Summary: MSNBC BLTWY squares Sarah Palin off against Michele Bachmann to see who has the makings of a GOP presidential nominee — or U.S. president. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 6, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, 53 percent of respondents who said they expect to vote in the 2012 GOP presidential primary identified themselves as Tea Party supporters. Their favorite candidate right now: former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who shot to prominence after winning the Iowa primary in 2008. House Tea Party Caucus leader Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was not named in the poll. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 3, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, anti-government conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) 2010 annual Intelligence Report.

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Summary: Biographical profile of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann by Paul Harris of the London Observer, republished here for informational purposes and annotated with sidebars. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 24, 2009 Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and reported that NATO deaths in Afghanistan had hit a record high.

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Summary: It’s been a good week for Independent Tom Horner’s campaign for governor of Minnesota. Not only did Horner meet his July 19 fundraising goal to qualify for public campaign funds, he also attracted favorable media attention highlighting the fact that he can win in November. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 19, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that the Pentagon had identified the captured American soldier who went missing from his forward operating base in Afghanistan as Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, Ketchum, Idaho, a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.

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Summary: “Rise of the New Right: A Hardball Documentary with Chris Matthews” — Part 6: How the New Right Exploits the Media. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 12, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that six Baghdad-area churches were bombed within 24 hours on July 11-12, 2009, killing at least four people and wounding 32. Iraq has lost more than half of the 1.4 million Christians who once called it home, mostly since the war began in 2003, and few who fled have plans to return.

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Summary: “Rise of the New Right: A Hardball Documentary with Chris Matthews” — Part 3: The Tea Party Movement. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 9, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that declassified notes of FBI interviews with Saddam Hussein in 2004 proved Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, but that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had WMD because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.

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Summary: Sarah Palin criticizes Barack Obama’s foreign policy on the eve of the president’s nuclear counterproliferation summit focused on keeping nukes out of the hands of terrorists. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 11, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured a discussion by Minnesota Public Radio political analysts Todd Rapp and Tom Horner on whether Rep. Michele Bachmann is a liability to the Republican Party.

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Summary: Unrest over sweeping federal health care legislation has turned to vandalism and threats, with bricks hurled through congressional Democrats’ windows, a propane line cut at the home of a congressman’s brother, and menacing phone messages left for lawmakers who supported the bill. Against this background, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s longstanding pattern of incendiary rhetoric (such as calling on citizens to be “armed and dangerous”) is particularly disturbing, considering its potential for propagating violent extremism and inciting acts of domestic terrorism in a time of grave economic uncertainty. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Baghdad had been much calmer since sectarian violence peaked in late 2006 and the first half of 2007, but that the calm was achieved in part because the city became ethnically divided, with Shiites predominating and Sunnis largely having fled.

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Summary: Conspiracy theories have long been a fixture on the political landscape, with political paranoia most virulent among politically marginalized sectors of the polity. So, with Democrats holding the reins of power, it stands to reason that the right-wing fringe has become the prime repository of collective craziness. … Conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Michele Bachmann. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 20, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, said at his trial that President Bush’s smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq had made him think of “the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women,” and enraged him. “After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction … I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him.”

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Summary: Deputy national security adviser John Brennan tells NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press” that politicians are using national security to score political points and that he’s exasperated with partisan political football over counterterrorism professionals’ handling of failed airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that defense contractor KBR Inc. had been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it was under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

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