Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Republican Conservative Base Starts Rallying Around Santorum: The Republican Party’s socially conservative base, conflicted for months over which presidential candidate to back, is increasingly coalescing behind Rick Santorum in a shift that some observers say may energize his bid and slow Mitt Romney’s momentum toward the nomination.

The Washington Post: The provision requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to get federal approval of any changes in their voting laws.

Rasmussen Reports: A new telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Obama earning 45% support to Romney’s 41%.

The Hill: Members approved the Expedited Legislative Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act, H.R. 3521, by a 254-173 vote . . . Among Republicans, the vote was 197-41 in favor of the bill, and among Democrats, the vote was 57-132 against.

WorldNetDaily: The latest WND/Wenzel Poll shows none of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates has solidified the base of the party, with one in five GOP voters leaning toward support of Obama in November.

Liberty Counsel: Mathew Staver was appointed to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) Board of Directors. The NHCLC is the nation’s largest Christian Hispanic organization and is also known as the Hispanic Evangelical Association.

News from The Associated Press: And that reality is undercutting his effort to cast himself as the inevitable Republican presidential nominee and prolonging a race that each day exposes deep divisions within the party.

News from The Associated Press: The Republican-led House is trying Wednesday to give President Barack Obama the line-item veto, a constitutionally questionable power over the purse that has been sought by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

CNN reports.

Washington Times: The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

CBS News: The former Pennsylvania senator came out on top in the voting in all three contests Tuesday night, including an unexpected five-point victory in Colorado’s caucuses. Santorum also won the Minnesota caucuses, by an 18-point margin, and he won by 30 points in the Missouri primary.

Rasmussen Reports: Fewer than half of voters nationwide still believe elections are generally fair. Most think the system is rigged to benefit incumbents in Congress.

Baptist Press: Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich finished in a virtual tie among evangelicals in Florida’s Republican primary, with each candidate claiming a small victory depending on which exit poll was used.

Washington Examiner: Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried

News from The Associated Press: Lawmakers put Indiana on the verge of becoming the Rust Belt’s first right-to-work state, passing legislation Wednesday that prohibits labor contracts requiring workers to pay union representation fees.

TheHill.com: With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Romney topped his nearest rival, Newt Gingrich, by 14 points, 46 percent to 32.

Washington Times: While the Obama campaign has consistently touted its grassroots, small-donor fundraising appeal, the reach of the tentacles of a few hundred Hollywood executives and financial moguls is astonishing.

CNSnews.com: The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

News from The Associated Press: When federal regulators approved a 39-mile natural gas pipeline through northern Pennsylvania’s pristine Endless Mountains, they cited the operator’s assurances that it would make sparing use of eminent domain as it negotiated with more than 150 property owners along the pipeline’s route.

News from The Associated Press: Republican Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana says he won’t seek re-election to a 16th term.

CSMonitor.com: Ron Paul is likely to win more delegates to the 2012 GOP convention than either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum this week. Wait. What? That’s why he campaigned in Maine this weekend.

The Hill: We’re at a point in America where about half of the people are getting something from government and the other half are paying for it, and we’re on track to have 60 percent getting something from government and 40 percent paying for it,” DeMint said.

The Hill: Former presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed his fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich in a surprise appearance at the Palm Beach County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner Saturday.

The Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show.

LaTimes.com: Members of a younger generation care less about Castro and are more liberal, but many are disappointed in President Obama.

NYTimes.com: A steady stream of endorsements has been flowing to Mitt Romney, with his campaign promoting Republicans who are giving their blessing to his presidential candidacy. Yet on the eve of the Florida primary, he has been unable to land the biggest catch of all: Jeb Bush.

LaTimes.com: The California Supreme Court, faced with a possible ballot measure to scrap newly drawn election districts, decided Friday to leave the boundaries in place for this year’s state Senate races.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion reports and links to the audio.

How Appealing reports and links to the ruling.

CNET News: Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

NationalJournal.com: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rode a strong performance and crowd enthusiasm at a debate in South Carolina to victory in that state’s primary, but the crowds at two debates in Florida this week haven’t been as wild for Gingrich.

InfoWars carries the video.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.” But what, exactly, are these “universal values”? And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

Rasmussen Reports™: Most voters agree with President Obama’s proposal in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night that wealthy Americans pay at least 30% of their income in federal taxes. But 30% seems to be about as far as they want to go.

News from The Associated Press: Forget the so-called liberal media. Right now Newt Gingrich’s most ardent critics are conservative pundits and columnists, many of whom have launched aggressive campaigns to discredit him and trip up his run for the Republican nomination.

The AP reports.

News from The Associated Press: Why do Mitt Romney and other wealthy investors pay lower taxes on the income they make from investments than they would if they earned their millions from wages?

2011 GDP: 1.7%: That’s the final, pathetic growth number for 2011.

News from The Associated Press: Democratic North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue, the first woman elected governor in the state, said Thursday she would not seek re-election . . .

The Washington Post: The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

TheHill.com: President Obama will raise the nation’s debt limit to $16.39 trillion after the Senate on Thursday killed a measure to stop the president from adding $1.2 trillion to the total.

OneNewsNow.com: In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich explained why he believes evangelicals are able to get behind his campaign.

Matt Paterson at the Washington Times: Once our body politic accepted this fundamental role of government, Medicare, welfare, Obamacare (or something very much like it) and all the rest of the unaffordable entitlement programs were all but inevitable. Obamacare will put us over the edge, to be sure, but make no mistake: It was Social Security that put us on the road to fiscal disaster and moral lethargy.

WBTV 3: Move over Cherokee Casino, the Catawba Indian Nation wants a piece of the action and plans to go to great lengths to do so.

Rasmussen: Mitt Romney has jumped back ahead in the fevered Florida Republican Primary race with his support back to where it was before Newt Gingrich’s big win Saturday in South Carolina.

David Malpass at WSJ (full access via Google): The central bank should take note when a popular presidential contender calls for limits on its power . . . The Fed’s responsibility is to create confidence in price stability and the dollar, thus providing the best monetary policy environment for full employment. Most central banks operate on this principle. Instead, the Fed has systematically undermined economic confidence by promising to maintain zero interest rates for privileged borrowers. That policy will have to stop if the U.S. is to again achieve impressive growth.

Deirdre Cooper at Public Discourse: In order to win, do Republicans really need to stop talking about abortion and marriage?

News from The Associated Press: A panel of federal judges appeared skeptical Wednesday of the Atlanta police department’s decision to reject a job application from an HIV-infected man.

AllGov: Rather than deal with the complexities of U.S. tax law, Americans living overseas are increasingly renouncing their citizenship in order to avoid paying their income taxes.

News from The Associated Press: Democrats who have been boycotting the Indiana House in a battle over right-to-work legislation could each face a $5,000 fine if they stay away another day.

Washington Post

Wall Street Journal transcript.

Washington Times: “I have a simple challenge for Speaker Pelosi…you know, put up or shut up. I mean, I have no idea what she’s talking about. I don’t think she has any idea what she’s talking about, but bring it on,” he said.

National Review: I called up the Commission on Presidential Debates, which handles the general election debates, and they confirmed that audience participation has not been allowed in the past in debates, and will not be allowed this cycle either.

Phyllis Schlafly at Townhall: Barack Obama’s latest unconstitutional action is his attempt to make four so-called recess appointments to high-level, well-paying jobs in the federal bureaucracy when the Senate was not in recess. He appointed three people to the National Labor Relations Board, plus Richard Cordray to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even though the Senate had declined to confirm his nomination.

NCPA Policy Digest: The Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) lax accounting standards obscure the fact that it is deeply insolvent with a capital shortfall of tens of billions of dollars.

The Washington Post: Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments.

The Associated Press: A judge has ruled that Montana’s medical marijuana law doesn’t shield providers of the drug from federal prosecution, delivering a new blow to an industry reeling from a state and federal crackdown.

2012 Florida Republican Primary – Rasmussen Reports: Less than two weeks ago, Mitt Romney had a 22-point lead in Florida, but that’s ancient history in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

News from The Associated Press: Overall, spending declined by some $6 billion, or nearly 8 percent, over the past year, according to the annual Grapevine study by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University

News from The Associated Press: The race to replace Rep. Gabrielle Giffords begins in earnest Monday as the Arizona congresswoman’s planned resignation sets up a free-for-all in a competitive district.

NBC Politics: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who just a few days ago seemed poised to capitalize on his New Hampshire primary victory to win South Carolina, failed to appeal to conservative, lower-income, and evangelical Christian voters in the state, which led to Saturday’s victory for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

MetroWeekly: Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) announced today on Facebook that her campaign for U.S. Senate raised more than $1 million in the last three months of 2011.

Judge Andrew Napolitano at Townhall: The theory behind the income tax is that the government’s need for cash is so great, it can just take it from your employer after you earn it but before your employer pays you — before you even see the cash — and use it as it sees fit. This presumes that the federal government has a greater right to your income than you do. There really can be no rationale for income taxes without that belief.

NCPA Policy Digest: USA Today reports that 21 states currently allow government workers to take advantage of an obscure perk known as “air time.” It allows public employees to essentially purchase credit for extra years of work that are applied toward their pension benefits.

The Hill: Herman Cain will deliver the Tea Party Express response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has postponed Tuesday’s scheduled vote on a controversial online piracy bill “in light of recent events,” he announced Friday.

Charles Hurt at Washington Times: There is growing consternation in Republican circles and among conservatives over why Republicans keep allowing the various Communist, leftist and otherwise anti-American TV networks to host GOP debates.

Politico (includes video): Gingrich called that story “false” — and delivered an extended denunciation of ABC and CNN for engaging Marianne Gingrich in the first place. “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” Gingrich said. “Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

Rasmussen Reports: The latest telephone survey of Likely GOP Primary Voters in the state finds Gingrich with 33% support to Romney’s 31%. Two days ago, before the last debate, it was Romney by 14 percentage points.

LifeNews.com: James Dobson, the founder and former president of Focus on the Family, has joined a number of social conservative and pro-life leaders have who announced endorsements for Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

OneNewsNow.com: everal prominent Christian leaders from across the country have signed on to lead the official “pastors and leaders faith coalition” for one of the GOP presidential hopefuls. The group was introduced during a recent nationwide conference call.

NYTimes.com: With a fortune estimated to be as large as a quarter of a billion dollars, Mitt Romney is among the wealthiest men ever to run for president.

The Hill: Five board members of the Palmetto Family Council, a leading South Carolina group of social conservatives, plan to endorse Rick Santorum after a series of meetings looking to coalesce around a candidate, one of the leaders told The Hill Wednesday evening.

Politico Poll: Several polls released during the past few days show that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is drawing close — or even surpassing — front-runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina, where the primary election is Saturday. Politico offered the latest evidence Thursday.