The political beliefs of Barack Obama, said Rick Santorum last week, come out of "some phony theology. ... Not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology."

With about a week to go until oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court over the state's plan for legislative redistricting, justices are already fighting about how far the court can go in reviewing the new maps.

In what could amount to a victory for opponents of the proposal for carving up House and Senate districts, SJR 1176, the court issued an order Tuesday calling for the Florida Democratic Party and a coalition of voting-rights organizations to hand over information they had on lawmakers' residences.

The perennial push to funnel construction funds to charter schools is running into another brick wall of political opposition erected by school districts and a liberal advocacy group.

Though charter schools serve an expanding enrollment of more than 160,000 Florida students at nearly 500 campuses across the state, these free public schools receive little or no capital funding.

The battle between Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to win the Michigan Feb. 28 primary is tightening -- and getting nastier.

Two polls released Tuesday show different winners. Last week, Santorum led Romney --who won the Michigan Republican primary back in 2008 and whose father was governor of the state during the 1960s --in a series of polls of the Great Lakes State.

The governors office helped plug a bill that could have sped up the oil exploration-to-drilling process on certain state-owned lands.

Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, chairman of the Environmental Preservation Committee, postponed the Senate version of the bill, SB 1158, on Tuesday.

The bill would authorize state land-management agencies to enter public-private partnerships on state-owned lands with the private company that explored for oil if the yield can produce near-term revenue for the state.

Many liberals fall into the odd trap of arguing that politics and government can change everything, while insisting that individual leaders cannot make much of a difference.

Go West, young man, go West, wrote famed American politician and journalist Horace Greeley to veterans looking for opportunities after the Civil War. While Greeley should have followed his own advice -- he was buried out west (and the rest of the nation) when he ran against Ulysses S. Grant in the 1872 presidential election -- Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is looking west to salvage his campaign.

Two polls released this week find Mitt Romney leading the pack of Republican presidential candidates heading into the Feb. 28 Arizona primary.

A We Ask America poll of likely primary voters unveiled Tuesday shows Romney with a solid lead in the Grand Canyon State, taking 37 percent of those surveyed, while Rick Santorum places second with 27 percent. Newt Gingrich takes third with 15 percent while Ron Paul trails in single digits with 8 percent. Thirteen percent of those surveyed remain undecided.