Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who practically re-invented the formula for blending activism and journalism, died suddenly today. He was only 43. I met Breitbart once, briefly, after he spoke to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville in early 2010, and he was indeed a larger-than-life personality, with his wild hair and his willingness to mix it up at any time. Breitbart was always "on." With a lot less fanfare, he was also a husband and a father -- and my condolences and prayers go out to his family and his friends.

As fans of the late Ted Kennedy would tell you, Breitbart would have been the last person to gush effusively over the death of an 180-degree political opponent, and no combination of grief and revisionist history can change the fact that at times his tactics were unfair and unacceptable (related to that: read this classy statement from Shirley Sherrod).

But he was, as his website said today, a "happy warrior" for the conservative causes he believed in, and I think America's a better place when it's filled with passionate people who profoundly disagree, as opposed to apathetic people who don't disagree because they're too lazy to care about anything. Breitbart cared. He thought that beliefs and ideas mattered, and for that alone he will be missed.

The Huffington Post talked to some of Rick Santorum's fraternity brothers, who are just as baffled as everyone else over the presidential hopeful's bizarre "liberal professors docked my grades" charge regarding Penn State. I loved this paragraph from the article:

On the trail this past week, Santorum went first person with a near memoir-ready pitch about the suffering he endured as a Republican at a land-grant university set in conservative farm country. The '60s had long ended. Political-correctness had yet to become a thing. But to this GOP presidential hopeful, Penn State University, with its old-fashioned football coach, quaint main street and famous ice cream shop, was his Altamont.

FYI. this below is the real Altamont -- not exactly one big Happy Valley. (h/t Attytood reader AW.)

It's not just Attytood readers who think that newspaper journalists are ridiculously overpaid:

The chief executive of the biggest bank in the United States says journalists are ridiculously overpaid.

At the company's annual investor day, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called the percentage of newspaper company revenue paid out to employees "just damned outrageous," according to Bloomberg News. "Worse than that, you [the media] don’t even make any money!"

Dimon then defended his company's own pay levels, arguing it necessary in the struggle to retain top talent. "We are going to pay competitively," he said, according to the WSJ. "We need top talent, you cannot run this business on second-rate talent."

I guess the level of talent at a newspaper doesn't matter, for some reason. Did I mention that Jamie Dimon made $23 million last year, while the average newspaper reporter in America makes $43,780?

Also...unlike the global banking giant that Dimon runs, newspaper journalists didn't finance Enron and WorldCom, drive the largest county in Alabama into bankruptcy, or overcharge thousands of military families on their mortgage.

For not doing those things, journalists deserve a raise, don't you think?

The greatest nation on earth unloads some shock and awe on Italy, winning 1-0 for its first victory over the Italians in...ever.

Baseball, where have you been all these months?

You need pictures like this when your friend writes an article headlined: "Daily News staff enters the shadow of the valley of death." Really Dave, it's not that bad.

If you thought that GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum was "out there" with his recent charges that President Obama is a "snob" who wants everyone to go to college as part of a "liberal indoctrination" plot, he has launched into another orbit with an incredible new allegation.

In a radio interview this past weekend with a Michigan talk radio station, Santorum claimed that professors at Penn State -- where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1980 -- gave him lower grades because of his conservative ideology:

“I’m very careful about the colleges and universities our children go to,” Santorum said. “There are schools, I went to one — Penn State — that’s one of the liberal icons, unfortunately it’s gotten a lot worse. I can tell you professor after professor who docked my grades because of the viewpoints I expressed and the papers that I wrote, there’s no question that happened.”

“Your grades suffered because of your views at Penn State?” Langton asked

“Absolutely, absolutely,” Santorum said. “I used to go to war with some of my professors, who thought I was out of the pale, these are just not proper ideas. This is not something that’s not unusual, folks, I know this may be a surprise to some people … There is clearly a bias at the university."

Santorum's comments are indeed surprising, but more importantly, they strain credibility. For one thing, the notion that Penn State is "one of the liberal icons" is pretty absurd. He seems to be confusing Berkeley, where students demonstrated for free speech and against the Vietnam War, with Happy Valley, where students rioted after the basketball team lost to Temple.

More importantly, it's hard to believe that Santorum's grades were "docked" -- this is a very serious allegation -- for his conservative views, because numerous students and professors who knew the future pol when he attended Penn State from 1976 through 1980 said that Santorum's early interest in politics was all about strategy and nothing about ideology. Famously, Santorum led the campus campaign for the late Pennsylvania senator John Heinz, a liberal-to-moderate pro-choice Republican (yes, we used to have these). The New Republic recently did the definitive piece on Santorum's years in State College:

And Santorum himself admitted as much to NPR this past May, saying that his early interest in politics wasn't mainly a matter of ideology. "I was generally conservative, I was generally Republican," he said. "But I was more of a political operative than I was someone who had strong convictions about issues."

My own conversations with people who knew Santorum in college support this view. Bob O'Connor — who in 1994 told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "I have never had a student so blindly ambitious" — told me, "He was a very memorable student because he was an unusual one." Even in policy-oriented classes, like American Local Government and Administration, "he didn't ask a whole lot of questions, or talk, about policy and policy positions and what would work best. He did ask an unusual amount about what policies would be more popular, rather than engage in debate about trade-offs, and what would be more effective, and why."

The bottom line is this: If Santorum is to continue making this allegation about Penn State, he needs to present actual evidence. (Just how bad were his college grades, anyway?) Without proof, this whole thing smells like a lie, based on what we know about the candidate and what we know about Penn State. And it also feels like another blatant attempt at manipulating resentment among working class voters -- the work of someone who is still a "political operative," not someone who is serious about ideas. 

What a winter! First there was no snow. Now, the long-range political forecast calls for...no Snowe:

Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe will not seek reelection in 2012, according to two source with knowledge of her plans.

Snowe’s retirement represents a major setback for the GOP’s efforts to regain a majority in the Senate. As a moderate Republican, she may be the party’s only hope to hold a seat in the strongly blue state.

This is major political news -- all "as Maine goes, so goes the nation" jokes aside. Snowe -- along with her state's other senator Susan Collins -- has been one of the last couple of moderate Republicans in Washington. It will be interesting to see what her stated reasons are for deciding, at this late hour, to not seek re-election; whatever the official story line, it won't escape notice that she leaves as her Republican Party is lurching to the extreme right, and as GOP lawmakers increasingly pursue an agenda that is hostile to women. The GOP will be eager to prove in November that the party is not anti-female, but it's going to be harder to make that case now that Snowe is not in the picture.

UPDATE: Check out the new rules at NPR.

Say goodbye to "on one hand, on the other hand":

In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

Also:

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly. 

Answer to come...

The Santorum administration:

THE SUN hasn't even set, and already Jan. 20, 2013, is going down as the wildest presidential Inauguration Day in more than three decades, since the Gipper declared that "government is the problem" and the Ayatollah freed the hostages.

After taking on the ghost of JFK in his inaugural address - "Ask what you can do for your family, your God, and yourself . . . free from the tyranny of government" - President Rick Santorum raced back to the White House to sign more than a dozen executive orders.

The new 45th president cut off federal funding for many overseas family-planning programs, steered new dollars into abstinence-only education and created "conscience exemptions" allowing institutions to opt out of Obama health-care reforms.

Then, as Santorum was throwing on a tuxedo for his inaugural ball featuring Up With People, an aide knocked on the door. "Ahmadinejad just closed down the Strait of Hormuz!" - a speedy reaction to the new president's bellicose talk on Iran.

Of course, the deal with "President Santorum" (or "El Presidente Santorum" as an overenthusiastic Daily News headline writer called him, perhaps a bid to increase our Hispanic circulation?) is completely different with Barack Obama winning election in 2008. With Obama, the concern was he would not do the things he promised, and unfortunately that's been true in too many cases. With Santorum, the danger is that he will do exactly the things he's promised America.

Meanwhile, the flap of the day is Santorum making robo-calls to Democratic voters in Michigan. I never thought I'd say these words in this order, but I agree with Rush Limbaugh on this: What's the big deal? I thought the Republicans want a candidate with some cross-over appeal to Democrats. What Santorum has done, however, is hand Mitt Romney a gift-wrapped excuse if Romney indeed loses one of his 17 home states. In fact, Romney isn't even waiting for the polls to close to start using it.