [to] the young man and want to express that this event is not indicative of the high standards that I hold my employees to." 

As for his experience in the holding cell (hands still handcuffed behind him), Chong said he had kicked the door several times in order to get someone's attention but no one answered. Thinking he was going insane, he said, "I didn't care if I died."

DEA officials are investigating the incident and Senator Barbara Boxer has called on the Justice Department to look into what happened. In the meantime, Chong has filed a $20 million claim against the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

One World Trade Center changing the shape of the New York City skyline (file).

Today, a day before the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, One World Trade Center became the tallest building in New York City.  Nearly 11 years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001,  One World Trade Center inched it's way past the Empire State Building when a column on the 100th floor was installed earlier today.

When completed, One World Trade Center will have a total of 104 floors, and be 1,776 feet high including the antenna.  At that height (antenna included) the office building will be taller than the Willis Tower in Chicago, making it the tallest building in the United States. After years spent in legal purgatory, the 9/11 memorial project and new office skyscraper are finally reaching their completion. Currently, progess at the site has seen one floor built per week. The building will have 69 floors dedicated to office space and will include an observation deck overlooking lower Manhattan.

Today's milestone was marked quietly as construction at the site continues, but with the memorial site including the two reflecting pools in the footprint of the original Twin Towers now open to the public - the constant construction at the site of the worst terrorist attack in this country's history is finally coming to an end. One World Trade Center is expected to open in the Spring of 2013.

U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images

Response crews battling the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21, 2010 near New Orleans, Louisiana.

Two years after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing the worst environmental disaster in our country's history, the Justice Department has announced they've made their first arrest. Drilling engineer Kurt Mix was charged with obstruction of justice after he allegedly deleted over 300 text messages with a BP supervisor.

The deleted texts, according to court documents, contain information regarding the actual amount of oil that was spilling endlessly into the Gulf of Mexico during the Spring and Summer of 2010. Originally, officials stated the damaged rig was spilling 5,000 barrels per day, but that number, according to these texts, was actually closer to 15,000 barrels. This is significant because BP's plan for stopping the oil spill, called "Top Kill" at the time, would only work if the flow rate of oil was less than 15,000 barrels. If found guilty, Mix could face up to 20 years in federal prison.

It's hard for anyone to argue that the "Top Kill" plan was a success. Yes, the gushing oil was stopped, but anyone who owned a TV or a computer with Internet access saw the live feed of non-stop oil spewing into the Gulf from the bottom of the sea from April to July 2010. It's doubtful that Kurt Mix will be the only person charged. Eleven people died, the economy of the Gulf states took a massive hit and the ecosystem has been changed dramatically. No charges or reimbursements can change that. The Deepwater Horizon disaster was just that — a disaster and the clean-up isn't over yet.