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On Friday, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton , Lanny Davis , appeared on Fox News Channel with Stuart Varney for what was teased to be a segment in which Davis would call upon President Barack Obama to denounce the “cancer ad” that links Mitt Romney to a former steelworker’s wife’s death. The interview quickly became tense, however, when Davis tried to make the point that there were aspersions equivalent to those in the “cancer ad” in spots run by PACs supporting Mitt Romney. RELATED: Bill Burton Hails ‘Wildly Successful’ Romney Cancer Ad, Liberal Group Touts Millions In Free Air TimeM Varney asked Davis what he thought crossed the line in the ad in question that requires President Obama to denounce it. “The same thing that crossed the line when Mitt Romney used as an ad Barack Obama saying that he didn’t understand the economy and forgot to mention that he was quoting John McCain ,” said Davis. “When Mitt Romney was asked if he was going to repudiate that ad, he sai...

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More Electronic Arts announced today that it is merging two top mobile game studios, IronMonkey and Firemint, which will fittingly combine to create a new company, called Firemonkeys. (All parties are awarded 50 points for the awesome portmanteau.) For those unfamiliar, IronMonkey is probably best known for adapting popular EA titles to mobile, like Mass Effect Infiltrator, Dead Space, and The Sims FreePlay. Freemint, meanwhile, has produced a number of its own popular games, including Flight Control, Real Racing, and SPY Mouse — to name a few. Both studios are currently subsidiaries of the gaming giant, which acquired IronMonkey in early 2010 and Firemint in May 2011. The rebranded operation will continue to work out of EA’s Australian headquarters in Melbourne, where the teams will be tasked with creating ne...

There’s something very cool about Google Now, which the company announced at its I/O developer conference a few weeks ago. At the same time, though, Now also has the potential to become Google’s creepiest service yet. Here is what it does (assuming you opt in to the service and have a phone or tablet that runs Jelly Bean): Google Now learns from your search behavior and shows you cards with information you regularly search for (think game scores of your favorite teams, flight schedules) or that could be relevant to you because of your current location, including weather, nearby restaurants, schedules for the next bus station, how long it’s going to take you to drive home and currency information if it finds you are in a different country. It also uses a whimsical theme to highlight the time of day and where you are (it showed an image of Sydney’s Opera House, for example, when I was there a few weeks ago). All of this could easily scream “invasion of privacy.” After all, this is one ...