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Please pray for my wife's mother. She made it to 84 years last week with the blessing of our Lord. Unfortunately her lungs don't have much more to give. My wife is very upset and all your prayers are appreciated. Thank you.

"I haven't seen HBO's latest effort at manipulating history. However, based upon the description and reports from people who have viewed the film Game Change, HBO has distorted, twisted and invented facts to create a false narrative and attract viewers. They call it a docu-drama, there is little "docu" in it. HBO must add a disclaimer that this movie is fiction." -Tim Crawford, Treasurer SarahPAC Pay channel HBO has produced another docudrama based on the political arena. This time it is a subscription-only television movie sensationalizing 40 pages of a three-year-old book about the 2008 presidential election. The real 2008...

Please pray for my father. He suffered a massive stroke, in his sleep, on December 1st. He has been breathing on his own but unconscious since then. He has an advanced directive concerning heroic measures. It doesn't look promising right now. Mom passed six years ago. He has 10 living children and a truckload of grandchildren to go with 1 great-grand child. He turned 83 on November 25th. Thank you.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign Friday disclosed it owes an additional $230,000 to cover travel costs in the last fund-raising period, much of which appears to be owed to private jet owners who leased their planes to the campaign at rates lower than the law allows. Previous reports by The Wall Street Journal and New York Times showed that Mr. Perry’s campaign was chartering private jets owned by supporters at sometimes half of commercial rates. Federal campaign finance law requires presidential candidates to pay the full cost of chartering a plane. The campaign thought it only had to pay...

On Friday Rick Perry delivers his first major policy address, unveiling an aggressive energy and jobs plan. It will no doubt be good. It will no doubt address serious problems. It will no doubt be ignored. That's because, unfortunately for Mr. Perry, drilling isn't the energy topic du jour. The buzz is the bankrupt Solyndra, which is why the only energy question that came to Mr. Perry at Tuesday's New Hampshire debate was this: How, exactly, is his state's vaunted "Emerging Technology Fund"—which has dumped some 200 million taxpayer dollars into private companies—any different from Obama programs that subsidized the...

Christie made clear he did not support in-state tuition levels for immigrants who arrived in the country illegally, a position that Rick Perry defended during last week's debate and uttered the line that several Florida straw poll voters recoiled from - that his critics on the issue "don't have a heart." Continue Reading Asked by a questioner at the Reagan Library, Christie took an unmistakable shot at Perry, saying, "From my perspective, that is not a heartless position. That is a common-sense position."

"Q: So in your view those things fall outside of general welfare. But what falls inside of it? What did the Founders mean by 'general welfare'? "A: I don't know if I'm going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant. "Q: But you just said what you thought they didn't mean by general welfare. So isn't it fair to ask what they did mean? It's in the Constitution. "A: [Silence.] "Q: OK. Moving on.... "

Reporting from Tampa, Fla. -- A black, threatening cloud hung low over the Orange County Convention Center on Saturday evening as top members of Gov. Rick Perry’s brain trust left a place their candidate would love to forget. At best half showed up, leaving tables groaning with uneaten bagels, scrambled eggs, bacon and fruit cocktail. At the end of the governor’s rather perfunctory eight-minute speech, the breakfast crowd offered a rather perfunctory round of applause, the first public clue that all might not be going well in Perryville. The Texan’s campaign fielded the largest cadre of volunteers and paid staff...

ORLANDO -- With both jobs and immigration likely topics of sharp debate at tonight's Republican debate here in Florida, a new report suggests that newly-arrived immigrants have filled a majority of new jobs created in Texas, home to Republican frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry. "Of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent were taken by newly arrived immigrant workers (legal and illegal)," says the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates reduced levels of both legal and illegal immigration. The report estimates that about 40 percent of the new jobs were taken by illegal immigrants, while...

This, from PPP, is pretty helpful to the narrative Mitt Romney wants to feed right now: When PPP did a national poll three weeks ago Barack Obama led Perry by only 6 points at 49-43. Now that gap has widened to 11 points at 52-41. The main movement has come with Democratic voters. On the previous poll Obama had only a 68 point lead with the party base at 81-13 but now it's 80 points at 89-9. We know there are a lot of Democratic voters disenchanted with Obama right now but if the GOP puts forward someone like Perry...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s humble origins and down home straight talk are central to his political identity, but for years Perry has enjoyed lavish perks and travel — mostly funded by a group of deep-pocketed supporters — that are allowed under his state’s lax ethics and campaign rules. Some of the same Texas donors who have funded Perry’s political rise also have footed the bills for Perry and his family to jet around the world, stay in luxury hotels and resorts, vacation in tony Colorado ski towns, attend all manner of sporting events and concerts, and to maintain, entertain —...

The less the Trans-Texas Corridor is brought up during the Republican presidential primaries, the better for Rick Perry. Although it was officially killed in the most recent Texas legislative session, the proposed massive transportation and infrastructure project and ensuing debacle could still end up being a thorn in the governor's side as he preaches his anti-big government mantra on the campaign trail. As originally proposed and backed by Perry, the state of Texas would have taken more than 500,000 acres of private land to build the 1,200-foot-wide toll road. The majority of those acres were agricultural lands and wildlife habitats,...

Commentary on the Rick Perry-Mitt Romney showdown at the GOP debate has focused on Perry's "Ponzi scheme" critique of Social Security. It's an important issue, and Perry will have to rethink the way he talks about Social Security in coming days. But not enough attention has been paid to Perry's performance on an issue that could be his undoing in the GOP race: immigration. The bottom line of Wednesday's debate is that Perry, governor of a border state for more than a decade, didn't have much to say about immigration. When asked how he would secure the U.S.-Mexican border, his...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry needed to show in tonight’s debate that he is presidential, substantive and ready for prime time. While he made no major gaffes, he certainly did not stand out in the crowd. He took hits on his views on Social Security and on mandatory HPV testing, and unsurprisingly did not have convincing comebacks. At times — on foreign policy and on global warming — he seemed to search for words. He will need to lose the frozen grin as well. His best moment came near the end of the debate when he gave a measured, tough-minded defense...

When then-Gov. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his office released a treasure trove of information relating to his years as Texas' chief executive. Some 3,125 pages detailing Bush's appointments during 1995-1998 allowed news organizations to remark on the exact number of lobbyists and campaign donors with whom he met. The records showed which state lawmakers Bush conferred with - and on what subject - and detailed how much time he spent reviewing capital punishment cases prior to executions. The records showed when he arrived at the office, when he took time off for the gym and when...

Total jobs. Texas: Up 0.7 percent since the beginning of 2008. U.S: Down 5.6 percent. Since the recession began, Texas has added about 75,000 jobs, one of the few states with any job creation at all. Overall, the U.S. economy has lost about 5.6 million jobs since then. But net job gains in Texas have come entirely from government hiring, which accounts for 115,000 new jobs over the past three years. The private sector in Texas shed about 40,000 jobs during that time. Federal government jobs. Texas: Up 7 percent. U.S.: Up 4.3 percent. Nationwide, the federal government has been...

Article from 2007: AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry said today he will oppose efforts to repeal a law, which he signed six years ago, giving tuition breaks to undocumented immigrants attending state universities. ``I'm for leaving the law like it is because I think it serves a good purpose,'' he said. Perry said he and the media might have failed to adequately educate the public about the tuition law, which has drawn fire during the ongoing debate over illegal immigration. State legislators have filed at least four bills to repeal the measure, which grants lower, in-state tuition to the children...

House Speaker John Boehner has a plan that he touts as slashing about $900 billion in government spending — shy of his original claim, only two days earlier, that cuts would amount to $1.2 trillion. It’s nonsense, of course. In Washington, unlike the rest of the known universe, a “cut” is a reduction in the rate of increase. There are never real cuts. In reality, Speaker Boehner’s plan would add $9.1 trillion to the national debt. It is a “cut” only in the sense that the Obama Democrats have rigged matters so that, if nothing changes, autopilot would add $10...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a blunt message to the Republican Conference Tuesday morning: Quit the “grumbling” and “whining” and come together to rally behind Speaker John Boehner to pass his debt ceiling plan. Cantor’s heavy rhetoric came out in a closed session at the Capitol Hill Club as the GOP majority tried to whip up support for Boehner’s latest deficit package. Cantor summed up what he knew many Republicans were thinking as they head into another critical vote. The debt limit vote sucks,” he said, according to an attendee of the closed meeting. But Republicans have three...

Pella — Many viewers of "The Undefeated" came out of the Pella Opera House moments ago with rave reviews of the film. "The Undefeated," a documentary chronicling the political career of former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin recently finished its premiere at the Pella Opera House. Those in attendance, most of whom are Republican supporters, enjoyed the film. "I thought it was just great," Mike Olson of Pella said. He called Palin courageous and worthy of a second look for a potential presidential run by Republicans and the country. (snip) Two of Pella's own politicians watched the...