* I’m going to call this one “overblown headline with major caveat” because we’re likely to see a lot of these in the future. Here’s the headline: Obama’s final State of the Union address draws record-low TV audience. And here’s the caveat:
…these numbers don’t include anyone who may have streamed the address online, either on a TV network’s website, or on Youtube or Amazon, which are not measured by Nielsen. They also don’t count anyone watching on C-SPAN, which as a non-commercial network doesn’t use Nielsen.
* I’ve been reading a lot about the Des Moines Register Iowa poll today showing that Clinton is only 2 points ahead of Sanders. But so far I haven’t seen anyone mention this very interesting finding.
The tightening race is not because of a surge in support for Sanders, the poll indicates. His support has risen just 1 percentage point in the past month. But Clinton has seen her support slide from 48 percent to 42 percent. The big shift has been in the number of likely Democratic caucusgoers who say they are undecided or who plan to stand up for “uncommitted.” Fourteen percent now say that, up from 8 percent a month ago.
* Planned Parenthood is fighting back.
Planned Parenthood filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group responsible for secretly filming abortion providers over a two-year span. The suit, to be filed in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that the Irvine, California-based activists violated the Federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO Act.
* President Obama’s efforts to close Gitmo reached a bit of a milestone this week.
The U.S. military on Thursday disclosed that it delivered 10 Yemeni captives to the Arabian Sea nation of Oman in the largest Guantánamo release to a single country by the Obama administration.
The military operation — which leaked earlier in the week without disclosure of the destination — left 93 captives at the remote prison, 34 of them cleared for transfer with security arrangements that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
* And then there were seven. Participating on the main stage at tonight’s Fox Business Network Republican debate in South Carolina will be Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich.
* Finally, send an email to President Obama and maybe he’ll come to your house for a visit.
According to a White House press release, Obama visited Martin to “talk about what matters most to her: the world Cooper will inherit.”…
POTUS is said to have lingered at Martin’s home for almost 40 minutes, chatting with the mom and her husband, Jeff.
