Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in Nevada for the Republican primary caucuses, has scheduled a mysterious press conference in Las Vegas later tonight. Active candidates typically hold a rally regardless of voting results; Mr. Gingrich's presser has prompted The New York Times to report via its political blog The Caucus that "rumors have been flying" in Nevada that Mr. Gingrich will cease his run for the presidency.

Those rumors may be unfounded--embedded journalists following the campaign have already a received preliminary schedule of appearances Mr. Gingrich will make in upcoming caucus states such as Colorado and Ohio.

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to a Super PAC supporting the Gingrich campaign, is based in Las Vegas as well, so Gingrich could simply be acknowledging a major donor's support. The upshot is no one really knows what the former Speaker is up to, which is perhaps just the way he likes it.

UPDATE: In his press conference after Mitt Romney was declared winner of the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Gingrich declared he was the only real conservative seeking the nomination and definitely still in the running.

[NYTimes.com]

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is having a tough enough time with front-runner Mitt Romney surging in the polls prior to the upcoming Florida primary. Now he may also have to contend with pesky questions about a government probe into the overseas business affairs of Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who may be the financial savior of  Mr. Gingrich's campaign.

Mr. Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corporation has been under federal investigation since early 2011 by the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). ABC News reports that corporate documents contain allegations of bribing officials on the Chinese island of Macau.

A separate civil suit filed in Nevada in 2010 alleges Mr. Adelson ordered Steven Jacobs, the former C.E.O. of Las Vegas Sands Corp's Chinese affiliate, to stay quiet about alleged entanglements "with Chinese organized crime groups, known as Triads." Mr. Jacobs's suit characterized Adelson's demands as "repeated and outrageous." Mr. Jacobs also claimed Mr. Adelson wanted him to essentially manipulate Macau officials to assist company business interests in the region.

Mr. Adelson, a long-time backer of conservative causes and Republican candidates, has given as much as $10 million to "Winning Our Future," a Super PAC supporting Gingrich's presidential campaign.

Mr. Adelson has appeared unruffled by the investigation, stating publicly that the lawsuit was "not a serious case" and he was "1,000 percent positive" that once the smoke has cleared "there won't be any fire below it." He also told the Wall Street Journal that Mr. Jacobs was "fired for cause" and the ex-CEO's charges are "outright lies an fabrications" originating "in delusion."

The Gingrich campaign didn't respond ABC's requests for comment on the story.

[ABC]

"The NBC Legal Department has written a letter to the campaign asking for the removal of all NBC News material from their campaign ads," NBC News said in a statement to Politico, adding that a similar note had gone out to all other campaigns that had used NBC materials.

The clip shows Tom Brokaw's coverage of then-Speaker Gingrich's ethics charges.

Mr. Brokaw, speaking for himself, said, "I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad.  I do no want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."

Today Romney's camp told reporters they believe the ad falls within fair use standards and do not intend to take it down.

Old friends at their umpteenth reunion these past few months.

If you’re feeling withdrawal symptoms from reduced doses of Occupy Wall Street rabble-rousing (we hear they’re just hibernating), the success of last week’s SOPA blackout ought to cheer you up. Without going into the nitty-gritty of what this Stop Online Piracy Act was all about, let’s just say that the idea of blocking IP addresses and enforcing criminal laws for streaming copyrighted materials finally gave the Internet a reason to shut down for the day. While hundreds of kids complained that they couldn’t do their homework because Wikipedia was out protesting, the Congressmen behind SOPA withdrew their support within 24 hours of the January 18^th viral movement that was opposed by almost every major web service. If there’s one thing more powerful than an army of lobbyists, it’s an inbox full of angry Reddit users.

Not that we needed another reminder that we rely far too much on the Internet information, but when a deluge of reports started streaming in Saturday night that Penn State’s former football coach Joe Paterno had died of lung cancer, Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree plugged into a nuclear reactor. CBS and The Huffington Post also jumped the gun reporting the death of the beloved and controversial coach, who had been dismissed by the college swiftly last November after allegations of sexual abuse emerged against his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. While Coach Paterno did indeed pass away, he died Sunday, not Saturday. Which just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you read. Or maybe you can, but give it 24 hours just to be sure.

One news item that we just flat-out refuse to believe is the separation of Seal and Heidi Klum. Those two were our inspiration, as much for their Halloween costumes as for their happy partnership. You’d think that after seven years together the couple would want to stay mum on the messy details, but Seal has a new album to promote and hit the talk-show circuit to discuss his heartache less than 24 hours after the announcement was made. Hey, Soul 2 isn’t going to sell itself! Unless, of course, the album is just 40 minutes of “Kiss from a Rose” covers. (Now that we think about it, that’s not a bad idea; we can almost hear Joanna Newsom plucking on her harp, followed by Randy Newman crooning about graying towers, eyes that emit light, graveyards, and whatever hell else that song was about.)

And of course the nominations for the 84^th annual Academy Awards are in, and what do you know? Transformers: Dark of the Moon was nominated for as many awards as Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Michael Bay’s third movie based on action figures also grossed over a billion dollars more than Malick’s meditation on life and death, but that’s to be expected. Robots sell: lush landscapes serving as metaphors for childhood don’t.

The nominations also fly in the face of theories espoused by the late Christopher Hitchens and former Letterman comedy booker Eddie Brill; it appears that women are, in fact, funny. Bridesmaids, last year’s frontrunner in the hysterical-to-watch but infuriating-to-talk-about category, snagged a Best Original Screenplay nod for Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, and a Best Supporting Actress accolade for Melissa McCarthy. Hopefully these Oscar contenders don’t inspire another false dichotomy involving ovaries and funny bones ... or even worse, golf-claps for women triumphantly breaking through the gender barrier and being allowed to poop in sinks for laughs.

After all, isn’t it time we find something new to fight with our ideologically opposed families about? Certainly those Republican debates make for great conversation fodder. Newt Gingrich became a hero in South Carolina for refusing to answer John King’s question about his ex-wife’s claims that he asked for an open marriage while she was on her hospital bed, helping him to sweep up 40% of the votes in the state. (If only Mitt Romney could have someone leak to the press the existence of a few extra heretofore unknown wives; at this point it might help him pick up some extra points.) In other unsurprising news, Rick Santorum told Piers Morgan on Friday that he would urge his daughter not to get an abortion even if she was raped, and he’s predictably vehement about outlawing gay marriage. And Ron Paul, the only person on the stage with any military or medical experience, continues to have to fight to get a word in edgewise during questions about health or international relations.

It’s all sort of ridiculous, and dare we say funny. But not in a Bridesmaids sort of way. More a laugh-to-keep-from-crying sort of way. Just don’t bring up Heidi and Seal again, or we may lose it.

Beyonce wearing Babyonce. (Getty)

How can you tell 2012 has begun with a bang? Just log onto Twitter: the hot topics since Jan. 1 are a Venn diagram of American life—from pop culture to politics, to sports and even race relations. It’s beginning to feel an awful lot like looking into a microcosm not too dissimilar to those sea monkey kits we cried enough about to have Mom and Dad buy one, only to have it sitting in garage next to whatever Santa had brought us the year before. In fact, Twitter has morphed into This American Life. Well, again, for sea monkeys. At least there’s a community spirit in the barrage of 140-character thought bubblettes: it’s one of the few times that you’ll find New Yorkers venturing outside their insular world and joining in the national dialogue ­… even if it’s only online and it turns out that our sea monkeys are just brine shrimp with great marketing.

So here was your week on Twitter.

Sunday night (New Year’s Day), 60 percent of your social network updates were composed of armchair commentary on the Giants-Cowboys game, while the remaining 40 percent debated whether Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich would win the Iowa caucus. (Here’s a scary fact: Tim Tebow had the second most tweets per second about his 80-yard overtime touchdown pass, with 9,420 messages going up almost simultaneously.) Then whatever percentage of people who didn’t care about football or politics traded gossip about whether or not Beyoncé had secretly given birth already.

Monday evening was a 50-50 split between up-to-the-nanosecond reactions to the Iowa polls and equally fervent up-to-the-nanosecond reactions to The Bachelor.

Wednesday saw Twittersphere explode with the triple-whammy of dark-horse Rick Santorum tying for first place in Iowa and two celebrities activating (or in one case, reactivating) their accounts. Kanye West, who quit the social networking service several months back, hopped back on to give the world the gift of whatever crazy thing popped into his head. For example, iPhones! “Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using there iPhones … why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test … like the real WORLD!!! Give kids the amount of test they would have in a year in one day but they have to get everything perfect …” Steve Jobs in iHeaven, are you listening?

Joy to the world’s satirists, who now have that much more material to work with. Also joining Twitter on humpday was media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who quickly amassed 100,000 followers in one day (but chose to follow only six people himself, one of whom was The Observer’s editor, who was promptly unfollowed the following day—possibly because Mr. Murdoch didn’t like being direct messaged questions by curious journalists). Currently his list counts him following four of his own publications, former Village Voice intern Esther Zuckerman, Mark Pincus, Radiolab’s Jad Aumrad, economist Nouriel Roubini, Peggy Noonan, Eric Cantor, Jack Dorsey, a director of MOBY as well as the accounts for AllThingsD and the conservative group Ricochet. Sea monkeys, all around. But maybe Mr. Murdoch is just in a shopping mood and looking to buy a possibly overvalued social networking platform. Again. (Remember MySpace? Barely? Us, neither.)

Thursday Nick Cannon tweeted that his kidneys were shutting down and he was going to the hospital. Jon Huntsman tried to win voters Obama-style by using “new media,’ creating a user account and hashtags for #jonhuntsman, but he really needs to update his social media strategists, since his use of the service could actually be considered spam in the eyes of the all-mighty Twitter. (That’s the beauty of the Twitter policy: it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a free iPad or four years in office. If you’re bothering account members while they’re trying to discuss Downtown Abbey’s latest episode, you’re out of there.)

Saturday, of course, was officially Beyoncé Baby Day, when, for several hours, we all believed the child’s name to be Ivy Blue Carter. Thankfully, Gwyneth Paltrow took to Twitter and corrected us: It was Blue Ivy, Twitter. Phew, thanks for clearing that up! Then Alec Baldwin pulled a Kanye and returned to his 140-character fan base just in time to promote the 30 Rock premiere this week.
And then it was Sunday again, a clean slate where we can look forward to a whole new week of Bachelor commentary, Tim Tebow touchdowns, outrage over Rick Santorum’s latest round of homophobic statements and hashtags for #stuffgirlssay.

God bless America, the Internet and sea monkeys.

Romney and Gingrich.

In this modern world of supposed transparency in all things, it’s sometimes hard to see the correlation between seemingly random events. Butterfly wings in Africa and all that. We couldn’t help but notice that the morning after Mayor Bloomberg condemned the Morning After pill (also known as Plan B, for Barack Obama, who wants all children to have lots of unprotected sex), the stock market started to rise again after some devastating trading on Friday and Monday. Could it be that a certain cadre of finance professionals, crazed over their inability to get back on the dating scene after leaving an incomprehensible, rambling messages to a stranger they met at the Philharmonic (check the Internet if you don’t know what we’re talking about) have decided that as long as they’re not having sex, no one in the world should either? They’re probably outliers, granted, but it could explain what we’re seeing here.

Elsewhere, the strangely similar circular winding of Paul Krugman’s Times op-eds about the euro and economic depression and Frank Bruni’s nostalgic ramblings betray a distinct possibility that Jill Abramson is hedging her bets, mixing and matching convolution with complexity and hoping that one or the other will appeal. (We find one more entertaining than the other, and we’re not gonna say which. But we’d like to suggest a co-bylined column, if only to marvel at the results.)

And speaking of bets, here’s a relationship we can explain: Newt Gingrich is suddenly winning this Republican primary, while Rick Perry has gone up a notch on the bonkers scale. Not only does the Texas governor’s new anti-gay “Strong” ad rip off the musical stylings of Aaron Copland, a gay composer, but he’s induced a heretofore unknown wild betting streak in Mormon candidate and ultimate Highlander foe, Mitt Romney. The bet was initiated after Governor Perry needled Mr. Romney about some chapters taken out of his second book, No Apologies and had Mr. Romney so hopping mad that he put $10k on the table to prove that he never suggested a national mandate on health care. The obvious result of this is that we all realize that underneath that cool exterior, Mitt Romney probably has more in common with than Rick Perry (a strong correlation, shall we say) than possible use of similar hair product, making Mr. Gingrich the only viable horse left in this race. And now per their previous arrangement, Mr. Gingrich would like to nominate Governor Perry to be his vice-presidential candidate. Butterfly wings, etc.

Boehner and Obama.

It would almost seem that the stars had finally aligned. After weeks of stalled talks and contentious meetings between House Republicans and Democrats that escalated into a public spat between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, a bill finally made it through the House and into the Senate, where it was speedily approved Tuesday morning thanks to backing from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid, just in time for the Cinderella-esque stroke-of-midnight deadline. The anthropomorphic bill from Schoolhouse Rock! had nothing on this drama.

So, the good news is that the country isn’t going to default on its debt obligations, which puts us at least one step ahead of Teresa Giudice from the Real Housewives of New Jersey. The bad news is that just as everyone was making nice and learning to compromise, Vice President Joe Biden made an offhand comment that Congress’s Tea Party Republicans “acted like terrorists” during negotiations, an ill-timed gaffe that not even the heartwarming sight of Gabrielle Giffords casting her first vote on the House floor after nearly getting assassinated in January could correct. Oh, Joe. To paraphrase The Princess Bride, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders—of which the most famous one is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and an only slightly less well-known one is: Never go in against the Tea Party when debt is on the line.

But at least the Dems aren’t buying Twitter followers, which is more than we can say for beleaguered 2012 hopeful Newt Gingrich. After bragging to the Marietta Daily Journal that, despite abysmal poll numbers, he has “six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined,” a former staffer submitted an anonymous tip to Gawker claiming that 80% of Mr. Gingrich’s 1.3 million followers are either inactive or dummy accounts (this figure was later amended by networking firm PeekYou to a whopping 92%). File this under #YouKnowYouWon’tWinTheNominationWhen …

Also stepping in it this week: Bronx principal Frank Borzellieri, a white supremacist who, despite having published racist essays, somehow worked at a largely black and Latino Catholic school for two years before anyone noticed; Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who did not do a very good job of apologizing to the vacation rental company’s disgruntled clients whose apartments were trashed (it’s O.K., now you can rent swaths of Lower East Side grass for $50/hour, courtesy of N.Y.C.’s own Timeshare Backyard!); British comedian Johnnie Marbles, who got sentenced to six weeks in jail for memorably pie-ing Rupert Murdoch during July’s News Corp. hearing in Parliament; and the M.T.A., which is responsible for screwing up repairs and slowing service, according to a joint report released last weekend by state and city comptrollers Thomas DiNapoli and John Liu. (And here we thought we were just getting a complimentary sauna with our subway fare.)

So perhaps we were too hasty about the whole “stellar alignment” thing. Turns out mercury is in retrograde, and not to get all Dionne Warwick on you, but something has seemed … off the past few days. First, in the midst of an oppressive heat wave, baseball-size hail rained down on Queens (adding insult to injury for the hapless Mets). Then, a peacock escaped from the Central Park zoo and began terrorizing (read: sitting calmly on) a Fifth Avenue window ledge. Not one but two adult men made the news for wearing inappropriate full-body animal costumes (but on the upside, only one, David Wu, was a member of Congress). Mark Zuckerberg added a creepy pregnancy feature to Facebook. And just as the debt ceiling legislation went through, assuaging Wall Street’s fears about market stability, the Dow dropped 265 points. Maybe it’s just our bad fortune.

With Mitt Romney leading the primary polls by a mile in New Hampshire, and Barack Obama in the White House, the former mayor and dud presidential candidate of 2008 wanted to talk about leadership.

"This president has been a failure in just about every single thing he's done," Mr. Giuliani told the 100 or so die-hard Republicans who had come for the Manchester G.O.P's annual Lincoln Reagan dinner. "He has ruined our economy. He is ruining our health care."

As he got rolling, the arms of his dark suit gesticulated wildly around his emerald green tie. He called attention to his bullet points with a prodding finger, leaned on the podium, stepped out from beside it, removed and replaced his glasses for comic effect and, at one point, raised a big outstretched palm and brought it crushing down upon our liberties.

On the president's handling of Libya, he said he had "never witnessed a worse case of presidential decision making. Or lack of decision making. Or conduct of foreign policy. Ever."

And he criticized the president for leaving it to Congress to hash out the health care bill, and for not leading enough on energy policy. "Because he's a follower," Mr. Giuliani said. He mocked a stutter to capture Mr. Obama's perceived hesitancy to implementing a no-fly zone, which, in Mr. Giuliani's telling, he did only after being convinced by France and the United Nations.

"No fly zones are r-r-r-r-eally, really hard," he said, to big laughs.

Four years after he abruptly pulled out of the nation's first primary, in favor of a big-state strategy that ended in disaster, Mr. Giuliani was back in New Hampshire, promoting himself as a potential presidential contender and aggressively trying to make amends.

For Mr. Giuliani--who last year passed on rumored runs for the governor's mansion and the Senate--any last hope for higher office would have to begin here, with the good people of the Granite State, where his profile as a moderate Republican with a reputation for leadership could still resonate, at least in theory.

Building some fresh buzz around the Giuliani brand would seem to be a no-lose proposition, what with his slew of self-titled businesses, but there are those who think Mr. Giuliani could do much better than that.

"If he runs, he stands a strong chance of either winning, or coming in second place," said Andrew Smith, who directs the Granite State Poll at the University of New Hampshire, where the latest survey has Mr. Giuliani running a distant second to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

On Friday night, Mr. Giuliani's pitch had a particular New Hampshire bent. He avoided mentioning the social issues on which he and the state's Republicans might diverge--in 2008, he had tried to split the difference with the G.O.P. base on abortion, gay marriage and gun control by casting them as issues best left to the states--and opted instead to praise the state's Tea Party and to portray resistance to the administration's health care bill as a "Live Free or Die" struggle against tyranny.

"I've always believed the emotion of the Tea Party is because it reaches into something deeper in an American's soul, which is, 'They're taking our freedom away,'" he told The Observer in a back room before the speech, in between posing for pictures with the evening's V.I.P.'s, who had paid $100 for the privilege.

"This president appears to want to have an America where Americans have less to say about their future, and the government has more to say about your future. And if you know New Hampshire, you know that's a very powerful theme in New Hampshire. Live free or die." He rocked back in his chair and let out a commanding laugh. "Wow, that's a powerful thought, right?"

Mr. Giuliani said he might even be capable of carrying the Tea Party mantle. "I think if the Tea Party looks at my record, they would find a lot of things to like," he said.

Asked if his disastrous showing last time--when he leveraged his front-runner status into one lone delegate--might hurt his chances, Mr. Giuliani shrugged.

"We'll see," he said. "We'll see. I don't know the answer to that yet. When I know the answer to that, I'll tell you--when I'm running or not running."

It's easy to forget, but in the fall of 2007, Mr. Giuliani was virtually tied with Mr. Romney in New Hampshire, and was constructing a campaign infrastructure that seemed capable of capturing the first primary state from its neighboring governor. But as Senator John McCain roared back to life and began to siphon away the state's moderate voters, Mr. Giuliani's campaign shifted its time and money to focus on the bigger prizes in Florida and California. He finished a distant fourth in New Hampshire, trailing even Mike Huckabee, with just 8 percent of the vote.

On Friday, it was clear the mayor had some making up to do.

"I'm not a political strategist, but I know those of us who wore our emotions on our sleeves really wanted him to stick around a little longer," said Donna Waterman, a 2008 campaign volunteer, who came to see Mr. Giuliani, gave him a big hug and said she would work for him again.

But Mr. Giuliani had been having problems even before he left.

"He kind of came in and went out," said Cliff Hurst, who chaired the local party in 2004 and 2005. "People didn't have a chance to have a conversation and shake hands. They're really used to being pampered and getting a lot of attention, and I'm not sure they got that."

"I saw him in person a couple of time and was just kind of stunned with some of the things he came in with, like two bodyguards in front of him walking through the Rotary Club, as if somebody was going to reach out and stab him with a butter knife," said Mr. Smith, the University of New Hampshire pollster.

"The emcee in both places was instructed to say, 'Now the mayor is very busy, can you please stay in your seats until he leaves,'" Mr. Smith recalled. "And the only reason those people are there in the first place is to go get their picture taken or get an autograph from the guy. So it's like every room he goes to, he ticks off everybody in the room."

Mr. Giuliani seemed to have learned his lesson.

"If everybody could start sitting down, the Nation's Mayor will stop by each table and say hello," said the emcee, as Mr. Giuliani worked his way across the room, shaking hands and touching shoulders.

"Wanna get a picture?" he asked one man, flashing his gargantuan grin.

In front of the cash bar near the door, a woman posed for a picture and implored him to stick around this time. He joked like he was walking out the door, before telling her, "I'm here for you, I'm not going anywhere."

Whatever hard feelings may linger about Mr. Giuliani's early departure in 2008, to the crowd that came out on Friday night, he will always be the man who led New York City through the depths of Sept. 11.

A few "Never Forget" pins were handed out at the door, and Mr. Giuliani paused from the podium to recognize one of them.

"Thank you for wearing it. I really appreciate that," he said. And he pointed to a middle table to acknowledge Tim Brown, a New York firefighter (and staunch Giuliani supporter) who responded to the attacks and is now suing to stop the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site.

But, for the man whose message Joe Biden once mocked as "a noun, a verb and 9/11," that was it. If the crowd had come expecting his hit song, it got a few new riffs instead.

Mr. Giuliani presumed, as usual, that his status as a leader during those days could go unstated.

"You kind of get the feeling that people think we're starved for leadership, and he wrote the
book on leadership, literally," said Wayne Semprini, the well-tanned former chairman of the state party, referring to the mayor's book Leadership, which was a best seller when it was published in 2002.

Mr. Semprini ran Mr. Giuliani's 2008 campaign in New Hampshire, and he talked up the possibilities for another run, even as the mayor's aides--including Jake Menges, a former City Hall hand who was traveling with him--went to great pains to emphasize that this was not a campaign trip, and that the boss was simply reconnecting with old friends to whom he still owes a debt of gratitude.

Of course, those old friends happen to be the same ones who could form the foundation for a future run.

On Thursday night, Mr. Semprini hosted a small, 10-person dinner at Ristorante Massimo, a swanky Italian restaurant in downtown Portsmouth, next to a seashell shop that offers psychic readings on the weekends.

The next morning, led by Mr. Semprini, the mayor and a modest entourage had breakfast in Greenland with Sean Mahoney, a former Republican committeeman, and then made their way down to Manchester to have lunch with the current mayor, Ted Gatsas, and a former mayor, Ray Wieczorek, who was one of his staunchest supporters four years ago.

He also met with Ovide Lamontagne, a Tea Party candidate who narrowly lost a Senate primary last year.

"It's hard not to be moved by the passion and the sincerity that he has," said Mr. Lamontagne, who has emerged as a conservative power broker to be courted by the primary candidates.

"I hope he gets in, I really do. I think he will be a wonderful spokesman for the particular approach he would take, which would be a little different than I think most other candidates would bring."

Whether Mr. Giuliani actually wants to do the gripping-and-grinning required of the Granite State is another matter.

On Friday afternoon, he and the entourage pulled in to Blowin' Smoke, an upstairs cigar lounge in a small shopping center in Bedford, where about 30 gentlemen were celebrating the end of the work week in high-backed leather chairs beneath big screen TVs.

Mr. Giuliani bought a medium-bodied Arturo Fuente, hand-rolled in the Dominican Republic, for $10.

"He didn't do a lot of shmoozing," said Tyler Shea, whose family owns the store. "In fact, a lot of the guys thought it was kind of cool, because he just went in the back and threw on Fox News and chilled out and smoked his stogie." (Later, when a Fox News microphone fell from the podium during his speech, Mr. Giuliani returned it to its perch. "Gotta make sure Fox stays up there. It's all we have!" he said.)

At one point, the mayor ducked into Blowin' Smoke's back office to do a phone interview. After an hour or so, he bought a selection of cigars and left. "It was great; we hope he comes back soon," Mr. Shea said.

Unlike some of his potential competitors for the nomination, with their lucrative Fox contracts, Mr. Giuliani wouldn't seem to have much to lose in making another run.

His consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, has scaled back considerably from its halcyon days in the mid-2000s. In 2007, the firm sold off its investment banking arm, Giuliani Capital Partners, and last year it vacated its flagship office at Times Square to share space with his law office, Giuliani & Bracewell, in midtown.

The firm's most ambitious partnership since Mr. Giuliani's election loss--a $500 million to $750 million real estate fund designed--tried to launch into the turbulent market of 2008, but failed to get off the ground.

And, while he is hardly at the apex of his early-2000s popularity, he remains a relatively sought-after public speaker. Last Monday, in Portland, Ore., he delivered his "Perseverance" speech to yet another Get Motivated! business conference, a speech he'll give again in Memphis on March 28, in Grand Rapids on April 14 and in St. Louis on April 27. ("Only $1.95 per person or send your entire office for only $9.95!" says the Web site.)

"If you told me 20 years ago, when he left making a million bucks a year as a lawyer--when a million bucks was a lot of money--and he had young kids, then it was a big deal going back into government," said a source close to him. "At this point in his life, he's got money, he doesn't have young kids anymore--it's a totally different world."

But while Mr. Giuliani ponders, his potential opponents are taking up residence.

Mitt Romney has long had a house in New Hampshire, where he owns a sizable lead on the other hopefuls.

The former House speaker Newt Gingrich was in Nashua, N.H., one day ahead of Mr. Giuliani, for a St. Patrick's Day breakfast and said he'll announce a decision in "five or six weeks."

On Monday, Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, became the first to form an exploratory committee, and he has been spotted of late in a black SUV with New Hampshire vanity plates that read T-PAW.

Last month, Mr. Pawlenty attended a house party thrown by Mr. Lamontagne, who is inviting all the prospective candidates to appear at his home, including Mr. Giuliani.

"I invited him to come and spoke with his people, and they're interested in doing that," Mr. Lamontagne said.

So far, no date has been set, and Mr. Giuliani is vague about when and what will ultimately determine his decision.

"An analysis and a feeling that you could make a big difference and that you have a good chance," he told The Observer. "But you have to come to that point, and I'm not at that point yet."

Just in case he gets to that point, Mr. Giuliani seems to be casting aspersions on the front-runner.

After his speech, he retreated to the same back room, where he cautioned reporters that Mr. Romney might have a difficult time explaining away his health care mandate in Massachusetts.

"For his own good, he's got to straighten this out. This will be a much bigger problem than people realize," he said. "I've had people tell me about it for the last two months, from here. Calling me and telling me. People who might be interested in supporting him. So I think he's got to deal with it. And if he isn't, he's not being realistic."

Mr. Giuliani said "the other candidates" would certainly be making an issue of it. "I'm not sure I'm running, so I'm just raising it."

But the criticism also comes more subtly, and without prompting.

Asked about the Tea Party's role in winnowing the field, Mr. Giuliani said it "will work really well" in New Hampshire, given the overlap between the Tea Party's core values and those of the state's electorate.

"Because a lot of New Hampshire is kind of a reaction to Massachusetts," he explained. "This is a state where people appreciate the fact there isn't an income tax. Many of them moved here from Massachusetts because they felt the government spent too much money, wasn't as efficient."

Mr. Giuliani stood for a few more photographs, then hustled off toward Boston for a charity event the next day.

"I leave very exhilarated," Mr. Giuliani said. "They were a lot of fun. They were terrific. But you know, if you're not running, they always treat you much nicer. You only find out when you actually start running."

rpillifant@observer.com

The impulse to violate the First Amendment rights of Muslims-as Muslims!-is so blatantly wrong and so radical, in the worst sense, that it almost defies outrage. Until now, nobody in a position of responsibility has sought to deny basic religious liberty to any group whose practices did not somehow trespass the law. Despite disagreements around the borders of religious freedom, the nation shared a consensus in favor of the concept-for everyone, with no exceptions.

It is a consensus that dates back to the first days following the Revolution, when George Washington wrote to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, guaranteeing the new republic's commitment to universal tolerance. The first president explained in that historic letter why that guarantee could only be categorical and indivisible:

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts."

In short, the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution, to those of any faith or no faith, belongs to all the people. Liberty is not bestowed on Muslims or Hindus or Jews by Christians, and cannot be rescinded from any group by another. Certainly, it is not subject to revocation by any seedy demagogue.

But now, the former speaker of the House and a former Republican vice presidential candidate, both of whom may well run for president in the next election, are campaigning against "the 9/11 mosque." Although the building is to be constructed on private property, both Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin seem to believe that the state should forbid construction of a mosque there.

According to Ms. Palin, this project represents a threatened "stab" in the "heart" for every American-and that's all she said. The former Alaska governor's remarks frequently lack any semblance of reason or logic. This time, her fumbling diction, instructing "peace-loving" Muslims to "refudiate" the mosque, provided such amusement that the ominous subtext of the message was almost ignored-but it couldn't have been clearer.

Beneath her references to healing and understanding, Ms. Palin let every Muslim in America know that their religion, its edifices and symbols, offends their fellow Americans. She was saying that Islam doesn't share equal status with other faiths. She was warning the Muslim community against any assertion of those rights.

Characteristically, Mr. Gingrich went further, using aggressive language and false insinuation. Without any shred of evidence, he denounced the moderate Muslims developing the community center as "hostile to our civilization." Instead of building where they live, in New York City, he urged them to try to build a church or a synagogue "in Saudi Arabia."

By uttering those words, the old bully proved what liberals and moderates have often noticed about the religious right-namely, the troubling resemblance between our homegrown ultras and the foreign extremists who have attacked us. Only when the Saudis permit full religious freedom to Christians and Jews, Mr. Gingrich suggested, should we do likewise to Muslims. So he recommends that we trash the Bill of Rights and mimic the practices of foreign despots.

At the very least, the mosque debate should dispel any sense that "conservatives" like these are the strict and true defenders of the Constitution they often claim to be. These politicians-along with the mob they are stirring-recklessly endanger the most sacred American traditions.

jconason@observer.com

In short, Mr. Gingrich channeled the same phobias and fury as the Tea Party activists whose growing influence in Republican ranks seems to have shaken him so badly. Why is Newt scared?

Despite his ranting against the Eastern elites, the former House speaker is a college graduate, a professional historian and an intellectual with wide-ranging interests—making him a figure of potential suspicion to radio talkers without much formal education and the raving mobs that follow them. Much as he exploited the prejudices of the religious right and fantasies of the conspiracy crowd, Mr. Gingrich has always affected a more sophisticated and urbane attitude. He may be troubled to realize that he suddenly ranks far lower than Sarah Palin, who can barely utter a coherent political thought, or Glenn Beck, who enthralls his audience with weird, weepy rants.

Leaving aside his own lingering presidential ambitions, Mr. Gingrich understandably feels that this brand of leadership will have a very limited appeal for most Americans—and that the more voters see of it, the less they will like it.

Is it fair to stigmatize the teabaggers and their leaders as a movement of the fringe? In New York’s 23rd Congressional District, Douglas Hoffman, the right-wing carpetbagger who drove out moderate local Republican Dede Scozzafava, has apprenticed himself to Mr. Beck, obsequiously flattering the Fox News host as his “mentor.” He signed a pledge to uphold the “912 principles and values” endorsed by Mr. Beck—a juvenile tract that demands honesty, thrift, humility and charity even as it complains that government forces citizens to “share” when they don’t want to. As far as Mr. Beck is concerned, all Democrats are “Marxist” and almost all Republicans are “Marxist lite.”

No doubt Mr. Hoffman is eagerly studying the collected writings of the late Cleon Skousen, the Beck-endorsed prophet whose speeches used to stir up meetings of the John Birch Society—mostly against Republicans of the Rockefeller and Kissinger variety.

If the revival of Birchite mania troubles Mr. Gingrich, then the Palin phenomenon, now breaking loose with the publication of her memoir, could be equally disturbing. The former Alaska governor has a long, Beck-like history of affiliation with bizarre causes and characters, including an Alaska secessionist party and a Kenyan witch-hunting evangelist who conducted an exorcism rite in her Wasilla church. She will ignore or minimize those episodes in Going Rogue, but putting extra lipstick on the pit bull may not help.

Most Americans don’t know much yet about the idiosyncratic ideology of the Tea Party crowd, beyond their conviction that President Obama was born in Kenya (and that his birth announcement in the Hawaii newspapers must therefore be part of a plot that dates back to the Kennedy era). What they have seen so far, they don’t seem to like: The more that Mr. Beck, Ms, Palin and kindred spirits appear to represent the Republican brand, the less appeal that brand possesses.

From the perspective of Mr. Gingrich and other veteran Republicans, there is deep irony in these untoward developments. Most of the Tea Party types actually hate Republican politicians, unless, like Ronald Reagan, they are dead. They hate Democrats, of course—and lots of other people—but their invective against Republicans is suffused with special outrage. If they have their way, every Republican who doesn’t adhere to the Beck canon will be driven out at the end of a pitchfork, just like poor Ms. Scozzafava.

Once upon a time, when Newt rode to power on the resentments of the religious right, the gun lobby and the economic royalists, he celebrated their extremism as the political style of “normal Americans.” Now when he hears the violent rhetoric, the hateful threats and the fanatical intolerance, he knows they are talking about him, too.

jconason@observer.com