Imagine how many more customers companies like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, General Motors, Amazon.com, Ford, Foot Locker, H & M, or Ben & Jerry's might have if the tens of millions of people with convictions could get jobs and not have to live on food stamps!

LITTLETON, Colo. — (AP) Ann Romney has stepped out into a new role for the final stretch of the campaign: Character witness and defender in chief. ...

The job of a presidential campaign surrogate is relatively simple: take the campaign's message on a given subject and amplify it. Staying on message, ...

With all due respect to slow jammin', it's too slow to define the campaign. Rather, it is the instantaneous micro-to-global combat of Twitter that is setting the pace (insanely fast) and practice (cutthroat attack) of 2012.

In this election year, women are being thrust into the political debate and openly attacked as if we were a single hot-button issue like gun rights or fracking.

The partisan proxy war waged over the mommy question only underscores the country's lacking vocabulary when it comes to discussing the totality of social and economic barriers facing women.

Ann and Mitt Romney are deluded if they fail to understand their story is not commonplace in a nation where the American Dream is becoming increasingly elusive.

With high amplification from social media, every surrogate can fall for the lure of self-importance, misspeaking for their candidate -- sometimes with dire consequences.

What all of this shows, of course, is how the real issues that plague this country can effectively be buried. Hilary Rosen did speak thoughtlessly. But what she meant (and awkwardly tried to explain) was obvious.

WASHINGTON -- If Mitt Romney seemed comfortable turning last week's kerfuffle over stay-at-home mothers into a "Christmas gift" that came early for hi...