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In a press release this afternoon, Club for Growth criticized Newt Gingrich for his attacks on Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital, calling them unbecoming a “Reagan Conservative.” Club for Growth’s statement: Yesterday, Gingrich said “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation…we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” Gingrich’s attack was echoed that same day that by the Democratic National Committee, which...

Mitt Romney: 36 Newt Gingrich: 25 Rick Santorum: 17 Ron Paul: 7 Other: 5 Undecided 10 Other: 5

Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said. Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.

GOP New Hampshire primary debate tonight on ABC at 9pm ET By Nate, on January 7th, 2012 Tonight will mark the first of two debates this weekend focused on the New Hampshire Republican primary. This evening's debate will take place at Saint Anselm College and is sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo! and WMUR. Sunday morning will feature a GOP debate broadcast on NBC at 9am ET (yes, am) but look for more details on that later today. Air Time: Saturday, January 7th at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on ABC Live Stream: WMUR and Yahoo! News Participants: Santorum, Romney, Paul,...

Ready, aim fire. That’s apparently Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s idea of relaxation before returning to the campaign trail this weekend. Ahead of Saturday night’s ABC News-Yahoo-WMUR debate in New Hampshire Perry took a few moments to himself at an Austin-area shooting range. “Just relaxing a bit @ Red’s Range before we leave for New Hampshire!” @governorperry tweeted Friday along with a photo of himself wearing a green sweatshirt and a baseball cap with a firearm in hand. On the campaign trail, Perry, a staunch defender of second amendment rights, has not been shy about talking about his “long love affair”...

"It has recently come to our attention that your station has either been asked to run, or may soon be asked to run, various advertising spots produced by the Mitt Romney aligned SuperPAC “Restore Our Future” or Romney for President, the principal campaign committee of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Included among the Romney advertisements submitted to your station for broadcast are likely to be various advertisements which specifically mention Speaker Gingrich and purport to quote or reference the findings of a 1997 report issued by the House Select Committee on Ethics (the “Report”). The content of these advertisements state...

As the results of the Iowa caucus dribbled in, Americans got to see how the GOP candidates greeted victory and defeat. Top vote-getter Mitt Romney was gracious toward Rick Santorum, who came in second by eight thin votes, but uninspiring as he pledged to get America back to work. Santorum pronounced, "Game on," then hailed his Italian grandfather's decision to leave Italy to dig coal, if that's what it took to bring his family to the United States. Ron Paul, who came in third, saluted the work of his enthusiastic volunteers and credited his success to his role as a...

Perry is nearly perfect with regards to his gun record.

BILL WHITE: GUN GROUPS SEE STEADY BLEED INTO MILITIAS; DOMESTIC UNREST STILL GROWING IN UNITED STATES When agents of America’s US Marshals surrounded the Indiana Baptist Temple, accusing the church and its parishioners of violating US tax laws by refusing to pay social security taxes on non-clergical employees, they didn’t charge in with guns blazing, as they did at Waco. Concern about bad publicity was there, but there was a more serious concern just under the surface – the Southern Indiana Regional Militia, a 250-man “unorganized” citizen’s militia unit, had pledged to defend the church – and their threats were...

In the recent Presidential debate, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said America’s voters did not need to “settle” for the moderate candidate. Amen to that. And gun owners do NOT want candidates who talk out of both sides of their mouths. As the Gun Owners of America’s Board of Directors looks at the Republican candidates running to unseat radical anti-gun President Obama, we see several who have strong pro-gun backgrounds. Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman all have solid pro-gun records and deserve a hard look from pro-gunners. At least one frontrunner candidate stands in contrast with a decidedly mixed record on...

As Wisconsin heads toward lifting a ban on carrying concealed weapons, researchers at the University of California-Davis have turned up some unsettling information about those who may take advantage of the law. In a study using 15-year-old data -- the most recent available -- published online in the journal Injury Prevention, the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program says those who carried concealed weapons or who had confronted someone with a gun were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers than non-gun owners. Gun owners who drove with loaded weapons were four times more likely to hop behind the wheel...

Gun Owners of America worked with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on legislation to exempt 4473’s (the form all buyers fill out when a gun is purchased from a licensed dealer) from that statute’s broad provisions. Sen. Paul will offer that amendment this week, assuming Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is not able to block the amendment from being offered. Here’s a major concern: Assume the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) goes to the “secret court” (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or “FISA” court) and argues, without anyone else in the room, that ALL 4473’s should be seized...

(February 23, 2011) “Two months after the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office remain silent. But family members, and others, are speaking out.” -- William Lajeunesse, “America’s Third War: Agent Brian Terry, A Policy of Silence?,” Fox News (February 22, 2011) at www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/22/agent-brian-terry-policy-silence/ Summary According to recent press reports -- such as Fox News -- the ATF has enabled gun smuggling by telling gun dealers in the southwest to sell weapons to known straw purchasers (people who buy guns for others). Even worse, one of those guns became the murder weapon...

Remember day before yesterday when Larry Pratt came out swinging on the Gunwalker scandal? Last night, just before the CBS piece ran, Chris Brown at the collectivist "analysis" chop shop Media Matters slammed Larry Pratt as a conspiracy theorist. On February 22, Gun Owners of America (GOA) president Larry Pratt appeared on America Live and presented a variety of misleading reasons for his opposition to Andrew Traver, President Obama's nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Pratt's objections during the segment were political in nature, wholly ignored Traver's distinguished record as a law enforcement...

Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer, pointing at the 800 pound gorilla sitting on its ass: "What about him?" Breuer: "Don't worry, that's the NRA, he's tame." As previously reported, FOX had two pieces on the Project Gunwalker scandal today. The better of the two was Larry Pratt's commentary on the Traver nomination which of course is intimately intertwined now with the Gunwalker scandal. Larry came out swinging, and apparently the ATF had declined to provide anyone to defend Traver, for it was Larry vs. Megyn Kelly, who was spinning out the administration meme as best she could. I want to...

As discussed in an earlier Gun Rights Examiner report today, Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, appeared on the Fox News’ “America Live” program with Megyn Kelly today to discuss the nomination of Andrew Traver for Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Believing it relevant to the discussion, Pratt introduced key points involving “Project Gunwalker,” allegations about gun monitoring operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gone awry. Host Kelly quickly tried to steer away from that, claiming it unfair to talk about because ATF was not there to...

As Election Day 2010 approaches, there is much to be found in the media about the National Rifle Association and its political grades and endorsements. There's another, albeit smaller organization out there working hard to bring us candidate evaluations that gun activists are well aware of, Gun Owners of America, designated "The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington" by Rep. Ron Paul. Because GOA takes a somewhat different approach that can yield different performance assessments, tensions sometimes arise between its supporters and NRA's, along with often acrimonious, even bitter debate. And because this election has such potential to impact gun...

What gets a Tea Party activist going? A good way of answering that is to browse the stalls at a Tea Party rally, as I did in Richmond, Virginia. Let's start with this: they very much like their guns. Stickers were being handed out saying: "Guns save lives" -- an interesting twist on machines designed to kill. One stall was occupied by the Gun Owners of America, a lobby group online magazine Slate describes as "well to the right of the National Rifle Association" -- which many of us would have assumed impossible. They like the 50 individual states and...

This Bureau of Justice Assistance (U.S. Department of Justice) document is entitled "Investigating Terrorism and Criminal Extremism - Terms and Concepts” and includes a reference to GOA, a gun rights lobbying organization. I have seen GOA mentioned on threads here, but I am not personally familiar with GOA. I believe that the right to self defense is a God given right. The Constitution should protect "the right to keep and bear arms" (firearms and other weapons usable for self defense), but that right is currently being "infringed" at all levels of government.

A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups lists “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood. The 120-page, “Law Enforcement Sensitive” guide to “Investigating Terrorism and Criminal Extremism – Terms and Concepts” describes itself as “a glossary designed primarily as a tool for criminal justice professionals to enhance their understanding of words relating to extremist terminology, phrases, activities, symbols, organizations, and selected names that they may encounter while conducting criminal investigations or prosecutions of members of extremist organizations.” Constitutionalist, defined by Random House’s 2010 Dictionary as an “adherent or advocate of...