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Sarah Palin has not canceled her keynote speech for the Tea Party of America’s Saturday rally in Indianola, Iowa, according to the event’s organizers. Ken Crow, the founder of the Tea Party of America, told ABC News this morning that he “hung up with [Palin's] people five minutes ago” and “she’ll be here on Saturday.”

Just as I said. According to O4P insiders , Palin lured Perry into the race to pop Romney's bubble and are relying on Romney to go negative on Perry and pop Perry's bubble and thus the reason for Palin's late entry. Read the article , Team Romney is getting ready to pull the trigger.

Update at 2p.m. ET: Reuters reports a 6.0 magnitude earthquake centered near Mineral, Va., rocked the mid-Atlantic states and was felt as far north at Manhattan and as far south as North Carolina. Update at 1:57 p.m. ET:The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon is being evacuated. An apparent earthquake rocks Washington, D.C. area. Fox news reports that several public buildings, including the Capitol, have been evacuated.

"How many of you love the IRS? "I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is 'know your enemy.' So I went to the inside to learn how they work because I wanted to beat them.""Bachmann said. "They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward." "Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today," Bachmann said. That date, August 16, was actually the anniversary of Elvis's death in 1977 at age 42.

Former Bush adviser sets record straight about alleged feud between Texans.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is reportedly conducting focus groups to prepare for a presidential bid in 2012. "If Christie chooses to run, he would have wide support within the party and become the likely frontrunner for the GOP nom," Alter tweeted earlier.

In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.” But in fact, global warming was already a significant theme for Gore in 1987 and 1988 — long before his activism led to several books, a Nobel Prize and a part in an Academy Award-winning film. It was also well before the right gave him the "Mr. Ozone" nickname and talk radio heaped endless mockery on the future...

Ames, Iowa — Mike Huckabee thinks that someone who doesn’t finish in the top two stands a chance at winning the caucuses, but not somebody who did not participate in today’s straw poll — which would rule out Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. He doesn’t see the importance of the Ames Straw Poll ending if Ron Paul wins today. “I think that it shows the capacity [of Paul campaign] to organize,” Huckabee tells National Review Online, referring to a Paul victory, “but I don’t think his message is credible. And his statement on Iran the other night was totally off-the-wall.”...

Giuliani's team is concerned that Texas Gov. Rick Perry's all-but-certain campaign could scoop up the few remaining top operatives in the first-in-the-nation primary state, where a host of candidates already have dozens of people on the payroll. One person described Giuliani's aides as having a sense of urgency.

I’ve lived in Texas throughout the entirety of the Perry administration. He hasn’t been the most awful governor we might have had, but in truth, he’s been mediocre. It is true to say that Perry deserves a little credit for the better economic conditions in the state, insofar as he’s done no particular harm. On the other hand, it’s fair to say that part of the reason Perry’s done no particular harm, and perhaps the sole reason he hasn’t damaged the economy, is because the Texas people, through their legislature, won’t let him. The governor’s real shortcomings are not to...

In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.“First, they’ve got to like you, and there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Chicago Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.”

In the coming days we’ll sort through the repercussions of S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating, including concerns about the impact a potential interest rate increase would have on our ability to service our suffocating $14.5 trillion debt. I’m surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision. Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming? I’ve been writing and speaking about it myself for quite some time.

Now the President is outraged because the GOP House leadership called his bluff and ended discussions with him because they deemed him an obstruction to any real solution to the debt crisis. He has been deemed a lame duck president. And he is angry now because he is being treated as such. His foreign policy strategy has been described as “leading from behind.” Well, that’s his domestic policy strategy as well. Why should he be surprised that he’s been left behind in the negotiations when he’s been leading from behind on this debt crisis? Thank you, GOP House leaders. Please...

Even though at least $35 million (almost half the total Obama/DNC haul) can be credited to just 244 well-connected “bundlers,” Team Obama made a big thing of their 260,000 new small dollar donors. But that means only 292,000 donors from his last campaign have renewed their support for the re-elect so far. That's just 6.6 percent of the 3.95 million people who donated to the '08 Obama effort, only a quarter to a third of what most reelect campaigns could expect from renewal efforts at this point.

<p>GOP Senators and Speaker Boehner set to cave and raise taxes. This is the start of the set up.</p>

Vennes and his family members donated $27,400 to Bachmann’s campaigns between 2005-2008. Bachmann and Pawlenty subsequently asked then-President George W. Bush to pardon Vennes.n May 1987, Vennes was indicted on money laundering charges, to which he pled guilty, plus gun and drug charges, to which he pled no contest. (He later tried to withdraw the pleas but the courts rejected the request.) He was sentenced to five years at Sandstone Prison in northern Minnesota and served three. In 2008, the feds raided Vennes’ homes as part of the Petters probe.

If T-shirt and presidential product sales predict the future in American politics, 2012 will be a Palin vs. Obama race. CafePress writes: The people have spoken and they want to see a Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama showdown in the 2012 election. Although Palin’s Republican peers Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and now Jon Huntsman have officially declared their candidacy, the American public is throwing their support behind “Mama Grizzly” for the 2012 Election – on T-shirts that is. It may be 503 days away, but politically-minded citizens have already designed over 500,000 presidential election products on CafePress, the go-to site...

<p>NEW YORK – Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann sought pardons for a major campaign donor now accused of fleecing faith-based charities in a Ponzi scheme. The 2012 presidential hopefuls should answer for helping make Frank Vennes Jr. respectable, writes Michelle Goldberg.</p>

The last president re-elected with unemployment over 7.2% was FDR in 1936. Ronald Reagan overcame 7.2% unemployment because the rate was dropping dramatically (it had been over 10%) as the economy grew very rapidly in 1983 and 1984. Today, in contrast, the Federal Reserve says growth will be less than 3% this year and less than 3.8% next year, with unemployment between 7.8% and 8.2% by Election Day.

Bachmann wrote the letter urging the president to pardon Vennes for his 1987 conviction on federal money laundering, illegal firearm sales and cocaine distribution charges. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Vennes, has been a major financial contributor to Bachmann since 2005. Was Bachmann’s letter in support of Vennes’ presidential pardon a quid pro quo for Vennes’ largesse? Until Bachmann releases her original letter, the motivation behind it won’t be known. Bachmann chief of staff Michele Marston told Minnesota Independent Monday that “We’re trying to track down a copy of that letter."