Jon Huntsman, languishing in the low single-digits in primary polls, has recently proclaimed his acceptance of both evolution and the contribution of human activity to global warming, which in today's GOP puts him somewhere to the left of Wavy Gravy. The Atlantic's James Fallows calls this the "what the hell, I might as well keep my dignity" approach to campaigning.

You may remember the scenes in Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks past shops, which scan his eyes and deliver a personalized advertisement ("Stressed out, John Anderton? Need a vacation? Come to Aruba!") Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, we're almost there:

Picture this: You stop in front of a digital advertising display at a mall and suddenly an ad pops up touting makeup, followed by one for shoes and then one for butter pecan ice cream.

It seems to know you're a woman in your late 20s and, in fact, it does. When you looked at the display, it scanned your facial features and tailored its messages to you.

In a column tearing his party a new one for ever defending Sarah Palin, David Frum says that we should "Quit treating consumption patterns as substitutes for character":

It's very important that politicians understand the everyday lives of Americans. It's important that politicians champion the ordinary person and not pay undue heed to the wishes of the rich and powerful. It's important that politicians be people of integrity, not hirelings of industry lobbies. These are issues of character, and character counts.

We sure are talking about Rick Perry a lot. But why stop now -- he's not only new, but interesting in ways that some of his opponents aren't. Jonathan Chait brings us this video of Perry seemingly flummoxed when confronted with the fact that his preferred policy of abstinence education doesn't work to stop teen pregnancy:

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s has had a tough go with higher education. Costs to attend the state's college have shot past the support the state provides to students. State community colleges, for example, are 90 percent more expensive since 2000 while, over the same period, government spending increased only 23 percent. The disparity is even more pronounced for the major flagship universities. On top of that, in the most recent budget, no appropriations were made for enrollment increases, and state financial aid was cut 15 percent. So what is Governor Perry’s tonic for this sour mixture? Forcing local governments to choose to raise taxes and making Texas’s nationally-renowned research universities more like for-profit colleges.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed some new rules that will allow people to easily compare plans when shopping for health insurance. Good news! The Obama administration has been fairly proactive in working to make information more accessible and easier for people to understand, often through thoughtful design. So I went over to the HHS web site to get some details about the new form, and have a look at it. After all, I'm sure they'd want to aggressively promote this, right? Not so much.

Our new executive editor, Bob Moser, went on Democracy Now! this morning to talk about Rick Perry's record in Texas. Moser is the former editor of The Texas Observer, where he spent three years covering Perry's governorship. Watch the video below or go here for a full transcript.