Last night: On Thursday night’s “Colbert Report,” Mr. Colbert took [his Super PAC riff] a big step further, handing control of his group to his friend and fellow host Jon Stewart so that he can legally run for president, or at least pretend to. Mr. Colbert, who has comically flirted with — and mocked the possibility of — runs for political office before, said he would form an “exploratory committee for president of the United States of South Carolina.” Riffing off his claimed dissatisfaction...

But then, Rick believes they have too much regulation and government intervention over there. Ars Technica: A court in Paris, France has fined Google $65,000 because its search engine’s autocomplete feature brings up the French word for “crook” when users type the name of an insurance company. RELATED: How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse.

She’s using a typewriter to write a letter… The letter is to a friend in Spain who sent a postcard — “apparently people don’t send them anymore, either” — asking for a real letter. She bought the typewriter last summer at Goodwill. “I just love old things… I was surprised that the ribbon is still good.” Note the paper dictionary she must use to find the correct spelling of words. All of which proves once again that Kevin Kelly is right...

(Clean Version.) To pass some time while we wait… “A response to national media coverage of our beloved home state.” You want NSFW? See Andrew.

Maybe. But many live longer: [A] new study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds that it’s not all bad for American leaders. By comparing presidents to other men of their eras, researchers discovered that commanders in chief die at about the same age as their peers. They certainly don’t age at double the speed [as was suggested by one physician]. Many live longer, probably because most have been wealthy, college-educated, and able to get good medical...

Update: The Daily Mail headlines, No wonder they looked sheepish! Wealthy bankers who claimed record $254m jackpot accused of collecting fortune as a ‘front’ for mysterious client. Who says it’s the poor who play the lottery? We all like the lottery. 3 Asset Managers Won $254 Million in Connecticut’s Powerball Lottery: Timothy C. Davidson, Brandon E. Lacoff and Gregory H. Skidmore, three executives at Belpointe Asset Management, an investment firm based in Greenwich, Conn.,...

Following up on the teenager who refused to apologize for tweeting disparaging remarks about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback… Yahoo! News: Hundreds of people have left negative comments on Brownback’s Facebook Thanksgiving message. "The imperial Gov needs to go to the school, apologize to the assembled students and then apologize in person to the young lady," one person wrote. In a comment to the Kansas City Star last week, Brownback’s communications director stood behind the...

NECN: Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts fourth Congressional District has said he will not seek re-election for 2012. Frank, a ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, planned to hold a press conference in Newton, Mass. on Monday afternoon, to formally announce and answer questions on the decision. CNN confirms. The Caucus: His Fourth District falls mostly in southern Massachusetts but also includes the famously liberal Boston suburbs of Newton and Brookline. Under a new...

Julie Sullivan isn’t angry with her daughter, Emma, for tweeting disparaging remarks about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback during a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka: “She was talking to 65 friends. And also it’s the speech they use today. It’s more attention grabbing. I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers. If she wants to tweet her opinion about Gov. Brownback, I say for her to go for it and I stand totally behind her.” Brownback’s office,...

After reviewing what’s happened to other Western leaders confronting voters in this economic vortex (eight governments toppled in Europe in two years), and observing that President Obama’s “cautious centrism soured the left without reassuring the right,” Nick Kristof gives the president some due credit: Obama has done better than many critics on the left or the right give him credit for. He took office in the worst recession in more than half a century, amid fears of a complete...

New Scientist reports on the first contact lenses containing electronic displays. They’ve been put into the eyes of rabbits to prove they are safe for humans: The first version may only have one pixel, but higher resolution lens displays – like those seen in Terminator – could one day be used as satnav enhancers showing you directional arrows for example, or flash up texts and emails – perhaps even video. In the shorter term, the breakthrough also means people suffering from...

Would any of us disagree? Photo from the WSJ’s Kelly Evans… The cringe-worthy promo was given out to reporters attending last night’s 69th Annual Financial Follies Dinner and Entertainment event put on by The New York Financial Writers Association. Via.

Stephen Colbert remembers Newt’s two week Greek vacation in June. Apparently Newt now claims that luxury cruise was a fact-finding mission… ABC News: At a stop in Jefferson, Iowa on Monday Gingrich reiterated that the luxury vacation was a chance for him to listen and talk with the Greek people and “reflect” on the American economy. “I was in Greece in early June I took some flak from the press for going on a trip, but it was actually very helpful to be in Greece in early June,”...

Is anyone truly surprised to find that profligate spender and putative GOP presidential front runner Newt Gingrich has spent nearly three quarters of a million dollars on his ho-hum candidate website? Karoli at Crooks and Liars: According to his third quarter report, the campaign made weekly payments of $10,000 to High Tech Win, LLC for “website development”, with the exception of two payments in July for $20,000 each. The total paid in the third quarter to this vendor was $120,000. In...

Tenured Radical Claire Potter: As you absorb the news about the key people at Penn State who ought to have reported what they knew of coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged assaults on little boys, please keep one thing in mind. Penn State’s cover-up is embedded in the interest it, and all universities, have in keeping many forms of sexual violence and sexual harassment a private, internal matter. The mistake Penn State made was, in many ways, a simple category error: they mistook these pubescent boys...

Jill Lepore’s must read New Yorker piece about the past and future of Planned Parenthood is locked up tight behind a paywall, so too few of us actually will read it. For those of you who don’t subscribe, I point to Amanda Marcotte: [W]hat I really enjoyed was Lepore’s depiction of the midcentury struggle between the feminist radicals and the moderate social conservatives that populated the movement to make contraception access more wildly available. The struggle was over...

There’s got to be a political metaphor to be made here: A technical hitch saw Oban’s community fireworks all released at the same time at Mossfield Stadium tonight, November 4 2011. The display,which usually lasts around half an hour, barely lasted a minute as a spectacular number of fireworks went off simultaneously. Chime in TMVers! Via.

Carlos Miller: One photographer was detained for photographing a subway turnstile and accused of being in cahoots with Al-Qaeda. Another photographer was detained for photographing a courthouse and investigated for terrorist activity. And another photographer was detained for photographing refineries at night and placed in the back of a police car for 45 minutes. Now all three men are suing the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department for unlawfully detaining them for the legal act of taking photos. The...

And you can bet safety is the more likely loser. AP says that one out of every five Americans lives in a community that pays a for-profit company to install and operate cameras that record traffic violations. That’s 700 communities in nearly half the states have for-profit deals. USA Today: Some contracts restrict police from doing things like lengthening the yellow signal and leave taxpayers holding the bag if the contracts are terminated early, says the report from the U.S. Public Interest...

Not that I would know. But Martin A. Sullivan, now he’s convincing: In the United Kingdom the government is led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. His government did not adopt stimulus. Instead it boldly enacted an economic program that cut spending and raised taxes. The chart below shows the results and compares it to the U.S. experience. After three and a half years, U.S. GDP is just about returning to the pre-recession peak. That’s awful. But it s far better than the U.K… Via.