Piers Morgan Goes Off on Pro-Gun Guest, Norquist Breaks Anti-Tax Pledge, and More

‘Architect of a New America’:

Time magazine has selected President Barack Obama as its 2012 “Person of the Year.” In unveiling the pick Wednesday, Managing Editor Richard Stengel wrote, “For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.” The magazine also awarded Obama the honor in 2008 when he was first elected president. You sense a pattern here, yes? (Read more)

Judge’s Death: Robert Bork, who is perhaps best known for his failed nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, died Wednesday at the age of 85. The former federal judge’s extreme views on the bench ignited an intense political battle in the Senate that subsequently led to his not being confirmed. The conservative jurist also served as a solicitor general in the Nixon administration, carrying out orders to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox and his entire staff during the Watergate scandal. (Read more)

Concussiongate: Some conservatives believe Hillary Clinton is faking her concussion to avoid testifying on Capitol Hill about the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The secretary of state reportedly fainted and hit her head recently while sick with a stomach virus. Clinton’s spokeswoman responded Tuesday to accusations that she was avoiding the hearing, telling reporters: “She’s been on the phone and in e-mail contact with senior staff. She’s been working on other issues — Syria, the DPRK [North Korea] today. These are people that don’t know what they are talking about.” (Read more)

Pledge Break: Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist says he is down with the Republicans’ backup plan to deal with the fiscal cliff. There’s only one problem. The GOP’s “Plan B” calls for a tax increase on Americans making more than $1 million a year. That means by supporting it, Norquist is essentially violating his own pledge. Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform, has a good excuse for this though: It doesn’t technically view the GOP’s plan as a tax increase because all the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year anyway. (Read more)

Majority Rules: In the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre, a new CNN/ORC International poll finds that a slim majority—52 percent—favors major restrictions on guns in this country. The survey also found that more than 60 percent favor an outright ban on semiautomatic assault weapons. (Read more)

Video of the Day: Gun control proponent Piers Morgan absolutely ripped into gun rights advocate Larry Pratt on his CNN program Tuesday night. After some heated cross talk, Morgan told Pratt: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” He added, “You have absolutely no coherent argument. You don’t actually give a damn about the gun murder rate in America.”