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ORLANDO, Fla. - As Hurricane Sandy takes aim at the East Coast, the storm is already throwing a wrench in the campaign plans of both President Barack Obama and his challenger, Gov. Mitt Romney. Obama greeted local members of the Puerto Rican community upon arrival at Orlando International Airport just before 8 p.m. Sunday, but he canceled his Monday morning appearance at the University of Central Florida. "Due to deteriorating weather conditions in the Washington area, the president will not attend today's campaign event in Orlando. The president will return to the White House to monitor the preparations for and...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A spokesman for the Secret Service told The Daily Caller that the agency is aware of video showing a delegate at the Democratic National Convention expressing a desire to “kill” Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “We are aware of it,” Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told TheDC on Thursday. He said the department is “taking the appropriate follow-up steps” with the woman. Video surfaced on Wednesday of a woman identifying herself as New York delegate Julia Rodriguez telling The Blaze, “If I see him” — in reference to Romney — “I would like to kill him.” In...

TAMPA - The following are the remarks as prepared for delivery by Luis Fortuño, Governor of Puerto Rico. The actual remarks may differ. The Hon. Luis Fortuño Governor of Puerto Rico (Remarks as Prepared for Delivery) August 29, 2012 Thank you. Buenas noches Puerto Rico! Buenas noches America! As a proud American serving the nearly 4 million American citizens of Puerto Rico, I am honored to be with you tonight. We gather to celebrate the hopes and dreams of every American. We all believe in the greatness of this nation, and this greatness lies within each of us. Hard-working Americans...

In a very subtle move, instead of covering the speech given by Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, MSNBC interviewed Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. MSNBC has vilified Brewer for her tough stances against illegal immigration and has painted her as anti-Hispanic. Fox News covered the speech briefly, but interviewed Chris Christie for the majority of the time. Fox News however, hasn't painted Jan Brewer as racist and anti-Hispanic, etiher. To be fair, Brewer should have declined an interview with MSNBC during Fortuno's speech but, they set her up.

Orlando, Florida – On Thursday, Orlando will be the hub of presidential campaigning. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida's own, is expected, as well, to campaign for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The city is part of the Interstate 4 corridor — a wide swath of central Florida lined with amusement parks and, of importance to the campaigns, home to the majority of Florida's Puerto Ricans, whose voting population has doubled in the last decade to more than 860,000, or about 1 in 14 of Florida voters overall. Puerto Ricans living in the...

San Juan – Puerto Rico’s most powerful female lawmaker is in hot water once again. This time its after one of her advisers sent a tweet to President Barack Obama that local politicians have labeled as racist. Heidi Wys sent the tweet shortly after Obama tweeted that Michelle Obama's birthday was coming up. Wys tweeted the following in response: "Who cares? Take her to Burger King, buy her a sundae with double banana, take her to your homeland, Kenya!" Wys is an adviser to House of Representatives President Jenniffer González. On Tuesday, several legislators demanded that Wys step down. They...

The opinion is Asoc de Duenos de Armerias de PR Inc. v. Policia de Puerto Rico (P.R. Ct. App. June 28, 2012); I don’t know Spanish, but if any readers who do can post a quick summary of the court’s conclusion and its reasoning, that would be great. For earlier Puerto Rico Second Amendment opinions, see here and here.

Madison, Wis., may be the austerity debate’s central front, but San Juan is an important, if overlooked, battleground. For the past three years, Governor Luis Fortuño has been the Caribbean’s Scott Walker — and like Walker, he’s under siege. When Fortuño began his term, Puerto Rico was an economic mess. Fifteen percent of the island territory’s labor force was unemployed. Facing a $3.2 billion budget deficit, Fortuño implemented deep cuts, slashing public jobs and salaries across the board. The government unions erupted. Thousands of public workers protested Fortuño’s reforms on the streets of San Juan. And in five months, when...

Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno (R) is a sleeper pick for the No. 2 spot on the 2012 presidential ticket, according to GOP strategists. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has kept his cards close to his chest on vice presidential prospects, saying that it would be “presumptuous” to think about it before winning the nomination. But in a recent interview with Newsmax, he described Fortuno as “a solid conservative and a firm leader.” He also dubbed Fortuno “one of the great leaders of our party.” Republican strategists say that whomever Romney picks, the selection has to resonate with Hispanic voters. Sen....

Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno (R) is a sleeper pick for the No. 2 spot on the 2012 presidential ticket, according to GOP strategists. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has kept his cards close to his chest on vice presidential prospects, saying that it would be “presumptuous” to think about it before winning the nomination. But in a recent interview with Newsmax, he described Fortuno as “a solid conservative and a firm leader.” He also dubbed Fortuno “one of the great leaders of our party.”

Puerto Rico warns Occupy Movement to clean up messAssociated Press – 2 hrs 26 mins ago SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico officials threatened the island's Occupy Movement with legal action Thursday if its supporters do not clean up a public park they occupied for five months and abandoned suddenly this week. The group has 48 hours to respond, said Mari Batista, director of San Juan's Sports and Recreation Office. "The amount of garbage, waste and rubble left behind is impressive," she said. "They were supposedly defending the environment, fighting for a better Puerto Rico ... what they...

But there is another intriguing possibility. Luis Fortuño is the 51-year-old governor of Puerto Rico, whose four million people have all been U.S. citizens since 1952, making their governor eligible to become vice president. Mr. Fortuño made history in 2004 by being elected the island's lone delegate to the U.S. House as a conservative and followed up that feat in 2008 by being elected governor with the largest margin of any predecessor since the 1960s. His party not only won control of the legislature by historic margins but also won the power to name three supreme court judges, giving that...

In Puerto Rico, for the price of 20 delegates, Mitt Romney sold out his conservative principles. There is a long history of Congress requiring English to be the language of government and schools for territories seeking to be admitted to the Union — e.g., Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. For all of the territories that had large non-English speaking populations, Congress announced before the territories voted on the question of statehood that a change in language policy would be a prerequisite for statehood. In the case of Puerto Rico, where according to the latest Census only 15% of residents...

<p>Mitt Romney will win the Republican presidential primary in Puerto Rico on Sunday, CNN projects, based on vote results obtained from local party and election officials.</p>

Rick Santorum delivered yet another gaffe about Puerto Rico on Sunday as voters there head to the polls for the Republican primary. The former Pennsylvania senator referred to the United States commonwealth as a “Spanish-speaking country” on ABC’s “This Week.” Although Santorum was quick to fix his mistake, it was yet another example of how the presidential wanna-be has stumbled in his efforts to gain support among the island’s Republican voters. Santorum made the error while he was trying to explain his previous comments that Puerto Rico's residents would have to speak English as a condition of being admitted as...

Turnout for the GOP Primary in Puerto Rico higher than expected. It helps that the local parties are having their own primaries, and you just walk from the local to the GOP primary next door. As they didn't have many election officials (only one at my voting station), people were voting openly right there at or near the registration desk. I saw a lot of Santorums and Gingrichs, but not a one Romney - the heavily favored PR GOP establishment candidate.

Rick Santorum's contention that in order for Puerto Rico to become a state English must be its principal language drew criticism Thursday from the U.S. territory's sole representative in Congress. "Santorum's view is narrow and a limiting view of what America is all about," said Pedro Pierluisi, a Democrat, on CNN's "Starting Point." "English is the predominant language in the U.S. and will continue to be so, whether Puerto Rico becomes a state or not." Puerto Rico will vote in November on a referendum regarding possible statehood. While campaigning Wednesday ahead of the island's primary on Sunday, Santorum told a...

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on Thursday defended a condition he said Puerto Rico must meet to be eligible for statehood: "English needs to be the principal language." Campaigning in the territory ahead of their Sunday primary, Santorum had on Wednesday said, "There are other states with more than one language, like Hawaii, but to be a state of the United States, English must be the principal language." Speaking to CNN's National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta on Thursday, he stood by his comments. "Obviously Spanish will be spoken here on the island. But this needs to be a bilingual country not...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Rick Santorum came to Puerto Rico and promptly waded into the emotional debate over the role English should play in the island's future, sparking a furor that led the former Pennsylvania senator to insist his remarks were misreported. Santorum was forced to repeatedly clarify remarks he made Wednesday, when he said English would have to be the "main language" for Puerto Rico to become a state. "I never said only English should be spoken here. Never did I even intimate that," Santorum told local reporters gathered in El Capitolio, the island's Capitol building. "What I...

Santorum says Puerto Rico must adopt English as official language if it wants statehood By Daniel Strauss - 03/14/12 04:10 PM ET Rick Santorum said Puerto Rico would have to adopt English as its primary language if it wants to achieve statehood. "Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum told a local newspaper, El Vocero, according to Reuters. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii, but to be a state of the United States,...