The most egregious Republican debate error on Jan 7: football

Yahoo.news did mention the goof on college football during the New Hampshire debates on 7 Jan 2012, tho it did not mention that the moderators did not correct the rather obvious goof:

ABC News’ Greg Krieg’s Instant Fact Check: There is no college football championship game being played tonight. There is an NFL playoff game. But no college ball.
ABC News’ Chris Good reports:
America loves sports, and for a politicians, fanship is a good way to prove you’re just one of the guys or gals. Most of the time.
Asked by moderator George Stephanopoulos what they’d be doing on Saturday night if they weren’t debating, three candidates said they’d be at home watching a national-championship college sports game.
Unfortunately, no such game was being played. Rather, an NFL playoff game between the Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints was underway during the debate.
“Watching the national-championship college basketball game,” Newt Gingrich said in response to Stephanopoulos’s final debate question. “Football,” he adjusted, when corrected on the sport.
Santorum agreed: He’d be at home watching the national-championship NCAA football game.
“It’s football,” Mitt Romney said, also agreeing. “I love it.”
False: It’s neither. Badly as they may have wanted to, no candidate could have been watching a football or basketball championship game tonight.
Alabama and LSU will play on Monday for the BCS championship–in football–in a much-anticipated rematch of the overtime slugfest held in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 6, which LSU won 9-6.

Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision of the Supreme Court, also came up during the debate. There were two dissents in Griswold, one by Hugo Black and one by Potter Stewart; one suspects there were not many 7-2 votes with Stewart and Black agreeing in dissent.

Of patent matters, Justice Black, in dissent in Graver Tank, nailed the chemistry issue dead on:

The only patent claims involved here describe respondent's product as a flux "containing a major proportion of alkaline earth metal silicate." The trial court found that petitioners used a flux "composed principally of manganese silicate." Finding also that "manganese is not an alkaline earth metal," the trial court admitted that petitioners' flux did not "literally infringe" respondent's patent. Nevertheless it invoked the judicial "doctrine of equivalents" to broaden the claim for "alkaline earth metals" so as to embrace "manganese." On the ground that "the fact that manganese is a proper substitute . . . is fully disclosed in the specification" of respondent's patent, it concluded that "no determination need be made whether it is a known chemical fact outside the teachings of the patent that manganese is an equivalent . . . ." Since today's affirmance unquestioningly follows the findings of the trial court, this Court necessarily relies on what the specifications revealed. 1 In so doing, it violates a direct mandate of Congress without even discussing that mandate. (...)

Respondent's assignors experimented with several metallic silicates, including that of manganese. According to the specifications (if these are to be considered) they concluded that while several were "more or less efficacious in our process, we prefer to use silicates of the alkaline earth metals." Several of their claims which this Court found too broad to be valid encompassed manganese silicate; the only claims found valid did not. Yet today the Court disregards that crucial deficiency, holding those claims infringed by a composition of which 88.49% by weight is manganese silicate.

In view of the intense study and experimentation of respondent's assignors with manganese silicate, it would be frivolous to contend that failure specifically to include that substance in a precise claim was unintentional.