Is Romney Picking Christie for VP Spot

I've already stated that Romney will choose NJ Governor as his running mate. They are campaigning together as if Christie were chosen already.

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Record-High 40% of Americans Identify as Independents in '11

This is a repudiation of the two-party system. Now to convert those numbers into a third party challenge:

The percentage of Americans identifying as political independents increased in 2011, as is common in a non-election year, although the 40% who did so is the highest Gallup has measured, by one percentage point. More Americans continue to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, 31% to 27%.

These results are based on more than 20,000 interviews conducted in 20 separate Gallup polls in 2011. Gallup has computed annual averages of party identification since 1988, when it began regularly conducting interviews by telephone. The prior high percentage of independents was 39% in 1995 and 2007.

Gallup records from 1951-1988 -- based on face-to-face interviewing -- indicate that the percentage of independents was generally in the low 30% range during those years, suggesting that the proportion of independents in 2011 was the largest in at least 60 years.

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Constitutional Scholar: White House Entirely Ignoring Article 1, Section 5

Jessica Yellen says the President could've done made the appointment when the Congress was truly in recess without opposition but has instead chosen to play politics:

John C. Eastman, a professor at Chapman University School of Law who is an expert on the constitutional separation of powers, says that the White House simply ignored the section of the Constitution, which governs when Congress can adjourn, when President Obama claimed to use the "recess" appointment power on Wednesday to name a director to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and three members to the National Labor Relations Board.

Eastman says that under the terms of the Constitution Congress was not in recess this week, it was in session.

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