Via Twitter, the former Speaker of the House says he's up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, visiting family and rolling the Wiimote. "Seven year old is proving tough competition," he tweets.

Twitter's konabess replies with the helpful, "keep your elbow in and follow through!" Gingrich replies: "Good advice I will try this Any advice for wii golf."

I would have pointed him to the bowling ball attachment. As for golf, well, I find that the distance your ball travels relative to the dots feel a bit longer after the second dot. Keep that in mind when you're trying to make a mid-range iron shot onto the green.

Man, I feel so goddamned bipartisan all of a sudden.

Newt Gingrich on Twitter

Mayor Tom Leppert, 53, made sweet sweet love to his main axe with "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," craning the guitar neck up and grimacing dramatically. Sure he handed it off to his 11-year-old "personal Guitar Hero coach" Aaron Blackmon mid-song. But Leppert got it back to drop to his knees for the big finish.

"I might not have hit the keys, but boy I sure got the style points," Leppert said. Aaron says the mayor is "good for his level," (ouch) but that he shouldn't play Guitar Hero as a career.

"The heck with this mayor stuff," Leppert replied.

Leppert was matched against Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes, whom Leppert accused of practicing for "hours and hours" to get "School's Out" right. When Keyes started his licks, Leppert stuffed $5 bills in his guitar strap and half-heartedly interfered with the guitar's signal back to the console.

The fund-raiser hopes to raise $625,000 for the mayor's "Igniting Opportunity for the Children of Dallas Campaign." This is part of leadership, too — having fun at an event that's supposed to be fun. Good on Mayor Leppert.

Dallas Mayor Leppert Jams at Blockbuster Charity Event [Dallas Morning News, via GamePolitics]

King's been writing horror novels for nearly four decades, many of them reaching the big screen, some of them even winning Oscars. And he rightly points out that to a politician, a 17-year-old can see gruesome flicks like Hostel or Saw, but would be a danger to society playing the less graphic Grand Theft Auto or Hitman series.

Then he loses it on a bill before the Massachusetts state legislature, and it gets good.

You really should read the whole thing, but his kicker is well worth quoting here:

What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It's easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room. Elephant One is the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, a situation guys like Fiddy and Snoop have been indirectly rapping about for years. Elephant Two is America's almost pathological love of guns. It was too easy for critics to claim — falsely, it turned out — that Cho Seung-Hui (the Virginia Tech killer) was a fan of Counter-Strike; I just wish to God that legislators were as eager to point out that this nutball had no problem obtaining a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Cho used it in a rampage that resulted in the murder of 32 people. If he'd been stuck with nothing but a plastic videogame gun, he wouldn't even have been able to kill himself.

Case closed

Stephen King: Video Game Lunacy [Entertainment Weekly, thanks Avi Gold]

Many of his campaign speeches have contained advice for parents to get kids to "put away the video games." This isn't anything new, either. GamePolitics.com also points out that he's been talking about video games and underachievement in the same breath since April 2006.

In his victory speech in Wisconsin last night, Obama reiterated this sentiment:

I know how hard it will be to alleviate poverty that has built up over centuries, how hard it will be to fix schools, because changing our schools will require not just money, but a change in attitudes.

We're going to have to parent better, and turn off the television set, and put the video games away, and instill a sense of excellence in our children, and that's going to take some time.

I'm fairly certain my prime minister doesn't know what a video game is, so for now, Canada is safe. But it's scary when a potential leader of a country so passively attributes video games with failure. It sounds like yet another instance of a politician not fully understanding what he's talking about, and jumping on the bandwagon, proliferating the popular sentiment that "video games are evil."

Obama Campaign Theme: Video Games As Metaphor For Underachievement [GamePolitics.com]

With both the Senate and the Assembly having passed gaming bills, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is calling for talks towards a compromise. You'd think that would be an easy task since there are only a few major differences between the bills, but if any group of people could argue to a standstill over something they basically agree on, it's politicians. Michael Fahey

Lightning Round for NY Assembly: Video Game Bill Passed in a Day [GamePolitics.com]

I kinda felt sad when I heard that New York City was declaring today Final Fantasy XII day and that I wasn't going to be able to catch it... and then I saw the videos, they're almost as boring as the plot to most of the FF games.

If uninspired cosplay, politicians yammering on endlessly and lines of fanboys and girls alternately cooing over Square art and asking stupid questions, is your cup of tea, here's two heaping mouthfuls courtesy of The Software Pirates. Brian Crecente

Happy Final Fantasy Days [The Software Pirates]