Weekly Review

By Genevieve Smith

A Christian martyr.

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich released their most recent tax returns. Romney’s showed that he made $21.6 million in 2010, paid taxes at a rate of 14 percent, and gave $4 million to the Mormon church over two years. Gingrich’s return showed that he earned $3.1 million last year and may have cheated on his taxes. ^{1 2 3 4} President Barack Obama made increasing the tax rate on the super-rich a theme of his State of the Union address, saying, “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” whom experts calculated earns between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.⁵ A Wall Street Journal reporter compared the practice, begun in 2011, of having Republicans and Democrats sit next to each other during the State of the Union to date rape, and a Chrysler 300C once leased by President Obama was listed on eBay with a starting bid of $1 million. “It’s all about the money for me,” said the car’s owner, a self-described Reagan conservative. ^{6 7} The Republican candidates faced off in their nineteenth primary debate, and former presidential candidate Herman Cain, jailed former congressman Duke Cunningham, and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin threw their support behind Gingrich. “Both party machines... are trying to crucify Newt Gingrich for bucking the tide,” explained Palin. “Rage against the machine, vote for Newt. Annoy a liberal, vote Newt.”^{8 9 10 11} PETA was offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who killed an Arkansas Democratic campaign manager’s cat and left it on his doorstep with the word “liberal” written across its body, and a penguin named Paula defecated in the chamber of the Kentucky Senate.^{12 13}

Outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, protesters built igloos to stay warm, while inside, software company Tibco announced a new social-networking site that would allow the planet’s 200 richest people to friend world leaders.^{14 15} Twitter announced that it would selectively censor tweets at the request of governments, and clashes in Syria between government troops and armed militias escalated following the Arab League's suspension of its monitoring mission there.^{16 17} A suicide bombing of a funeral procession in Baghdad killed 32 people, and the government of North Korea declared it a war crime to use a cell phone during the country’s 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-Il.^{18 19} The French senate voted to jail anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces amounted to genocide.²⁰ A German court blocked the release of an annotated version of “Mein Kampf,” and an online auction house in Slovakia sold for $42,300 a painting of a full moon over a shimmering ocean by Adolf Hitler.^{21 22} A U.S. military-court judge ruled that a Marine sergeant who oversaw the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in 2005 should serve no time in prison.²³ U.N. security staff revealed that they had received a duffel bag filled with $2 million worth of cocaine from Mexico at U.N. headquarters in New York.²⁴ A welfare office in Dublin banned claimants from wearing pajamas to interviews.²⁵

Scientists discovered 11 new planetary systems with 26 orbiting planets, and a solar storm of high-energy particles pummeled the earth. ^{26 27} People worldwide celebrated the Chinese New Year, marking the beginning of the year of the dragon, the luckiest year in the Chinese Zodiac, while the Pennsylvania state assembly passed a resolution declaring 2012 the year of the Bible.²⁸ Four police officers in East Haven, Connecticut, were arrested by the FBI for harassing and beating Hispanic residents. Asked by a reporter how he would make amends with the Latin American community, the town’s mayor, Joseph Maturo, said, “I might have tacos when I go home. I’m not sure yet.” Two days later, activists sent 500 tacos to the mayor’s office.^{29 30} The city of Los Angeles passed a bill requiring porn actors to wear condoms.³¹ An Oklahoma state legislator introduced a bill to ban the use of aborted human fetuses in food.³² Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, where they smashed display cases, cut electrical wires, and burned an American flag.³³ A school in suburban Philadelphia banned Uggs because students were hiding cell phones in the boots’ tall, furry cuffs, and 76 high school seniors were erroneously told they’d been accepted to Vassar College, only to have the acceptances rescinded a few hours later. “My mom called, like, my entire family,” said one of the rejected students. “It was just a big letdown.”^{34 35}