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Rick Santorum said he would be pleased with a third-place finish in South Carolina Saturday but vowed to stay in the presidential race through the Florida primary no matter what. He also blasted his "desperate" rival Mitt Romney for perpetrating "cheap stuff" as Mr. Romney's position as front runner here melted away the past week... "We finally were given the victory in Iowa," Mr. Santorum said. "If we had had it two weeks ago, it might be a very different situation. It might have been a very different race." Mr. Santorum also said he was disappointed in Mr. Romney after...

With the field of Republican candidates down to four, GOP voters trickled to the polls on the first day of early voting in South Florida with plenty of opinions about their choice to challenge President Barack Obama in November. Many said they were deciding between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in what has been a rollercoaster race. Romney is ahead in Florida, with more than 40 percent of GOP supporters, followed by Gingrich with 22 percent, Sen. Rick Santorum with 15 percent and Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 9 percent, according to an average...

Update: Chris Cillizza of WaPo tweets that “Close Jeb Bush ally tells me that no Romney endorsement is in the works.” Jeb’s camp being coy, or is he getting cold feet about throwing in with Romney after tonight’s drubbing?

UPDATE: The would-be robber shot and killed on Saturday had rotated in and out of Rockdale County jail for nearly a decade on charges ranging from simple battery to posession and selling of drugs. Yuhanna Williams, 30, of Covington was booked into the jail at least eight times since August 2001 when he was 21-years-old. Some of the charges he faced were disorderly conduct, simple battery, probation violation, public indecency, DUI, and possession of marijuana and posession with the intent to distribute at a school. -------------------------------------- (Dec. 13, 2010, 11:56 a.m.) Investigators have released the name of the man shot...

Girl, 6, dies after being shot with pellet gun in Georgia Published January 21, 2012 | FoxNews.com A six-year-old girl died Friday afternoon after being accidentally shot in the throat with a pellet gun at her home in Peachtree City, Ga. Peachtree City police responded to the incident with fire and rescue crews shortly after noon local time and paramedics treated the unconscious girl at the scene. She was rushed to Piedmont Fayette Hospital in nearby Fayetteville, roughly 30 miles south of Atlanta, where she later died. Police said they were not planning on releasing details about who shot the...

A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and can't be president. It's one of many such lawsuits that have been filed across the country, so far without success. A Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama's name off the state's ballot in the March presidential primary. An Obama campaign aide says any attempt to involve the president personally will fail and such complaints around the country have no merit.

A 20-year-old maintenance worker who this week pleaded guilty to molesting and killing a 7-year-old girl was found dead of an apparent suicide in his prison cell Thursday, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. Ryan Brunn was found unresponsive at 4:15 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson, said spokeswoman Kristen Stancil. Brunn was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:37 p.m., Stancil said in an email to The Associated Press. She gave no other details about how he died. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents out of Milledgeville were investigating, said agency spokesman John Bankhead....

Aside from a 9 mm pistol and 16 years of military experience, Sgt. 1st Class Eddie Waiters was on his own in the wee hours of Tuesday morning when an intruder shattered his window and tried to open the front door of his house. But when Waiters opened fire and shot the would-be burglar in the groin, state law was also on his side, authorities determined after an investigation of the shooting. “If I didn’t have my weapon, I could have been dead,” Waiters said several hours after the 2 a.m. encounter. “The police weren’t there and they wouldn’t have...

LEE COUNTY, GA (WALB) - Two Georgia teenagers found a loaded gun in a grocery store restroom Tuesday afternoon and it turns out the gun belongs to a retired FBI agent. The gun, a 40 caliber SIG loaded with 12 hollow point bullets, was lying on the right side of a sink in the men's restroom at a Publix store. 15 and 16-year-old brothers found the gun, and told their mother who alerted the store manager. He then called the sheriff's office. 60-year-old David Hallman heard a news report about the discovery of the gun and realized that he was...

COLUMBUS, GA - One Columbus homeowner took full advantage of his second amendment rights this morning. Officials say he shot a man allegedly trying to break into his home on Woodland Drive around 2:30 this morning. "Georgia law says that you can own a handgun in your home and in your vehicle as an extension as your home," Major Randy Robertson with the Muscogee County Sheriff's Office says. After shooting the man in the leg, the homeowner and Fort Benning Soldier called police. When they arrived on scene they were able to take the suspect into custody in a neighboring...

ROSWELL, Ga. — A group of Indian-American men are learning to shoot guns after a rash of metro Atlanta home invasions they believe targeted their community. The men gathered Saturday at a firing range in north Fulton County for target practice and to learn about gun safety, WSB-TV reported.

SNIPPET: ""All I want is shahadah in Kashmir. I don't want to be famous or well known." Those were the words of Abu Adam Jibreel al Amreekee as we walked around the center in Muridke, Pakistan. As we strolled around the giant masjid and school and looked at the horses at the horse stable we talked of the difficulties in training and jihad in general. Abu Adam was only nineteen years of age when he went to the killing fields of occupied Kashmir. Born into a considerably wealthy family in Atlanta Georgia, Abu Adam had always excelled in most of...

Jon Huntsman was endorsed by Columbia, S.C.'s The State newspaper on Sunday. The endorsement comes less than a week before the South Carolina primary and comes as Huntsman quickly tries to gain traction in the Palmetto state. The State's endorsement is actually similar to what happened just before the New Hampshire primary: Mitt Romney's hometown paper, The Boston Globe, backed Huntsman in a long editorial in which it compared Romney with the former Utah governor. Like the Globe endorsement, The State praised both Romney and Huntsman but said Huntsman was the better candidate. "There are actually two sensible, experienced grownups," The...

With Newt Gingrich breaking out of the pack as the conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina, he came under attack Friday from an old friend and colleague in Congress, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Santorum had largely avoided political attacks against Gingrich, whom he once considered a political mentor. But on Friday, the glove came off as Santorum took the former House speaker to task for being insufficiently conservative on climate change, free markets and health care. "Conservative alternatives don't go out and attack the capitalist system as he has done. Conservative alternatives don't promote...

DALLAS, Ga. — A Paulding County judge has scheduled an execution for a man convicted of the 2001 killing a woman and her 3-year-old daughter. The judge ruled Thursday that Nicholas Cody Tate will be put to death between Jan. 31 and Feb. 7. State officials have not yet determined the date of the execution. A spokeswoman for the Georgia Attorney General's office declined comment. Tate's case moved relatively quickly through the death penalty appeals process because he has yet to challenge his death sentence by filing a habeas appeal. Tate pleaded guilty in 2005 to murdering 26-year-old Chrissie Williams...

ATLANTA -- As the GOP races settles into South Carolina, Mitt Romney isn’t enjoying the double-digit lead he held in New Hampshire, according to a survey conducted Wednesday night. The former Massachusetts governor’s lead is so small in the Palmetto State that he’s essentially tied with Newt Gingrich, according to a poll for the Savannah Morning News and the Augusta Chronicle conducted by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research. Romney’s 23 percent and Gingrich’s 21 fall within the 3.6 percent margin of error. Rick Santorum, who came in second in the Iowa caucus is in third place in South Carolina with 14 percent,...

Following much thoughtful consternation, I have decided to pull my support and endorsement of Texas Governor Rick Perry for the GOP presidential nomination.  I realize the redstate diary commenters, won’t be kind but this needs to be said.  This decision wasn’t easy but a serious evaluation of the field should inform us that Rick Perry has no realistic path to victory in South Carolina, Florida and beyond. I realize that redstate.com’s Erick Erickson continues to stick by him, that South Carolina is Perry’s state and that he has re-tooled his staff.  But it is too little too late and at...

Cody Jackson is too young to join the military, but that's not stopping him from saluting service members returning from deployment.

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world. LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year. LanzaTech hasn't received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S....

A Douglas County teenager was out on bond Thursday after appearing before a magistrate judge on charges he used a White House official’s Social Security number to apply for a credit card. During a hearing Wednesday, according to the Douglas County Sentinel, a sheriff’s investigator said James Townsend of Douglasville, using the name "Austin Townsend," had applied for a Discover card using the unidentified official’s personal information. The investigation led the Secret Service to the Chapel Hill High School 11th-grader’s home, which was searched for evidence. The newspaper reported agents also copied files from the teen’s computer. "He wanted a...