Profile Facts

Eade to be Buckley's mentor at Magpies Sydney

2011-10-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

IMAGERY and perception. Those words may not tell the full story, yet they help shape many questions.

What was going through the minds of Mick Malthouse and Nathan Buckley, as they stood slightly apart, watching the Geelong players being feted on stage on Saturday?

For Mick, was it the cold realisation hit that his career had fluttered to the earth like the blue-and-white ticker tape around him?

And for Bucks, was it the immediacy of the loss, or was he already thinking about next year?

A premiership for your thoughts.

Amid the jubilation of the Cats, the visual disappointment - or was it coldness? - of Buckley and Malthouse standing on the Southern Stand wing will be an image for the ages.

And what about them?

It is said they aren't best friends and that the succession plan had driven a wedge so sharp and deep their relationship had deteriorated to strictly professional. And problematic at that.

They didn't appear to exchange words or warmth in the post-script. At the post-match dinner, Malthouse made only passing reference to the new coach.

At the Collingwood family day yesterday, however, Malthouse acknowledged that the club was in good hands and that "Nathan and the player group will make it even better again".

Perception is reality and so are the thoughts of people close to the Malthouse-Buckley relationship; that Malthouse imposed himself over Buckley and that Buckley despised Malthouse's treatment.

Suffice to say, when Malthouse announced he wouldn't be at Collingwood next year, Buckley wasn't about to use a Chinese burn to convince him to stay.

That it is all over, that the cold war between the two ended without ultimate victory, will clearly demand reference in Collingwood's booklet of history.

The journey this season grew increasingly about Malthouse.

A great of the AFL, he has earned the accolades, but there is a query about the fact the countdown to Saturday became as much about Collingwood as it did Malthouse.

Even as late as Sunday week ago, Malthouse announced on Channel 7 the Grand Final would be his last game as coach.

The role for Eade will partly incorporate functions that Malthouse would otherwise have performed had he stayed at Collingwood - overseeing high-performance strategies, innovations and development - but, unlike Malthouse, Eade will have a role on match day in the box. There may also be some element of opposition analysis.
Collingwood has already appointed Ben Hart to the club as defensive coach, while Scott Watters, who was defensive coach this year, will move to become midfield coach should he not succeed in his bid for the St Kilda position.
Malthouse made the surprising announcement in his post-match press conference that he would not be at Collingwood next year. Malthouse reached a decision with president Eddie McGuire and the club executive about six weeks ago that he would leave after the finals.
He yesterday bid farewell to the crowd of about 1000 who turned out at Gosch's Paddock, saying the club was well positioned to win the flag next year.
''Rest assured this football club can only get better because of yesterday,'' Malthouse said.
''I think you look at the age of our players … Chris Tarrant is our oldest player and he is as fit as he was five years ago. [He] had a fantastic year. Next oldest is Leon Davis, All-Australian this year, Ben Johnson, who had a pretty good year. They are our three oldest players.''
Leigh Brown is the only player confirmed to be leaving the club after announcing his retirement. Brown has indicated an interest in coaching and will speak with several clubs in the coming weeks.
The 30-year-old small defender has indicated an interest to return to family in Western Australia, but yesterday said he would ''definitely like to stay'' at Collingwood.

Manly Sea Eagles captain Jamie Lyon rules himself out of Four Nations tour Herald Sun

2011-10-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hasler was already a Manly icon. Last night he became a legend as he led the club to its eighth premiership and second under his tenure. What next? Hasler has another year remaining on his contract but has been the subject of a massive offer from the Bulldogs.

After last night's game he indicated he would honour his contract and stay for next season. Beyond that, who knows? The Sea Eagles are locked in talks with their coach and insist he is going nowhere. The Bulldogs have a big fat cheque that says otherwise.

"I haven't given it a thought to tell you the truth. The only thing I have been concentrating on is this moment, this grand final," Hasler said. "I am at Manly for next season. Now that this grand final is over we will continue some discussions."

Given what happened at ANZ Stadium, Manly would be well advised to shell out whatever it takes to keep its coach. Hasler is worth every cent. Wayne Bennett may be the game's reigning super-coach but Hasler is closing fast.

"We were in a shambles before he turned up," backrower Anthony Watmough said.

"This club wouldn't be the same without him. I don't really know much about the coaches history at Manly, but he has to be one of the greatest.

"He has done such a great job over the years he has been here. How could you walk away from something you built? Give him $2 million a year."

Hasler won his first premiership in 2008, re-built his team and won a second only three years later. He did it with a new set of halves, two 20-somethings who were among the club's best performers last night.

"Tim Sheens knows I don't want to play so I don't think he'd pick people that don't want to be here. They have Chris Lawrence, Michael Jennings, Willie Tonga, Brent Tate, plenty of other centres who want to be there. I am looking forward to a rest."

After producing his best grand final display with a performance that included seven tackle busts, Lyon revealed he had played most of the year with a series of niggling injuries.

"It is just great to get the win," Lyon said.

"And I am glad it is over. I have had a few bumps and bruises and have been carrying a few injuries. I am definitely glad it is all over."

Lyon said he was feeling "old" but was adamant he had at least another two years of football to play. He is contracted with the Sea Eagles until the end of 2013.

"Yeah, I am feeling it in my body," he said.

"But I have another two years after this year and I am hopeful I will get through."

Lyon was happy with his display, leading the way as the Sea Eagles fought off a spirited charge home from the Warriors. He made 13 runs for 88m, while making 13 tackles in a five star performance.

"I have some bad grand final memories," he said.

"2001 (when he played for the Eels against the Knights) was bad but in 2007 I had a shocker. It took me a couple of months to get over that and even my missus said I was terrible so it scared me a bit."

Labour adverts slam Liberals' migrant boat stance

2011-10-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

The radio advertisements will be played on high-rating AM and FM stations down the east coast and feature a man and a woman questioning why the Coalition would oppose offshore processing. The campaign will run into the next parliamentary sitting week, beginning on October 11, when a vote is expected on the government's amendments to the Migration Act, which seek to put the controversial Malaysian solution and offshore processing beyond legal doubt.

But the opposition was sceptical last night about the impact the campaign would have, saying the public had come to distrust the government on the issue of border protection. "Two weeks of spin on radio won't make up for years of policy failure," opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said.

"After all their failure, Labor still don't understand that you can't spin the boats away. You need proven policy."

Labor is emboldened by internal research showing the majority of voters believe the opposition should support the government's amendments.

t could then resurrect its deal to send up to 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in return for 4000 confirmed refugees. Mr Abbott wants an amendment that would restrict offshore processing to countries that have signed UN refugee conventions - which Malaysia has not.

Labor believes there is confusion in the community over Mr Abbott's stance.
The advertising campaign, authorised by ALP national secretary George Wright, capitalises on this and will run on capital city commercial stations over the next few weeks.

The Government is desperate to stem a flow of boats that has begun since the High Court effectively scuttled its Malaysian policy.

On Saturday, the fourth boat in about a week sailed into Australian waters. It was carrying 70 people.

The four boats held about 320 asylum seekers.

Bikini babes bust the record

2011-10-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

The world record for the largest bikini parade was broken today in the City of the Gold Coast, Australia
The event was organised by a local newspaper, the Gold Coast Bulletin.
The bikini-clad women started the parade at a Gold Coast shopping mall, after which the women paraded for the required distance of 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) along Surfers Paradise beach.
Officials from the Guinness Book of World Records were there to confirm that with 357 women in the procession, a new record had been set.
The previous record was set by the Cayman Islands in June 2010 with 331 participants.

In all, 357 women wore bikinis to strut their stuff in a parade from Cavill Avenue on to the Surfers Paradise beach.

Four had to be disqualified for being overdressed.

The feat smashed the previous record of 331 set in the Cayman Islands last year.

Surfers Paradise councillor Susie Douglas said it was fitting the Gold Coast held the record.

"We have beautiful beaches ... we've got a great foreshore and got healthy young women and a sense of fun," she said.

Bushfire threatens south of Gladstone

2011-10-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

Authorities were stretched to the limit on Sunday as they worked to contain about 50 bush and grass fires across the state.

More than a dozen crews, two water bombing helicopters and a plane were sent to the scene of a large bushfire, south of Gladstone, which was surrounding a chemical plant.

But Assistant Commissioner Neil Gallant says with nightfall, winds have dropped.

"We've scaled back a few of the fires, thankfully as night has fallen, the winds have dropped off and the humidity has risen so the fires are not moving as quickly," he said.

"At this stage we're confident we've got a handle on them.

"Some of the fires are contained but not all of them.

"Hopefully tomorrow we'll just have crews patrolling those containment lines."

Assistant Commissioner Gallant says extra officers from Brisbane and Mackay in north Queensland have been sent to Central Queensland to help their tired colleagues.

"At the moment, we're just trying to release as many crews as we can to try and combat fatigue, a lot of the crews have been going fairly solid since yesterday morning," he said.

He says despite conditions having eased, residents still need to remain alert.

"At this stage they still need to be aware that there are fires in their area, conditions are still volatile and people who live in rural areas or on the fringe of urban areas people need to be aware that a fire could start tomorrow and endanger their property," he said.

The challenge for us yesterday was the intensity of the wind as it was coming through and we're expecting more winds today," he said.
"The humidity's picking up a little bit because the wind's changing, so we're going to have an interesting week given the wind changes.
"We're hoping it will ease a little bit by tomorrow."
Assistant Fire Commissioner in central Queensland Neil Gallant said a team of fire crews from Mackay and specialist staff from Brisbane will go to Rockhampton this afternoon to assist with 12 fires in the region.
"The record wet season that we had at the start of the year has meant that there's been enormous vegetation growth and unfortunately now that's drying out, so any fire that starts has plenty of fuel," he said.
"We're certainly looking ahead because a lot of our crews are fatigued, the volunteers in the rural service have contributed many of their hours to helping out."

It comes as Brisbanites feel the chill with below average springtime temperatures.
While the thermometer doesn't normally drop below 15.8 degrees in October, it's been down to 11 degrees in the past few days with those cold mornings set to stick around for at least the next week.
The cold, dry weather is responsible for some bushfires which are also being fuelled by extra vegetation from the January floods.
There are currently over 30 fires burning around the South Burnett and Burrum Heads area.

Backpacker's death in Italy linked to deep vein thrombosis

2011-10-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Died on Contiki tour ... Madelaine Crawley, the 23-year-old from Pottsville who attended Kingscliff High School, who died suddenly in Rome. Source: The Daily Telegraph
TWEED Coast backpacker Madelaine Crawley may have died from complications from Deep Vein Thrombosis, according to preliminary medical tests in Italy.
The attractive 23-year-old, who had been enjoying the holiday of a lifetime on a Contiki tour through Europe, was found motionless in her bed the morning after a party at Contiki's Seven Hills camping ground in Rome on Thursday.
She had suffered massive cardiac arrest and was rushed to hospital but could not be revived.
Initial media reports from Italian newspapers claimed she may have died after consuming a deadly cocktail of alcohol and drugs, but Madelaine's uncle Bruce Melville this afternoon said doctors believe DVT, a condition involving blood clots in veins after extended periods of air travel, was the most likely cause.
Untreated, DVT, often nicknamed economy class syndrome, claims the life of about three per cent of patients, with the risk of clots travelling to major organs such as lungs or the heart.

23-year-old, who had been enjoying the holiday of a lifetime on a Contiki tour through Europe, was found motionless in her bed the morning after a party at Contiki's camping ground in Rome on Thursday.

The Tweed Coast resort worker suffered a cardiac arrest and was rushed to hospital but could not be revived.

Initial media reports in Italian newspapers claimed she may have died after consuming a cocktail of alcohol and drugs.

But Madelaine's uncle Bruce Melville yesterday said doctors believed DVT, a condition that caused blood clots in veins after extended periods of air travel, was the most likely trigger for the massive heart attack.

Manly channels anger into victory

2011-10-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

Most of the Manly players have been given Premiers t-shirts to wear. Just heard through the referees microphone an official say to Glenn Stewart, "mate, you have got to wear it".
Shaun Johnson says more success lies ahead for the Warriors: "The club is in pretty good stead and to have all three teams in the grand final is something special".
Glenn Stewart is the Clive Churchill Medallist. Stewart just shook hands with David Gallop and the pair spoke briefly.
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Des Hasler just said of Brett Stewart: "I think he has finally got closure". Glenn and Brett Stewart are the first brothers to score in a grand final.
Des Hasler just said: "We were deserved winners tonight. Full credit to the Warriors but I can't fault these guys."
Captain Jamie Lyon scores a deserved try off a Glenn Stewart pass to secure Manly's second premiership in four years. Michael Robertson kicks the goal from wide out in his last game for the club with players and officials running on to celebrate. MANLY 24 WARRIORS 10. Those with betting tickets for Manly to win by 13+ will be happy.
Locke just threw a forward pass in his own in-goal. Dropout. Manly have won.
Locke loses ball running off his own line.
Hot potato play by the Warriors but Manly hang on. They just want this game to end. Warriors are coming home strong but time will probably beat them.
Manly are now trying to wind down the clock. DCE deliberately kicked the ball dead.
Cherry-Evans kick straight down Locke's throat. Warriors up to halfway after four tackles.
Manly are off the hook now but this game isn't over. Watmough down injured now. He wouldn't be wasting time would he?
That passage of play was unbelievable. Johnson's kick and regather was freakish, Vatuvei no-look pass, Lewis Brown grubber and Cherry-Evans trapped in-goal.

Manly winger Will Hopoate came closest to handing his side the early advantage, but his effort was a reflection of the tight contest; his hip touched the white line as he planted the ball. Warriors five-eighth James Maloney showed a more direct route, but his opposite Foran stopped him.
No side really deserved to take the lead but Manly's interchange prop George Rose was probably grateful the Warriors' only reward for his elbow on Aaron Heremaia was two points. He came down heavily on the hooker and the Warriors were awarded the penalty, Rose being put on report.
But the Warriors dropped their guard. Fullback Stewart, running off the inside hip of Cherry-Evans, danced through to score the game's first try, half an hour into the match. Had the half ended that way, with a 6-2 advantage to the Sea Eagles, the Warriors would have felt good about themselves. But six seconds before the break, Cherry-Evans scored.
It came not long after Manly back-rower Anthony Watmough produced a play-the-ball which was many kinds of wrong; the Warriors might have found themselves deep in the Manly quarter but instead found themselves defending for their lives. Having said that, the Sea Eagles began the play deep inside their own half; Glenn Stewart grubbered for winger Michael Robertson.
Suddenly the brilliance of the play was followed by another tinge of controversy. Cherry-Evans prevented Heremaia from getting a clean shot on his opposite number Matt Ballin, who eagerly took the ball from Robertson. Ballin was tackled short, but the Warriors found themselves short - Cherry-Evans took advantage to score.
Manly took that momentum into the second half. The Sea Eagles skipped upfield with relative ease every time they touched the ball.
The Warriors were their own worst enemies. Winger Krisnan Inu did superbly to jink his way out of his quarter but lost possession when he was finally brought down. Inu was fortunate Foran was ruled to have knocked on after fumbling a grubber by the Manly five-eighth with 25 minutes remaining.
By this stage, it was becoming less a matter of if, and more a case of when Manly would clinch the contest. It took another two minutes, and it was some play. Hopoate was being man-handled into touch when he flung the ball in-field to find Glenn Stewart who scored the try. This was an occasion when the man with the assist should get most of the credit.
The Warriors took a while to be woken last night. After 62 minutes, Johnson sent Manu Vatuvei over. And just seven minutes later, Johnson helped set up Elijah Taylor's try.
But Manly, through skipper Jamie Lyon, responded. Manly's known to have a heck of a chip on its shoulder - but when the chips are down, it's also a heck of a team.

Pilot did not see fair ride

2011-10-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

THE pilot of a light plane that crashed into a ferris wheel on NSW's mid-north coast says he didn't see the fairground ride before his aircraft slammed into it.

"I just went to take off, do a go-around and I didn't even see the ferris wheel there," pilot Paul Cox said.

The aircraft became stuck on the ride, 10m in the air, for about 90 minutes.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Recreational Aviation Australia are conducting separate investigations into the accident.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Recreational Aviation Australia are conducting separate investigations into the accident, which happened on Saturday morning at a fairground in the township of Old Bar, near Taree.
Amazingly, neither Mr Cox, his 32-year-old male passenger, nor any of the children on the ferris wheel were hurt.
Amber Arndell was among those on the ride.
''When I turned around there was just this big plane right behind me,'' the 13-year-old said. ''I was so scared.''
The president of the Old Bar Beach Festival, Cozette Leonard, said the pilot clipped a tree before hitting the ferris wheel.
''He hit a tree, wobbled, pulled out to sea and that's when he crashed into the ferris wheel,'' Ms Leonard said.
''It's just a miracle. It could've been worse.''

Sarah Palin Headed for Divorce

2011-09-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

Todd Palin is alleged to be “fed up” over his wife’s scandals that have headlined papers since her rise to fame after running for vice president. According to a report by the National Enquirer, Todd is fed up with the scandals and is ready to file for a divorce.

To add to the trouble for the potential 2012 presidential candidate, the release of the book, “In the Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin,” written by Joe McGinniss, claims are made that Palin had a one night stand with a basketball star.

The “Rogue” book also accuses Palin of snorting cocaine, and having an affair with her husband’s business partner.

Author Joe McGinniss apparently moved next door to the Palins to write the biography on the former Alaska governor.

Todd Palin called the author a “stalker” saying, “This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife.”

Todd is said to be fuming over the allegations in the book.

Sarah Palin has been destroyed by Joe McGinniss' no-holds-barred biography. It exposed all her lies, cover-ups and secrets," a source close to the former governor told the Enquirer. "As a result, she has been told by her advisers that it would be political suicide to announce a White House candidacy. The press and her opponents would have a field day digging into the dirty details of her background."

All of these revelations, the National Enquirer source alleges, has culminated in the derailing of her marriage and career aspirations, particularly her relationship, after her brother Chuck Heath Jr. was quoted saying his sister and Todd's marriage was over.

"Todd felt as if he was stabbed in the back by his own brother-in-law after 23 years of being married to the guy's sister, and having five kids together."

The source told the Enquirer that Todd feels like he has been made a laughing stock; the Rice tryst became a joke on late night TV and was all over the Internet when it was divulged last week. He is also said to be "fuming" over the biography's confirmation that his wife had an affair with his business partner, Brad Hanson.

Both parties denied the affair, but Palin's former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, allegedly confirmed it, saying: "Todd and Sarah were headed for divorce, but Sarah got pregnant soon after, so they decided to stay together."

While Palin hasn't publicly commented on the new allegations, her husband released a statement decrying the book through her Sarah PAC Facebook page.

"This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife," Todd Palin said in the statement. "His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears," Todd Palin stated. "Even The New York Times called this book 'dated, petty,' and that it 'chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.

Todd Palin

2011-09-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

Todd Mitchell Palin, born September 6, 1964 is the husband of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party. He is an American oil field production operator, commercial fisherman and champion snowmobile racer, winning the Tesoro Iron Dog race four times.

Early life

Palin was born and raised in Dillingham, Alaska to James F. "Jim" and Blanche Palin (née Kallstrom).

His father, a native of Seattle, Washington, is a former general manager of Matanuska Electrical Association. His mother, a former secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives, is one-quarter Yup'ik, and his maternal grandmother, Helena (Bartman) Andree, is a member of the Curyung tribe. His paternal grandfather, Frederick William Palin, was born in Hartney, Manitoba, Canada in February 1905.

In 1982, Palin graduated from Wasilla High School, which is the same alma mater of his wife and their eldest two children, son Track and daughter Bristol. He has taken some college courses but does not have a degree.

Career

For eighteen years, he worked for BP in the North Slope oil fields of Alaska. In 2007, in order to avoid a conflict of interest that related to his wife's position as governor, he took a leave from his job as production supervisor, when his employer became involved in natural gas pipeline negotiations with his wife's administration. Seven months later, because the family needed more income, Todd returned to BP. In order to avoid potential conflict of interest, this time, he accepted a non-management position as a production operator.He resigned from his job on September 18, 2009, with the stated reason as a desire to spend more time with his family.

He is also a commercial salmon fisherman at Bristol Bay on the Nushugak River.

Public life

Voter registration

Palin first registered to vote in 1989. From October 1995 through July 2002, except for a few months in 2000, he was registered to vote as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. In late August 2008, The Politico reported that Palin was registered to vote as an independent (undeclared), and had never registered as a Republican. In her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin confirms this, writing, "My husband... isn't registered with any party, for sound reasons, having been an eyewitness to the idiosyncrasies of party machines." Sarah Palin reaffirmed that Todd is not a registered Republican again in her February 6, 2010, keynote address to the national Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

Husband of the Governor of Alaska

Palin in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Palin was First Gentleman (or "First Dude," as he was often nicknamed) for two and a half years. Early on in that role, he encouraged young Alaskans who could not afford college to consider jobs in the oil and gas industry as an effective training ground, and advised the Governor on workforce development issues for the natural gas pipeline she supported.

In February 2010, the state of Alaska released to msnbc.com reporter Bill Dedman about 1,200 e-mails, which totalled 3,000 pages, that Palin exchanged with state officials. Almost 250 additional ones were withheld by the state, under a claim that executive privilege extends to Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government.Gregg Erickson, columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, said, in September 2008, that Palin "obviously plays an important role… I've seen him in the governor's office and I know that she's conducted interviews in the governor's office with him present." The emails showed Palin discussing a wide range of activities: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, "strategy for responding to media allegations," staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, "strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy," potential cuts to the governor's staff, "confidentiality issues," Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Other

As of late 2009, Palin was a community volunteer who worked in youth sports, coached hockey and basketball.[23] Palin was a judge in the 2008 Miss Alaska pageant.

Champion snowmobile racer

Palin is a four-time champion of the Tesoro Iron Dog, the world's longest snowmobile race. and traces the path of the Iditarod race with an extra journey of several hundred miles to Fairbanks added.

Palin has competed in the Tesoro every year since 1993. His racing teammate is Scott Davis, with whom he won in 2007. He has previously raced with Dusty Van Meter in the race, and they were co-champions in 2000 and 2002. In 1995, Palin partnered with Dwayne Drake for his first win.

In 2008, 400 miles (640 km) from defending his Tesoro Iron Dog championship, he was injured and broke his arm when he was thrown 70 feet from his machine.He was sent to the hospital but managed to finish in fourth place.

Personal life

In 1988, Palin married his high school sweetheart, Sarah Heath. The Palins have five children: Track Charles James (b. 1989), who has enlisted in the United States Army and deployed to Iraq on September 11, 2008; Bristol Sheeran Marie (b. 1990);Willow Bianca Faye (b. 1994); Piper Indy Grace (b. 2001); and Trig Paxson Van (b. 2008), who has Down syndrome; and two grandchildren: Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, born in 2008 in Palmer, Alaska, to Bristol and Levi Johnston and Kyla Grace Palin, who was born to son Track and his wife, Britta, in 2011.

Palin fishes and holds a Private Pilot Certificate. He also owns his own aircraft, a Piper PA-18 Super Cub.

Palin's stepmother, Faye Palin, ran unsuccessfully in 2002 for the position of Mayor for Wasilla, Alaska, to succeed Palin's wife, Sarah, who was term-limited. Faye Palin, who is pro-choice and a registered Democrat, lost to Dianne M. Keller, a candidate endorsed by Sarah Palin.

Public Safety Commissioner controversy

Todd Palin's name has appeared in news reports regarding the firing of Commissioner Walt Monegan and the actions of Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten. At one point, Todd Palin brought information prepared by himself and a private investigator to Monegan.

On September 12, 2008, the Alaska Legislature subpoenaed Palin to testify on his role in the controversy. On September 18, the McCain/Palin campaign announced that Todd Palin would refuse to testify because he does not believe the investigation is legitimate. State senator Bill Wielechowski said that the witnesses could not be punished for disobeying the subpoenas until the full legislature comes into session, then scheduled to be in January 2009.

On October 10, 2008, Palin was cited in special investigator Stephen Branchflower's report to the Legislative Council. One of Branchflower's four main findings was that Governor Palin violated Alaska's Ethics Act when she "wrongfully permitted Todd Palin to use the governor's office...to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."Blanchflower also states: "Todd Palin is not an employee of the (Alaska) executive branch, so his conduct is not a violation of (the Ethics Act)." and " . . . I make no finding as to Mr. Palin's conduct..

Levi Johnston Say: Bristol Palin wanted to get pregnant

2011-09-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.

Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places.

Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!” Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.

Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.

“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”

In a statement issued through a PR representative, Todd Palin trumpeted the Times review, pointing to it as proof that the book was so reprehensible that “even The New York Times” disdained it.

But it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks the Palins have found the Times — the print voice of East Coast intellectualism — in their corner. The Gray Lady also recently published an op-ed praising Palin as a person of ideas and calling for her to be taken seriously.

Sarah Palin was plucked from obscurity to be the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.

The 'pitbull in lipstick' sparked a media storm after accepting the nomination, despite questions over her experience.

But she wowed the U.S. after a barn-storming speech in September 2008 in which she attacked critics for calling her 'small town'. A former mayor of Wasilla before she became governor of Alaska, Palin stepped down after the Republican defeat in the presidential election.

The mother-of-five has remained tight-lipped on whether she would stand next year, but said she would likely make an announcement at the end of this month.

The AP reports that Johnston writes that when Sarah Palin found out she was pregnant in March of 2008, Bristol was mad and thought she should be the one who was pregnant, so she told Levi they should become so.

Johnston also says that Bristol's claim in her book "Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far" that she lost her virginity on a camping trip with Johnston is not true - he says it happened much earlier in their relationship.

He also claims he was "too dumb" to use protection while dating Bristol, even though he knew getting pregnant was "what she wanted." And finally, he claims when the Palins found out about the pregnancy, Sarah's first reaction was that she and Todd adopt the baby to "avoid a scandal."

This is not the only scandalous book about the Palins hitting shelves Tuesday. Joe McGinniss' book "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin," which alleges Palin's cocaine use and extramarital affairs, also comes out Sept. 20.

Levi Johnston

2011-09-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

Levi Keith Johnston, born May 3, 1990 is the former fiancé of Bristol Palin. He first received media attention in August 2008 when U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced that her daughter Bristol was five months pregnant with Johnston's baby and that the two were engaged. Johnston and Palin broke off their engagement in March 2009, and Johnston had several public feuds with the Palin family for which he later apologized. The couple announced they were engaged again in July 2010, but ended that engagement three weeks later.

After working in the Alaskan oil fields, Johnston began pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, aspiring to be a model and an actor.

Family life and education

Johnston is the first of two children born to Keith and Sherry Johnston. He has a younger sister, Mercede "Sadie" Johnston. The family is of Mexican and Canadian descent.

Johnston attended Wasilla High School, where he played on the hockey team, but dropped out of school in his junior year. He worked full-time on the Alaska North Slope oil fields as an apprentice electrician, quitting in January 2009.

According to Johnston, he and Bristol began dating during their freshman year of high school. After losing a promise ring on a caribou hunt, Johnston had Bristol's name tattooed on his finger.

Media attention

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election

Johnston attended the 2008 Republican National Convention with the Palin family. While Sarah Palin was delivering her prime-time nomination acceptance speech, the cameras frequently cut away to Johnston and Bristol. Johnston shook hands onstage with Sarah Palin's running mate, Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and was treated as a member of Palin's family. Fox News commentator Dick Morris commented that McCain's decision to welcome Johnston to the stage was a good move, because it would help McCain show "a nonjudgmental", tolerant attitude, while still sending the message that unwed teens who become pregnant should marry.

2009 interviews

After his 2009 breakup with Bristol, Johnston gave a series of nationally televised interviews. He appeared on The Tyra Banks Show with his mother and sister, saying he wanted to dispel rumors that he had "done steroids and drugs and cheated on Bristol". Remarking on Bristol's public appearances to promote sexual abstinence, Johnston told The Early Show that "abstinence is a great idea, but I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don't just think telling young kids, 'you can't have sex' - it's not going to work. It's not realistic." In another interview he said that he was "pretty sure" Sarah had known that he and Bristol were having sex in the family's mansion because "moms are pretty smart."

In August 2009, Johnston publicly speculated that Sarah Palin's early resignation from office was due to long-standing marital difficulties, the pressures of the job, and lucrative book and other media offers. In a September 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Johnston alleged that Sarah Palin initially wanted the couple to keep Bristol's pregnancy a secret and offered to adopt the baby and raise him as her own, but that he and Bristol rejected the plan. In response, Sarah told the media the statements were "untrue, malicious, and appalling", emphasizing that she highly appreciated her children and commenting that Johnston's photoshoots were "attention-seeking and desperate".

2010 apology and reversal

In July 2010, a week prior to the announcement that he and Bristol were engaged a second time, Johnston issued a statement expressing regret for his accusations against the Palins, "Last year, after Bristol and I broke up, I was unhappy and a little angry. Unfortunately, against my better judgment, I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true. I have already privately apologized to Todd and Sarah.

2011 Wasilla mayoral election

In August 2010, Johnston announced that he will be running in the October 2011 election for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Johnston stated: "Whether I win or not win, I want Tripp to look up to me and see what I've done and be proud of his dad."

The current mayor, Verne E. Rupright, responded to Johnston's announcement: "Well, it is a little early to declare. Usually most wait until the year the seat is up. But since I am nearly old enough to be Levi's grandfather I think it would be wise for him to get a high school diploma and keep his clothes on. The voters like that!"

Bristol Palin responded that she "never knew he had political aspirations. I'm glad that Levi has not given up on completing his education and is looking for steady employment."

Johnston's manager stated he hoped to copy the rise of Sarah Palin from mayor of Wasilla to governor of Alaska, "creating a rural, Alaskan version of the Bush political dynasty."

On 3 September 2010, Public Policy Polling reported that Johnston had become the most unpopular person polled in his home state, replacing former Democratic presidential candidate and senator John Edwards. Edwards was recorded in January 2010 as having a 15 percent approval and 72 percent disapproval rating in his home state of North Carolina. Johnston received a six percent approval and 72 percent disapproval rating in the state of Alaska.

Other activities

Johnston hired Anchorage, Alaska, attorney Rex Butler (who was previously best-known for representing criminal defendants and handling civil litigation) to represent him in his pursuit of a career in the entertainment industry.

According to Tirdad Derakhshani of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Johnston was "shopping around a memoir" concerning his time with Bristol. Politico reported in April 2009 that focus of the memoir had been changed to show the true story of the Palin household. The Associated Press reported in July 2009 that Johnston was also pursuing a movie deal.

Johnston and comedienne Kathy Griffin attended the 2009 Teen Choice Awards together. She later stated that he was "surprisingly sweet and courteous" to her. Johnston and Griffin's acquaintance is documented in the sixth season of Griffin's reality television series, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. Additionally, as a gag in her stand-up comedy routine, Griffin often referred to the acquaintance as a relationship, and Johnston as her boyfriend.

In popular culture

On September 28, 2010, Ben Folds and Nick Hornby released an album called Lonely Avenue with a song on it entitled "Levi Johnston's Blues," in which they tell a fictionalized account of Johnston's story.

Sarah Palin's husband Todd attacks biography

2011-09-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

News broke Wednesday that a new book about Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential candidate, is coming out soon, and it paints a less-than-flattering picture of her life before she was governor, including allegations of cocaine use and extramarital affairs.

Sarah's husband Todd Palin has fired back at author Joe McGinniss in a statement:

"This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife. His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears. Even The New York Times called this book 'dated, petty,' and that it 'chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.'"

Excerpts from the book, due out next week, were first published in the National Enquirer.

His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears”

Todd Palin
In a statement, Todd Palin said the book was full of "lies" and "smears", and accused Mr McGinniss of being obsessed with his wife, according to ABC News.

"This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife," he said via a Sarah Palin campaign aide, the network reported.

"His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears. Even The New York Times called this book 'dated, petty,' and that it 'chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip."

According to US media reports, the book claims Mrs Palin had a six-month affair in the 1990s with Brad Hanson, Todd Palin's business partner at the Polaris snowmobile store in Big Lake.

Mrs Palin has previously denied the allegation.

Mrs Palin also allegedly had a fling with former NBA player Glen Rice in 1987 when he was in Alaska for a basketball tournament, a year before she eloped with Todd, the book says.

At the time, the young Sarah Heath was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU.

It also alleges that the former former Republican vice-presidential candidate snorted cocaine off a 55-gallon drum while on a snowmobiling trip with friends, and smoked marijuana with a professor at Mat-Su College in Alaska.

Mr McGinniss is known for his 1968 book on Richard Nixon, The Selling of the President.

Sarah Palin

2011-09-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

Sarah Louise Palin, born February 11, 1964 is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and the first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.
She was elected to Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency.
The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009. She has subsequently associated herself with the Tea Party movement, endorsing and campaigning for several candidates in the 2010 midterm elections.
Her book Going Rogue has sold more than one million copies, and is one of four recent political memoirs to sell more than one million copies. Since January 2010, she has also provided political commentary for Fox News, and hosted a television show, Sarah Palin's Alaska. Five million viewers tuned in for the premiere episode, a record for The Learning Channel. A documentary about Palin's career, The Undefeated, was released in July 2011.
Palin is a potential candidate for the 2012 presidential election.

Early life and family

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. She is the third of four children (three daughters, one son) born to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track and field coach, and Sarah "Sally" (née Sheeran), a school secretary. Palin's siblings are Chuck Jr., Heather, and Molly. Palin is of English, Irish and German ancestry.
When Palin was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska, where her father received his teaching job. They relocated to Eagle River in 1969; and finally settled to Wasilla in 1972.
Palin played flute in the junior high band, then attended Wasilla High School where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and a member of the girls' basketball and cross country running teams. During her senior year, she was co-captain and point guard of the basketball team that won the 1982 Alaska state championship, earning the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her competitive streak.

College

After graduating from high school, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin switched to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982. She transferred to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983. (In June 2008, the Alumni Association of NIC gave her its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.)
In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant. She finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, playing flute in the talent portion of the contest, and receiving both the Miss Congeniality award and a college scholarship.
She attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho in the fall of 1984 and spring of 1985, and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in the fall of 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in the spring of 1986, and received her bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in 1987.

Early career and marriage

After graduating, she worked as a sportscaster for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, and as a sports reporter for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, fulfilling an early ambition.
On August 29, 1988, she eloped with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin. After the marriage, she became a mother and helped in her husband's commercial fishing business.

Early political career

Main articles: Early political career of Sarah Palin and Electoral history of Sarah Palin
City council
Palin was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992 winning 530 votes to 310. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her political career, Palin has remained a Republican, first registering as such in 1982.

Mayor of Wasilla
Motivated by concerns that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely, Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, defeating incumbent mayor John Stein 651 to 440 votes. Her biographer has described her campaign as targeting wasteful spending and high taxes; her opponent Stein has said that Palin introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues. The election was nonpartisan, but the state Republican Party took the unprecedented step of running advertisements for Palin.

First term
Palin had a standoff with the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, a local newspaper, and became involved in personnel challenges and a failed attempt to pack the City Council during her first year in office. Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that had been approved by Wasilla voters in October 1992, Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes. Using municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department. She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources. At the same time, she shrank the local museum's budget and deterred talk of a new library and city hall.
Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin eliminated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from "city department heads who had been loyal to Stein," including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian. The judge dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, holding that the police chief served at the discretion of the mayor, and could be terminated for nearly any reason, even a political one, and ordered Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees.

Second term

During her second term as mayor, Palin proposed and promoted the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5% sales tax increase and $14.7 million bond issue. Voters approved the measure by a 20 vote margin and the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex (later named the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center) was built on time and under budget. However, the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction. The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million due to $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. The Wall Street Journal characterized the project as a "financial mess." A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.

State-level politics

In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary. Following her defeat, she campaigned throughout the state for the nominated Republican governor-lieutenant governor ticket of Frank Murkowski and Leman. Murkowski and Leman won, Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to assume the governorship. Palin was said to be on the "short list" of possible appointees to Murkowski's U.S. Senate seat, but Murkowski ultimately appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, as his successor in the Senate.
Governor Murkowski offered a number of other jobs to Palin, and in February 2003, she accepted an appointment to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees Alaska's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. Although she had little background in the area, she said she wanted to learn more about the oil industry, and was named chair of the commission and ethics supervisor. By November 2003 she was filing non-public ethics complaints with the state attorney general and the governor against a fellow commission member, Randy Ruedrich, a former petroleum engineer and at the time the chair of the state Republican Party. He was forced to resign in November 2003. Palin resigned in January 2004 and put her protests against Ruedrich's "lack of ethics" into the public arena by filing a public complaint against Ruedrich, who was then fined $12,000. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft in complaining that Gregg Renkes, then the attorney general of Alaska, had a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement. Renkes also resigned his post.

Governor of Alaska

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was Sean Parnell, who since leaving the state senate in 2001 had worked as a corporate lobbyist.
In the November election, Palin was outspent but victorious, defeating former Democratic governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%. She became Alaska's first female governor, and, at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history, the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau (she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead). She took office on December 4, 2006, and for most of her term was very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 showed her with 93% and 89% popularity among all voters, which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America." A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%. A poll taken in May 2009 showed Palin's popularity among Alaskans was at 54% positive and 41.6% negative.
Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step," and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.
Palin frequently broke with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young, and she publicly challenged then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as intended to "make clear she had not abandoned him politically."
Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have been the subject of a national debate.

Budget, spending, and federal funds

In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the capital budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the capital budget to $1.6 billion.
In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.
Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature. In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.

Gubernatorial expenditures

Palin lived in Juneau during the legislative session and lived in Wasilla and worked out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is 565 miles from Juneau, while she worked there, state officials said she was permitted to claim a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she took (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she did not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla. She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef. Republicans and Democrats have criticized Palin for taking the per diem and $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business. In response, Palin's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that her gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of Murkowski, her predecessor, and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation." In February 2009, the State of Alaska, reversing a policy that had treated the payments as legitimate business expenses under the Internal Revenue Code, decided that per diems paid to state employees for stays in their own homes will be treated as taxable income and will be included in employees' gross income on their W-2 forms.

Federal funding

In her State of the State address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]." Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; despite this, in 2008 Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.
While there is no state sales tax or income tax in Alaska, royalty revenues from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field (comprised mostly of state-owned lands) have funded large state budgets since 1980, with the exact amounts largely dependent upon the prevailing price of petroleum. As a result, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008. For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska's senior U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.

Bridge to Nowhere

In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, Congress passed a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges as part of an omnibus spending bill. The Gravina Island Bridge received nationwide attention as a symbol of pork-barrel spending, following news reports that the bridge would cost $233 million in Federal funds. Because Gravina Island, the site of the Ketchikan airport, has a population of 50, the bridge became known nationally as the "Bridge to Nowhere." Following an outcry by the public and some[who?] members of the U.S. Senate, Congress eliminated the bridge earmark from the spending bill but gave the allotted funds to Alaska as part of its general transportation fund.
In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform,saying she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project ... into something that's so negative." Palin criticized the use of the word "nowhere" as insulting to local residents and urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.
As governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to what she called "inaccurate portrayals of the projects." Alaska chose not to return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.
In 2008, as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." This angered some[who?] Alaskans in Ketchikan, who said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community. Some critics complained that this statement was misleading, since she had expressed support for the spending project and kept the federal money after the project was canceled.

Alaska gas pipeline

In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the Alaska North Slope to the continental United States through Canada. The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project. It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion. Newsweek described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor." The pipeline faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations.

Predator control

In 2007, Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters. In March 2007, Palin's office announced that a bounty of $150 per wolf would be paid to the 180 volunteer pilots and gunners, to offset fuel costs, in five areas of Alaska. 607 wolves had been killed in the prior four years. State biologists wanted 382 to 664 wolves to be killed by the end of the predator-control season in April 2007. Wildlife activists sued the state, and a state judge declared the bounty illegal on the basis that a bounty would have to be offered by the Board of Game and not by the Department of Fish and Game.

Public Safety Commissioner dismissal

Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues" and "egregious rogue behavior." Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein said that the "last straw" was Monegan's planned trip to Washington, D.C., to seek funding for a new, multimillion-dollar sexual assault initiative the governor hadn't yet approved, Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from Palin, her husband, and her staff, including state Attorney General Talis J. Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister after a bitter divorce that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father. At one point Sarah and Todd Palin hired a private investigator to gather information, seeking to have Wooten officially disciplined. Monegan stated that he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others — an illegal moose killing and the tasering of his 11-year-old stepson (the child 'reportedly' asked to be tasered). He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed. When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue; he later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing. Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so.

Legislative investigation

On August 1, 2008 the Alaska Legislature hired an investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to review the Monegan dismissal. Legislators stated that Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten. The atmosphere was bipartisan and Palin pledged to cooperate. Wooten remained employed as a state trooper. She placed an aide on paid leave due to a tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide, appearing to act on her behalf, complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.
Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate," Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate. On September 1, Palin asked the legislature to drop its investigation, saying that the state Personnel Board had jurisdiction over ethics issues. The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Palin’s predecessor, and Palin reappointed one member in 2008. On September 19, Todd Palin and several state employees refused to honor subpoenas, the validity of which were disputed by Talis Colberg, Palin's appointee as Alaska's Attorney General. On October 2, a court rejected Colberg's challenge to the subpoenas, and seven of the witnesses, not including Todd Palin, eventually testified.

Branchflower Report
On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without endorsing, the Branchflower Report, in which investigator Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten. The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."
On October 11, Palin's attorneys responded, condemning the Branchflower Report as "misleading and wrong on the law." One of Palin's attorneys, Thomas Van Flein, said that it was an attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo." Later that day, Palin did a conference call interview with various Alaskan reporters, where she stated, "Well, I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing... Any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.

Alaska Personnel Board investigation and report
The bipartisan State of Alaska Personnel Board reviewed the matter at Palin's own request. On September 15, the Anchorage law firm of Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness filed arguments of "no probable cause" with the Personnel Board on behalf of Palin. The Personnel Board retained independent counsel Timothy Petumenos, a Democrat, as an investigator. On October 24, Palin gave three hours of depositions with the Personnel Board in St. Louis, Missouri. On November 3, 2008, the State of Alaska Personnel Board reported that there was no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official had violated state ethical standards. The report further stated that the Branchflower Report used the wrong statute in reaching its conclusions, misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence required to properly reach findings in the matter.

Job approval ratings, with comparisons

As governor of Alaska, Palin's job approval rating ranged from a high of 93% in May 2007 to 54% in May 2009. In November 2006, the month before Palin took office, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski’s job approval rating was 19%.
Date Approval Disapproval Pollster
May 15, 2007 93% Not reported Dittman Research
May 30, 2007 89% Not reported Ivan Moore Research
October 19–21, 2007 83% 11% Ivan Moore Research
April 10, 2008 73% 7% Rasmussen Reports
May 17, 2008 69% 9% Rasmussen Reports
July 24–25, 2008 80% Not reported Hays Research Group
July 30, 2008 64% 14% Rasmussen Reports
September 20–22, 2008 68% Not reported Ivan Moore Research
October 7, 2008 63% 37% Rasmussen Reports
March 24–25, 2009 59.8% 34.9% Hays Research
May 4–5, 2009 54% 41.6% Hays Research
June 14–18, 2009 56% 35% Global Strategy Group
In April 2009, SurveyUSA reported job approval ratings for the following U.S. governors: Bob Riley (AL) 54%, Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA) 25%, Chet Culver (IA) 42%, Kathleen Sebelius (KS) 46%, Steve Beshear (KY) 47%, Tim Pawlenty (MN) 46%, Jay Nixon (MO) 56%, Bill Richardson (NM) 46%, David Paterson (NY) 25%, Ted Kulongoski (OR) 40%, Tim Kaine (VA) 50%, Christine Gregoire (WA) 40%, and Jim Doyle (WI) 35%. (Polls taken April 24 – 26, 2009).

Resignation of Sarah Palin

An estimated 5,000 people[ gathered at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks to watch Palin cede her office to Sean Parnell.
On July 3, 2009, Palin announced that she would not run for re-election in the 2010 Alaska gubernatorial election and would resign before the end of July. In her announcement, Palin stated that both she and the state had been expending an "insane" amount of time and money ($2.5 million) to address "frivolous" ethics complaints filed against her, and that her decision not to seek reelection would make her a lame duck governor. A Palin aide said Palin was "no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself." Palin and her husband Todd had personally incurred more than $500,000 in legal fees defending against ethics charges brought against her as governor. Palin transferred the office of governor to Sean Parnell in Fairbanks on July 26, 2009.
In December 2010, new rules governing Alaska executive branch ethics, stemming from Sarah Palin's tenure as governor, took effect. "These include allowing for the state to pay legal costs for officials cleared of ethics violations; (and) allowing for a family member of the governor or lieutenant governor to travel at state cost in certain circumstances . . ."

2008 vice-presidential campaign

Palin addresses the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Several conservative commentators met Palin in the summer of 2007. Some of them, such as Bill Kristol, later urged McCain to pick Palin as his vice presidential running mate, arguing that her presence on the ticket would provide a boost in enthusiasm among the Religious Right wing of the Republican party, while her status as an unknown on the national scene would also be a positive factor.
On August 24, 2008 during a general strategy meeting, Steve Schmidt and a few other senior advisers to the McCain Campaign, discussed potential vice presidential picks with the consensus settling around Palin. The following day, the strategists advised McCain of their conclusions and he personally called Palin who was at the Alaska State Fair.
On August 27, she visited McCain's vacation home near Sedona, Arizona, where she was offered the position of vice-presidential candidate. According to Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain, he had previously met Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February 2008 and had come away "extraordinarily impressed." Palin was the only prospective running mate who had a face-to-face interview with McCain to discuss joining the ticket that week.
Since Palin was largely unknown outside Alaska before her selection by McCain, her personal life, policy positions, and political record drew intense media scrutiny. On September 1, 2008, Palin announced that her daughter Bristol was pregnant and that she would marry the father, Levi Johnston. During this period, some Republicans felt that Palin was being unfairly attacked by the media. Timothy Noah of Slate magazine predicted that Palin's acceptance speech would be "wildly overpraised" and might end speculation that she was unqualified for the job of vice president because the press had been beating her up for "various trivial shortcomings" and had lowered the expectations for her speech. On September 3, 2008, Palin delivered a 40-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that was well-received and watched by more than 40 million people. A Rasmussen poll taken immediately after the Convention found that 51% of Americans believed that the media was "trying to hurt" Palin with negative coverage, and 40% believed Palin to be ready for the Presidency.
Palin appeared on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment on October 18. Prior to her appearance, she had been parodied several times by Tina Fey, who was noted for her physical resemblance to the candidate. In the weeks leading up to the election, Palin was also the subject of amateur parodies posted on YouTube.
Controversy arose after it was reported that the Republican National Committee (RNC) spent $150,000 of campaign contributions on clothing, hair styling, and makeup for Palin and her family in September 2008. Campaign spokespersons stated the clothing would be going to charity after the election. Palin and some media outlets blamed gender bias for the controversy. At the end of the campaign, Palin returned the clothes to the RNC.
The election took place on November 4, and Obama was projected as the winner at 11:00 PM EST. In his concession speech McCain thanked Palin, calling her "one of the best campaigners I've ever seen, and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength." While aides were preparing the teleprompter for McCain's speech, they found a concession speech written for Palin by George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Two members of McCain's staff, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she would not be speaking. Palin appealed to McCain, who agreed with his staff.

After the 2008 election

Palin was the first guest on commentator Glenn Beck's Fox News television show on January 19, 2009, commenting on Barack Obama that he would be her president and that she would assist in any way to bring progress to the nation without abandoning her conservative views.
On January 27, 2009, Palin formed the political action committee, SarahPAC. The organization, which describes itself as an advocate of energy independence, supports candidates for federal and state office. Following her resignation as Governor, Palin announced her intention to campaign "on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation." It was reported that SarahPAC had raised nearly $1,000,000. A legal defense fund was set up to help Palin challenge ethics complaints, and it had collected approximately $250,000 by mid-July 2009. In June 2010, Palin's defense fund was ruled illegal and will have to pay back $386,856 it collected in donations because it used Palin's position as governor to raise money for her personal gain. Palin subsequently set up a new defense fund.
In March 2010, Palin started a show to be aired on TLC called Sarah Palin's Alaska. The show was produced by Mark Bennett. Five million viewers tuned in for the premiere episode, a record for TLC. Palin also has secured a segment on Fox News. Two guests that she was shown to have interviewed claimed to have never met her. Guests LL Cool J and Toby Keith stated that footage shown on the segment was actually taken from another interview with someone else, but was used in Palin's segment.
On December 8, 2010, it was reported that SarahPAC and Palin's personal credit card information were compromised through cyber attacks. Palin's team believed the attack was executed by Anonymous during Operation Payback. The report was met with skepticism in the blogosphere. Palin's email had been hacked once before in 2008.
In November 2009, Palin released her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, in which she details her private and political career, including her resignation as Governor of Alaska. Palin said she took the title from the phrase 'gone rogue' used by McCain staffers to describe her behavior when she spoke her mind on the issues during the campaign. The subtitle, "An American Life," mirrors the title of President Ronald Reagan's 1990 autobiography. Less than two weeks after its release, sales of the book exceeded the one million mark, with 300,000 copies sold the first day. Its bestseller rankings were comparable to memoirs by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Tea Party movement

On February 6, 2010, Palin appeared as the keynote speaker at the inaugural Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Palin said the Tea Party movement is "the future of politics in America." She criticized Obama for rising deficits, and for "apologizing for America” in speeches in other countries. Palin said Obama was weak on the War on Terror for allowing the so-called Christmas bomber to board a plane headed for the United States. Palin’s speaking fee was reported to be $100,000. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, the social networking site that sponsored the convention, did not confirm the amount paid to Palin saying he was contractually obligated not to speak about it.
On Labor Day, September 5, 2011, Palin was the featured speaker at a Tea Party Express rally in Manchester, New Hampshire's Victory Park. New Hampshire is traditionally the host of the nation's first Presidential primary. She addressed an enthusiastic crowd that the Los Angeles Times estimated to number 1,000 but which the local New Hampshire Union-Leader newspaper reported as "at least 500". Many in the crowd chanted "Run, Sarah, run!" during her speech.
Palin told the rally attendees that it was time to grow the Tea Party movement and it was important for them to avoid internal bickering with Establishment Republicans. She told the crowd, “The Tea Party movement is bigger than any one person and is not about any one candidate.”
"Pink Elephant" movement and 2010 endorsements
In the middle of 2010, Palin flagged the launch of a new "Pink Elephant Movement." She set about endorsing a number of female GOP candidates. Her endorsement helped Georgia Gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel to take the lead in the campaign for the Republican nomination, though ultimately Handel lost the primary. Palin has endorsed several female candidates nationally. Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the House Democratic campaign operation has called her involvement in various U.S. House campaigns a "great thing across the board." She spoke at a May 2010 fundraiser for the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political advocacy group and political action committee that supports pro-life women in politics, in which she coined the term "mama grizzly." Her O'Donnell endorsement further increased tensions between Palin and the Republican establishment: leading conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer described the endorsement as "reckless and irresponsible"; party strategist Karl Rove argued that her endorsement may have cost the GOP the Delaware Senate seat; and commentators including Politico's Ben Smith posited that Palin's support of O'Donnell contributed to dashing Republican hopes of regaining control of the U.S. Senate. Palin's influence over the primaries nonetheless further increased speculation that she would seek to be the party's nominee for President in 2012, with political pundits Paul Mirengoff, David Frum, and Jonathan Chait identifying Palin as the front-runner.

Possible 2012 presidential and Senate campaign

Beginning in November 2008, following Palin's high profile in the presidential campaign, there was an active "Draft Palin" movement. On February 6, 2010, when Fox News asked her if she would be running for president in 2012, she replied, "I would be willing to if I believe that it's right for the country." She added, "I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."
In November 2010, Palin confirmed that she was considering running for the Presidency, and was "having that discussion with my family." She stated she realised her level of experience could cause problems with winning the nomination, and criticized the "lamestream media" for focusing attention on her personal life.
During March 2011, Palin and her husband toured India at the invitation of Indian newsmagazine India Today, subsequently visiting Israel. During the tour she was quizzed about her future candidacy, she said "I don't think there needs to be a rush to get out there as a declared candidate. It's a life-changing decision". In response to another question, she said "It’s time that a woman is president of the United States of America."
Palin has since denied that she is running for Senate and said that her recent purchase of a home in Scottsdale was not a full-time residence.

Personal life

Sarah and Todd Palin have five children: sons Track (born 1989) and Trig Paxson Van (born 2008), and daughters Bristol Sheeran Marie (born 1990), Willow (born 1994), and Piper (born 2001). Palin's youngest child, Trig, was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.
Palin has two grandchildren, a boy named Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, who was born to her eldest daughter, Bristol, and her then-fiancee, Levi Johnston, in 2008, and a girl named Kayla Grace Palin, who was born to son Track and his wife, Britta, in 2011. Her husband Todd worked for the British oil company BP as an oil-field production operator, retiring in 2009, and owns a commercial fishing business.
Palin was born into a Roman Catholic family. Later, her family joined the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, which she attended until 2002. Palin then switched to the Wasilla Bible Church. When in Juneau, she attends the Juneau Christian Center. Palin described herself in an interview as a "Bible-believing Christian."

Political positions

Health care
Palin opposed the 2010 health care reform package, saying it would lead to rationing of health care by a bureaucracy, which she described using the term "death panels". This legislation is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as modified by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Palin characterizes the act as an "unfunded mandate" and supports defunding it, as well as repealing portions of the act.

Social Issues
Palin opposes same-sex marriage, abortion including in cases of rape and incest, and embryonic stem cell research. She supports capital punishment, and parental consent for female minors seeking an abortion.

Education

Palin supports sex education in public schools that encourage abstinence along with contraception.
She supports discussion of creationism during lessons on evolution in public schools. Palin believes evolution "should be taught as an accepted principle" and said that her belief in God's role in Earth's creation "is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught in science class."

Guns

A Life Member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Palin interprets the Second Amendment as including the right to handgun possession and opposes bans on semi-automatic assault weapons.She supports gun safety education for youth.

Environment

Palin supports off-shore drilling, and land-based drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When commenting on the Gulf Coast oil disaster Palin said, "I repeat the slogan 'drill here, drill now.' She said, "I want our country to be able to trust the oil industry." Palin asked supporters to read an article by Thomas Sowell which criticized Obama for having BP pay to an escrow fund.
Palin has expressed skepticism about the causes of global warming, but agrees that "man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue" and that action should be taken. She is opposed to cap-and-trade proposals, such as the defunct American Clean Energy and Security Act. Palin has acknowledged that "Simply waiting for low-carbon-emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals..that will be required [for carbon dioxide] under most credible climate-change models.

Foreign policy

Palin is a strong supporter of Israel. Referring to Iran's threat to Israel, Palin said Obama would be reelected if "he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do.
On foreign policy, Palin supported the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, but is concerned that "dependence on foreign energy" may be obstructing efforts to "have an exit plan in place. Palin supports preemptive military action in the face of an imminent threat, and supports U.S. military operations in Pakistan. Palin supports NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations.

Public image

Prior to the 2008 Republican National Convention, a Gallup poll found that most voters were unfamiliar with Sarah Palin. During her campaign to become vice president, 39% said Palin was ready to serve as president if needed, 33% said Palin was not, and 29% had no opinion. This was "the lowest vote of confidence in a running mate since the elder George Bush chose then-Indiana senator Dan Quayle to join his ticket in 1988." Following the Convention, her image came under close media scrutiny, particularly with regard to her religious perspective on public life, her socially conservative views, and her perceived lack of experience. Palin's experience in foreign and domestic politics came under criticism among conservatives as well as liberals following her nomination. At the same time, Palin became more popular than John McCain among Republicans.
One month after McCain announced Palin as his running mate, she was viewed both more favorably and unfavorably among voters than her opponent, Delaware Senator Joe Biden. A plurality of the television audience rated Biden's performance higher at the 2008 vice-presidential debate. Media outlets repeated Palin's statement that she "stood up to Big Oil" when she resigned after eleven months as the head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, due to abuses she witnessed involving other Republican commissioners and their ties to energy companies and energy lobbyists, and again when she raised taxes on oil companies as governor. In turn, others have said that Palin is a "friend of Big Oil" due to her advocacy of oil exploration and development including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the de-listing of the polar bear as an endangered species. The National Organization for Women did not endorse McCain/Palin, endorsing Barack Obama instead.
Palin was selected as one of America’s "10 Most Fascinating People of 2008" by Barbara Walters for an ABC special on December 4, 2008. In April 2010, she was selected as one of the world's 100 most influential people by TIME Magazine.
In the wake of the January 8, 2011 shooting of Rep. Giffords, Palin faced criticism for her SarahPAC website's inclusion of a graphic that included a crosshair over Giffords's district. Palin responded to the criticism of the graphic, saying that "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them," controversially equating the accusations of her role in the shooting to a "blood libel". Following her response, an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 46% of respondents viewed Palin's actions after the shooting unfavorably, while 30% approved and 24% had no opinion.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck

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Elisabeth Hasselbeck, born May 28, 1977 is an American television host and television personality. She was a contestant on Survivor: The Australian Outback (2001) and is a current co-host on the daytime talk show The View (since 2003).

Early life

Elisabeth DelPadre Filarski was born in Cranston, Rhode Island. She is the daughter of Roman Catholic-school teacher and lawyer Elizabeth DelPadre and architect Kenneth Filarski. She has one brother, Kenneth, Jr., a lawyer and aspiring musician. As a child, she lived in Providence and Cranston, Rhode Island.

Hasselbeck was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Mary School in Cranston, followed by St. Mary Academy - Bay View in Riverside, Rhode Island, where she graduated in 1995. She then attended Boston College, where she captained the women's softball team for two seasons, winning consecutive Big East championships. With a concentration on large scale paintings and industrial design, Hasselbeck graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1999. Hasselbeck started working for Puma in 1998, while attending Boston College. After graduation, she worked for Puma shoes as a member of its design team before her television career.

Personal life

On July 6, 2002, Hasselbeck married her college boyfriend, former professional football quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. They have a daughter, Grace Elisabeth born in 2005, and two sons, Taylor born in 2007, and Isaiah born in 2009.

Hasselbeck is a supporter of breast cancer awareness initiatives in the form of an internet-only PSA on breast cancer diagnosis.

Hasselbeck is living with celiac disease. She has written a book on the subject, The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide, which has appeared on several best-seller lists. On June 23, 2009, a lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Massachusetts alleging that her book was plagiarized from a self-published book by Susan Hasset.Hasselbeck released a statement calling the allegations baseless. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2009 when the plaintiff's lawyer declined to pursue it, saying to the press that he believed some degree of plagiarism occurred, but it was not sufficient to justify monetary damages.

Career

Survivor and early career

In 2001, Hasselbeck was cast in Survivor: The Australian Outback, and was originally a member of the Kucha tribe. She was the last remaining member of that tribe in the game before being voted off on Day 39 and finishing fourth overall. As her luxury item, she brought a self-made immunity headdress.

In 2001, Hasselbeck was a judge at the Miss Teen USA Pageant.[8] From 2002 to 2003 she hosted the Style Network's The Look for Less where she helped find stylish clothes for bargain prices.

The View

In the past, Hasselbeck has been open about owing much of her career to the influence of her husband's family, particularly her father-in-law, Don Hasselbeck. Although Hasselbeck previously saw herself as a "behind the scenes" kind of person and not interested in career television, or playing pundit, her agent was eager to showcase her competitive client and she auditioned for The View. In 2003, Hasselbeck was one of a number of women who guest-hosted to replace outgoing The View co-host Lisa Ling, who left the show at the end of 2002.

Hasselbeck typically represents the conservative position on The View. However, Hasselbeck has said that she calls herself neither a conservative nor a liberal. Her parents had an independent political stance, never telling their children for whom they voted. She has stated that the term "conservative" does not define her as a person.

On October 26, 2008, Hasselbeck appeared at Republican rallies in Florida, introducing Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Notable debates on The View

Hasselbeck (right) shares a laugh with Joy Behar (left) and Sherri Shepherd (center) on a July 2010 episode of The View

Hasselbeck has been involved in a number of heated debates on The View, including but not limited to:

On August 2, 2006, Hasselbeck got into a heated debate in which she strongly opposed the Food and Drug Administration's plan to sell the "morning after pill" as an over-the-counter drug. Hasselbeck stated, "I believe that life begins at the moment of conception." She said the over-the-counter distribution of the pill should be banned even in cases of rape and incest, because "life still has value." Hasselbeck argued that advocates of the drug use the "rape or incest" exception as a "bait-and-switch" distraction from the goal of making it universally accessible. She argued if the "rape or incest" exception were all advocates cared about, they would not support its over-the-counter status.

On May 23, 2007, Hasselbeck was involved in a heated on-air argument with co-host Rosie O'Donnell concerning the war in Iraq, which she supports and O'Donnell opposes. When O'Donnell asked, "655,000 Iraqi civilians dead. Who are the terrorists?" O'Donnell was criticized by conservative commentators for her question and she (O'Donnell) complained about Hasselbeck's unwillingness to defend O'Donnell's statements in the controversy that followed. Hasselbeck responded "defend your own insinuations," adding that she should not have to defend anyone else's words for them, especially when that person has a forum in which to present a defense.

On October 3, 2007, Hasselbeck and The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg were discussing Senator Hillary Clinton's proposal that the U.S. Government provide a $5,000 savings bond for each child at birth. The conversation became heated when Hasselbeck stated it would lead to fewer abortions due to women wanting to keep the money.

Ron Paul

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Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul, born August 20, 1935 is an American medical doctor, author, Republican U.S. Congressman of the House of Representatives and candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination. Paul is currently the U.S. Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas, which comprises the area south and southwest of the Greater Houston region, including Galveston. Paul serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Joint Economic Committee, and the House Committee on Financial Services, and is Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, where he has been an outspoken critic of current American foreign and monetary policy.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. Paul served as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968, during the Vietnam War. He worked as an obstetrician and gynecologist during the 1960s and 1970s, delivering more than 4,000 babies, before entering politics during 1976.

Paul is the initiator of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty and his ideas have been expressed in numerous published articles and books, including Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (2011), End The Fed (2009), The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008), Pillars of Prosperity (2008), A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (2007), and The Case for Gold (1982). According to University of Georgia political scientist Keith Poole, Paul had the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. His son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010, making the elder Paul the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child of his in the Senate.

Paul has been termed the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement. He has become well-known for his libertarian ideas for many political issues, often differing from both Republican and Democratic Party stances. Paul has campaigned for President of the United States twice before, first during 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party and again during 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination. On May 13, 2011, he announced formally that he would campaign again during 2012 for the Republican presidential nomination. On July 12, 2011, Paul announced that he would not seek another term in Congress in order to concentrate on his presidential bid.

Personal life and medical career

Paul was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Howard Caspar Paul and Margaret (née Dumont) Paul. His paternal great-grandparents emigrated from Germany, and his mother was of German and Irish ancestry. As a junior at suburban Dormont High School, he was the 220-yard dash state champion. He received a B.S. degree in biology at Gettysburg College during 1957. He was a member of the fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha. After earning a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Duke University School of Medicine during 1961, Paul relocated with his wife to Michigan, where he completed his medical internship at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He then served as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force from 1963 to 1965 and then in the United States Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968.

During 1968, Paul and his wife relocated to Texas, where he continued his medical work. Trained in obstetrics and gynaecology, Paul then began his own private practice.

Paul has been married to Carol Wells since 1957. They have five children, who were baptized Episcopalian: Ronald, Lori, Rand, Robert, and Joy. Paul's son Rand is the junior senator from the state of Kentucky. Raised a Lutheran, Paul later became a Baptist.

Early congressional career

While still a medical resident during the 1960s, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which caused him to read many publications by Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well, and credits to them his interest in the study of economics. He came to believe that what the Austrian school economists wrote was becoming true on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon "closed the gold window" by implementing the U.S. dollar's complete departure from the gold standard. That same day, the young physician decided to enter politics, saying later, "After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded.

First campaigns

Inspired by his belief that the monetary crisis of the 1970s was predicted by the Austrian School and caused by excessive government spending on the Vietnam War and welfare, Paul became a delegate to the Texas Republican convention and a Republican candidate for the United States Congress. During 1974, incumbent Robert R. Casey defeated him for the 22nd district. When President Gerald Ford appointed Casey to direct the Federal Maritime Commission, Paul won an April 1976 special election to the vacant office. Paul lost some months later in the general election, to Democrat Robert Gammage, by fewer than 300 votes (0.2%), but defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch, and was reelected during 1980 and 1982.

House of Representatives

Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, at first during the 1970s in the House of Representatives where he also declined to attend junkets or register for a Congressional pension while serving four terms. His chief of staff (1978–1982) was Lew Rockwell. During 1980, when a majority of Republicans favored President Jimmy Carter's proposal to reinstate draft registration, Paul argued that their views were inconsistent, stating they were more interested in registering their children than they were their guns. He also proposed legislation to decrease Congressional pay by the rate of inflation; he was a regular participant of the annual Congressional Baseball Game; and he continued to deliver babies on Mondays and Saturdays during his entire 22nd district career.

During his first term, Paul initiated a "think tank", the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE). Also during 1976, the foundation began publication of the first monthly newsletter associated with Paul, Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report[30] (or Special Report). It also publishes radio advertisements, monographs, books, and (since 1997) a new series of the monthly newsletter, Ron Paul's Freedom Report, which promote the principles of limited government.

1988 presidential campaign

In the 1988 presidential election, Paul was on the ballot in 46 States. Paul scored third in the popular vote with 432,179 votes (0.5%). Paul was kept off the ballot in Missouri, and received votes there only when written in, due to what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch termed a "technicality".

The Libertarian party was split between a Conservative and Liberal wing. Ron Paul represented the Conservative wing which was successful in fundraising while the Liberal wing received 10x and more favorable press coverage which was argued was 100x more important. Nevertheless the Nomination was given to Paul. Ron Paul argued, “Pro-life libertarians have a vital task to perform: to persuade the many abortion-supporting libertarians of the contradiction between abortion and individual liberty; and, to sever the mistaken connection in many minds between individual freedom and the ‘right’ to extinguish individual life.”

According to Paul, his presidential campaign was about more than obtaining office; he sought to promote his libertarian ideas, often to school and university groups regardless of vote eligibility. He said, "We're just as interested in the future generation as this election. These kids will vote eventually, and maybe, just maybe, they'll go home and talk to their parents." He traveled the country for a year speaking about issues such as free market economics and the rising government deficits: "That's why we talk to a lot of young people. They're the ones who are paying these bills, they're the ones who are inheriting this debt, so it's most likely these young people who will move into this next generation in government."

Inter-congressional years

Ron Paul & Associates (RP&A), Inc. was initiated during 1984 by Paul, who served as President. Llewellyn H Rockwell Jr. served as Vice President, Ron Paul's wife Carol served as Secretary and Lori Pyeatt as Treasurer. The corporation was dissolved during 2001. In 1985 Ron Paul & Associates began publishing The Ron Paul Investment Letter and The Ron Paul Survival Report; it added the more controversial Ron Paul Political Report during 1987. Many articles lacked a byline, yet often invoked Paul's name or persona.

After his unsuccessful presidential bid during 1988, Paul resumed his private medical practice and continued to allow the newsletters to be published bearing his name. For 1992, RP&A earned $940,000 and employed Paul's family as well as Lew Rockwell (its vice-president and occasional editor) and seven other workers. Murray Rothbard and other libertarians believed Rockwell ghostwrote the newsletters for Paul; Rockwell later acknowledged involvement in writing subscription letters, but attributed the newsletters to "seven or eight freelancers".

Later congressional career

1996 campaign

During 1996, Paul was re-elected to Congress after the most difficult campaign he had experienced since the 1970s. Because Republicans had gained control of both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Paul entered the campaign hopeful that his Constitutionalist policies of tax reductions, terminating federal agencies, and curbing the U.N. would have more support than during the past. The Republican National Committee emphasized instead encouragement of Democrats to switch parties, as Paul's primary opponent, incumbent Greg Laughlin, had done during 1995. The party endorsed Laughlin, including assistance from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and the National Rifle Association. Paul responded by running newspaper advertisements quoting Gingrich's harsh criticisms of Laughlin's Democratic voting record 14 months earlier. Paul won the primary with assistance from baseball pitcher, constituent, and friend Nolan Ryan (as honorary campaign chair and advertisement spokesman), as well as tax activist Steve Forbes and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan (both of whom had had presidential campaigns that year).

Paul's Democratic opponent in the autumn general election, trial lawyer Charles "Lefty" Morris, received assistance from the AFL-CIO, but Paul's wider contributor base out-raised Morris two-to-one, giving the third-highest amount of individual contributions received by any House member (behind Gingrich and Bob Dornan). While Paul was able to describe Morris as a stooge of trial lawyers and big labor, Morris ran numerous advertisements about Paul's advocacy of federal drug law repeal.

Morris also accused Paul of authoring questionable statements in past newsletters, some of which were characterized as racially charged. Paul's congressional campaign countered the statements were taken out of context. and that voters might not understand the "tongue-in-cheek, academic" quotes out of context. Further, the campaign rejected Morris' demand to release all back issues.

Later campaigns

During 1998 and again during 2000, Paul defeated Loy Sneary, a Democratic Bay City, Texas, rice farmer and former Matagorda County judge, running advertisements warning voters to be "leery of" Sneary. Paul accused Sneary of voting to increase his pay by 5%, increasing his travel allotment by 400% during one year, and using increased taxes to start a new government bureaucracy to administer a license plate fee he enacted. Sneary's aides said he had voted to increase all county employees' pay by five percent in a cost-of-living increase. Paul countered that he had never voted to increase Congressional pay. In both campaigns, the national Democratic Party and major unions continued to spend much money against Paul. Paul continued to refrain from congressional benefits and in 2009 was featured by CBS on Up to the Minute as one of two members of the U.S. Congress that had pledged not to receive a pension from the United States government. The other was Howard Coble of North Carolina.

An online "grassroots" petition to draft Paul for the 2004 presidential election garnered several thousand signatures. On December 11, 2001, he told political independents that he was encouraged by the fact that the petition had spread the message of Constitutionalism, but did not expect a White House win at that time. Further prompting in early 2007 caused him to enter the 2008 presidential election campaign.

Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions from individuals (97 percent during the 2006 cycle), and receives much less from political action committees (PAC's) than others, ranging from two percent (2002) to six percent (1998). The group Clean Up Washington, analyzing from 2000 to mid-2006, listed Paul as seventh-lowest of PAC receipts of all House members; one of the lowest in lobbyist receipts; and fourth-highest in small-donor receipts. He had the lowest PAC receipts percentage of all the 2008 Republican presidential candidates.

Relationship with district

After 2003 Texas redistricting, Paul's district is larger than Massachusetts (though it has only a tenth of the population), with 675 miles (1,086 km) of Gulf of Mexico coastline between Houston and Rockport, Texas, including some 22 counties. Even so, Paul opposes programs like federally funded flood insurance (typically endorsed by coastal and rural representatives) because it requires those outside flood zones to subsidize those within, but prohibits those within from choosing their own insurers. In an overwhelmingly rural region known for ranching and rice farms, Paul opposes farm subsidies, which are paid to large corporations rather than small farmers. Despite his voting against greatly endorsed legislation like farm bills, Paul's devotion to reducing government is popular with 14th district voters: in a survey, 54% of his constituency agreed with his goal of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.

Paul adds his own "earmarks", such as for Texas shrimp promotion, but he routinely votes against most spending bills returned by committee. Earmarks permit members of Congress, rather than executive branch civil servants, to designate spending priorities for previously authorized funds directed otherwise. Paul compared his practice to objecting to the tax system yet taking all one's tax credits: "I want to get their money back for the people." In The Revolution: A Manifesto, Paul states his opinion of earmarks this way: "The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in the 2007's earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Cutting even a million dollars from an appropriations bill that spends hundreds of billions will make no appreciable difference in the size of government, which is doubtless why politicians and the media are so eager to have us waste our time on earmarks."

Legislation

Paul authors more bills than the average representative, such as those that impose term limits, or abolish the income tax or the Federal Reserve; many do not escape committee review. He has written successful legislation to prevent eminent domain seizure of a church in New York, and a bill transferring ownership of the Lake Texana dam project from the federal government to Texas. By amending other legislation, he has helped prohibit funding for national identification numbers, funding for federal teacher certification, International Criminal Court jurisdiction over the U.S. military, American participation with any U.N. global tax, and surveillance of peaceful First Amendment activities by citizens.

During March 2001, Paul introduced a bill to repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR) and reinstate the process of formal declaration of war by Congress. Later during 2001, Paul voted to authorize the president, pursuant to WPR, to respond to those responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also introduced "Sunlight Rule" legislation, which requires lawmakers to take enough time to read bills before voting on them, after the Patriot Act was passed within 24 hours of its introduction. Paul was one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq War Resolution, and (with Oregon representative Peter DeFazio) sponsored a resolution to repeal the war authorization during February 2003. Paul's speech, 35 "Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq," was translated and published in German, French, Russian, Italian, and Swiss periodicals before the Iraq War began.

Bills sponsored and cosponsored

The following tables link to the Congressional Record hosted by the Library of Congress. All the specifics and actions done for each individual bill Ron Paul has either sponsored or cosponsored can be reviewed further there. "Original bills" and "Original amendments" indicate instances where Ron Paul had pledged to endorse the legislation at the time the bill was initially introduced rather than at some other phase of the legislative process of the bill.

Rep. Ron Paul – U.S. House of Representatives – [R-TX-14]

Years Covered All bills sponsored All amendments sponsored All bills cosponsored All amendments cosponsored Original bills cosponsored Original amendments cosponsored Bill support withdrawn Amendment support withdrawn

1997–98 32 7 223 0 76 0 0 0

1999-00 51 8 316 0 119 0 0 0

2001–02 64 4 323 0 104 0 1 0

2003–04 68 8 354 0 150 0 0 0

2005–06 71 8 393 0 141 0 0 0

2007–08 70 0 443 0 160 0 0 0

2009–10 41 0 120 0 69 0 0 0

Affiliations

Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (having been on the Western Hemisphere and the Asia and Pacific subcommittees); the Joint Economic Committee; and the Committee on Financial Services (as Ranking Member of the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology subcommittee, and Vice-Chair of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee).

Paul was honorary chairman of, and is a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action committee that describes its goal as electing "liberty-minded, limited-government individuals". Paul also hosts a luncheon every Thursday as chairman of the Liberty Caucus, composed of 20 members of Congress. Washington DC area radio personality Johnny "Cakes" Auville gave Paul the idea for the Liberty Caucus and is a regular contributing member. He is an initiating member of the Congressional Rural Caucus, which deals with agricultural and rural issues, and the 140-member Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus. He remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its 2004 convention. He also was endorsed by the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka.

Committee assignments

Rep. Paul serves on the following committee and subcommittees.

Committee on Financial Services

Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology (Chairman)

Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade

Committee on Foreign Affairs

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

With the election of the 112th Congress, and a resulting GOP majority in the House, Ron Paul became the chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology starting in January 2011.

On July 12th 2011, Ron Paul announced that he will not seek re-election as a U.S. Representative.

2008 presidential campaign

Paul formally declared his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination on March 12, 2007, on C-SPAN. His campaign had intense grassroots support—his supporters were said to "always show up"—- and he had dozens of wins of GOP "straw polls". Additionally, Ron Paul garnered much popularity among college students, with about 500 Students for Ron Paul groups formed across the United States. Few major politicians endorsed Paul, but he won the endorsement of Houston political activist Clymer Wright, the main promoter of the municipal term limits imposed in Houston during 1991.

Paul's campaign showed "surprisingly strong" fundraising with several record-breaking events. He had the greatest rate of military contribution for 2008, and donations coming from individuals, aided significantly by an online presence and very active campaigning by endorsers, who organized "moneybomb" fundraisers acquiring millions of dollars during several months. Such fundraising earned Paul the status of having raised more than any other Republican candidate during 2007's fourth-quarter. Paul's name was a number-one web search term as ranked by Technorati, beginning around May 2007. He has had more YouTube subscriptions since May 20, 2007 than any other candidate.

Paul said he had the greatest number of pledged Louisiana delegates who had registered by the original January 10 deadline, and formally challenged the deadline extension and the Louisiana GOP's exclusion of voters due to an outdated list; he projected three Louisiana delegates. The Super Tuesday West Virginia caucus was won by Mike Huckabee, whose state campaign coordinators reportedly arranged to give three Huckabee delegates to Paul in exchange for votes from Paul's endorsers. Huckabee has not confirmed this delegate pledge.

Paul's preference votes in primaries and caucuses began at 10 percent in Iowa (winning Jefferson County) and eight percent in New Hampshire, where he had the endorsement of state sovereignty champion, State Representative Dan Itse; on Super Tuesday they ranged from 25 percent in Montana and 21 percent in North Dakota caucuses, where he won several counties, to three percent in several state primaries, averaging under 10 percent in primaries overall. After sweeping four states on March 4, McCain was projected widely to have a majority of delegates pledged to vote for him in the September 2008 party convention. Paul obliquely acknowledged McCain on March 6: "Though victory in the political sense is not available, many victories have been achieved due to hard work and enthusiasm." He continued to contest the remaining primaries, having added, "McCain has the nominal number ... but if you're in a campaign for only gaining power, that is one thing; if you're in a campaign to influence ideas and the future of the country, it's never over." Paul's recent book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, became a New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller immediately upon release. His newest book, End the Fed, has been released.

Newsletter controversy

Controversial claims made by an unidentified author in Ron Paul's newsletters, written in the first person narrative, included statements such as "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." Along with "even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." Two other statements that garnered controversy were "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions". In an article titled "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

Paul had given his own account of the newsletters during March 2001, stating the documents were authored by ghostwriters, and that while he did not author the challenged passages, he bore "some moral responsibility" for their publication.

At the end of 2007, both the New York Sun and the New York Times Magazine reprinted passages from early 1990s publications of Paul's newsletters, attacking them for content deemed racist. These were the same newsletters that had been used against Paul during his 1996 congressional campaign.

On January 8, 2008, the day of the New Hampshire primary, The New Republic published a story by James Kirchick quoting from selected newsletters published under Paul's name.

Responding to the charges in a CNN interview, Paul denied any involvement in authoring the passages. Additionally, Paul's campaign claimed through a press release that the quotations had come from an unnamed ghostwriter and without Paul's consent. Paul again denounced and disavowed the "small-minded thoughts", citing his 1999 House speech praising Rosa Parks for her courage; he said the charges simply "rehashed" the decade-old Morris attack.

Assistance for third-party candidates

On September 5, 2008, the Constitution Party of Montana removed Chuck Baldwin from their presidential ticket, replacing him with Ron Paul for president and Michael Peroutka for vice president. Paul made an announcement stating that he "was aware that the party planned to do this, and has said that as long as he can remain passive and silent about the development, and as long as he need not sign any declaration of candidacy, that he does not object." However, Paul requested on September 11 that Montana eliminate his name from the ballot, stating that he did not "seek nor consent" to the Montana Constitution Party's nomination. He also suggested the Party list official Constitution Party nominee Baldwin on the Montana ballot instead. Five days later the Montana Secretary of State denied Paul's request for withdrawal, stating that the request was sent to them too late. On September 4, 2008, a list of electors in Louisiana using the name "Louisiana Taxpayers Party" filed papers and paid $500 with the Secretary of State's Office. They are pledged to Paul for President and Barry Goldwater, Jr. for Vice President.

The same day, Paul's staff released a brief press statement: "On the heels of his historic three-day rally in Minneapolis that drew over 12,000 attendees, Congressman Ron Paul will make a major announcement next week in Washington at the National Press Club." The congressman had reportedly invited presidential candidates Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader to the press conference, causing some people to speculate that they would endorse Paul campaigning for president on the ticket of either the Constitution, Libertarian or other third party.

Post–2008 presidential campaign activities

On February 26, 2009, Ron Paul was a major speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., speaking for 20 minutes on topics including monetary theory and policy in the United States, in addition to the War in Iraq, and international foreign policy. Paul's Campaign for Liberty sent 140 volunteers to CPAC 2009 to distribute materials, and significantly increased that number the next year.

In the 2009 CPAC Straw Poll for the 2012 presidential election, Paul tied 2008 GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin for third place with 13% of the vote, behind fellow former candidate Mitt Romney and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. However, in the 2010 CPAC straw poll, he scored first, decisively winning with 31%, followed distantly by Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, among others. In the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, Paul finished second place with 24% of the vote (438 votes), behind only Mitt Romney (with 439 votes). An April 2010 Rasmussen poll among likely voters found that Ron Paul and President Obama were statistically tied in a hypothetical 2012 presidential election.

2012 presidential campaign

Beginning during 2010 there was speculation among pundits and journalists regarding the prospect of Paul campaigning for president again during 2012. When Paul's wife, Carol, was asked if he would campaign during 2012 her response was "If you would ask him now he would probably say 'no', but he did say... things are happening so quickly and fast in our country, if we're at a crisis period and they need someone... with the knowledge he has... then he would do it."

Paul won several early straw polls and began raising funds for an exploratory committee. In mid-April, 2011, Paul announced the formation of a "testing-the-waters" account, and stated that he will make a decision on whether to enter the campaign officially no later than May. In late April, he formed an official exploratory committee to campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He participated with the first Republican presidential debate on May 5, 2011. and on May 13, 2011, Paul formally announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America. He placed second in the 2011 Ames Straw Poll, missing first by 0.9%.

An August scientific poll of likely voters across the political spectrum by Rasmussen Reports held a contest between Paul and Barack Obama, in which the two were "almost dead even." Obama led Paul by one percentage point at 39% to 38% - a significantly smaller margin than July (41% - 37%). Paul moved up to 3rd in a late-August poll of likely Republican primary voters, trailing Rick Perry and Mitt Romney and passing Michele Bachmann, climbing from fourth to third position.

Political positions

Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. He has been nicknamed "Dr. No", representing both his medical degree and his insistence that he will "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution" and "Mr. Republican". One scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science found Paul the most conservative of all 3,320 members of Congress from 1937 to 2002. Paul's foreign policy of nonintervention made him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution during 2002. He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty. He endorses free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as "managed trade". He endorses increased border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists. An opponent of the Iraq War and potential war with Iran, he has also criticized neoconservatism and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, arguing that both inadvertently cause terrorist reprisals against Americans. Paul has stated that "Israel is our close friend" and that it is not the place of the United States to "dictate how Israel runs her affairs".

Paul is a proponent of Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) on his office wall. He regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes; he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. He has pledged never to raise taxes and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would be primarily by excise taxes and non-protectionist tariffs. He endorses eliminating most federal government agencies, terming them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul has a consistent record as an inflation hawk, having warned of the threat of hyperinflation as far back as 1981. Paul also believes the longterm decrease of the U.S. dollar's purchasing power by inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing. However, Paul does not endorse a "return" to a gold standard, as the U.S. government has established during the past, but instead prefers to eliminate legal tender laws and to remove the sales tax on gold and silver, so that the market may freely decide what type of monetary standard(s) there shall be. He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System. As a free-market environmentalist, he asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention. He also opposes the federal War on Drugs, and believes the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs such as medical marijuana. Paul pushes to eliminate federal involvement with and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to decrease due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market. He is an outspoken proponent for increased ballot access for 3rd party candidates and numerous election law reforms which he believes would allow more voter control. Referring to the federal government, Ron Paul has also stated that “The government shouldn't be in the medical business." He is also opposed to federal government influenza inoculation programs.

Paul was critical of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it sanctioned federal interference in the labor market and did not improve race relations. He once remarked: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society".

On April 15, 2011, Paul was one of four Republican members of Congress to vote against "The Path to Prosperity".

Florida Republican presidential Winners and losers

2011-09-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum will be on CNN's "CNN/Tea Party Republican Debate" at 8 p.m.

• Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich and Santorum, as well as Sarah Palin, will also be on Fox News's "On The Record with Greta Van Susteren" at 10 p.m.

The Times-Picayune reports, "CNN announced that Buddy Roemer was not among invitees to its Sept. 12 debate in Tampa, co-sponsored with Tea Party Express, because he did not rate well enough in the polls, even though they invited New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, though neither is now a candidate for president."

Buddy Roemer is eminently qualified. He's the former Louisiana governor and congressman. He also successfully ran a community bank. Sure, he might not be too well known these days, but he should be! Is he any less qualified to be president than the one term governor of Massachusetts (Romney), a former Obama administration diplomat (Huntsman), a congressman from Minnesota (Bachmann), or a CEO from Atlanta (Cain)? Certainly not.

In addition to his impressive experience, he's just been making a lot of sense on the campaign trail. Consider his statement today, calling on President Obama to fire Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the White House's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Agree or disagree with our picks? The comments section awaits.

WINNERS

* Mitt Romney: Four debates. Four times Romney has wound up in the winner’s circle. It’s not a coincidence. Romney proved yet again that he is the best debater in this field with another solid performance in which he effectively downplayed his liabilities on health care and accentuated his strengths on jobs and the economy. Romney played more offense than he has in previous debates, taking the fight to Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Social Security. He also got a major assist from Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), both of whom relentlessly bashed Perry. But that’s how debates work. Romney also, smartly, ignored the tea party audience in the hall — who occasionally booed him — and focused his messaging on the much broader audience of people watching the debate on CNN.

* Newt Gingrich: The former House Speaker was at his populist best tonight, repeatedly delivering one-liners that had the crowd on his side. This was the Gingrich that many Republican strategists predicted would be a major player in the GOP race when 2011 began. Unfortunately for Gingrich, he lacks the sort of campaign organization in early states that would allow him to capitalize on what was clearly a good night for him.

* Michele Bachmann: The Minnesota Congresswoman did a lot with not all that much time. Picking a fight with Perry on the HPV vaccination issue was smart and seemed to energize her for the final 30 minutes or so of the debate. There was no game-changer for Bachmann in this debate but she was far more relevant to the conversation than her no-show last week in California. Small victories.

* The Santorum-Gingrich Alliance: Who says there is no love lost between these Republican contenders? Time after time Gingrich and Santorum praised one another for their work on issues — cementing a sort of alliance that makes for an interesting (if minor) storyline going forward. Could Santorum and Gingrich be the next great tag team of the 2012 Republican race? Which bring us to....

* Professional wrestling fans: The opening of the CNN debate felt exactly like the beginning of a pay-per-view wrestling match. (Not that we would spend our hard-earned money on such things. Ahem.) From the descriptions of the candidates — “The Businessman”....”The Libertarian” — to Wolf Blitzer giving each candidate their own introduction onto the stage, it felt like a theatrical production. Which, of course, it was.

LOSERS

* Rick Perry: The frontrunner didn’t get it done tonight. After surviving the expected back and forth with Romney over Social Security, Perry seemed to let his guard down a bit when the subject turned to his executive order on the HPV vaccine. Big mistake. Bachmann lit into him and Santorum jumped on too. (Romney said nothing but had to be thrilled with the development.) Perry tried to emphasize that he was acting to save lives but it didn’t sell. Following that exchange, he looked flustered and missed a chance to go after Romney in a more meaningful way on health care. And Perry’s answer on illegal immigration drew boos from the audience. Looking for a silver lining for Perry? He demonstrated a willingness to clean up self-created messes on both Social Security and his “treasonous” remark about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

* Jon Huntsman: The former Utah governor started with a Kurt Cobain joke....and went downhill from there. After a very solid performance in California last week, Huntsman regressed badly — bouncing between bad one-liners and outright snark. At times he seemed to disappear from the debate completely and when he did get a chance to speak, Huntsman seemed more interested in winning a laugh from the audience than making a point. Not good.

* Ron Paul: We wrote earlier today that the tea party debate might be a moment for Dr. Paul. Or not. Paul often felt like an afterthought and when the conversation turned to foreign policy Paul got lustily booed by the crowd — and attacked by Santorum — for his views on the post-September 11 landscape. Paul’s answer — and his refusal to back down — made clear that he simply isn’t within the mainstream of Republican thought on the issue, making any growth beyond his base very difficult.

GOP presidential debate in Tampa

2011-09-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

TAMPA, Fla. — Despite the rumors, a publicist for actor Chuck Norris said the tough guy did not attend Monday’s Republican presidential debate.

Earlier in the day during a brief interview, Sal Russo of Tea Party Express told The Daily Caller that Norris, who played a major role in generating excitement for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in 2008 and contributed to the political action committee, would be attending the debate as a guest of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

But Jeff Duclos, a publicist for Chuck Norris, shot that down.

“He won’t be there,” Duclos said in an email.

During a media viewing of the debate set earlier Monday, a chair in the audience was labeled with the name tag “C. Norris.”

Very bad news for Rick Perry. David Gergen on CNN said the Texas governor "walked out the front-runner". Under the Reverse Gergen Rule, the opposite of what David Gergen says is actually the case. So that means Perry had a disaster.

The best news for Perry tonight is that no-one was watching, not even in Florida – thanks to the Monday Night Football: the New England Patriots versus the Miami Dolphins.

10.00pm ET: A final thought from Ana-Marie Cox:

Maybe it's because I'm an American with no attention span but I do appreciate the kind of wacky wrap-up question CNN ended with, though clearly the candidates had been given some time to think it over – though if Mitt Romney had more time he wouldn't have picked such a back-handed compliment from Churchill. My favorite answer was Herb Cain's response that he'd bring a sense of humor the White House, because, clearly, if he won it would have to be some kind of joke.

9.55pm ET: Oh sweet Jesus, now Wolf Blitzer is asking what changes the candidates would make to the White House. Really.

Newt says he'd bring ballet and a chess set. Bachmann wins: "I'd bring a copy of the declaration of independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and that's it."

Frankly, I'd vote for any candidate who would pass a bill that bans CNN from ever hosting a presidential debate ever again.

And that's it, it's over. Rick Perry retires to bind his wounds.

9.50pm ET: In the comments, @tsubaki picks up on Perry's performance.

Is Perry sinking before our eyes here? He just got seriously booed (albeit for a relatively sane immigration policy).

9.50pm ET: To clarify: Ron Paul was booed by crowd members for explaining al-Qaida's stated reasons for the 9/11 attacks, he wasn't advocating it himself. Unless it meant lower taxes.

9.46pm: Newt Gingrich thinks we "celebrate" the anniversary of 9/11. Um, not quite sure that's how 9/11 is commemorated. At least not in the US.

The CNN/Tea Party Republican presidential debating hall in Tampa. Photograph: Scott Audette/Reuters
9.45pm ET: Rick Santorum upbraids Ron Paul for his isolationism and especially his comments that America was "asking" for the attack on 9/11. When Paul defends himself on the grounds that America has been bombing the blazes out of various countries, there are boos in the crowd.

Ron Paul has been bravely (in the circumstances) saying this stuff for years. In fact he reduced Rudy Guiliani and John McCain to spluttering rage during the 2008 presidential debates.

9.42pm ET: "We don't need to be building airplanes that were used in World War Two," says Ron Paul.

I think we can all agree on that. Are we building planes that were used in World War Two? Whatever.

9.41pm ET: The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg sums up the debate so far:

How would I remove illegal immigrants from this country? I would give them the HPV vaccine

No, I know that doesn't make sense, but that's the level of things tonight.

9.40pm ET: Oh man, now even Jon Huntsman is accusing Rick Perry of being a left-wing crypto-Marxist. In fact he says: "For Rick Perry to say that we can't secure the border, that's treasonous."

Memo to Republican party: they have these things called airplanes, and believe it or not but Latinos can actually fly on them.

9.38pm ET: To immigration, and another chance to take a shot at Rick Perry, who as governor of Texas actually has to deal with immigration every day and so is sane on the subject, while the others all just chant "Build the wall!" (apart from Ron Paul).

Blitzer takes a question from Twitter: "What are candidates doing to attract the Latino voters?" As they say on the internet: LOL. Other than Perry, zero.

Rick Santorum gets in a snide comment about Texas's policy that gives in-state college tuition, and says maybe that's what Perry is doing to attract "illegal immigrant, I mean Latino votes".

Perry then gives a defence of the Texas education policy, which again is moderately sane – and he gets boos from the audience.

As they say, wait long enough and you'll see everything. I never thought I'd see the day when Rick Perry was too left-wing for the Republican party.

9.35pm ET: Ana Marie Cox thinks Rick Perry's answer to the funding question (see 9.22pm ET) is revelatory.

Zinger! Perry says: "If you're saying I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended." I like that he didn't rule out completely the idea he could be bought. Let the bidding begin!

It's probably important to work out that just because the Tea Party views are more extreme than those of most Americans – it's a strangely non-representative group to co-host a debate – the questions coming from the audience have been really good. They've been well-informed, if a little shrill, and certainly reflect an attentiveness to issues beyond those in the headlines.

9.29pm ET: Prof Larry Sabato, the Sage of Charlottesville at the University of Virginia, tweets:

Bachmann goes after Perry again on anti-Obamacare executive order. He shakes his head. Knows he's punching bag tonite.

9.28pm ET: Twitter lit up at Ron Paul's suggestion that the government should let a comatose uninsured accident victim die. Here's a tweet from HuffPost Media:

Wolf to Ron Paul: should society just let a sick man die? Some audience members: yes!

Charming. Like all those who went "woo!" at the last debate when the host mentioned that the state of Texas had executed 234 people under the Rick Perry.

9.25pm ET: Another break. "When we come back, national security, immigration, and a lot more!" says Wolf Blitzer. Oh joy.

9.23pm ET: Dr Ron Paul wants alternative health care legalised, which somehow explains why he is against the government paying for the healthcare of an uninsured person injured in an accident.

9.22pm ET: The HPV vaccine business reminds me of the "drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants" issue that – in my mind – may have tipped the scales against Hillary Clinton in 2007. That hurt her even though the attack came from a fringe candidate (Chris Dodd) and not Obama.

9.18pm: Rick Perry is asked again about his decision to mandate the HPV vaccine for girls as young as 11. He acknowledges the way he implemented the policy was a mistake, but defends the principle on the grounds of public health. Which is not an approach he takes to climate change, strangely.

Michele Bachmann is offered an open goal on this one, and she makes the most of it.

Perry responds by saying that parents had an opt-out. "At the end of the day I am always going to err on the side of life," says Perry, getting in a sly pro-life message.

Bachmann is back at him, saying that the policy was backed by a huge pharmaceutical company that had donated to his campaign. "Was it about life or was it about millions or potentially billions of dollars? she asks.

Perry says it was a $5,000 donation from Merck. "I raised $30 million and if you are saying I can be bought for $5,000 then I'm offended," says Perry. "I'm offended on behalf of all the young girls," replies Bachmann, her best shot of the campaign so far.

That was a very bad exchange for Perry on so many levels. At this rate, it could derail his campaign.

9.09pm ET: A question now about the "Fair Tax", a flat tax idea that has been knocking around forever.

Like most of the questions tonight, much of the discussion is on policies that wouldn't come within miles of being considered even by a Republican president. This is a classic example of a party talking to itself.

9.08pm ET: Maine blogger Gerald Weinand notes something interesting, via Twitter:

All the candidates except the tallest are standing on boxes to equalize height differences

And he's right, looking at still photos running on the wires. Otherwise everyone is eerily the same height.

Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry at the Republican debate. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images
9.03pm ET: Wolf Blitzer asks Michele Bachmann if she agrees with Rick Perry that the Fed chairman Ben Bernanke should be tried for treason – and the question gets a big round of applause from the crowd. (Bachmann dodges the question, saying she thinks he should be fired.)

I think there's a message there for anyone who thinks Rick Perry is too conservative for today's Republican party.

Asked if he stands by his remarks, Perry says it was a clear statement of fact. He goes on: "It is a travesty that young people in America are being devalued – we don't know if it was political or not because of the transparency issue."

Not quite sure what that means, and crowd have a smattering of confused applause.

Once again, the lazy attacks on Ben Bernanke are appalling. The trouble is that with that rhetoric, no credible economist would want to serve on the Fed with some of the people on stage as US president.

8.55pm ET: We're back to the exciting game of whose state created the most jobs, although Newt Gingrich makes a desperate bid by claiming that when he was speaker of the House in the 1990s America created shedloads of jobs and he was somehow responsible for them.

Oh good. Another break for ads. Somewhere back stage Rick Perry is poking Ron Paul in the eye again.

8.53pm: Herman Cain claims that a restaurant is the basic building block of the American economy. He reminds us once again that his experience includes being president of the National Restaurant Association. (Whose national HQ, incidentally, was next to the Guardian's old office in Washington DC. And the staff canteen was rubbish.)

8.50pm: ET Ron Paul – a veteran congressman from Galveston, Texas – isn't a fan of Perry's record. "I don't want to offend the governor because he might raise my taxes."

8.46pm ET: All the other candidates want a bold solution, and that bold solution is cutting taxes.

Mitt Romney is asked about Perry's record in Texas, and he makes sure he's effusive about Texas: "Great state," is Mitt's thought.

Does Governor Perry deserves any credit for all those jobs he created, asks Wolf of Romney. Mitt delves into an elaborate poker metaphor about being dealt four aces. "Mitt, you were doing pretty good until you got to poker," says Perry, who reminds everyone that Texas has created a million jobs during his tenure during a national recession.

8.42pm ET: Back from the break to the economy and how to get it moving again. Perry keeps it short and sweet: "People are tired of spending money we don't have on programs we don't want."

8.36pm ET: As CNN goes to a break, political commentator Ana Marie Cox files her first take on the debate so far.

Huntsman continues to pander for the irony vote with an oblique and deeply weird Nirvana reference.

Nice of Ron Paul to wear a tie picked out by a child. Or designed by one.

Romney is breaking just slightly out of his robotic shell, but it is kind of a bad sign when "testy" is an improvement, personality-wise.

It is looking a little like it will be the fringe candidate night – maybe taking away the moderator's podium has unmoored the race's static seeding.

8.33pm ET: Everybody wants to cut federal spending – and Ron Paul wants to cut $1.5 trillion dollars being spent on national security, as well as abolish the department of education, the department of energy, and many more. (I'm not joking either, that's what he wants to do.)

8.28pm ET: Blitzer asks Rick Santorum if he backs the Perry or the Romney view. "The question is, who's with me?" says Rick.

It's no surprise that Santorum refers to himself in the third person. According to the polls, only about 2% are with Rick, and given the margin of error, that could 0%.

8.26pm: 8.25pm ET: Newt Gingrich gets asked about social security. "I'm not worried about Governor Romney and Governor Perry scaring the American people, when President Obama scares them every single day."

Oh dear. Newt goes on: "I just want to make two simple points about social security," a pledge he fails to honour. Big applause, though.

8.23pm ET: Here's Jon Huntsman: "Sensible sensible sensible sensible." Thanks, Jon.

8.21pm ET: Mitt Romney gets his chance, and he's asked if Perry can beat Obama. He wants to know if Perry thinks social security should be abolished?

Perry bats it away but Romney comes back at him. "I think we should have a conversation..." says Perry. "We're having that right now," responds Romney. Perry riposts by accusing Romney of "scaring seniors" – and that gets a big cheer from the crowd.

Now Perry and Romney are going back and forth. "Governor, you said that if it happened in the private sector it would be criminal, that's what you said in your book," Perry grins back, Cheshire-like, and gets a laugh. Romney does a fish-out-of-water impression: "You've got to quote me accurately..."

See, running a debate isn't hard: you just have to ask questions and get answers.

Protesters outside the debating hall in Tampa ahead of the Republican presidential debate. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
8.18pm ET: Now Rick Perry gets to answer – and he wants to tell retired people, especially those in Florida who might vote, that everything is going to be fine. But young Americans need to be told the truth. Basically, if you're old you get the social security cheques but soon you will die and the young must feast on your flesh. Roughly speaking.

8.16pm ET: Finally, a question, and it's about reforming social security and Medicare and so of course it goes to Rick Perry. Oh no, it goes to Michele Bachmann, for some reason.

Bachmann is trying to say how great social security is and why it needs to be gutted. "I am a person who had feet in the private sector and a foot in government," says Bachmann. That must have been painful.

8.13pm: "My name is Michele Bachmann..."

Well, that's cleared that up.

8.11pm ET: Oh man, now they are each given an introduction. Really, NBC skipped all this nonsense and got straight into it. Remember, tonight's hashtag is #CNNfail

8.10pm ET: Seriously, in the last debate, Perry and Romney had already scratched each other's eyes by now. Come on CNN.

Now Wolf Blitzer is explaining the rules. Even by CNN's low standards, this is awesomely bad.

8.10pm ET: The Economist's live bloggers are on top form:

I appreciate the dramatis personae. And the theme song. If it was a movie they all would have exploded.

8.07pm ET: Oh man, now the national anthem. Excuse me, I have to stand up and stop eating Sun chips.

8.06pm ET: Now he's introducing the candidates individually up on stage like it was a tag-team wrestling match. "The former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, Herman Cain!"

Jon Huntsman gets zero applause.

8.03pm ET: CNN is running an extended promo for the Republican candidates, trying to make it sound like a trailer for a particularly gruesome action movie.

8.01pm ET: Oh, host Wolf Blitzer is on stage, the traditional opening to a CNN debate, much like the Queen's speech to parliament.

Preparations get under way for the Republican presidential debate. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
7.59pm ET: Ready to go. The last time CNN hosted a debate it was awful so let's hope this one is better. There's a live feed of the debate right here.

7.58pm ET: We are not the only people live-blogging this debate, of course. The Economist also ran a fantaistic live blog of the last debate, with the different bloggers writing in different colours so they could archly call each other "Mr Pink" and "Mr Brown," just like Reservoir Dogs. Here's a highlight:

Brown: I say, this Rick Perry fellow wouldn't have got into Balliol.
Pink: Steady on Sebastian, I mean Mr Brown.
Green: He looks like a beefy fellow so he could probably have made the Oriel eights crew!
Brown: Oh hahaha Adrian. You're so cruel.

If anyone can translate this into English, please do so. Here's hoping they are live-blogging again tonight.

7.52pm ET: Steven, a Ron Paul fan, emails:

As far as I can see Richard, Ron Paul seems to be winning the argument and in all probability will win the GOP nomination. Prestitutes like yourself have purposely ignored Ron Paul and consistently denounce him, either by callous omission, or by regarding him as a crank with no chance.

He is the logical truth, and will win.

If your angry right now, don't blame me for pointing out that your piece had nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with propaganda.

I'm not angry as I understand. Forgive yourself and make a difference.

Kind regards
Steven

Thank you Steven, but I believe the correct spelling is "presstitutes".

7.50pm ET: The Los Angeles Times also thinks Michele Bachmann is struggling to stay above water:

Bachmann was riding high after her last month win in the Iowa Straw Poll, but has failed to capitalize on the victory. Since then, her campaign manager, Ed Rollins, has departed, and she was something of a non-entity in last week's debate at the Reagan Library in California.
Part of the reason may have been due to Bachmann herself.

On the trail, she has not engaged in the sort of rhetorical hand-to-hand combat that Perry and Romney have, preferring to stick to scripted talking points attacking President Obama. But she has also suffered from diminishing media attention. A press conference last week on Capitol Hill following the president's jobs speech was sparsely populated.

"Sparsely populated" here means it got no TV coverage, which means it may as well have not happened, frankly.

7.46pm ET: Politico's Ben Smith reports that Karl Rove thinks this will be a long, drawn-out primary:

[Rove] anticipates a dragged out Republican primary, depending on "one or two" more candidates getting in, an apparent reference to Sarah Palin and perhaps Chris Christie.

"We could have a long extended contest that could be as good for the Republicans" as 2008 was for Democrats. In Iowa, Perry "does not have an insurmountable lead, particularly in a state where organization matters a lot."

Given Karl Rove's track record of late, that probably means there will be a Republican nominee once polls close in New Hampshire.

7.05pm ET: Here's some background about Rick Perry's career as a politician in Texas.

It includes clips from a 1990 ad when he was running for state agricultural commissioner (a big job in Texas and many US states).

7.04pm ET: Romney appears certain to zero in on Perry's remarks from the last debate about social security. Already today I've received emails from the Romney campaign headlined "RICK'S LATEST RETREAT ON SOCIAL SECURITY".

Tampa Bay Online reports:

Mitt Romney didn't wait long to begin his attack on Rick Perry over Social Security — his campaign is doing door-to-door distribution of a flier attacking Perry on the issue.

The flier, which a campagn spokesman said is being left at the doors of Florida GOP primary voters, portrays the GOP primary as a two-candidate race — "Two candidates. Only one will protect what's important to you," is the headline.

Of those two, it says, Perry is "reckless and wrong on Social Security." The bold-face tagline: "Rick Perry: How can we trust anyone who wants to kill Social Security?"

The New York Times has the background:

The Republican candidates for president are likely to find themselves in the middle of an intraparty feud over Social Security as they take the stage in Tampa, Fla., on Monday night for another nationally televised debate.

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has sparked a high-stakes political fight over Social Security by calling the popular retirement program a "failure" and a "Ponzi scheme" on the campaign trail and in his recent book.

And his rivals have pounced.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, warned during a debate last week that the Republican Party should nominate someone "who isn't committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security."

7.01pm ET: There was a boost for Rick Perry before tonight's debate: the news that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal – still a rising star in the modern Republican party, despite being overshadowed recently – has endorsed Perry's bid for the nomination.

That rather trumps Mitt Romney's big news earlier today that one-time presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty – who pulled out before the race had barely begun – is now backing him.

Michele Bachmann Slams Rick Perry Over HPV Vaccine

2011-09-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

Tampa, Florida - Hours before the start of the first-ever Tea Party Republican debate, a new national survey indicates that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is maintaining his lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
And according to a International Poll, what appears to be Perry's greatest strength - the perception among Republicans that he is the candidate with the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in 2012 - seems to be exactly what the GOP rank and file are looking for.

On Monday, Sept. 12th, CNN will broadcast the "Tea Party Republican Debate," live from Tampa, Florida at 8 p.m. ET. Follow all the issues and campaign news leading up to the debate on CNNPolitics.com and @cnnpolitics on Twitter.
The survey, released Monday morning, indicates that 30 percent of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP support Perry for their party's nomination, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 18 percent. Romney, who's making his second bid for the White House, had been leading the list of Republican candidates in the national polls, but since Perry launched his campaign a month ago he's jumped ahead of Romney to capture the top spot.
The poll's Monday morning release comes a few hours before CNN teams up with the Tea Party Express and tea party groups from all 50 states to put on a presidential debate that will be held at the Florida State Fairgrounds just outside Tampa.
"Perry's support comes mostly from Republicans who support the tea party movement, although he has a statistically insignificant edge among non-tea party Republicans as well," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
According to the survey, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is at 15 percent. The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has flirted with a presidential bid, but hasn't taken any concrete steps to launch a campaign.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who's making his third run for the White House, is at 12 percent. Every other candidate is in single digits.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, who was at 10 percent in the last CNN poll, now stands at four percent.
With Palin out of the running, the headline stays the same: Perry 32 percent, Romney 21 percent, Paul 13 percent and all other candidates, including Bachmann, in single digits.
"Perry doesn't simply have the most support in a hypothetical ballot - he also tops the list of GOP candidates on every personal quality tested," adds Holland.

To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. That's a violation of a liberty interest," she said.

She then argued that Perry had a conflict-of-interest because one of his top staffers was a lobbyist for Merck, the drug company that manufactured the vaccine.

"I just wanted to add that we cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order, there was a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate. We can't deny that," Bachmann said, referring to Merck.

"What I'm saying is that it's wrong for a drug company -- because the governor's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company. The drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor, and this is just flat-out wrong. The question is, is it about life, or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company?"

Perry clarified that he received a $5,000 donation from Merck. "I raised about $30 million," he said. "And if you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended."

"Well, I'm offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn't have a choice," replied Bachmann. "That's what I'm offended for."

The Bachmann campaign quickly sent out a press release on Perry's HPV record:

Texas Governor Rick Perry has admitted he was mistaken to issue his 2007 executive order mandating the Gardasil vaccine against a sexually-transmitted disease for 11-year-old girls. However, it remains unclear how much his ties to Merck, Gardasil's maker, influenced this decision. Key advisors to Perry worked for Merck as lobbyists before and after he issued this executive order and Merck donated $6,000 to Perry in 2007. The drug maker stood to make tens of millions off Perry's order until the legislature overturned it. ....
Lobbyist Mike Toomey served as Perry's chief of staff for two years, then went on to lobby for gambling interests and the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine. ...
Internal Perry office emails show frequent contact and coordination with Merck lobbyists, such as Mike Toomey and Lara Keel, in the weeks leading up to Perry's decision on the executive order.
Perry's campaign also issued a statement, saying, "Governor Perry has always been a strong believer in protecting parental rights, which is why this executive order allowed parents to make the final decision about whether or not their daughter was vaccinated. ... Gov. Perry stands firmly on the side of protecting life, and he viewed the issue in that context since HPV is a leading cause of cervical cancer in women. However, he has said that, in hindsight, his order was a mistake because citizens should have had the opportunity to express their opinions beforehand on such a sensitive issue.

Michele Marie Bachmann

2011-09-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Michele Marie Bachmann, April 6, 1956 is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Minnesota's 6th congressional district, a post she has held since 2007. The district includes most of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Woodbury, Blaine, Stillwater and St. Cloud.

She is currently a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. She previously served in the Minnesota State Senate and is the first Republican woman to represent the state in Congress.

Bachmann is a supporter of the Tea Party movement and a founder of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Early life, education, and early career

Michele Marie Amble was born in Waterloo, Iowa "into a family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats"; her family moved from Iowa to Minnesota when she was 13 years old. After her parents divorced, Bachmann's father, David John Amble, moved to California, and Bachmann was raised by her mother, Jean (née Johnson), who worked at the First National Bank in Anoka, Minnesota. Her mother remarried when Bachmann was a teenager; the new marriage resulted in a family with nine children.

She graduated from Anoka High School in 1974 and, after graduation, spent time working on a kibbutz in Israel. In 1978, she graduated from Winona State University with a B.A.

In 1979, Bachmann was a member of the first class of the O. W. Coburn School of Law, then a part of Oral Roberts University (ORU). While there, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, whom she described in 2011 as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me". Bachmann worked as a research assistant on Eidsmoe's 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argues that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and should become one again. In 1986 Bachmann received a J.D. degree from Oral Roberts University. She was a member of the final graduating class of the law school at ORU, and was part of a group of faculty, staff, and students who moved the ORU law school library to what is now Regent University.

In 1988, Bachmann received an LL.M. degree in tax law from the William & Mary School of Law. From 1988 to 1993, she was an attorney working for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She left her position with the IRS to become a full-time mother when her fourth child was born.

Personal life

Family

In 1978, she married Marcus Bachmann, now a clinical therapist with a master's degree from Regent University and a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School, whom she had met while they were undergraduates. After she received an LL.M. in taxation from William & Mary School of Law in 1988, the couple moved to Stillwater, Minnesota, a town of 18,000 near St. Paul, where they run a Christian counseling center. Bachmann and her husband have five children (Lucas, Harrison, Elisa, Caroline, and Sophia). Bachmann said in a 2011 town hall meeting that she suffered a miscarriage after the birth of their second child, Harrison, an event which she said shaped her pro-life views.

Bachmann and her husband have also provided foster care for 23 other children, all teenage girls. The Bachmanns were licensed from 1992 to 2000 to handle up to three foster children at a time; the last child arrived in 1998. The Bachmanns began by providing short-term care for girls with eating disorders who were patients in a program at the University of Minnesota. The Bachmann home was legally defined as a treatment home, with a daily reimbursement rate per child from the state. Some girls stayed a few months, others more than a year.

Religion

Bachmann was a longtime member of Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater. She and her husband withdrew their membership on June 21, 2011, just before she officially began her presidential campaign. They had not attended the congregation for over two years. Salem Lutheran Church is a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. When challenged about that denomination's belief that the Pope is the Antichrist, Bachmann responded by stating, "I love Catholics, I'm a Christian, and my church does not believe that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, that's absolutely false. More recently, according to friends, the Bachmanns began attending Eagle Brook Church, an Evangelical church closer to their home.

Bachmann has cited theologian Francis Schaeffer as a "profound influence" on her life and her husband's, specifically referring to his film series How Should We Then Live?. She has also described Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey as a "wonderful" book. Journalist Ryan Lizza has argued that Bachmann's worldview is deeply influenced by the Christian movement known as Dominionism, citing the influence of Schaeffer and Pearcey as evidence. Others have criticized Lizza's article, especially its connection of Schaeffer with Dominionism. However, religion writer Sarah Posner broadly concurs with Lizza, pointing to the influence of Christian Reconstructionists Herb Titus and R. J. Rushdoony on Bachmann via the curriculum at O. W. Coburn School of Law.

Businesses

Bachmann and her husband own a Christian counseling practice named Bachmann & Associates, which is run by her husband, who has a PhD in clinical psychology from Union Graduate School. Marcus Bachmann is not a licensed psychologist in Minnesota. The clinic received nearly $30,000 from Minnesota government agencies between 2006 and 2010 in addition to at least $137,000 in federal payments and $24,000 in government grants for counselor training. When asked about the subject in an interview, Bachmann indicated that she and her husband had not benefited at taxpayers' expense, saying that "the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees". Marcus Bachmann has denied allegations that Bachmann & Associates provides conversion therapy, a controversial psychological treatment repudiated by the American Psychological Association, which attempts to transform homosexuals into heterosexuals. A former client of Bachmann's clinic and a hidden camera investigator with the activist group Truth Wins Out have said that therapists at the clinic do engage in such practices, although columnist Mariah Blake of The Nation has suggested the hidden camera investigator may have been intentionally baiting the therapist to say something controversial. In a subsequent interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, Marcus Bachmann did not deny that he or other counselors at his clinic used the technique but said they did so only at the request of a client.

In personal financial disclosure reports for 2006 through 2009, Bachmann reported earning $32,500 to $105,000 from a farm that was owned at the time by her ailing father-in-law, Paul Bachmann. The farm received $260,000 in federal crop and disaster subsidies between 1995 and 2008. Bachmann said that in 2006–2009, her husband acted as a trustee of the farm for his dying father and so, out of "an abundance of caution", she claimed the farm as income in financial disclosures, though it was her in-laws who profited from the farm during that period.

Early political activism

Bachmann grew up in a Democratic family, but she says she became a Republican during her senior year at Winona State. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she was reading Gore Vidal's 1973 novel, Burr: "He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, I just remember reading the book, putting it in my lap, looking out the window and thinking, 'You know what? I don't think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican.

While still a Democrat, she and her then-fiancé Marcus were inspired to join the pro-life movement by Francis Schaeffer's 1976 Christian documentary film, How Should We Then Live? They prayed outside of clinics and engaged in sidewalk counseling, a pro-life protest activity in which activists approach people entering abortion clinics in an attempt to dissuade women from obtaining abortions. Since then, Bachmann has made statements supportive of sidewalk counseling. Bachmann was a supporter of Jimmy Carter in 1976, and she and her husband worked on his campaign. During Carter's presidency, Bachmann became disappointed with his liberal approach to public policy, support for legalized abortion and economic decisions she held responsible for increased gas prices. In the 1980 presidential election, she voted for Ronald Reagan and worked for his campaign.

Her political activism gained media attention at a pro-life protest in 1991. She and approximately 30 other pro-life citizens went to a Ramsey County Board meeting where a $3 million appropriation was to go to build a morgue for the county at St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center (now Regions Hospital). The Medical Center performed abortions and employed pro-choice activist Jane Hodgson. Bachmann attended the meeting to protest public tax dollars going to the hospital; speaking to the Star Tribune, she said that "in effect, since 1973, I have been a landlord of an abortion clinic, and I don’t like that distinction".

In 1993, she and other parents started the K-12 New Heights Charter School in Stillwater. The publicly funded school's charter mandated that it be non-sectarian in all programs and practices, but the school soon developed a strong Christian orientation. Parents of students at the school complained and the superintendent of schools warned Bachmann that the school was in violation of state law. Six months after the school's founding Bachmann resigned and the Christian orientation was removed from the curriculum, allowing the school to keep its charter. Bachmann began speaking against a state-mandated set of educational standards, which propelled her into the world of politics.

Bachmann became a critic and opponent of Minnesota's School-to-Work policies. In a 1999 column, she wrote: "School-to-Work alters the basic mission and purpose of K-12 academic education away from traditional broad-based academic studies geared toward maximizing intellectual achievement of the individual. Instead, School-to-Work utilizes the school day to promote children's acquisition of workplace skills, viewing children as trainees for increased economic productivity.

In November 1999, she and four other Republicans were candidates, as the "Slate of Five", in an election for the school board of Stillwater. All five lost.

Minnesota Senate

In 2000, Bachmann defeated 18-year incumbent Gary Laidig for the Republican nomination for State Senator for Minnesota District 56. In the November 2000 general election, she defeated Ted Thompson of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) and Lyno Sullivan of the Minnesota Independence Party, to win the seat. Two years later, in November 2002, after redistricting due to the 2000 Census, Bachmann defeated another incumbent, State Senator Jane Krentz of the DFL, in the newly drawn State Senate District 52. In office, Bachmann's agenda focused on the cultural conservative issues of opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

Same-sex marriage constitutional amendment

Assistant Minority Leader

In November 2004, Republican Senate Minority Leader Dick Day appointed Bachmann as Assistant Minority Leader in charge of Policy for the Senate Republican Caucus. In July 2005, the Republican Caucus removed her from her leadership position. Bachmann said that disagreements with Day over her anti-tax stance were the reason for her ouster.

U.S. House of Representatives

Since being elected in November 2006, Bachmann has served Minnesota's 6th congressional district, which includes the northernmost and eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities and St. Cloud. She is the first Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House from Minnesota.

110th Congress

Iraq War troop surge

In January 2007, a resolution was approved in the House of Representatives opposing President George W. Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq. Bachmann voted "No". However, before supporting the proposed surge, Bachmann called for a full hearing, saying, "The American people deserve to hear and understand the merits of increasing U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Increased troop presence is justifiable if that measure would bring a swift conclusion to a difficult conflict." She hesitated to give a firm endorsement, calling the hearings "a good first step in explaining to the American people the course toward victory in Iraq".

Member of Congressional delegation

In July 2007, Bachmann joined a Congressional delegation visiting Ireland, Germany, Pakistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. Bachmann met briefly (due to security concerns) with U.S. personnel in the Green Zone and upon her return she said she "was encouraged by reports of progress from Crocker, Gen. David Petraeus and other personnel in Iraq linked to the surge. She said the surge "hasn't had a chance to be in place long enough to offer a critique of how it's working. (Gen. Petraeus) said al-Qaida in Iraq is off its plan and we want to keep it that way. The surge has only been fully in place for a week or so."

Bachmann also spoke of the delegation's visit to Islamabad to meet Pakistani Prime Minister Aziz at the same time as the siege of Islamic fundamentalists at the Lal Masjid mosque elsewhere in the city.

Opposition to higher education finance bill

On July 11, 2007, Bachmann voted against the College Cost Reduction and Access Act that would raise the maximum Pell grant from $4,310 to $5,200, lower interest rates on subsidized student loans to 3.4 percent from 6.8 percent, raise loan limits to $30,500 from $7,500, disfavor married students who file joint tax returns, provide more favorable repayment terms to students who do not use their education to prosper financially and favor public sector over private sector workers with much more favorable loan forgiveness benefits. Supporters of the bill said "it would allow more students to attend college".

Light bulbs

Bachmann introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, which would require a GAO report show that a change to fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) would have "clear economic, health and environmental benefits" prior to enforcement of lighting efficiency regulations that effectively ban conventional light bulbs. Bachmann argued, "Each light bulb contains between 3–6 milligrams of mercury. There's a question about how that mercury will fill up our landfills, and also if you break one in your home, you'll have mercury that instantaneously vaporizes in your home. That poses a very real threat to children, disabled people, pets, senior citizens.

Class action lawsuits

On June 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Credit and Debit Card Receipt Clarification Act (H.R. 4008) into law. The bipartisan bill, which Bachmann cosponsored with Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), removes statutory damages for violations of a 2003 federal law prohibiting merchants from printing consumers' credit card numbers and expiration dates on sales receipts, in order to end class-action lawsuits aimed at businesses that violated the law.

Domestic oil and gas production

During the summer of 2008, as national gasoline prices rose to over $4 a gallon, Bachmann became a leading Congressional advocate for increased domestic oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Outer Continental Shelf. She joined 10 other House Republicans and members of the media on a Congressional Energy Tour to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and to Alaska. The trip was set up by Arctic Power, an Alaskan lobbying group that advocates for ANWR development. The purpose of the trip was to receive a first hand account of emerging renewable energy technologies and the prospects of increased domestic oil and natural gas production in Alaska, including ANWR.

Global warming skepticism

Bachmann has charged that global warming is a hoax and has been a vocal skeptic of global warming. She has asserted that since carbon dioxide is "a natural byproduct of nature", it is a beneficial gas required by plant life. She stated that because life requires carbon dioxide and it is part of the planet's life cycle, it cannot be harmful. In a statement she made on the House floor on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Bachmann stated she was against the cap and trade climate legislation, stating: "Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural; it is not harmful.... We're being told we have to reduce this natural substance to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth."

Opposition to financial sector bailout

Bachmann opposed both versions of the Wall Street bailout bill for America’s financial sector.

She voted against the first proposed $700 billion bailout of financial institutions, which failed to pass 205–228. She also advocated breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and barring executives from excessive compensation or golden parachutes. However, she also advocated a plan that would suspend mark-to-market accounting rules and supported suspending the capital gains tax.

Accusations of anti-Americanism against Barack Obama

On October 17, 2008, Bachmann gave an interview on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews in support of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain that brought the Minnesota 6th Congressional District race national attention. During the interview she criticized Barack Obama for his association with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, saying "…usually we associate with people who have similar ideas to us, and it seems that it calls into question what Barack Obama's true beliefs, and values, and thoughts are...I am very concerned that he [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views." She noted the terrorist bombings done by Bill Ayers and his associations with Barack Obama, saying that "Bill Ayers is not someone the average American wants to see their president have an association with." Matthews responded with, "Why is it of concern? What is wrong with it? When asked by Matthews: "How many Congresspeople, members of Congress fit into that Anti-American crowd you describe?", Bachmann stated "You'd have to ask them Chris, I'm focusing on Barack Obama and the people he's associated with".

111th Congress

Global currency

On March 26, 2009, following comments by China proposing adoption of a global reserve currency, Bachmann introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to bar the dollar from being replaced by a foreign currency. Current law prohibits foreign currency from being recognized in the U.S., but Bachmann expressed concerns relating to the President's power to make and interpret treaties.[95] Earlier that month, at a Financial Services Committee hearing, Bachmann asked both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if they would reject calls for the U.S. to move away from the U.S. dollar and they replied that they would reject such a call.

2010 Census

In a June 17, 2009, interview with The Washington Times, Bachmann expressed concern that the questions on the 2010 United States Census had become "very intricate, very personal" and that ACORN, a community organizing group that had come under fire the previous year, might be part of the Census Bureau's door-to-door information collection efforts. She stated, "I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home, we won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that." According to Politifact her statement was incorrect, as the watchdog group confirmed that the Constitution does require citizens to complete the census.

Cap and Trade legislation

In March 2009, Bachmann was interviewed by the Northern Alliance Radio Network and promoted two forums she was hosting the next month in St. Cloud and Woodbury regarding Obama's proposed cap and trade tax policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Bachmann said she wanted Minnesotans "armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back." Bachmann's office quickly clarified that she was speaking metaphorically, meaning "armed with knowledge." However, according to the Star Tribune, her quote went viral across the Internet.

AmeriCorps

In 2009, Bachmann became a critic of what she characterized as proposals for mandatory public service. Speaking in reference to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an expansion to AmeriCorps (a federal community service organization), she said in April:

It's under the guise of—quote—volunteerism. But it's not volunteers at all. It's paying people to do work on behalf of government. ...

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

Health care

Bachmann contributed to the "death panel" controversy when she read from a July 24 article written by Betsy McCaughey from the floor of the House. Sarah Palin said that her "death panel" remark was inspired by what she called the "Orwellian" opinions of Ezekiel Emanuel as described by Bachmann, who accused him of advocating health care rationing by age and disability. According to PolitiFact and TIME, Bachmann's euthanasia remarks distorted Emanuel's position on health care for the elderly and disabled. FactCheck.org stated, "We agree that Emanuel’s meaning is being twisted." When many doctors wanted to legalize euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, Emanuel opposed it.

Criticism of President Obama's visit to Asia

In an interview with Anderson Cooper on November 3, 2010, when discussing cuts in government spending for Medicare and Social Security suggested by Congressman Paul Ryan, Bachmann was asked what cuts in government spending she would make to reduce the deficit. She cited President Obama's then-upcoming visit to Asia as an example, saying it "is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He's taking two thousand people with him. He'll be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are 5-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending, it's a very small example, Anderson." Bachmann was apparently referring to information in a story from the Press Trust of India, attributed to "a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit", information that was also published in U.S.-based media such as The Drudge Report.

112th Congress

After the 2010 elections and the announcement from Rep. Mike Pence that he was stepping away from his leadership position in the House, Bachmann announced on her Facebook page her intention to seek the position of House Republican Conference Chair. As Bachmann is the founder of the House's Tea Party Caucus, her announcement caused some to see the leadership election as "an early test of how GOP leaders will treat the antiestablishment movement's winners". Many among the House's Republican leadership, including Eric Cantor and the retiring Mike Pence, were quick to endorse Rep. Jeb Hensarling for the position; Speaker-to-be John Boehner remained neutral on the issue. Supporters of Bachmann’s run include Reps. Steve King, John Kline, Louie Gohmert, Chip Cravaack, Erik Paulsen, as well as media personality and political commentator Glenn Beck.

Committee assignment

Bachmann was selected by House Speaker John Boehner for a position "on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, giving her a new role as overseer of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community. Bachmann, who had "not served on any committee that deals with foreign policy issues" requested the position, "a move that has fueled speculation that she may be planning to carry the Tea Party banner into the GOP presidential primaries.

Repeal of Dodd-Frank reform

Soon after being sworn in to her third term Bachmann introduced legislation to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. She stated "I'm pleased to offer a full repeal of the job-killing Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill. Dodd-Frank grossly expanded the federal government beyond its jurisdictional boundaries. It gave Washington bureaucrats the power to interpret and enforce the legislation with little oversight. Real financial regulatory reform must deal with these lenders who were a leading cause of our economic recession. True reform must also end the bailout mind-set that was perpetuated by the last Congress." She also took issue with the law for not addressing the liabilities of the tax-payer funded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

State of the Union response

Bachmann responded to President Obama's 2011 State of the Union speech for the Tea Party Express website; this speech was broadcast live by CNN. She insisted that her response was not intended to counter the official Republican party response by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. When asked if the speech was an indication of competition with Ryan and Speaker Boehner's leadership team, Bachmann dismissed such a view as "a fiction of the media", she had alerted Ryan and the leadership team that her response might go national and no objections were raised.

Repeal of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Bachmann has characterized the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as "ObamaCare", and has continually called for its repeal. She recalled to reporters that she called for debate to repeal the act "the morning after Obamacare passed".[135] Joining with Rep. Steve King she introduced "the Bachmann-King repeal of health care bill" stating that it "is our intent in our heart to make sure that Obamacare is completely repealed." In light of a Democratic held Senate and Presidency that oppose repeal, Bachmann called on the Republican held House of Representatives to not provide any funds for the implementation of the act "But until we can see that [repeal] happen, we want to fully defund this bill so that, like, it would be akin to a helium balloon that gets no helium inside so that it can’t take off the ground, and that’s what we’re planning to do. I’m very, very grateful for nothing else; having a majority in the House of Representatives so that we have the ability of the power of the purse to not fund Obamacare, and this is exactly the right way to go.

Committee on Financial Services

Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Political positions

Education policy

According to an article in the Stillwater Gazette, a local newspaper in Minnesota, Bachmann supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public school science classes. During a 2003 interview on the KKMS Christian radio program Talk The Walk, Bachmann said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other. She co-authored a bill (that received no additional endorsement among her fellow legislators) that would require public schools to include alternative explanations for the origin of life as part of the state's public school science curricula. In October 2006, Bachmann told a debate audience in St. Cloud, Minnesota "there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact or not.... There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.

Fiscal policy

In the Minnesota Senate, Bachmann opposed minimum wage increases. In an interview in late June 2011, Bachmann did not back away from her earlier proposal to eliminate the federal minimum wage, a change she said would "virtually wipe out unemployment.

In a 2001 flyer, Bachmann and Michael J. Chapman wrote that federal policies manage a centralized, state-controlled economy in the United States. She wrote that education laws passed by Congress in 2001, including "School To Work" and "Goals 2000", created a new national school curriculum that embraced "a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America. In 2003, Bachmann said that the "Tax Free Zones" economic initiatives of Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty were based on the Marxist principle of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. She also said that the administration was attempting to govern and run centrally planned economies through an organization called the Minnesota Economic Leadership Team (MELT), an advisory board on economic and workforce policy chaired by Pawlenty.

Environmental policy

Bachmann supports increased domestic drilling of oil and natural gas, as well as pursuing renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar. She is a strong proponent of nuclear power.

Bachmann has stated a strong opposition toward the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pledging at an August 2011 campaign rally, "...I guarantee you the EPA will have doors locked and lights turned off and they will only be about conservation." In 2007 and 2010, Bachmann was actively soliciting for funds from the EPA on behalf of constituents in her congressional district.

Social Security and Medicare phaseout

Bachmann has called for phasing out Social Security and Medicare:

...what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off.

Foreign policy

Bachmann says in dealing with Iran, diplomacy "is our option", but that other options, including a nuclear strike, shouldn't be taken off the table.

She has also said that she is "a long time supporter of Israel".

Global economy

In a discussion about the G-20 summit in Toronto, during an interview with conservative radio host Scott Hennen, Bachmann stated that she does not want America to be part of the international global economy.

I don't want the United States to be in a global economy where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe, We can't necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries. I don't like the decisions that are being made in our own country, but certainly I don't want to trust the value of my currency and my future to that of like a Chavez down in Venezuela.

On economists who have influenced her views, Bachmann told The Wall Street Journal,

... the late Milton Friedman as well as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. "I'm also an Art Laffer fiend—we're very close," she adds. "And [Ludwig] von Mises. I love von Mises," getting excited and rattling off some of his classics like Human Action and Bureaucracy. "When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises."

Social issues

Same-sex marriage constitutional amendment

Bachmann supports both a federal and state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and any legal equivalents. In 2004, the Star Tribune reported that Bachmann said of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, "We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders".

Pro-life position

Bachmann has identified herself as pro-life and has been endorsed in her runs for Congress by the Susan B. Anthony List and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. At a debate among presidential candidates in New Hampshire, when asked if abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest, Bachmann responded that she is "100 per cent pro-life". In the state senate, Bachmann introduced a bill proposing a constitutional amendment restricting state funds for abortion.

Federal-backed home loans

According to an article in the Washington Post, in 2008 Bachmann may have taken advantage of a federal program for a home loan, then called for dismantling the program, though the article notes that the public and other members of Congress have taken advantage of such loans despite seeing reasons to criticize them. When asked about it, she said: "This is the problem. It is almost impossible to buy a home in this country today without the federal government being involved".

Political campaigns

Bachmann won her Congressional seat in the 2006 election with 50 percent of the vote, as she defeated Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate Patty Wetterling and the Independence Party's John Binkowski.

Mark Kennedy, the 6th District's congressman since 2001, announced in late 2005 that he would be running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Mark Dayton of the DFL. Bachmann states she was called by God to run for the seat, and that she and her husband fasted for three days to be sure.

According to Bloomberg.com news, evangelical conservative leader James Dobson put the resources of his organization behind her 2006 campaign. Dobson's Focus on the Family planned to distribute 250,000 voter guides in Minnesota churches to reach social conservatives, according to Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council, a local affiliate of Dobson's group. In addition to Minnesota, Dobson’s group also organized turnout drives in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and Montana.

2008 congressional

In 2008, Bachmann won re-election over her DFL and Independence Party endorsed opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg. With all precincts reported, Bachmann won, 46.41% to 43.43%. Because Tinklenberg was running as a DFLer in the Democratic primary this allowed candidate Bob Anderson to run in the Independence Party primary unopposed despite not having the Independence endorsement. Anderson received 10% of the vote.

2010 congressional

Bachmann was challenged in 2010 by DFL nominee Tarryl Clark and Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson. With more than $8.5 million, Bachmann spent more than any other House of Representative candidate, although her opponent, Tarryl Clark, was able to raise $4 million, one of the largest fundraising efforts in the nation for a U.S. House challenger. On November 2, 2010, Bachmann defeated Tarryl Clark by 52% to 40% of the vote.

In the 2009–2010 election cycle, Bachmann's campaign raised over $13.4 million for her re-election; the average House member raised about $1 million over the same election cycle. Roughly 96% of her contributions came from individual contributors, and of those, 56% were from small individual contributions and 40% were from large individual contributions. Additionally, 3% came from PAC contributions and less than 1% from other sources.

2012 presidential campaign

In early 2011, there was much speculation that Bachmann would run for president in 2012. Bachmann participated in the second Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire on June 13, 2011; during the debate she announced she had filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) earlier that day to become a candidate for the GOP nomination. Bachmann formally announced her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on June 27, 2011 during an appearance in Waterloo, Iowa.

Troy Davis asks U.S. Supreme Court to halt execution

2011-09-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

JACKSON, Ga. — It didn't take long to notice Troy Davis' execution was different from the others I've covered. As I drove up to the prison, I could see the crowds of protesters and a group of at least 50 reporters. I've covered about 10 executions in Georgia. None of them are easy. This was by far the most unusual. There were four reporters besides me there to witness the execution. We ended up waiting for more than four hours in a somber prison break room. We made small talk and speculated about whether the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene. At times, it was silent. Around 10:30 p.m., a guard walked in and said: "You ready?" We were led into a white van and, after passing through several security checkpoints, we were delivered to the squat white building on the edge of the prison that serves as the death chamber. We watched the slain officer's son, Mark MacPhail Jr., enter the building. Behind him, Jason Ewart, the condemned man's attorney, walked in. A county coroner's van rolled up. By the time we were inside, officials had already strapped Davis to the gurney. There was a glass window with a curtain separating Davis from the witnesses, who sat in three rows of seats. There were about 20 of us. Davis searched for Ewart, who nodded slightly when they locked eyes. MacPhail Jr., sitting in the front row, focused on Davis. With execution set for 7 p.m. EDT, the lawyers said they would soon file a more substantial appeal citing “constitutional errors” that have arisen in the case. Davis was convicted of the 1989 killing of Savannah, Ga., police Officer Mark MacPhail, but maintains his innocence. After his 1991 trial, some witnesses recanted their testimony. Two years ago, the high court took the unusual step of ordering a federal judge in Savannah to review the evidence in Davis’ case and to decide whether new testimony undercut his guilt. But after hearing the witnesses, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore described the new evidence as “largely smoke and mirrors” and upheld Davis’s death sentence. Since then, the high court has turned away further appeals from Davis. Earlier Wednesday, the Georgia Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Troy Davis executed after 11th-hour appeal fails

2011-09-22T00:45:00.000-07:00

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — Strapped to a gurney in Georgia's death chamber, Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time that he did not kill police officer Mark MacPhail. Just a few feet away behind a glass window, MacPhail's son and brother watched in silence. Outside the prison, a crowd of more than 500 demonstrators cried, hugged, prayed and held candles. The small army represented hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide who took up the anti-death penalty cause as Davis' final days ticked away. "I am innocent," Davis said moments before he was executed Wednesday night. "All I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight." Prosecutors and MacPhail's family said justice had finally been served. "I'm kind of numb. I can't believe that it's really happened," MacPhail's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus, Ga. "All the feelings of relief and peace I've been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace." She dismissed Davis' claims of innocence. "He's been telling himself that for 22 years. You know how it is, he can talk himself into anything." Davis was scheduled to die at 7 p.m., but the hour came and went as the U.S. Supreme Court apparently weighed the case. More than three hours later, the high court said it wouldn't intervene. The justices did not comment on their order rejecting Davis' request for a stay. Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions on Davis' behalf and he had prominent supporters. His attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, but state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against him — three times on Wednesday alone. Officer MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said it was "a time for healing for all families." "I will grieve for the Davis family because now they're going to understand our pain and our hurt," she said in a telephone interview from Jackson. "My prayers go out to them. I have been praying for them all these years. And I pray there will be some peace along the way for them." Davis' supporters staged vigils in the U.S. and Europe, declaring "I am Troy Davis" on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge's phone number online, hoping people would press him to put a stop to the lethal injection. President Barack Obama deflected calls for him to get involved. "They say death row; we say hell no!" protesters shouted outside the Jackson prison before Davis was executed. In Washington, a crowd outside the Supreme Court yelled the same chant. As many as 700 demonstrators gathered outside the prison as a few dozen riot police stood watch, but the crowd thinned as the night wore on and the outcome became clear. Davis was declared dead at 11:08 p.m. The lethal injection began about 15 minutes earlier, after the Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour request for a stay. The high court did not comment on its order, which came about four hours after it received the request and more than three hours after the planned execution time. Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions on Davis' behalf, and prominent supporters included former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, former FBI Director William Sessions, the NAACP, several conservative figures and many celebrities, including hip-hop star Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. His attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, but state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against him - three times on Wednesday alone. MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said there was "nothing to rejoice," but that it was "a time for healing for all families." Davis' supporters staged vigils in the United States and Europe, declaring "I am Troy Davis" on signs, T-shirts and the Internet. Some tried increasingly frenzied measures, urging prison workers to stay home and even posting a judge's phone number online, hoping people would press him to put a stop to the lethal injection. President Obama deflected calls for him to get involved. "They say death row; we say hell no!" protesters shouted outside the Jackson prison where Davis was executed. In Washington, a crowd outside the Supreme Court yelled the same chant. As many as 700 demonstrators gathered outside the prison as a few dozen riot police stood watch, but the crowd thinned as the night wore on and the outcome became clear. About 10 counterdemonstrators also were there, showing support for the death penalty and the MacPhail family. Davis' execution had been stopped three times since 2007, but Wednesday he ran out of legal options.

Metta World Peace aka Ron Artest on DWTS elimination

2011-09-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Unlike the past few seasons where the celebrities got two weeks of performances before being eliminated, this time around on Season 13 the dancers only had one chance to prove how good or bad they were.

On Tuesday night, Ron Artest, who now calls himself Metta World Peace, was the first one of our 12 celebrity dancers to be eliminated.

Looking back.....Ricki Lake & Derek Hough, Elisabetta Canalis & Val Chmerkovskiy and Rob Kardashian & Cheryl Burke were the first bunch to find out who was safe and who was in jeopardy.

Lake and Hough were obviously safe and in a surprise twist so was Canalis. Kardashian was the unlucky dancer in the bottom three.

Harry Connick Jr. and LMFAO were our music fillers for the night. Not the most exciting performers for the first elimination show, but one highlight was the Chmerkovskiy brothers dancing to LMFAO’s song “Sexy and I Know It.”

You can only imagine how much these two bro’s ate up the attention they were getting.

Oh, and it should be noted they were wearing red and purple skin tight jeans, with no shirts. Nothing says sexy better than bright colored jeans.

The next group finding out their fate was, Hope Solo & Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Kristin Cavallari & Mark Ballas and Ron Artest & Peta Murgatroyd. Before I go any further, on Monday night, the audience was told that Artest was going to keep his old name for the show and not be called Metta World Peace.

Well, that didn’t last long because the whole night they called him Metta.

We probably won’t have to deal with this name changing situation for too much longer though because he was the one told he was in the bottom three.

J.R. Martinez & Karina Smirnoff, Chynna Phillips & Tony Dovolani and Chaz Bono & Lacey Schwimmer were the next group and they all found out they were all safe. There was lots of love on the stage as the couples gave Bono a group hug.

Following the elimination, World Peace appeared with dance partner Peta Murgatroyd on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" (see both parts of the interview to the right) and discussed his experience on DWTS.

He acknowledged his lack of dancing ability but "I was just expecting the judges to see the effort and entertainment value."

Kimmel replied, "They saw the effort all right -- they saw you struggling to remain standing."

The wacky Laker also discussed his recent name change, telling Kimmel people can still can him Ron if they want but he is going to keep his new moniker "at least a couple of years -- until there's world peace."

During his monologue, Kimmel introduced a look back at all the great moments World Peace provided on DWTS -- and proceeded to show a three-second clip. (He had another great line about DWTS: "There were so many Kardashians in the audience, I thought I was watching the NBA Finals.")

And in case you missed the one and only World Peace dance competition segment ... yes, it really was that bad.

Dancing With the Stars Results: Did Chaz Bono Survive?

2011-09-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

As much as the studio crowd might have been rooting for World Peace, they didn't get it. Basketball star Ron Artest — now known as Metta World Peace — couldn't garner enough votes with his cha-cha and was the first to go on season 13 of "Dancing With the Stars." The field of 12 competing couples was trimmed down to 11, and the L.A. Lakers player and partner Peta Murgatroyd were sent packing.

The first elimination round was action-packed. The professional dancers kicked things off with a sizzling group number set to an amped-up version of Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory," followed by the gradual, performance-interspersed reveal of the couples named to the bottom three: Rob Kardashian and Cheryl Burke, Metta and Murgatroyd and later Nancy Grace and Tristan MacManus.

The headlining performers for the evening included musician/actor Harry Connick Jr. and self-described party rockers LMFAO. Connick wowed the crowd with his soulful rendition of the titular number from his upcoming Broadway revival, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever." The expectedly energetic and colorfully dressed LMFAO kept it classy for network TV with a medley of their new single "Sexy and I Know It" and their summer dance club sensation "Party Rock Anthem."

After his cha cha with partner Peta Murgatroyd, Artest earned the lowest score of the week with 14 points, and became the first contestant voted off.

When the news was delivered, Artest - true to his new name - threw up his hands joyously and smiled, not seeming too shocked or down by his loss.

"Who's coming with me?" the 6'7", newly blond star asked the crowd.

"Everybody give a round of applause to Peta – she was awesome!"

"I had a great, great time," he added, and we're so glad to hear it.

He's awesome. Who do you think will win DWTS with Metta out?