A whole lot of carts are getting put before the horse in the Romney campaign — but their aspirations are as uninspiring as their candidate.

While some are calling yesterday’s change of policy with regard to contraception coverage a win-win for both the Catholic church and the Obama administration, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops does not see this as a win. Instead, they see it as one small little step, and they are pressing for much, much more.

The first amendment’s protection of religious liberty is not a license for religious organizations or individuals to disregard any law or regulation they don’t like. If the White House wants to end this fight, that’s the argument they’re going to have to make to the public. Instead, they have allowed the USCCB to set the terms of the debate, and the USCCB is quite happy to continue doing so.

This isn’t over, folks. Not by a long shot.

Or has Mitt Romney hired somebody to have one for him?

Roseanne Barr has qualified to run for President in the California primary on the Green Party ticket.

Economic confidence among Americans has been trending significantly upwards for five straight months according to Gallup. While Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index of -27 is still objectively bad, it is a dramatic improvement from last summer. And there’s clearly a solid positive trend, which is good news for the incumbent President.

The Job Creation Index of +16 is based on 33% of workers nationwide saying their employers are hiring workers and expanding the size of their workforce, and 17% saying their employers are letting workers go and reducing the size of their workforce. Hiring and firing have each improved by one percentage point since December. The percentage hiring matches the 33% of June 2011, and the two reflect the highest hiring levels since September 2008.

Ron Jeremy is more honest than most of the candidates running for president! And a far more wholesome candidate than Mitt, Newt or Randall Terry.

All the recent polling of the Florida found Mitt Romney with a substantial lead over second place Newt Gingrich. The final Real Clear Politics polling average of the state has Romney winning by 13.

When I turned on the TV last night, I wanted to stand up and cheer. While watching President Obama’s State of the Union address, I felt much like I did when I watched his 2008 acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver. OK, that’s not true–not hardly. Reality has not been kind to Obama’s rhetoric, after all. But when Obama got to the energy section of the speech, I found much to applaud, not unlike in 2008. . . with some obvious caveats for his praise of dirty, dangerous, failed or flat-out fictional forms of energy production.

Newt Gingrich’s contract with Freddie Mac is out, and when you boil it all down, his job description boils down to “. . . whatever duties as may be assigned.”

Kind of makes you wonder what those might have been. I’m sure the folks around here will have a few good ideas about what Newt might have done that would have been worth $25,000 a month.