Free Republic

SAN DIEGO — Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Anne, can move forward with plans to remodel and expand their beachfront La Jolla home, the California Coastal Commission ruled Friday. By a 7-4 vote, the panel rejected an appeal by Anthony A. Ciani, an architect and former La Jolla resident, who had argued, among other things, that the expansion would be illegal and exceed the size allowed on the 0.41-acre beachfront lot. Coastal Commission staff had said in their report to the panel that Ciani’s claim was in error. They had recommended the appeal be denied. The...

“I hear Pittsburgh is very nice this time of year.” -- A senior Romney campaign staffer talking to Power Play about the strategy for the closing weeks of the campaign. Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney trailed in five Rust Belt battleground states by an average of 6.9 points in the Real Clear Politics Average of polls. This morning, his average deficit was just 3.2 points. While all 11 swing states have moved his direction since the Republican nominee’s boffo performance in his first debate with President Obama, Romney has seen the most significant improvement in the core column of the...

On Friday, Starting Point host Soledad O’Brien sat down with DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to discuss Mitt Romney‘s RNC speech. O’Brien started things out by asking her guest what most worried her, as a Democrat, about the speech. (Snip) “Well, actually, what is deeply concerning to me is as an American is that Mitt Romney sort of had the audacity to not lay out any specifics at all,” she replied, “but gave us some very nice platitudes about how he would create jobs, 12 million of them, reduce the deficit,

Huffington Post chose some rather odd rhetoric to identify Romney's Jewish fans that were eager to get the candidate's photo at a Wednesday appearance. The Aug. 8 HuffPo posting carries the odd headline, "Mitt Romney's Motorcade Chased By Pack Of Orthodox Jews." Apparently a wedding party made up of Orthodox Jews spied Mitt Romney's motorcade arriving at the hotel where their celebration was being held and a group of them ran to the procession hoping to get photos of the GOP candidate. Huffington Post highlighted the story as related by a member of the Romney press pool but the border-line

The Los Angeles Times refuses to disclose the contents of a video tape in its possession that reportedly shows Barack Obama lavishing praise on his friend Rashid Khalidi, a close associate of Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat, at a 2003 Chicago dinner party sponsored by the Arab American Action Network and attended by Bill Ayers. The Times does, however, have all kinds of time to vet Ann Romney, going so far as to dig into a lawsuit she was part of involving a horse: It was the end of a long day in a stuffy Simi Valley office building. Ann Romney...

Vice President Joe Biden today said Mitt Romney’s economic policies bring to mind Kentucky Derby and Preakness champ I’ll Have Another, “except the horse is a real winner.” On the stump in Keene, N.H., this afternoon, Biden said the economic values Romney would bring to the White House were displayed during his tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital and manifest on the campaign trail, particularly in his calls to roll back Democrats’ health care overhaul, Wall Street reforms and other consumer protections. “The governor’s philosophy seems to be whatever the last administration does, let’s do it and do more

Here’s a fun exercise for Hot Air readers. Go to the New York Times website and do a 12-month search for “Romney Mormon,” and see how many hits come back. I’ll end the suspense — “about 12,000 results,” according to the search I conducted earlier today. Now, do a search on “Obama Jeremiah” in the same time frame, and you’ll get 4,190 hits, which is more than I expected but only about a third of the Romney-Mormon search results. Actually, the same search only turns up 4,330 hits since 1851, which means that before mid-2011 the Times only had less...

U.S.English Chairman Mauro E. Mujica this week contacted former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, calling for the two Republican Presidential candidates to demand an English language requirement should Puerto Ricans elect statehood this coming November. Expected to make appearances in Puerto Rico this week, Romney and Santorum have not yet spoken out in support of requiring English as an official language in order for Puerto Rico to be granted statehood status. Romney has previously expressed support for statehood, should Puerto Ricans favor that in an upcoming plebiscite.

VIDEO of Pam Bondi admitting her new role in Romneys administration.

This is a longish clip from Reuters in which Newt talks about the Iowa race. About two minutes in Newt makes clear that he’s not very pleased with Romney. Asked specifically why his appeal is limited to 22-23% he replies that Romney is a a moderate pretending to be a conservative then adds “people aren’t that stupid.”

NewsCore) - Los Angeles rapper Sky Blu was named by TMZ website on Friday as the mystery man who attacked Republican politician and former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on an airplane. Blu, of electro-hop group LMFAO - known for hits such as I'm in Miami Bitch - allegedly physically threatened Mr Romney on an Air Canada flight leaving Vancouver on Monday morning (local time).