Newt in Iowa (Video)

I managed to see Newt Gingrich at a campaign event in Iowa. As you can see, Newt and Callista walked up, shook my hand, and wished me a happy new year. I didn't have any gotcha questions (looks like Newt is on his way down in the polls anyways), but just wanted to film it to give people an idea of what Iowa is like prior to the caucuses. Basically, candidates are coming through town at stops like this constantly for months.

You can see David Gregory briefly in the video; I also saw Brett Baier from Fox and Chuck Todd from MSNBC in the crowd. It's very possible that there were more people from the media present than Gingrich supporters. It also seemed to me like there were a lot of Republicans there who weren't from Iowa: I overheard a few people say they were from Texas, and others from Louisiana. Reporters seemed to be having a hard time finding undecided Iowa voters.

One funny thing I overheard: a guy went up to two CSPAN employees handing out promotional material and said, "Oh, you're with that liberal network." It reminded by of Colbert's quote: "Reality has a well known liberal bias."

Here's the video of Gingrich walking through the crowd (hopefully no one disowns me for passing up this golden gotcha question opportunity):

Ed Martin's Financial Disclosure Flub: Part of a Pattern

Sean at FiredUp Missouri linked to a story in the Hill that caught Ed Martin falsely reporting having nearly $200,000 in the bank in his FEC report. Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch of course simply regurgitated Martin's claim that it was a "computer error," but Sean has presented some good reasons for thinking that even Ed Martin's amended comments are suspicious, especially considering that he now claims he had no activity in Q4 according to PoliticMo.

Of course, this isn't exactly new territory for Martin. During his failed bid for Congress, he filed his financial disclosure forms 300 days late because he was "really busy." Sure is interesting how much difficulty Ed Martin has with basic things like reporting his finances, and how it's always someone else's fault.