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Senator Santorum suspended his campaign today, leaving Governor Romney as the likely Republican Party nominee with Speaker Gingrich and Dr. Ron Paul trailing, but still in the race. This is a fortuitous development for Gov. Romney, as April and May were not likely to be kind. Politics, after all, abhors a vacuum. This situation is likely to result in an exponential growth in Dr. Paul delegates, which has been the focus of the Paul campaign all along. This prediction is based on where the primari

Despite the efforts of the Romney campaign and media treatment of the Republican nominating process as all but wrapped up in his favor, the reality is the GOP race continues on for several reasons. There remains a substantial and meritorious challenge to Gov. Romney receiving 50 delegates from Florida and 29 delegates from Arizona, based on the systems that those states used to award delegate. Both basically used winner-take-all rules, in a violation of RNC policy. It's a view shared by Michael

The US Supreme Court will hold hearings this week on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obama’s health care plan. The lawsuit was filed by twenty six states, four small business owners, and the proudly ferocious National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB.)  The lawsuit contends the federal government does not have the authority to order people and businesses to buy health insurance (and face fines if they don’t.)  The hearings will surely be closely watched. Indeed, the future

The Canadian Tar Sands have become a hot topic on the campaign trail this year especially since President Obama rejected the proposed Keystone Oil Pipeline extension.  Yes, I said extension because there already exists one Keystone Oil Pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but because of increased production, there now needs to be a second pipeline.  But this extension has environmentalists raising their voices, and even some throughout the country not so sure about it.  The issue,

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has published an update and a revision of a 2007 study entitled “Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom”. The report analyzed three primary “freedom variables” for each state, determining the overall burden that local and state policies place on individual residents. So how did California stack up? Frankly, not so good. In fact, California was only underperformed by New Jersey and New York. The authors, William Ruger a

Though  the mainstream political press has naturally focused on the stinging  Democratic losses and sweeping Republican gains in last week's  elections, 2010 has proven to be an historic year for third party and  Independent politics in the United States. One  of the primary motifs in media coverage of this year's elections has  been the public’s deep discontent with both the Democratic and  Republican parties.  In poll after poll, record numbers of  Americans opted to identify themselves as In

California's most famous U.S. Representative, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is taking heavy fire from all sides going into the November mid-term election. With an immminent takeover of the House by Republicans (some estimates put as many as 99 Democratic seats in danger of a Republican victory, with a likely swing of 40 - 50 seats), Speaker Pelosi is stuck between hurting her party's chances even more by publicly conceding the likely Republican victory, or appearing naïvely confident by insisting

On July 1, the federal government and dozens of states set up temporary “high-risk” health insurance pools for people denied health insurance due to so-called pre-existing conditions. These pools were one of the major provisions included in federal health care reform signed into law early this year. However, this is only a temporary fix intended to provide health insurance to individuals without coverage until the law goes fully into effect in 2014, when insurance companies will no longer be ab

With less than three weeks until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils his revised budget plan for the fiscal year starting July 1, he and the Democratic majority Legislature have done little to reduce the state’s projected $18.8 billion budget shortfall. Almost the only thing they have accomplished is agree that increasing taxes won’t be part of whatever solution they stitch together over the next 10 weeks.  “In this budget I refuse to raise taxes because there are so many other areas where Sacr

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quest to convince the federal government to put-up-or-shut-up by paying California an additional $6.9 billion he says the state needs to carry out Washington D.C. imposed mandates is just one high-profile example of states increasingly asserting their rights. The battle over when states rights trump federal government edicts is as old as the constitution, waxing and waning in favor of each camp for nearly 225 years.  But recently, an increasing number of states are