Rep. Michele Bachmann (R - The Negative Zone) is officially running for president! (We should hope so, given that she's appearing in a presidential debate right now.) Is Bachmann crazy enough to win the nomination? We say yes... unless Bill Clinton kills her first.

It looks like Rep. Michele Bachmann will be running for president, unless you hire a renowned campaign manager and plan a major rally in the Iowa town where you were born just to get a cruel laugh out of it. We shouldn't rule that out. But she seems ready to run, capable of doing well in Iowa, and willing to have her good friend and possible Iowa competitor Sarah Palin trashed through surrogates.

No book has scared away more possible presidential candidates this cycle than Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's Game Change, the definitive "horse race" account of the 2008 presidential race that focuses on making every relevant politician's family life look like utter shit. Haley Barbour and John Thune have already bypassed runs this year largely on account of their spouses wanting no part of the gossip industries that would coalesce around them, and Mitch Daniels is still weighing his decision for similar reasons. But are these pulp novels giving Rep. Michele Bachmann some hesitancy, too?

The federal government is working on new nutrition regulations for federally subsidized school lunch programs, meaning certain food industries will be waging all-out fights to protect their streams of revenue. This is not surprising in any way! Unfortunately, there's nothing in the Constitution protecting the potato industry's right to federal money, as Michele Bachmann wants the fight to be framed.

So, Michele Bachmann... she is probably just pretending to consider a run for president in order to raise PAC money? But maybe she's serious? We haven't conclusively determined where Bachmann's potential candidacy lands on the fake/real spectrum. But the murmurs are certainly helping her raise cash. And now she's introduced a tiered donation system in her latest email solicitation: $25 bucks for another House run, $50 "or $100" for a presidential run. Checkbooks out, chop chop!

Mitt Romney surprised no one yesterday when he announced that he's running for president in 2012. What does this mean for some of the other prospective candidates, like Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump? On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart broke it down for us.

As she closes in on a possible presidential run, gleefully ignorant Tea Party queen Michele Bachmann says she isn't doing this for self-aggrandizement. She is doing this to save America, in one presidential term or less:

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart—during an "Indecision 2012" segment—opened with discussion of potential Republican presidential candidates for 2012 and the need for them to desperately appeal to what amounts to a pretty ridiculous base of voters.

The news this morning from delightfully nuts Rep. Michele Bachmann's part of the world is that she'll form an presidential exploratory committee by June! That's according to, uh, one anonymous source "close to the congresswoman," at CNN.com. Let's hope that it's true, and that the anonymous source is just Bachmann herself wearing a Richard Nixon mask and speaking through fan blades.

No one has ever accused Tea Partiers of being especially bright, but Michele Bachmann blew it pretty hard today in New Hampshire. She was speaking to the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire when she got some important Revolutionary War facts wrong:

Here's a picture of Tea Party queen Michele Bachmann and perennial "Rent Is 2 Damn High" candidate Jimmy McMillan at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington today. The photo appeared in a Bachmann staffer's Facebook feed today. Details of what the two discussed did not. Alas.

It's an exciting day for the conservative movement! Perhaps even the most exciting day of the year, right up there with Guy Fawkes Day. The 10,000-attendee Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off this morning in Washington, and it will run through Saturday. It's the Republican party's most important gathering every year, and it's especially vital in years, like this one, when there's a large crop of potential presidential candidates to size up.

On last night's Real Time—during what amounted to a heated panel discussion—Bill Maher couldn't resist making comment on Michele Bachmann's bizarre post-State of the Union response. What was CNN thinking as Bachmann spoke/avoided eye contact? Maher provided captions.

John McCain's unedited daughter, Meghan, scolded Rep. Michele Bachmann on MSNBC yesterday, calling her a "poor man's Sarah Palin" and "one rogue woman who couldn't even look into the camera directly." Watch out, Meghan! Michele Bachmann will be president soon.

Tonight, Jon Stewart opened with his analysis of last night's State of the Union Address by President Obama—and he delivered. Inside, watch three highlights from Stewart's segment, about our "Sputnik moment," audience member Kathy Proctor, and Michele Bachmann.

Tea Party zombie Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered a rebuttal to Obama's State of the Union address last night, and besides lacing it with all sorts of nonsense about rising debt and Iwo Jima, she didn't look into the right camera.

Republicans and Democrats are both furious at CNN, the only network which will air Rep. Michele Bachmann's Tea Party response to tonight's State of the Union in addition to the official Republican response. But CNN refuses to compromise!

The new year has arrived and it is awful, what with bird/fish/crab death, floods, freezing temperatures, and zombie ex-Vice Presidents. So let's just put it all out there and list the reasons why this is already the worst year ever.

Since the federal government's going to default on its debt this year, we'll all need some cheap, entertaining distractions. How about, say, a presidential race with delightful right-wing baby-farming dingbat Rep. Michele Bachmann? It could happen!

Tea Party Caucus founder Rep. Michele Bachmann has been planning a weekly course on the Constitution for new members of Congress, many of whom ran on their rich constitutional knowledge. And her first guest professor? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.