Free Republic

No question about it: Mitt Romney struck gold with his commanding performance in Wednesday’s first presidential debate. The Rasmussen polling firm reported Friday the results of new polls in the crucial swing states of Florida and Virginia, and in each of them Romney got a boost. Romney now leads by 49 percent to 47 percent in Florida, while in the previous Florida poll, taken slightly more than three weeks earlier, it was Obama who led by 2 percentage points. In Virginia, Romney leads by one point, 49 to 48, while in the previous poll, also taken a bit more than...

Tweet from The Colbert Report: Nation! First Lady @MichelleObama will appear on The Colbert Report on Wednesday, April 11. Tune in at 11:30pm / 10:30c. Quite the media blitz the First Lady and the President have been on lately. You would think that if the First Lady wanted to reach a sizable audience, though, she would do a guest spot on a program that gets more viewers like "Pawn Stars" or a cartoon rerun on Nickelodeon or something on cable access. Well, Colbert is a true-blue friend to the Barack Obama re-election campaign and a fellow crusader in the left's...

As states such as Alabama and Georgia make waves with a hard-line approach to illegal immigration, California took a leap in the other direction this weekend when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a host of bills that make the nation's biggest state one of the most accepting of immigrants living here illegally. Some saw the flurry of new laws, especially the California Dream Act, as a rejection of the political fervor against illegal immigration in other parts of the country. "Wherever California goes, so does the nation. It may put a halt to some of this," said Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, facing waning confidence among Americans in his economic stewardship, will lay out a plan on Thursday that will have a "quick and positive impact" on job creation, the White House said. Confidence in Obama's management of the economy has been hit by months of bad economic news and several polls on Tuesday showed fresh declines in his job approval ratings. Obama, a Democrat, hopes to start reversing this trend in an address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, in which he will try to convince voters that he has a better economic...

President Obama took his jobs pitch to Pittsburgh Friday, announcing a manufacturing partnership aimed at reviving a key sector of the American economy. The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership is designed to team government, industry and higher education together to fund new technologies. Obama's plan calls for an initial $500 million down payment toward that effort. Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, Obama said the Steel City is a living example of how manufacturing helped build the middle class in America, and said the country must continue investing in new technologies to sustain it. "Here and across America's industrial heartland, millions clocked in...

COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama, while still a candidate, promised he would bankrupt the coal industry. According to the Chicago Tribune, it looks like this will be a rare promise that Obama will actually keep. Unfortunately, it will mean sky-rocketing electricity prices for Americans, as much as 60 percent more by AdChoices 2014. The Obama administration intends to slap environmental regulations on coal fired plants that will make many of them impossible to operate. Even those coal plants that will continue to function will only do so at the expense of billions of dollars of upgrades, which of course will...

As the high cost of gasoline takes a toll on politics and pocket books, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is calling on major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia to increase their oil supplies to help stabilize prices, warning starkly that lack of relief would harm the global economy. "We are in a lot of conversations with the major oil producers like Saudi Arabia to let them know that it's not going to be good for them if our economy is hobbled because of high oil prices," Obama told a Detroit TV station. His remarks signaled a broad new...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Tuesday a mandate that 33% of electricity in California must come from renewable sources by 2020. Executives at solar, wind and other clean energy companies said the new regulations could help California reclaim its green leadership position after losing ground to states such as Texas and Iowa. "This is tremendous," said Mike Hall, chief executive of Borrego Solar. "A legislative solution provides a lot more clarity and firepower for regulators and proponents." Brown, along with U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, signed the bill while helping dedicate a new solar panel manufacturing plant in...

The operators of businesses visited by the first family last weekend are unsure if their visit will have a direct impact on their establishments, but they and local officials are hopeful it will boost visitor traffic and the economy in Panama City Beach. “Having the first family visit Panama City Beach is international news,” said Dan Rowe, executive director of the Bay County Tourist Development Council. There are no hard numbers available about direct economic impacts, Rowe said, but articles printed around the world about the visit will increase the area’s profile as a tourist destination, and he expects far-reaching...

FINDING it difficult to revise for an exam? Help could be on its way in the form of the first non-invasive way of stimulating the brain that can boost visual memory. The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which weak electrical currents are applied to the scalp using electrodes. The method can temporarily increase or decrease activity in a specific brain region and has already been shown to boost verbal and motor skills in volunteers. Richard Chi, a PhD student at the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney, and colleagues wanted to follow up on previous research...

California entered 2010 burdened with a dismal unemployment rate (12 percent) and facing a discouragingly large state budget deficit ($19.9 billion). FDR Memorial, Washington DC We’re still in the worst recession to hit the West Coast since the Great Depression. It’s hard to imagine how the economic news could be worse. But the independent California Budget Project, in a report issued yesterday, says matters would be worse indeed but for the estimated $85 billion that the federal government has pumped into California’s economy via the stimulus program. Undoubtedly there has been waste, abuse and what state Inspector General Laura Chick...

Temporary help is on the way for the country's battered job market, thanks to the upcoming U.S. Census. According to a new study released today by the Commerce Department, which includes the Census Bureau the survey will add up to 635,000 temporary jobs by May to the nation's employment reports. The study also predicts that Census Bureau hiring will cause the country's unemployment rate to drop by several-tenths of a percentage point this spring. Census spending, the report also forecasts, will boost the nation's gross domestic product by 1/10 of a percentage point during the first quarter of this year...

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AFP) – In office less than 13 months, President Barack Obama has already returned to the campaign trail, flying west to stump for embattled Democrats ahead of November midterm elections. After meeting with the Dalai Lama Thursday, Obama flew to Denver, Colorado to address some 2,000 Democratic activists gathered in a concert hall who greeted him with cheers of "Yes We Can!" -- the slogan he made famous in his 2008 campaign. But the rapturous reception obscured the stark reality that Democrats face anything but a love-fest in November's midterms. That has left Obama to try and...

This figure shows the energy density and the power density of nano vacuum tubes in comparison to other energy storage devices. Credit: H?bler and Osuagwu. (PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists theorize that quantum phenomena could provide a major boost to batteries, with the potential to increase energy density up to 10 times that of lithium ion batteries. According to a new proposal, billions of nanoscale capacitors could take advantage of quantum effects to overcome electric arcing, an electrical breakdown phenomenon which limits the amount of charge that conventional capacitors can store. In their study, Alfred Hubler and Onyeama Osuagwu, both of the...

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina got a boost today from GOP national leadership regarding her possible 2010 bid against incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer -- a move Fiorina appears ever closer to making. It came this morning when Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, met with reporters for a briefing at the Ronald Reagan Republican Center in D.C., where he appeared eager to pump up the Fiorina candidacy, speaking of it as virtual given. "(Carly) Fiorina...even before she announces her candidacy she is within four points in a Rasmussen poll against Barbara Boxer,'' he...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the best way to judge his economic stimulus plan in the next two years will be whether it creates or saves 3 million to 4 million jobs. And if the White House predictions are correct, no state will produce more jobs than California, which has been losing jobs faster than any other state. More than 10 percent of the jobs – 421,000 – are forecast to come from the Golden State, which has a 9.3 percent unemployment rate, the fourth-highest in the nation and California's highest in 15 years. The state's loss of 78,200...

In a top secret operation, the U.S. Defense Dept. is conducting the first deep space inspection of a crippled U.S. military spacecraft. To do this, it is using sensors on two covert inspection satellites that have been prowling geosynchronous orbit for nearly three years. The failed satellite being examined is the $400 million U.S. Air Force/Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program DSP 23 missile warning satellite. It died in 2008 after being launched successfully from Cape Canaveral in November 2007 on the first operational Delta 4-Heavy booster. Since the U.S. is now demonstrating the ability to do such up close rendezvous...

After two years of relentlessly bad ratings news, Katie Couric finally has something she can smile about. . . That makes four straight weeks where her audience was bigger than at the same point last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. The improvement could be a result of the positive feedback Couric received for her interview of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the presidential campaign. Palin fumbled on a question about what publications she read regularly, and the interview was a launching point for one of Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" spoofs.

THE TIME MAY be coming, if it is not already here, when decision-makers in Sacramento finally understand that California must store a lot more water in reservoirs or lose much of its agriculture. That message was delivered Monday by federal regulators, who placed severe restrictions on pumping water out of the Delta. The new rules in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit will require more freshwater to be released into the Delta and a lot less water to be pumped out of the estuary. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the old pumping permit was highly flawed because...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a cabinet-level office for volunteer service Tuesday that aims to raise the profile of volunteerism and emergency relief in a state beset by wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Schwarzenegger named Karen Baker, executive director of the governor's commission for volunteerism, as secretary of service and volunteering, the first such state cabinet position in the country, he said. Speaking in a crowded hall at Cal State Northridge, he said he hoped the change would inspire other states to establish similar offices around the country. He gave his wife, Maria Shriver, credit for pushing the idea to...