Mitt

It has become fashionable of late to denigrate the importance of Iowa's caucuses, and even New Hampshire's primary, by suggesting neither has been very successful at picking party nominees. Naysayers note that only two of the last five Republican winners in Iowa garnered the party's nomination, while only three in five New Hampshire victors became the party's general-election standard-bearer. However, such analyses err by missing the dramatic joint impact of these two contests. Since 1976, when proliferating primaries and caucuses became the basis for selecting convention delegates, every single nominee but one, in both parties, won either Iowa or New Hampshire.

Looking to dramatically tip the scales in the race for Los Angeles' next mayor, a nationally prominent Republican media strategist has formed a "super PAC" that aims to spend millions of dollars to elect dark-horse mayoral candidate Kevin James. Fred Davis, a GOP advertising man who has worked on campaigns for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina and former President George W. Bush, said the Better Way LA committee has raised nearly $500,000 on behalf of James and plans to collect at least $3.5 million more.

Help wealthy people dodge taxes. Go to prison. And cap it off by getting $104 million for ratting out your former clients to the IRS. In one of the largest whistle-blower cases in U.S. history, the federal government is paying that amount to a globe-trotting banker who once smuggled a client's diamonds in a toothpaste tube to avoid detection by tax authorities. The financier, Bradley Birkenfeld, later confessed his transgressions and helped the Internal Revenue Service nab thousands of Americans who had stashed money overseas to avoid paying taxes.

The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn't emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign's attempt to turn out voters via technology. But I've got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, 57, has evolved from outside political agitator to presidential advisor and host of MSNBC's weekday news show "PoliticsNation," which he took over last August. Sharpton, known to friends as "Rev," also heads the civil rights organization National Action Network and Syndication One's eponymous radio show that broadcast weekdays to 40 markets around the country. How has having your own show on MSNBC affected your image? I think people understand firsthand what I'm saying my positions are and those of my guests.

More than five weeks after election day, almost all the presidential votes have been counted. Here's what the near-final tally reveals: The election really wasn't close. On election night, President Obama's victory margin seemed fairly narrow - just slightly more than 2 percentage points. White House aides anxiously waited to see if Obama would surpass the 2.46-percentage-point margin by which President George W. Bush defeated Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004. They needn't have worried.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and a "super PAC" working on his behalf spent more than twice as much as they raised in January, underscoring how persistent challenges by rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have taxed the former Massachusetts governor's financial operation. In a month when Romney lost two of the four GOP primary contests, his campaign raced through $18.7 million while raising just $6.4 million, according to finance records filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio isn't laughing at George Lopez's new one-man show on HBO in which the comedian blasts the Maricopa County lawman for his position on immigration and his "birther" stance. In fact, Arpaio is daring the comedian, via the media, to stop hiding behind the mike  and "meet me face to face. " The controversial sheriff said he and his wife were flipping through the channels Saturday night when they paused to linger on Lopez's show, "George: It's Not Me, It's You. " Arpaio said he was shocked at the potty-mouthed language coming from the comedian and switched to another channel without realizing the diatribe was aimed at him. An Arizona reporter helpfully filled Arpaio in on the details.

Re "Romney assails Obama foreign policy," Oct. 9 It is absurd for Mitt Romney to criticize anyone in the area of foreign policy. Romney has called Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe" (as though the Cold War continues). He promised to brand China a currency manipulator and impose tariffs on Chinese goods on Day 1 of his administration (without mentioning Day 2, when China may well stop purchasing U.S. Treasury notes, thus sending interest rates soaring and our economic stability into tatters)

Re "Working to break his own storybook spell," Nov. 24 Mitt Romney is not working to break the positive patterns he has established in his life, nor is he apologizing for the stability of his life. Would it be so bad to have a president who was as disciplined in his personal affairs as we would like our government to be in our national affairs? The implication of the article is that the voters should view Romney's lack of problems as a problem.