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WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Mitt Romney's Etch A Sketch moment is at hand. Now that he's the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Romney is shifting away from the "red-meat" issues of abortion and immigration and instead holding more events highlighting his appeal as a regular guy. He will favor more intimate settings, like the Ohio classroom, and a schedule that calls for fewer public appearances as the campaign hopes to show a softer side of the former Massachusetts governor who struggles at times to connect with average Americans. That's a dramatic difference from Obama, who feeds on large crowds and has...

Steve Bannon Says Breitbart Will Not Have an Obama Bombshell | @PolitiJim's Rants for Reasonable People | http://bit.ly/JtyXFx I have just spent two days at the True the Vote National Summit featuring James O’Keefe, Anita MonCrief, Christian Abrams, Pat Caddell, John Fund and many others. I wanted to rush two newsworthy items out before a much more thoughtful and comprehensive post tomorrow on the conference. The final speaker was the Executive Chairman of Breitbart.com and Sarah Palin THE UNDEFEATED Producer Steve Bannon who broke a bombshell by saying: Breitbart will not have a magic video that will change the election....

(AP) Ever since taking office last year as the nation's first Hispanic female governor, New Mexico's Susana Martinez found her family tree scrutinized over whether her grandfather was an illegal immigrant. Documents obtained by AP, however, show that he was lawfully admitted to the U.S. as a permanent resident in 1918 and became a citizen in 1942, something not even Martinez knew and a discovery that removes a potential trouble spot for someone talked about as an attractive Republican vice presidential prospect for Mitt Romney. Martinez was surprised at the news, ... The first-term governor insists she's not interested in...

If we look at the Senatorial Landscape IMHO a pattern is emerging. Lugar, almost gone, Ditto that Hatch. And the one that floors me, Menendez in New Jersery vs. (R) Kyrillos. Menendez is at 43% and Kyrillos is at 33% 7 months out, and Menendez is below the magic 50% mark. That screams to me he is in political trouble. If it is that bad in "blue" New Jersey, what are the winds of political fortune for other Republican / Conservative challengers in other States like Michigan.With that said, I am gonna go out on a limb and ask the...

[dear pawns] -- We're up against a critical fundraising deadline this coming Monday, and we need your help. We know you're working hard for this campaign, but we also want you to have some fun -- and that's where George Clooney comes in. If you chip in between now and Monday, you'll be automatically entered for the chance to join Barack at George Clooney's house on May 10th. Don't miss out -- make a donation of $3 or whatever you can: https://donate.barackobama.com/Barack-and-George Thanks, and good luck, Michelle [disclaimer, way down at the bottom of the email (many spaces deleted for...

For Obama, bin Laden killing becomes campaign toolBy BEN FELLER AP White House Correspondent Apr 27, 6:01 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The killing of Osama bin Laden, first presented as a moment of national unity by President Barack Obama, has become something else: a political weapon. **SNIP** The broader goal for Obama, whether through campaign web videos or the trappings of the White House, is not to just to remind voters of an enormous victory on his watch. It is to maximize a political narrative that he has the courage to make tough calls that his opponent might not.

If the GOP didn’t hurt us enough by propping John McCain up to be our 2008 nominee, handing us Barack Obama on a silver platter, now, by serving up this horrendous Romney Manchurian Candidate to be our next President, they are further promoting another party member, the “POM”, the “Party of Mormonism”. We have seen the power of the Mormon voting bloc by way of Romney winning Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Hawaii and Florida, and Utah will be a slam-dunk. We can expect that 90% of the 6 million US Mormons will vote for Romney. According to LDS statistics and...

Four years ago, the Obama fund-raising machine worked to bury Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now his contributors are opening their wallets for her. Obama campaign officials have asked the president’s elite donors and fund-raisers to donate to Mrs. Clinton’s defunct presidential campaign committee, with the goal of retiring $245,000 in debt left over from her 2008 White House bid. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton is barred from engaging in political activity or actively fund-raising for herself. People familiar with the effort said the campaign’s outreach grew out of discussions with Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has agreed...

General-election battle lines are taking shape between President Obama and likely Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Romney is sticking with his long-standing attack on the president as someone not up to the huge job of turning around the economy. But the Obama campaign has recently changed its message: Instead of portraying Romney as a flip-flopping, say-anything politician, it is now arguing that the former Massachusetts governor is a man with extreme positions far outside the American mainstream. And it's an opportune time to reframe the debate, said Grant Neeley, who teaches political science at the University of Dayton. "A lot of...

Sarah Palin has endorsed Richard Mourdock in the GOP Senate primary in Indiana dubbing the insurgent challenger as the "conservative choice" in the race against Sen. Dick Lugar. ... "Indiana deserves a conservative in the Senate... and not just go along to get along with the vested interests of the permanent political class in D.C." ...

This past weekend at my County Convention in Hardin County, TX, I was pleasantly surprised when a young woman from my county, Chelsea Willis, approached me and said she had a petition with over 3000 signatures on it. The petition was to try to persuade Mitt Romney to come to a Texas Republican Presidential Debate. The petition is titled "Potential Nominees, attend the GOP Debate (Houston, TX on May 24th, 2012)" In recent years, Texas has had little say in the Republican Presidential Race. The Texas GOP tried to put Texas on the map by getting together a debate on...

U.S. District Judge S. Thomas Anderson of Tennessee said the courts ultimately must define “natural born citizen,” affirming that the “issue of whether President Obama is constitutionally qualified to run for the presidency is certainly substantial.” “This specific question has been raised in numerous lawsuits filed since President Obama took office,” Anderson wrote in his opinion. “The outcome of the federal question in this case will certainly have an effect on other cases presenting the same issue about whether President Obama meets the constitutional qualifications for the presidency.” Van Irion, whose Liberty Legal Foundation brought the case, alleges the plan...

1. Bush passed a huge tax cut plan, mostly benefiting the wealthy. Romney’s tax cut plan is four times larger, more heavily weighted to benefit ultra wealthy. 2. Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Romney supports repealing virtually all campaign finance laws. 3. Bush supported comprehesive immigration reform, a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants and provisions of the DREAM Act. Romney opposes all of it.

[gullible suckers]-- I know this probably isn't the first time you're hearing about this, but chances like this don't come up very often. And the deadline is approaching. Chip in $3 or whatever you can to be automatically entered to go to L.A. and spend an evening with President Obama and George Clooney. We'll cover airfare and hotel for you and whoever you choose to bring with you. All you have to do to be automatically entered is donate what you can to support this campaign: https://donate.barackobama.com/Obama-and-Clooney Thanks, Julianna Julianna Smoot Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America

The Obama administration has hired Planned Parenthood's former spokesman to work in the Department of Health and Human Services' press shop -- angering anti-abortion groups, who pointed to the decision as evidence of the administration's bias. The federal health department tapped Tait Sye, former media relations director at Planned Parenthood, to be the new deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. In that role, Sye is likely to be dealing with many of the same controversies through which he navigated during his time at Planned Parenthood. While working for the abortion provider, Sye was outspoken in his organization's support for the...

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Perhaps trying to send a message to gay activists who want him to do more, President Obama's re-election website has posted a timeline of 40 specific accomplishments his administration has made for the gay community -- a timeline that no doubt will be referenced both by his supporters and opponents in the coming months. The rainbow-colored timeline begins in June 2009, when he ordered the federal government to extend some benefits to the partners of gay federal employees, and ends in March of this year, when he announced his opposition to a North Carolina constitutional amendment that...

According to reports, the U.S. and Russian military will be engaging in an anti-terrorism exercise that will involve Russian paratroopers using U.S. weapons to “take and hold” the main facilities of the CIA and Denver International Airport in Colorado and the National Security Agency in Utah. (Related: Learn about the hypothetical ‘war games’ the U.S. and China have been playing) The European Union Times has more on the report announcing this exercise from the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation: Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Alexander Kucherenko publically announced this 24-21 May “anti-terror drill” this Friday past noting that this...

Alaska Congressman Don Young today demanded to know why agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been asking gun shop owners in the 49th State for copies of their gun sales records. As this column reported, ATF agents had contacted gun shops in Anchorage for the bound books which contain information on gun buyers. Federal law prohibits federal agents from doing that, and they know it. Gun rights activists across the Northwest are furious. The situation has caused an uproar in the firearms community, and Young – a member of the National Rifle Association Board of...

he Hollywood studio run by one of President Obama’s biggest donors is under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission for bribing Chinese officials to secure exclusive film rights in the communist country—rights secured in secretive negotiations that included Vice President Joe Biden. The SEC is investigating at least five Hollywood studios—including 20th Century Fox, Disney, and DreamWorks Animation—for allegedly making illegal payments to Chinese officials, Reuters reported Tuesday. DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is the largest donor to the Obama reelection super PAC Priorities USA... Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/obama-donor/2012/04/26/obamas-biggest-donor-under-investigation#ixzz1tBZxsEcC

In a Senate speech, Senator Inhofe will draw attention to a little known video from 2010, which shows a top EPA official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, using the vivid metaphor of crucifixion to explain EPA's enforcement tactics for oil and gas producers. In this video Administrator Armendariz says: "But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it's one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my...