Notes on a Friday.

Here are some cautionary tales and other stories of in the news today for your review, wonder and entertainment.

Former White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan analyzes speeches of note delivered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and New Jersey’s Chris Christie.  She thinks they are historic for their truth-telling. Daniels is getting a lot of buzz in the Republican presidential sweepstakes.  Chris Cillizza points out he seems to be winning the Jeb Bush primary, which may be more significant than some other traditional measures in the early going.

The Boston Herald’s Peter Gelizinis points out that United States Senator Scott Brown, now retailing the trials of his youth in a book, did not want the public to hear much about the ordeal of an inconvenient victim of sexual abuse last fall when it interfered with the political campaign of a Republican ally.

Planned Parenthood is caught in the federal budget squeeze.  It’s worried about losing $75 million in taxpayer funding.  Without all that money, how will they have the resources to slime pro-choice Republican candidates for the United States Senate?  It’s the Washington definition of a crisis.

In the category of reversals of fortune, you’d have to include New York Democratic political consultant Hank Morris. The operator, with his business based in Connecticut, got carted off to the hoosegow yesterday for his role in a $19 million scheme to put the squeeze on investment firms looking for a piece of the state’s $125 billion pension fund.  Morris had hoped for community service and probation.  A New York judge sentenced the former high-flyer to up to 4 years behind bars as his weeping wife looked on.  Read the New York Post’s courtroom account and you’ll feel like you were there.

Anna Nicole Smith is on her way to cultural icondom that would have surprised even her. The debut of the opera, that’s right, opera, in London has caused a sensation in the good sense.  It is an event, according to the essential Daily Telegraph.  Make room Aida, Carmen, Norma, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly.  Anna Nicole has arrived.

Daily Ructions readers are voters, so you’ll be happy to know there’s still time to vote for Stewie for President of Monday Nights.