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The Times is fixated on Texas A&M, a rare public university that leans to the right. Reporter Michael Brick hypocritically attacked conservative campus activists in an October 16, 2009 story for displaying"unchecked fervor," which "can be a raw and fearsome thing." They had previously the"embarrassed the university by throwing eggs at a picture of Mr. Obama." But If defacing a picture of a president is an automatic embarrassment, then every other college in America should be red-faced, since posters of Bush as Hitler were pretty much de rigueur at any decent campus protest.
Start with Obama’s poll numbers, which are mediocre. His job-approval rating has been trending upward since October, but is still below 50 percent. More people disapprove than approve of his performance on health care and on the economy -- two issues likely to be critical in the election. A Gallup/USA Today poll recently found that among swing-state voters, Romney is actually beating Obama. (As is Rick Santorum.) Even in state polls that have Obama ahead, his numbers are weak: He’s below 46 percent in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Iowa. And almost 60 percent of Americans believe the country is “on the wrong track,” which typically doesn’t bode well for an incumbent president.Bloomberg
After a huge rush of optimism that Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy would end Scott Brown’s hold on his US Senate seat, Democratic insiders and activists are awakening to a new political reality, driven by a series of recent polls and Brown’s success these past few months in crafting an independent bipartisan image.
The campaign’s reshaped landscape, which appears to have shifted in Brown’s favor, has created a quiet buzz among some in the party that Warren, despite her incredible burst onto the Massachusetts electoral map last fall, has hit some strong headwinds and will need to recapture the excitement that lit up the Bay State’s political world when she entered the race in September.Boston.com
The victory ends a bit of a dry spell for the former speaker. Since winning South Carolina January 21, Newt has placed second in Florida with 31.9 percent, and then a slow decline: 21.1 percent in the low-turnout Nevada caucuses (29 percentage points behind Romney) and then 10.8 percent in the nonbinding results in Minnesota, 12.8 percent in the nonbinding results in Colorado, 6.7 percent in Maine, 6.5 percent in Michigan, 16.2 percent in Arizona and 10.3 percent in Washington.Campaign Spot
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Some 53 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners say they’re “more enthusiastic than usual about voting,” compared with just 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to data from a USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday.Christian Science Monitor
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A controversial system of mobile euthanasia units that will travel around the country to respond to the wishes of sick people who wish to end their lives has been launched in the Netherlands.
The scheme, which started on Thursday , will send teams of specially trained doctors and nurses to the homes of people whose own doctors have refused to carry out patients' requests to end their lives.
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In a report for Thursday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell referred to Andrew Breitbart as "the shooting star of the conservative blogosphere" and contemptuously remarked: "Breitbart, who called Senator Ted Kennedy a villain and worse when he died, called himself an 'accidental cultural warrior.'"
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But one ad at a DC Metro station — which starts off criticizing Obama’s health care reforms and ends up telling the president to “go to hell” — goes beyond the pale, says Jim Moran, a Democratic congressman from Virginia. The advertisement is for “Sick and Sicker: When the Government Becomes Your Doctor,” a documentary that interviews Canadian doctors and patients in the hope of showing how dangerous “Obamacare” is for the American people.
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The poll of likely GOP voters in Ohio, taken last night, shows former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum attracting 33 percent of the vote and Mitt Romney at 31 percent — a squeaker in statistical terms. Santorum has dropped 18- percentage points in two weeks against Romney.
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But back in 2009, as Barack Obama was formulating his healthcare vision for the country, Mitt Romney encouraged him publicly to use an individual mandate. In his op-ed, Governor Romney suggested that the federal government learn from Massachusetts how to make healthcare available for all. One of those things was “Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”
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A second poll is showing Republican US Senator Scott Brown leading Democrat Elizabeth Warren by 9 to 10 points, a sign of potential concern for Warren after months of polling showed a closer race.Boston.com
The poll of 456 voters, conducted by Opinion Dynamics of Cambridge, shows Brown leading Warren 52 percent to 42 percent in a theoretical match-up. Another 1 percent of voters said they were leaning toward Warren.
With Gov. Christopher Christie as his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the GOP front-runner, cuts into President Barack Obama’s lead in New Jersey, but still falls short, trailing 49 – 43 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.Quinnipiac via Campaign Spot
