Fact Checking Romney’s Claim that Production of Oil on Public Lands is Down (+video)

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One of the most intense exchanges of the night arose over the question of permitting and oil production on public lands.

In the segment below, Romney claimed that hydrocarbon production on government land is down. He stated that oil production is down 14% and gas production is down 9%.

Although Obama vigorously denied this, the Washington Post states that “Romney’s telling the truth when he says, ‘Production of oil on public land is down 14 percent and production of gas on public land is down 9 percent.’ That’s because energy production on federal lands is down compared to 2010, according to the Energy Information Administration.” However, the Post adds that production is “still higher than where production stood under President George W. Bush.”

The National Journal has a different take because it evaluated three years of production (2008 to 2011) rather than comparing just the last two years. By reviewing production over the longer range, it found both candidates were right and wrong: “Oil production on public lands is up 12 percent from 2008 to 2011, according to a March report by the Energy Information Administration…Natural-gas production on public lands is down 16.5 percent between 2008 and 2011, according to the same EIA report…Coal production on public lands is down 7.8 percent from 2008 to 2011.”

Fact Checking Romney’s Permits Claim: Under Obama Permits Declined Over a Third (+video)

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During the Presidential Debate this evening, Romney asserted that permitting for oil and gas on federal lands decreased by 50% under Obama.

Although Obama denied this, the Los Angeles Times states that there was a significant drop from 2008 forward:

Mitt Romney said “the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters.”

According to the Bureau of Land Management, in fiscal year 2011, 2,188 leases were issued for energy development on federal lands. Four years earlier, in fiscal year 2007, 3499 leases were issued. So, not quite a 50% drop, but a drop nonetheless.

Here’s a clip from the debate where Romney went after Obama on the permits issue:

Secret Service director suspected of lying to Congress about prostitution scandal

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An investigation for the agency that oversees the U.S. Secret Service suggests Director Mark Sullivan lied during his congressional testimony in the Colombia prostitution scandal that ensnared 13 of his agents, multiple law enforcement officials and congressional sources tell FoxNews.com.

Investigators with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) have completed their investigative report, which will be referred to the Department of Justice along with a memorandum of activity that lists potential criminal actions. The report indicates Sullivan may have obstructed Congress by lying about the criminal associations of prostitutes involved in the scandal. The report also alleges Sullivan may have manipulated a report requested by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the sources said.

DHS OIG uncovered the evidence — including specific incidents of alleged perjury, making false statements and impeding Congress — during their ongoing probe into the scandal surrounding agents’ misconduct prior to President Obama’s trip to Cartagena, Colombia last April, sources told FoxNews.com. Sources said Sullivan may have violated statute 18 USC § 1505 — obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees — and investigators are now handing the case over to federal prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.

DHS OIG has been in talks with Justice Department prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section for months, and met with them late last week about the potential charges against Sullivan, sources said. The OIG, however, declined to discuss details of its investigation.

“The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is conducting an ongoing investigation, requested by Congress, of the United States Secret Service regarding its actions during a presidential visit to Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this year,” Charles Edwards, acting inspector general, said in a written statement. “The department and the Secret Service have cooperated with the OIG’s investigation thus far. However, as a matter of policy, the OIG does not discuss its ongoing investigations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Black Leaders, Including Martin Luther King Jr.’s Niece, Launch $1 Million Campaign Against Obama’s Pro-Gay Marriage Stance

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With three weeks to go before the General elections on Nov. 6, a group of black leaders are stepping up their mission to convince at least 25 percent of African Americans who voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 to vote on their biblical principles on issues such as homosexuality.

“Our goal is not to campaign against President Obama or any individual candidate. We seek rather to call people to vote above their emotions, party affiliations, and even their personal opinions, and to vote God’s values,” said Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Executive Committee member of nonprofit group “God Said”.

“Each day brings us closer to realizing this goal. Many people are rethinking their options as far as the voting process is concerned. Online polls confirm that people are concerned about the ‘marriage factor’ and that it will impact their decisions at the poll,” King added in an email to The Christian Post, although she could not estimate how many people are reconsidering their vote.

The Texas-based organization has announced that it will spend $1 million on TV and radio ads in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida urging African-Americans to vote on God’s values, noting that “God said marriage is between one man and one woman”. Voters are being urged to consider “God’s values and not their party’s.”

Obama and GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney present two different opinions on the same-sex marriage debate. The president announced in May that he supports gay marriage, noting that his opinion had “evolved” on the issue, while Romney has stated that he is for preserving the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

Read more from this story HERE.

Make or Break Debate: Obama’s Support Among Women Now Collapsing

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Obama’s biggest task tonight in the second presidential debate will be to woo back ‘waitress moms’ so crucial to his re-election, after a poll showed Mitt Romney has stole their votes in the first showdown and they are now neck and neck among women voters.

According to a Gallup/USA Today poll of 12 swing states, Romney leads Obama by 12 points among men. But it is his surge among women voters to within one point of Obama that has given him a four-point overall lead that sets him on course to win the White House on November 6th.

The poll, released on the eve of the second presidential debate in Hampstead, New York, marks an apparent end to months of double-digit Obama leads over Romney among women and has plunged Democrats into panic mode.

Unlike the first debate, the second meeting will be in a ‘town hall’ format in which undecided ordinary voters – probably about a dozen – will pose questions. At least half of them are likely to be women. In addition, the debate will be moderated by a woman – CNN’s Candy Crowley.

Democrats traditionally enjoy a marked advantage among women. Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election was said to have been based on winning over middle class, aspirational so-called ‘soccer moms’. But Obama’s popularity among females has plummeted after Romney’s commanding debate performance in Denver nearly two weeks ago.

Read more from this story HERE.

Michelle Obama Lies Again: “We Are in the Midst of a Huge Recovery” Because of Barry (+video)

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By Christopher Goins. First Lady Michelle Obama said in a radio interview on Friday that the United States is in the “midst of a huge recovery” because of what “this president has done.”

Pablo Sato, co-host of Pablo & Free on WPGC 95.5, a Washington, D.C.-area hip-hop radio station, asked the first lady: “Mrs. Obama, you know what, in your words, tell us what you think the state of the union is in right now?”

Mrs. Obama said, “I mean, we are seeing right now that we are in the midst of a huge recovery. Right? Because of what this president has done.”

Free: “Yes.”

Obama: “Pulled this economy from the brink of collapse when we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Now were gaining every — throughout most of his presidency, we’ve been adding jobs to this economy because of what he’s been doing. The stock market has doubled. Housing prices are rising. Foreclosure rates are lowering. But in the face of that, you still have people trying to convince us that things aren’t better.” Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s the whole Michelle Obama radio interview. Her outrageous comments about the “huge recovery” start at about 6:10:

Hispanic Voters: Obama Not Masculine Enough

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Mitt Romney aides say he has made crucial gains among Florida’s Hispanic voters by portraying Obama as fatally weak, a perception they argue has particular power in the Latino community.

A new Florida International University/Miami Herald poll released over the weekend shows President Obama leading Romney among likely Latino voters by just seven points, 51-44 percent. A Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald poll released late last week actually showed Romney ahead of Obama by two points — an 11-point shift from a month earlier. And a third poll, released Sunday by Public Policy Polling, shows Romney down just three points among Florida Hispanics.

By contrast, Obama won 57 percent of Florida Latinos in 2008, according to exit polls.

One Obama campaign adviser, requesting anonymity to address the polls frankly, contested that they were likely skewed by oversampling Cuban-American voters, who are mostly conservative. And the adviser stressed that Obama still maintains a wide lead among Latino voters nationwide.

But nationally, Hispanic voters are also among the lowest enthusiasm levels of any demographic in the country. And oversampling Cuban-Americans doesn’t explain the 11-point bounce Romney received in the days since the debate. For the Obama campaign, which is banking on a Latino landslide similar to 2008, the numbers could spell danger.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Ca. Head of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Wants Blasphemy Laws in the US

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Rashid Ahmad [the California head of CAIR] neither identifies nor condemns the “crazy people” responsible for the murder of Chris Stevens and three other Americans. And the killers were only “way out of line,” something one might say of a misbehaving child. The U.S. government says it “might” have been a planned attack by an al-Qaida affiliate, but Rashid Ahmad fails to say if he agrees. But he does hold forth on the “Innocence of Muslims” video.

“People feel extremely hurt and offended by the film,” Ahmad told the Bee. “But there’s a huge debate in Northern California over what should happen to the filmmaker.” Actually there isn’t.

Few here have seen the video and the default position is that it may be offensive but the U.S. government should take no action against the filmmaker. The huge debate here is over the push for even higher taxes in a state on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Some say there should absolutely not be any prohibition against free speech,” explained Ahmad, billed as someone who came to the United States from Pakistan in 1970 to study engineering at UC Davis.

“In France, Germany and other European nations, there are laws against hate speech,” Ahmad told the Bee. “Holocaust deniers and others who belittle Nazi crimes during World War II are subject to criminal penalties. Just like there are laws against hate crimes in the U.S., there should be laws against hate speech that leads to violence or criminal activities. Because of the film we’ve lost so many lives – the filmmaker has blood on his hands.”

Read more from this story HERE.

New Study: Southern Poverty Law Center “Personifies the Hate, Dishonesty and Hypocrisy of the Left”

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The SPLC is an organization you need to become familiar with. It personifies the hate, dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Left. It is a hate factory that has institutionalized the Left’s favorite tactic, Alinsky rule #12:

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)…

We need to recognize that the SPLC does not merely represent an organized example of leftist lunacy. It is a dangerous organization, whose goal is to isolate its enemies and make them politically radioactive. They achieve this through calculated, disingenuous and hate-filled propaganda.

The SPLC has become a consultant to both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. These federal law enforcement organizations and others take SPLC’s “Hate List” and other similar products seriously. This incentivizes law enforcement and creates an automatic institutional bias against the SPLC’s foes; people with genuine concerns and legitimate gripes suddenly become societal pariahs.

Rather than focus on real enemies and threats within our midst, law enforcement agencies are directed to focus on principled, upstanding, patriotic and courageous citizens. Meanwhile, the left, demonstrably violent, demonstrably subversive and destructive, gets a free pass. Do you see the destructive cultural inversion and threat to national security this creates?

Jumaat al-Fuqra and its 35 U.S.-based terrorist training camps isn’t on any SPLC list. The many dangerous leftwing organizations in the U.S. are not on any SPLC list. The Communist Party isn’t. Occupy Wall Street isn’t, neither is the violent Occupy Black Bloc. Why not?

Read more from this story HERE.

Supposed “Racist” at Romney Event Very Likely an Obama Plant

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I can pretty much guarantee that this man photographed at a Romney rally in Lancaster, Ohio, is not in fact a Republican, but rather is a plant sent out by the Democrats as a dirty trick.

Clue #1: Wearing a “Romney/Ryan” sticker on the back of his T-shirt. Nobody does this. Nobody.

Clue #2: It’s kind of chilly in Ohio this time of year, and the guy’s wearing only a T-shirt, while those around him are wearing coats.

My guess is that this guy also wore a coat when he entered the rally, then stationed himself toward the back of the crowd (in front of the riser where the press photographers are stationed) and then removed his coat to expose the T-shirt, with the explicit purpose of having it photographed.

. . . aaanndd, Clue #3: No name? A press photographer is going to take a picture like this and make no effort to ID the guy? Nuh-uh.

Read more from this story HERE.