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Eighty legislators from Utah have submitted an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in which the legislators warn the Court that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to the legalization of incestuous and polygamous marriages. The brief comes following the request for a writ of certiorari from both Utah's Attorney General, Sean Reyes, and the plaintiffs in Kitchen v. Herbert, the case that found both both a district court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of marriage equality in Utah. As Joe.My.God points out, "the brief is signed by 22 of the 29 members of the state...

Mitt Romney has put a lot of work into reversing the perception, prevalent during his 2008 campaign, that his ideological compass only follows the magnetic field of whichever electorate he happens to be trying to win over. The title of his campaign book, No Apology, was as much a statement of principle as it was a potshot at the (entirely fictional) bowing and scraping Obama has done overseas. He’s refused to cede an inch on the merits of his Massachusetts health reform program, despite the incredibly inconvenient fact that Democrats cribbed from it when they wrote their national overhaul. And...

...Like Mr. Obama's reform, RomneyCare was predicated on the illusion that insurance would be less expensive if everyone were covered. Even if this theory were plausible, it is not true in Massachusetts today. So as costs continue to climb, Mr. Romney's Democratic successor now wants to create a central board of political appointees to decide how much doctors and hospitals should be paid for thousands of services. The Romney camp blames all this on a failure of execution, not of design. But by this cause-and-effect standard, Mr. Romney could push someone out of an airplane and blame the ground for...

Mitt Romney can’t seem to win for losing when it comes to some of the criticisms he faces on pro-life and health care issues. The former Massachusetts governor is giving a major speech today about health care in an attempt to overcome the hurdle he faces about the health care plan implemented during his gubernatorial administration that requires state residents to purchase health insurance in a way similar to Obamacare. Romney has already faced questions about the sincerity of his conversion on abortion — from abortion to pro-life before the 2008 presidential campaign — and the location of his speech...

Bartlett, NH - Leftover 2008 campaign signs outside the Carroll County Republican Committee dinner announce what's on everyone's minds, even Ann Romney's. "And I'm the one that is encouraging Mitt to think about pushing forward and think about running. So, yes, yes I am. I'm pushing him," she said before her husband took the podium. It's his first public speech in New Hampshire since the mid-term elections, and Mitt Romney sounded an awful lot like a candidate. "It's gonna take more than a good speech on his part, more than rhetoric to put Americans back to work. It's going to...

Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, looking to bolster his foreign policy credentials, is on a Mideast swing that included a visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney met the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 only to lose to John McCain. He has shown multiple signs of planning to seek his party's nomination again for the right to oppose Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012. Romney could be among as many as a dozen Republicans seeking the...

Michael Merlina was fed up, frustrated and seemingly out of options when he walked into Middlesex Superior Court last week and plunked down $275 for court fees. With help from a few clerks, Merlina became his own lawyer and filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority. The 29-year-old North Reading glazier is fighting the $2,000 state fine for not having health insurance. In 2009, the first year penalties were in place, Merlina paid a $400 fine for him his wife

A pickup-driving image helped put Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate, so is Mitt Romney hoping it will drive him him to the White House? The 2008 Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor drove a beat-up pickup to a New Hampshire fundraiser last night. He's also driven it to other political events as he weighs another run in 2012. Spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom says Romney has owned the Chevy since 2002 and uses it for errands around his New Hampshire lakeside vacation home.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is warning the tea party activists to not run third party candidates that would “divide” Republican voters and waste opportunities for the GOP. Romney said in an interview with Newsmax posted on the conservative outlet’s website Monday night that he was pleased the conservative grassroots movement is “silent no longer.” The likely 2012 GOP presidential candidate cautioned though that while he supports the idea of conservative challenges in GOP primaries, third party tea party-backed candidates in the general election could be disastrous. “Divide and fail is the result,” Romney said of third party challenges. “That...

Mitt Romney's role in overseeing passage of a universal health care plan in Massachusetts appears likely to cause headaches for the former Republican governor should he make his widely-expected run for the White House in 2012. As Matt Yglesias noted Sunday, all of the government-subsidized health care plans offered to low-income Massachusetts residents, under a program called Commonwealth Care, cover abortion.