He’s the only Mormon in the presidential race, but that doesn’t mean Mitt Romney is the only candidate Mormons support. Another favorite White House hopeful? Ron Paul, whose demand that Washington strictly adhere to the Constitution has some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints singing his praise.

“You cannot grow up in the church and not hear of and be taught that the Constitution is an inspired document,” says Connor Boyack, a Mormon who heads the Utah Tenth Amendment Center. “And when it comes to who best supports and defends the Constitution, Ron Paul is that guy.”

In Paul’s hunt for convention delegates, the Mormon vote will be key in early caucus states such as Nevada, where 25 percent of GOP caucus-goers in 2008 were LDS members. Exit polls from 2008 show nine of 10 Mormon voters cast ballots for Romney, but the Texas congressman is seeing a surge in support there and elsewhere.

While the Salt Lake City-based church does not officially endorse any candidate for president, members like Boyack have been preaching the gospel of Ron Paul. Boyack explains that Romney might be a brother in faith, but Paul’s commitment to upholding the tenets of the Constitution make him a more ideological choice for Mormons. A controversial and sometimes persecuted group, Mormons have historically looked to the Constitution as a safeguard to preserve their religious freedom. The Constitution is even mentioned in the church’s Doctrine and Covenants, described as revelations to the church’s founder, Joseph Smith. Brigham Young University religion professor Richard Bennett says the devotion to the Constitution came after an 1833 attack on a Mormon church in Missouri. Bennett says God told Smith to use the Constitution to fight the persecution of his church. [Read: Ron Paul Resonates with Latino Voters in Florida.]

Paul’s team has been quick to highlight the Mormon support, setting up a special “Latter Day Saints for Ron Paul” Facebook page (“liked” by over 1,300 fans). It’s one of a number dedicated to pro-Paul coalitions, including evangelicals, Protestants, and Catholics, as well as truckers, gamers, and accountants. The candidate is also featured in a five-minute Web ad, recycled from the 2008 campaign, titled, “Ron Paul preserves, protects, defends LDS Constitution view.”

Read More at US News By Lauren Fox, US News

Vice President Joe Biden was eager to get moving. In office for only a month, the Obama administration had already passed a monumental economic stimulus plan to address the biggest downturn since the Great Depression.

Now, at the first implementation meeting in 2009, Biden — with a smudged Ash Wednesday cross still on his forehead — declared that the stimulus would “literally drop kick us out of the recession.”

Officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $800 billion stimulus was the largest economic recovery program in history. Adjusted for inflation, it was nearly five times more expensive than the Works Progress Administration. It was bigger than the Louisiana Purchase, the Manhattan Project, the moon race and the Marshall Plan.

Economists and nonpartisan forecasting firms estimate that the stimulus created and saved more than 2 million jobs. It generated an unprecedented buzz around clean energy. A relatively small pot of education grants goaded 32 states to enact major reforms, such as tying teacher pay to student performance or lifting caps on charter schools. When the last dime is spent, more than 41,000 miles of roads will be paved, widened and improved; 600,000 low-income homes weatherized; and more than 3,000 rural schools connected to high-speed Internet.

But despite these achievements, the stimulus ultimately failed to do what America expected it to do — bring about a strong, sustainable recovery. The drop kick was shanked.

Read More at The New York Post By Michael Grabell, NY Post

(CNSNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI warned a group of Catholic bishops from the United States in a speech at the Vatican last week that some cultural trends in the U.S. are “a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself.”

The pope made the observation Thursday, Jan. 19, as he addressed a group of bishops from the mid-Atlantic region, including Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Archbishop Timothy C. Broglio, who leads the archdiocese for the military services. The bishops were in Rome for their “ad limina” visits, which they are required to periodically make to the Vatican to meet with the pope.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have been in an escalating conflict with President Barack Obama and his administration over a number of administration efforts that curtail religious freedom in the United States. Among these are the argument the administation is making in federal court likening opposition to same-sex unions to racial discrimination and the Obamacare regulation recenlty issued by the Department of Health and Human Services that requires all health insurance plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and artificial contraceptives, including those that induce abortions. Because the Obamacare law also requires all American to buy health insurance, the new HHS regulation presents Catholics with the choice of either acting against the law or against the moral teachings of their church.

“For her part, the Church in the United States is called, in season and out of season, to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering,” the pope said.

“To the extent that some current cultural trends contain elements that would curtail the proclamation of these truths, whether constricting it within the limits of a merely scientific rationality, or suppressing it in the name of political power or majority rule, they represent a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself and to the deepest truth about our being and ultimate vocation, our relationship to God,” said the pope.

Read More at cnsnews.com By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNS News

President Obama’s State of the Union address – coupled with recent troubling decisions by his administration to expand a pattern of de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants – cemented the unfortunate reality that this president continues intentionally to abdicate a responsibility to advance serious immigration reform. Empty rhetoric, repetitive platitudes and continued support for the already-rejected Dream Act do not make up a comprehensive proposal to this complex policy issue.

These remarks follow the administration’s decision to ease certain regulations on the visa program and move to release some deportation cases by focusing solely on whether a person poses “a national security threat,” only the latest addition to a list of blatant unilateral White House orders intended to curry favor with Hispanics.

The politics is conniving: Portray reform-minded Republicans and conservatives as unsympathetic to this fastest-growing demographic sector and bolster the president’s re-election chances in swing states with significant Hispanic votes, such as Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado and Arizona.

This scheme is not only misguided, but to someone who legally entered this great nation as a youth, it’s appalling.

I join most Americans, especially fellow Hispanics, across the political and ideological spectrum who understand the importance of legal immigration as vital to sustaining the greatness of America’s economic and cultural fabric.

Read More at The Washington Times By Al Cardenas, The Washington Times

U.S. law enforcement agencies are exposing people to radiation in more settings and in increasing doses to screen for explosives, weapons and drugs. In addition to the controversial airport body scanners, which are now deployed for routine screening, various X-ray devices have proliferated at the border, in prisons and on the streets of New York.

Not only have the machines become more widespread, but some of them expose people to higher doses of radiation. And agencies have pushed the boundaries of acceptable use by X-raying people covertly, according to government documents and interviews.

While airport scanners can show objects on the surface of the body, prisons have begun to use X-rays that can see through the body to detect contraband hidden in cavities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is in the process of deploying dozens of drive-through X-ray portals to scan cars and buses at the border with their passengers still inside.

X-ray scanners have been tested at ferry crossings, for visitor entries at the Pentagon and for long-range detection of suicide bombers at special events. And drawing the ire of privacy groups, Customs and the New York Police Department have deployed unmarked X-ray vans that can drive to a location and look inside vehicles for drugs and explosives.

Most federal health regulations for medical X-rays do not apply to security equipment, leaving the decision of when and how to use the scanners almost entirely in the hands of security officials.

Read More at propublica.org By Michael Grabell, propublica.org