[Fox says] the Navy has “built a wide range of potential options to give the president” and is “ready today” to confront any hostile action by Tehran.

He did not outline specifically how the Navy might answer an Iranian strike or an effort to shut the entrance to the Persian Gulf, though any response would likely involve the two U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships cruising the waters off Iran.

“We’ve developed very precise and lethal weapons that are very effective, and we’re prepared,” Fox said. “We’re just ready for any contingency.”

The detour to a state that is rich in Republican donors but does not hold its primary until June comes during a third week in which Mr. Gingrich will make limited public appearances, and it comes ahead of the 10 contests on “Super Tuesday,” March 6, which looks increasingly like a make-or-break date for Mr. Gingrich’s struggling campaign.

He will be largely out of sight for part of this week, just as he was in the days before last week’s contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, which Rick Santorum won, and before the Feb. 4 caucuses in Nevada, which Mitt Romney won. Even as he sacrifices time in front of voters, his prospects of raising the cash he needs are uncertain.

“Unless your name is Mitt Romney, raising money in this political environment is like trying to hit a bullet with another bullet while riding a horse,” said Ron Nehring, a former chairman of the California Republican Party.

The 18-year-old was taken by ambulance to the hospital around 10:30 a.m. Sunday from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where her mother was found dead Saturday afternoon.

Brown had accompanied her mother to several pre-Grammy events last week.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for sharing our sister Whitney with us.

Today our thoughts are with her mother, her daughter, and all of her loved ones.

And although she is gone too soon, we remain truly blessed to have been touched by her beautiful spirit and to have her lasting legacy of music to cherish and share forever.

Amen

Diane Aulger was about two weeks from her delivery date when she and her husband decided there was no time to wait: Mark Aulger had only days to live, and he wanted to see his child.

Diane Aulger had her labor induced and gave birth to their daughter Jan. 18. When tiny Savannah was placed in his arms, Mark Aulger “cried, and he just looked very sad,” his wife said. He died five days later from complications related to his cancer treatment.

“He seems, around conservatives, to be like a well-meaning, earnest tourist in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. And he’s trying hard to connect with them and he says, ‘My father grew up poor.’ Please.”

“First it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, now, the magnificent Whitney Houston,” Bennett observed. “I’d like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs.”

“You have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought,” Santorum said. “We’ve heard all sorts of things.”

Romney’s campaign shot back, pointing out that Romney on Saturday had also won the Maine caucuses and a separate, national telephone poll conducted by CPAC.

“Rick Santorum has a history of making statements that aren’t grounded in the truth,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an email. “Conservative voters recognize that in order to change Washington, we need someone who isn’t a creature of Washington.”

And Ron Paul campaign manager John Tate accuses Romney of dirty tricks in Maine.

In a dramatic break from what head been an informal alliance with Mitt Romney’s campaign for president, Ron Paul’s campaign manager John Tate dispatched a furious email to supporters last night, accusing Romney allies of dirty tricks in the Maine caucuses

Republicans aren’t playing nice with each other.

Gabriel Sherman wrote an article last week detailing how Wall Street is so upset at the Obama Administration for financial reform resulting lower bonuses.  Matt Taibbi decimates Sherman’s article, first by pointing out that uncertainty in Europe is far more to blame than financial regulation for lower bonuses and then arguing that even if the government was responsible, who cares?

The financial services industry went from having a 19 percent share of America’s corporate profits decades ago to having a 41 percent share in recent years. That doesn’t mean bankers ever represented anywhere near 41 percent of America’s labor value. It just means they’ve managed to make themselves horrifically overpaid relative to their counterparts in the rest of the economy.

A banker’s job is to be a prudent and dependable steward of other peoples’ money – being worthy of our trust in that area is the entire justification for their traditionally high compensation.

Yet these people have failed so spectacularly at that job in the last fifteen years that they’re lucky that God himself didn’t come down to earth at bonus time this year, angrily boot their asses out of those new condos, and command those Zagat-reading girlfriends of theirs to start getting acquainted with the McDonalds value meal lineup. They should be glad they’re still getting anything at all, not whining to New York magazine.