Audie Cornish talks to our regular political commentators — E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of the New York Times — about the Republican candidate's taxes and next week's primaries in Michigan and Arizona.
A federal appeals court has ruled for the first time that a suspect in a child porn case does not need to unlock his thoroughly-scrambled computer hard drives because it would violate his Fifth Amendment rights. That ruling conflicts with two other cases, including one this week where a Denver-based appeals court says a Romanian immigrant needs to turn over an unencrypted version of her laptop hard drive to help authorities pursue a mortgage fraud case.
Prospective voters listen to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, Feb. 7, 2012, at the Price Hill Chili Restaurant in Cincinnati.
Tuesday is the next big day for Republicans in choosing their presidential nominee, with primaries in Michigan and Arizona.
Then there's an even bigger day a week later: March 6 is this year's Super Tuesday, when 10 states hold primaries and caucuses. Possibly the most consequential one will be in the swing state of Ohio. It has 66 delegates at stake, and it will also be a key battleground in November.
It begins with a political leader or a businessman who hits on a powerful new idea, one that puts him miles ahead of everyone else. It could be a new innovation, like the financial derivative, or a new way of doing business, like Microsoft selling software. It could be something destructive, like Hitler's blitzkrieg, which ran over France in two months. No matter the specifics, it leaves everyone else flat-footed and looking foolish.
Our man (it's usually a man) is now indestructible and untouchable. With nothing in his way, he is, for a while, an irresistible force.
Mitt Romney says his experience in private equity taking over troubled companies would make him a good manager of America's economy. So we're reporting on companies that Bain Capital bought while Romney was in charge of the firm. This morning, we told the story of one that went bust. Here's the story of one that succeeded.
