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Mitt Romney revealed a new energy policy today that will hinge on states, and not the federal government, being able to control energy development on federal land, a shift that the campaign says will result in North American energy independence by the year 2020. It includes more offshore drilling options, evoking memories of the slogan introduced four years ago at the Republican National Convention in 2008: “Drill, baby, drill.” “If I’m the president of the United States in a few months here, I will set a national goal of America and North America, North American energy independence by 2020,” Romney...

HOBBS, N.M. (AP) — Seeking to reset his economic message, Republican Mitt Romney pledged Thursday to create 3 million jobs and more than $1 trillion in revenue by ramping up offshore oil drilling and giving states more control over energy production on federal land. Romney, reviving a long-elusive goal pushed by presidents and presidential candidates for decades, said his plans would make the U.S., along with Canada and Mexico, energy independent by 2020. "This is not some pie in the sky kind of thing," Romney told voters in Hobbs, the heart of New Mexico's oil and gas industry. "This is...

Washington D.C., Aug 22, 2012 / 06:03 pm (CNA).- Platform drafters for the Republican Party have approved language asserting a firm commitment to the defense of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. “The institution of marriage is the foundation of civil society,” the draft document states. “Its success as an institution will determine our success as a nation.” The document says that both experience and studies indicate that marriage has physical, emotional, academic and economic benefits for children. It reaffirms the party's support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, while also...

After Mass on Sunday, North Carolina pastor Rev. Andre Mangango was approached by a man who, a day earlier, was introduced as Mitt Romney’s running-mate for the 2012 presidential election.“I am Representative Paul Ryan and this is my son,” the man said.Ryan reportedly attended the 7:30 mass that morning with a group of Secret Service agents at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina prior to campaign events later that day in the state.“Our rights come from nature and God, not government,” Ryan said, in his post-nomination speech. “We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.”Those words characterize Ryan’s understanding...

European governments are rushing to boost stockpiles of crude oil and fuel, anxious to comply with new EU rules and amid reports that Israel is preparing to launch an attack on Iran. Belgium and the Netherlands have issued tenders to import a total of around 250,000 tonnes of diesel and gasoline for delivery in September and October, their agencies said. France has also bought diesel and awarded a crude oil tender this week while Belgium is increasing its crude stocks. "This is yet another unexpected source of support for oil demand… [It] shows how the geopolitical concerns about Iran and...

Odious remarks by GOP Missouri Senate candidate Cong. Todd Akin about how few pregnancies result from "legitimate rape" have done more than outrage people across the country and doom Akin's bid to move up from the House. It motivated the Romney campaign - - already trailing among women voters in recent polls - - to distance itself from Akin by assuring voters that Romney and Paul Ryan - - the "Romney-Ryan administration" - - should they win in November, would not oppose raped women's access to abortion. "Governor Romney and Congressman (Paul) Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement, and a...

Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan was supposed to be a problem for the Republicans. So said a chorus of chortling Democrats. So said a gaggle of anonymous seasoned Republican operatives. All of which was echoed gleefully by mainstream media. The problem, these purveyors of the conventional wisdom all said, was Medicare -- to be more specific, the future changes in Medicare set out in the budget resolutions Ryan fashioned as House Budget Committee chairman and persuaded almost all House and Senate Republicans to vote for. But while Democrats licked their chops at the prospect of scaring old ladies that...

We’re living in two Americas. But unlike 50 years ago, when Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” shone a spotlight on poverty among certain groups within the U.S., today’s “other America” is one of profound differences in the most precious of all commodities – the length of our lives. We’ve known for some time now of the health and longevity disparities between blacks and whites. But, as new findings by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society, recently published in Health Affairs, demonstrate, the story about these longevity gaps has gone through some rather startling changes.

The Gallup Organization had some bad news for Barack Obama on Friday. It's not that Obama fell behind Mitt Romney by two points in Gallup's daily tracking poll, although that couldn't have helped the the O-Team's spirits heading into the weekend. Between now and the election, polls are likely to be less stable than Joe Biden's thought process. The really bad news for the Chicago mob is that Gallup's unemployment survey shows the Obama economy is getting even worse. Gallup reported an uptick in joblessness in their latest survey of 30,000 households.

The reason that President Obama uses teleprompters, even when addressing elementary school children, is because he cannot help but reveal who he is and what he believes during moments that involve real spontaneity. He no doubt wishes that he had gotten a “mulligan” for that line that he inadvertently delivered: “you did not build that business”, but it says so much about the man, his agenda, and why he feels the moral superiority to enact it. Some dismissed the comment, while others called it a Freudian slip. But devotees of Freud maintain that a “slip” is actually caused by an...

Mitt Romney finally caught up with the rest of us via a fiery speech in Ohio on Tuesday where he proclaimed three simple truths that frame Barack Obama: "Intellectually exhausted, out of ideas, and out of energy." Those lines are still too charitable; Obama has been intellectually barren from the beginning. Yet it is irrefutable -- to steal an apt word from Paul Ryan describing Obama's raiding Medicare to finance ObamaCare -- that Obama's idea inventory consists of the expired date-stamped perishables of the collectivist state -- tax, confiscate, redistribute, and impoverish.**snip** Paul Ryan represents everything that Obama and the...

President Barack Obama has slightly more than 22 days to drop Vice Presidential Joe Biden from the 2012 Democratic presidential ticket, according to lawyers familiar with the party nominating process. That is, Democrats have until September 6 to formally nominate their presidential ticket which will then be qualified for the 50 state ballots

Michael Sean Winters, blogging for the National Catholic Reporter, has written a lengthy piece asserting that Paul Ryan’s “dissent” from “Catholic Social Teaching” makes him a not very good Catholic and a “dangerous” choice for vice president. Others are far more qualified than I to discuss Catholic social teaching and Ryan’s understanding of it (see, e.g., Michael Novak, “Jesuits Rebuke Ryan,” and George Weigel, “Ryan vs. Georgetown”). But Mr. Winters begins his piece with an account of William F. Buckley Jr.’s “dissent” from Catholic social teaching, and that account is wrong in nearly every particular. That, I am qualified to...

Special ops group attacks Obama over bin Laden bragging, leaks... A group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces operatives is set to launch a media campaign, including TV ads, that scolds President Barack Obama for taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden and argues that high-level leaks are endangering American lives. Leaders of the group, the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc, say it is nonpartisan and unconnected to any political party or presidential campaign. It is registered as a so-called social welfare group, which means its primary purpose is to further the common good and its...

Dear Friend, In this video commentary, I discuss how to put the case against Obama to a friend. Tune in!

More than 1.7 million illegal immigrants could become eligible for tentative legal status Wednesday when President Obama’s non-deportation policy goes into effect, and after initial fears that the program would backfire, immigrant advocates are urging young immigrants to sign up. Activists say the policy is the biggest change on immigration in decades, and it has roiled the political landscape, solidifying Mr. Obama’s support among Hispanics and leaving presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney struggling to say what he would do. On Tuesday, the Obama administration laid out final details, including relaxed education standards that set a low bar. Under the...

A Democratic Party caucus chairman who has speculated about Jewish involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks has launched a new political action committee dedicated to supporting “anti-Zionist” Muslim candidates who believe “the ‘war on terror’ is a hoax and that the official story of 9/11 is not true,” according to the group’s website. MD Rabbi Alam is an Obama campaign ally and Missouri-based Democratic activist who came under fire in July after he told the Free Beacon that “not a single Jew” was killed during the 9/11 attacks. (Alam is not a rabbi.) A veteran Democrat, Alam lost a...

Israeli ambassador now on Fox. Israel is giving Obama until September 25 to announce whether he will support an Israeli strike on Iran to stop those monsters from nuking Israel. According to the ambassador, "Yes, we can!" to coin a phrase. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in The One's Oval Office right now. His screeching must be audible in Maryland.

When They Come For Your Guns, You Will Turn Them OverAugust 13, 2012 By Jim Karger “When they come for my gun, they will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands,” is a common refrain I often hear from the Neo-Cons when there is a threat, credible or otherwise, that the US government is going to take their firearms. And, when I hear this crazy talk, I agree with them openly. “You are right. They will pry your gun from your cold dead hands,” which I often follow with the question, “And where will that leave you...

"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." -- Barack Obama So far, the message of the Obama campaign essentially seems to be, "I'm unable to effectively govern because Republicans won't do everything I want. Re-elect me so I can deliver more of the same. Oh, also Paul Ryan wants to push old people off a cliff while Mitt Romney will give you cancer." That doesn't tell you much about what Obama would try to do in his second term, but given that he appears to be largely indifferent to the law and the wishes of...