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The Associated Press NEW YORK —Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told Republicans at a New York state party dinner that he would work for Mitt Romney’s victory in the general election if Romney wins the nomination. “We are dedicated to a unified Republican Party,” he said. Speaking Thursday in New York City, Gingrich said he’s stayed in the race “to articulate big themes and big ideas” but that “we have a moral obligation to defeat Barack Obama.” To that end, he said, he would work to support Romney, and he said Romney would do the same for him. “Romney and I...

Fourth, Remember the Difference Between Republicans and Conservatives. Conservatives look at the endorsements Mitt Romney has garnered from such establishment figures as former President George H.W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and most importantly from business-as-usual Washington insiders, such as lobbyist Ed Gillespie, and they see advocates of positions they often opposed, not friends of the transformational agenda that won the Tea Party wave election of 2010. Surveying Romney’s record and agenda, and most importantly the people he is likely to bring to Washington to implement his agenda, movement conservatives see little likelihood a Romney administration will differ...

Newt Gingrich may not have got the memo but the battle for the Republican nomination is over. Some in the Romney campaign were hoping for a Febuary end but others were fearing it would go on until June and a small number of Republicans even predicted a convention fight in August. All in all, April is not a bad result for Mitt Romney - long enough to test him, short enough to allow him to focus solely on the general for the final six months. Despite the very recent and ugly and negative primaries, Romney's struggle with conservatives and the...

If Santorum's suspension of his campaign last week removed the drama from the GOP presidential race...

Dozens under arrest in China in connection with Bo Xilai scandal China has detained dozens people with connections to Bo Xilai, it was claimed as the Communist party pledged to "thoroughly investigate" the politician and his wife's alleged role in the death of British businessman Neil Heywood. By Malcolm Moore, Chongqing 5:40PM BST 18 Apr 2012 At least 39 people are thought to be being held, alongside Mr Bo, in the seaside town of Beidaihe, a favourite retreat for Communist party leaders. "The detainees include Xu Ming, who had a very special relationship with Mr Bo, and some of the...

(Reuters) - Musician and gun-rights advocate Ted Nugent said on Thursday he had a positive meeting with U.S. Secret Service agents investigating his recent criticism of President Barack Obama, and the agency confirmed the issue had been resolved.Nugent, who told NRA supporters in St. Louis last week that he would be "dead or in jail" next year if Obama was reelected, said in a statement that he had "met with two fine, professional Secret Service agents" in Oklahoma. "Good, solid, professional meeting concluding that I have never made any threats of violence towards anyone. The meeting could not have gone...

Washington: On the evening of February 6, a vice mayor of a major Chinese city who had a reputation as a crime fighter turned up at the American Consulate in Chengdu in an agitated state, telling a tale of corruption and murder that has ensnared the Obama administration in a scandal it wants nothing to do with. Wang Lijun was taken past police officers loyal to a powerful former patron, Bo Xilai. The official, Wang Lijun, sought asylum, fearing for his life even as Chinese security forces quickly surrounded the building and asked the American diplomats inside to turn him...

Hundreds sign petitions objecting to honorary degree Jody Lawrence-Turner The Spokesman-Review Gonzaga University is rejecting calls by social conservatives to find a new commencement speaker because of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s support for abortion rights and gay marriage. Critics say the apartheid era hero and Nobel laureate’s social views contradict Catholic teachings, and more than 700 Gonzaga alumni, staff, faculty and students have signed petitions protesting Tutu’s campus appearance in May and the university’s plans to award the Anglican archbishop an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. “It goes against Catholic teaching and so much of what Gonzaga stands for – or...

I buried this item at the bottom of my early morning post on Romney's rhetoric, but I think this staggering milestone merits a separate post.  The Obama legacy:   In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government’s debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56. Although he has served less than a term, Obama is now the first American president to see the federal government's debt increase by more than $5 trillion during his time in office. During the full eight years that George W. Bush served as president, the...

Brown: Is Progressivism the new Communism? In politics, truth-telling can get you into trouble, even if you stumble upon it by accident. Just ask Rep. Allen West (R-FL). West is feeling the heat for a pregnant pause he took during a town hall meeting after he was asked "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists or International Socialists?" "It's a good question," West responded, "I believe there's [sic] about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. (Long pause) "They don't actually hide. It's called the Congressional Progressive...

Pelosi: Amend the First Amendment By Terence P. Jeffrey April 19, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday endorsed a movement announced by other congressional Democrats on Wednesday to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged in by corporations as opposed to individuals. The First Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Television networks, newspapers, publishing houses, movie studios and think tanks, as well as political action committees, are usually organized as, or...

A sober look at the case against George Zimmerman. How do you stand your ground if you are lying on your back getting pummeled in the face? That one question alone shows that Stand Your Ground laws are not at issue in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin controversy. But the tragic death of young Trayvon is only seen by those on the left as a valuable media opportunity to further exploit the millions of gullible Americans to advance the left's political interests and agenda. Indeed, we have some people in positions of influence, both leading politicians and figures in the major...

India successfully launched its first domestically developed long-range intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday morning, joining a handful of nations that possess ICBM technology. The Agni V missile, capable of carrying a one-ton nuclear warhead, was launched this morning from Wheeler Island, off the coast of the state of Orissa, after a bad-weather delay yesterday. The Agni V was launched just after 8:00 a.m. local time and flew for 20 minutes before hitting its designated target in the Indian Ocean. Officials were thrilled with the smooth operation. “With this missile launch, India has emerged as a major missile power,” V. K....

New Tone: Union Rally Speaker Tells Scott Walker 'We Cut Your Head Off' Tuesday, over 2000 union protesters rolled into Springfield, IL, to protest Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, speaking at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. Once again they came to chant and sing, and chant and sing they did. It was a typical sea of matching t-shirts—a favored strategy of intimidation—along with their placards of “solidarity” and profane signs. They scattered four giant inflatable rats throughout the crowd, with a gargantuan cardboard cut out of Governor Scott Walker standing out, as well.Presidents of the AFL-CIO, Michael T. Carrigan of Illinois...

These are the results when registered voters are asked: "Suppose the presidential election were held today. If Barack Obama were the Democratic Party's candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney were the Republican Party's candidate, who would you vote for Barack Obama, the Democrat or Mitt Romney, the Republican?" Those who are undecided are further asked if they lean more toward Obama or Romney and their leanings are incorporated into the results.

When Washington Post journalist Elizabeth Flock wrote a post last year falsely accusing Mitt Romney of using a Ku Klux Klan slogan in his campaign speech, she was not fired or disciplined. But when Flock stole from the work of another mainstream organization and did not properly attribute, she abruptly “resigned” from the Washington Post conveniently and coincidentally before another editor’s note went up on her post that described it as having “serious factual errors” and “a significant ethical lapse.” Flock told AFP that “she resigned on Friday before the Post published a second editor's note about her work and...

Republicans should rejoice. When it comes to understanding the threat of the media, in a news-making interview with our own Larry O'Connor yesterday, Governor Mitt Romney proved he is no John McCain. Whether the story is true or not, I don't know, but sometime during the 2008 election, someone told me that our candidate, John McCain, said something to the effect of, "All these relationships I've made in the media are really going to pay off now."

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars over the past decade to fund the construction of an HIV-prevention website that, among other sexually explicit features, includes a graphic image of homosexual sex and a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets. The grant money went to a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota that created a site called Sexpulse. The goal was to draw in what are termed MISM -- or "men who use the Internet to seek sex with men" -- in order to educate them and...

A new revelation of young American soldiers caught on camera while defiling insurgents’ remains in Afghanistan has intensified questions within the military community about whether fundamental discipline is breaking down given the nature and length of the war. The photographs, published by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, show more than a dozen soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, along with some Afghan security forces, posing with the severed hands and legs of Taliban attackers in Zabul Province in 2010. They seemed likely to further bruise an American-Afghan relationship that has been battered by crisis after...

President Obama’s fan base is willing to pay through the nose to get a glimpse of him. In fact, supporters in Dearborn, Michigan showed up today to shell out $1,000 just to shake the hand of The One. “A thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Lonnie Peek, one of the fortunate few to touch Obama personally, told CBS. “But other folks are kickin’ in for their candidates, so what you do is you bite the bullet. You wanna have your conscience good, to feel that this is what I did. You know, you go without a couple of meals....