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Now it's South Carolina's turn.

If the Palmetto State, the "First in the South" primary, plays its traditional role in the Republican presidential nomination process, it will be where the White House hopes of virtually every candidate except the eventual nominee will go to die in about 10 days.

It's not for nothing that it's called the "South Carolina Firewall." And at this moment, it's looking like it's Romney's firewall.

There's a new award for brutal book reviews in Britain: the Hatchet Job of the Year Award. A Julian Barnes book is dismissed as "just so... average." A biography of Martin Amis is called "spectacularly bad writing about spectacularly good writing."

Ben Motz of Indiana University looked at NFL games over a 25-year span, and found the home team won 57 percent of the time. Professor Motz did find the home team's winning percentage dropped with the advent of instant replay.

With last night's results part of history, the candidates and press turned very quickly to South Carolina, which the AP says "is shaping up to be a dogfight."

And the stakes are high: After winning New Hampshire, Mitt Romney became the first non-incumbent Republican to win the primary season's first two contests, so as Bloomberg puts it, South Carolina, which votes Jan. 21, may be the last chance opponents have to derail Romney.

Several decades ago, more than half the states had eugenics laws — measures that allowed governments and others to forcibly sterilize people. It was a difficult chapter for many states and now North Carolina is looking to make amends. A task force says each of the state's 2,000 living victims should receive $50,000.

As expected, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary. Texas Rep. Ron Paul clinched second place — ahead of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. Paul told a crowd of supporters that he was nibbling at the heels of the front-runner.

A growth of 3 percent is not bad, given all the European turmoil. But there's a downside in the report. It shows the German economy shrinking a bit at the end of 2011.

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Mitt Romney's double-digit win in New Hampshire plants his feet happily on the path to the Republican nomination heading, now, into South Carolina.