San Francisco 49ers: Win or lose, they're back

San Francisco 49ers, after a decade of irrelevance, are in the NFC championship game, on the brink of the Super Bowl. Welcome back, San Francisco 49ers.

This playoff season seems bent on chucking every story line the NFL had going in 2011.

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The Packers? perfect season? Out. Tebow magic? Done, for now. The firing of Tom Coughlin?? We can definitely count that out, at least for another year (New York fans have a short memory, but beating the mighty Packers in Lambeau field at least ensures the Giants head coach gets to show up for work again in August).? Peyton Manning?s position at the top of the Manning hierarchy?? Even that?s in question, as a slew of analysts are now suggesting that little brother Eli might have been the best Manning all along.

Meanwhile, the barely noticed San Francisco 49ers had their best season in over a decade and emerged victorious from perhaps the best game of the playoffs against the Saints. The team by the bay has made it to the NFC championship, one win away from the Super Bowl.

Safe to say, no one really saw the 49ers coming. Why would they? San Francisco hadn?t had a winning record since 2002. Their biggest roster change from 2010?s 6-10 season was at head coach. Jim Harbaugh was an NFL coaching rookie, too, fresh from Stanford University. Given the team he was inheriting, a ?rebuilding year? would have been reasonable.

The 49ers most recognizable player? Quarterback Alex Smith, who has had a fraught relationship with the 49ers since the team drafted him first overall in the 2005 NFL Draft.? He?s been booed and benched constantly throughout his seven seasons; until last week, the highest praise anyone could muster for Smith concerned his ?game management? skills. But he clinched the NFC Championship for San Francisco last Saturday, with a game-winning touchdown pass to Vernon Davis with nine seconds left.

The rest of the 49ers roster has blossomed in the same way. Bucking the trend of most offense-heavy playoff squads this year, the 49ers have the best rush defense in the league, as well as a dangerous running game led by running back Frank Gore. The New York Giants are playing like a dream, but it will take their best to beat San Francisco at Candlestick Park.

Even if they do, the 49ers are beginning to look like their old selves again. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the franchise?s storied tradition and decades of domination garnered the same fear and respect as, say, the Patriots or the Packers do now. ?With five winning Super Bowl appearances, 16 consecutive seasons of 10-plus wins, and two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in a row (Joe Montana and Steve Young), the 49ers dynasty of the 1980s and '90s was so dominant that it has little chance of being duplicated anytime soon.

Their reign at the top of the NFL seemed endless in both directions: If you grew up in the 1990?s, Joe Montana was a word problem in your math workbook. Steve Young and wide receiver Jerry Rice were doing a funny Visa commercial on your television.

These 49ers aren?t quite there yet. But other teams are justifiably scared of the red and gold again, and that?s a good place to start.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1WzE9cP_hSY/San-Francisco-49ers-Win-or-lose-they-re-back

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Epic clash: Silicon Valley blindsides Hollywood on piracy (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? The massive online protest last Wednesday, in which Wikipedia and thousands of other websites closed down or otherwise protested and helped to kill controversial online piracy legislation, was widely heralded as an unprecedented case of a grassroots uprising overcoming backroom lobbying.

Yet a close look at how the debate unfolded suggests that traditional means of influencing policy in Washington had its place too. The technology industry has ramped up its political activities dramatically in recent years, and in fact, has spent more than the entertainment industry -- $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011, compared with $906.4 million spent by entertainment companies.

The latest chapter in what has become an epic, decades-long battle between the two industries over copyrighted digital content began innocuously enough. Hollywood movie studios, frustrated by online theft that they claim already costs them billions of dollars a year and will only get worse, in 2010 started pushing for a law that would make it possible to block access and cut off payments to foreign websites offering pirated material.

In 2010, longtime industry friend Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, introduced a bill, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously but never went further.

In May last year, Leahy tried again, introducing his Protect IP (Intellectual Property) Act. In October, Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a similar bill. The last major piece of copyright law, the Pro-IP Act of 2008, moved through Congress with little controversy, so the industry felt hopeful.

Through the end of September, Hollywood had outspent the tech industry 2-to-1 in donations to key supporters of measures it was backing. More than $950,000 from the TV, music and movie industries has gone to original sponsors of the House and Senate bills in the 2012 election cycle, compared with about $400,000 from computer and Internet companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Tech companies preferred backers of a narrower alternative bill. The computer and Internet industries gave more than $291,000 to supporters of that measure vs. about $185,000 from the content makers.

"They're both very powerful. They're all big players. They give a lot of money to politicians. This has to be a tough choice for many members of Congress," said Larry Sabato, a campaign finance expert who teaches at the University of Virginia.

PAY ATTENTION

The bills had attracted no public attention, but in early September, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman wrote to senators to oppose the bill. Later that month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce marshaled a group of 350 companies to write in supporting it.

The introduction of the House bill in late October prompted more scrutiny. Critics including the Consumer Electronics Association fretted over issues such as whether U.S. websites could be shut down under the bill, and security risks to Internet infrastructure that they said may arise.

By mid November, technology executives were paying close attention. Many watched online as Google copyright counsel Katherine Oyama testified before a House Judiciary Committee hearing November 16. Another, Ben Huh, chief executive of the online media network Cheezburger Inc, would eventually help organize the Web blackout.

Members of Congress "basically beat up Google," said Huh, who tuned in from the office. "We were watching it going, 'This is incredibly unfair.'"

Later that day, he talked over the testimony with Erik Martin, general manager of the social news site Reddit.com. The two would later help lead the online blackout efforts, along with others such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Meanwhile, the White House was taking meetings from both sides. The first week of December, Motion Picture Association of America chief and former Senator Chris Dodd moved the MPAA's board meeting from its traditional site of Los Angeles to Washington, in part so executives could lobby on the issues.

Dodd, along with movie executives including Warner Bros Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer and Fox Filmed Entertainment co-Chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman, met with White House officials including chief of staff Bill Daley and Vice President Joe Biden, according to a person familiar with the situation. They hammered home why the law was needed to go after foreign sites.

TAKING TURNS

The following week, it was the tech companies' turn. Executives including LinkedIn's Hoffman, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, and venture capitalists Brad Burnham and Paul Maeder met with the same officials to press their case.

Major tech companies then took out advertisements in newspapers including the Washington Post and The New York Times, saying the bills would allow U.S. government censorship of the Internet. The ads ran December 14 in the form of an open letter to Washington, signed by heavyweights such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

The ads ran as the House Judiciary Committee was turning back the bill. The proceedings streamed live over the Internet, allowing the public to watch many members struggling to fully understand terms such as IP address and DNS server.

North Carolina Rep. Mel Watt, for example, professed that he was "not a nerd and didn't understand a lot of the technological stuff." That opened them up to mockery in the blogosphere, with commentators questioning their ability to craft law around the Internet. "Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How the Internet Works," Motherboard blogger Joshua Kopstein wrote in a widely circulated post.

The weekend after the committee adjourned its hearing, opponents started an online petition to veto SOPA at the White House's "We the People" website. Within days, the petition had acquired 38,500 signatures, far exceeding the 25,000 required for review by the administration. An separate petition started in late October had already gathered more than 52,000 signatures.

A few days before Christmas, the House Judiciary Committee released the names of the many companies that supported SOPA. But that succeeded only in galvanizing further opposition: influential Silicon Valley investor Paul Graham took the unusual step of saying that any company that supported SOPA would be barred from Demo Day, an industry showcase.

People posting to the social-news site Reddit then suggested a boycott of one of the bill's supporters, the domain-name registrar GoDaddy, asking people to transfer their domains to another registrar. Many sites, among them Huh's Cheezburger, said they would switch. Just before New Year's Day, GoDaddy dropped its support for the bill amid widespread publicity.

Meanwhile, the White House was crafting its response to the online petitions. Three top aides to President Barack Obama, who won election in 2008 supported by online organizing and who has long been friendly to Internet industry concerns, weighed in on the issue in mid-January just as Hollywood was preparing to celebrate the Golden Globe Awards. The officials posted a response to the online petition and voiced concerns about the bills, while calling for improved antipiracy legislation.

That sparked a flood of media coverage and helped expand the Internet blackout to more sites. One popular protest, the brainchild of Instagram engineer Greg Hochmuth and YouTube Product Management Director Hunter Wall, allowed people to add black "Stop SOPA" banners to their Twitter and Facebook profile photos. On Wednesday, some 30 people a minute were adding the banners to their photos, Hochmuth told Reuters.

A FORMIDABLE COMBO

The combination of White House concerns, the impending online protest and the intense pressure on legislators from high-profile Internet industry leaders abruptly changed the dynamic on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, as the blackout unfolded, support for the bills quickly crumbled.

Some Hollywood executives acknowledge their own flat-footedness in trying to marshal public opinion as opposition mounted. While technology companies brandished the power of the Internet, Hollywood relied on old-media weapons such as television commercials and a billboard in New York's Times Square. It proved to be too little, too late.

One entertainment-company lawyer complained that opposing arguments were often inaccurate but spread like wildfire anyway on the Internet, leaving supporters scrambling to correct the information without the benefit of a strong online network.

"We do some of that (online) stuff, but it has to go through a committee of 14 people," he said. "The other side doesn't have conference calls. They just put stuff out there."

Both friends and foes of SOPA and PIPA do not think they have seen the end of this battle.

"Bills are a lot like zombies," said Cheezburger's Huh. "You never know if they're dead or going to come back."

When it comes around again, lobbyists on both sides will have learned some valuable lessons.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride in San Francisco and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles, with additional reporting by Jasmin Melvin and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Maureen Bavdek)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120122/en_nm/us_congress_piracy

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'Extinct' monkey rediscovered in Borneo by new expedition

Friday, January 20, 2012

An international team of scientists has found one of the rarest and least known primates in Borneo, Miller's Grizzled Langur, a species which was believed to be extinct or on the verge of extinction. The team's findings, published in the American Journal of Primatology, confirms the continued existence of this endangered monkey and reveals that it lives in an area where it was previously not known to exist.

Miller's Grizzled Langur (Presbytis hosei canicrus) is part of the small primate genus Presbytis, found across Borneo, Sumatra, Java and the Thai-Malay Peninsula. In Borneo, P.h. canicrus is only found in a small corner of the county's north east and its habitat has suffered from fires, human encroachment and conversion of land for agriculture and mining.

The team's expedition took to them to Wehea Forest in East Kalimantan, Borneo, a large 38,000 ha area of mostly undisturbed rainforest. Wehea contains at least nine known species of non-human primate, including the Bornean orangutan and gibbon.

"Discovery of P.h canicrus was a surprise since Wehea Forest lies outside of this monkey's known range. Future research will focus on estimating the population density for P.h. canicrus in Wehea and the surrounding forest," said Brent Loken, from Simon Fraser University Canada. "Concern that the species may have gone extinct was first raised in 2004, and a search for the monkey during another expedition in 2008 supported the assertion that the situation was dire."

By conducting observations at mineral licks where animals congregate and setting up camera traps in several locations, the expedition confirmed that P. h canicrus continues to survive in areas west of its previously recorded geographic range. The resulting photos provide the first solid evidence demonstrating that its geographic range extends further than previously thought.

"It was a challenge to confirm our finding as there are so few pictures of this monkey available for study," said Loken. "The only description of Miller's Grizzled Langur came from museum specimens. Our photographs from Wehea are some of the only pictures that we have of this monkey."

"East Kalimantan can be a challenging place to conduct research, given the remoteness of many remaining forested areas, so it isn't surprising that so little is known about this primate," said Dr. Stephanie Spehar, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. "We are very grateful to our local partners. This discovery represents the hard work, dedication, and collaboration of Western and Indonesian scientists, students, NGOs, as well as local communities and government."

"While our finding confirms the monkey still exists in East Kalimantan, there is a good chance that it remains one of the world's most endangered primates," concluded Loken. "I believe it is a race against time to protect many species in Borneo. It is difficult to adopt conservation strategies to protect species when we don't even know the extent of where they live. We need more scientists in the field working on understudied species such as Miller's Grizzled Langur, clouded leopards and sun bears."

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Wiley-Blackwell: http://www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell

Thanks to Wiley-Blackwell for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116909/_Extinct__monkey_rediscovered_in_Borneo_by_new_expedition

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Researchers solve questions about Ethiopians' high-altitude adaptations

ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2012) ? Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook example of evolution in action, but exactly how their genes convey a survival advantage remains an open question. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made new inroads to answering this question with the first genome-wide study of high-altitude adaptations within the third major population to possess them: the Amhara people of the Ethiopian Highlands.

Surprisingly, all three groups' adaptations appear to involve different genetic mutations, an example of convergent evolution.

"These three groups took different genetic approaches to solving the same problem," said senior author Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the genetics department in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and the biology department in the School of Arts and Sciences.

In addition to Tishkoff, the research was led by Laura B. Scheinfeldt, a research scientist in the genetics department at the Perelman medical school. Other members of the genetics department who contributed to the research are Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, William Beggs, Charla Lambert and Joseph P. Jarvis.

The Penn team collaborated with Dawit Wolde Meskel, Dawit Abate and Gurja Belay of the Department of Biology of Addis Ababa University.

Their research was published today in the journal Genome Biology.

One of the guiding principles behind evolution is natural selection; the more an organism is suited to its environment, the more likely it is to survive and pass on its genes. In high-altitude environments, oxygen concentration is low, a condition that can rapidly sicken -- even kill -- individuals who are not acclimated.

"As genetic anthropologists," Scheinfeldt said, "we know what patterns of genetic variation we expect to see after positive, or Darwinian, selection has occurred. Then we look for those patterns in the genome and try to make biological sense of what we find.

"The easiest way for us to do this is to look at situations where there's been very strong selective pressure: a disease with a really high mortality rate, or here at high-altitude where there are hypoxic conditions. This kind of situation makes a dramatic difference in terms of who passes on their genes, so it gives us more power to find the genetic signatures left behind."

Pregnant women are especially susceptible to the physiological pressure represented by hypoxia, which influences the birth weight and health of their children. Yet people have been living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau for generations, with little apparent ill effect.

Anthropologists, notably, Cynthia Beall, of Case Western University, and Lorna Moore, of Wake Forest University, have therefore extensively documented their physiological traits, trying to understand how these groups offset the problems pregnant women would normally have in hypoxic environments. More recently, geneticists have attempted to correlate these physical traits, or phenotypes, with the genes that are responsible for them, or genotypes.

Researchers have long wanted to add additional populations for comparison, and while the people of the Ethiopian Highlands met the criteria, living at over 3,000 meters above sea level, economic, linguistic and geographic hurdles stood in the way of collecting the data.

"This was an extremely challenging study. The logistics alone, getting permits and permission to do this trip, took us many years," Tishkoff said.

"Sampling from these remote populations was also very difficult," said Simon Thompson, who was part of the group's field team. "Roads were impassable and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the groups that were living at the highest altitude possible."

The researchers compared the genotypes and phenotypes of Amhara participants with those of two other Ethiopian groups that live at lower altitudes. They also compared the Amhara group with Nigerian and European groups that live at or around sea level.

"We make these comparisons," Scheinfeldt said, "to figure out where in the genome the high-altitude group looks distinct from the other groups. Those distinct areas are candidate regions for genetic variants contributing to high altitude adaptation. Two of the top candidates are involved in the HIF-1 pathway, a pathway that is initiated in hypoxic conditions."

Both the Andean and Tibetan populations had mutations related to the HIF-1 pathway as well, but all three groups differed in both genotype and phenotype. One difference in phenotype had to do with hemoglobin, the part of the blood that transports oxygen. Ethiopians and Andeans had hemoglobin levels that were higher than low-altitude populations, but the Tibetans had average levels.

The researchers also discovered a variant in the Ethiopian groups in a gene involved in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria regulate the production of ATP, the chemical cells use for energy, making this gene another interesting candidate for playing a role in adaptation to high altitude.

These differences all seem to play a role in how well a body can maintain homeostasis in low-oxygen conditions, but even seemingly clear advantages, such as higher levels of hemoglobin, are only proxies for more complex phenotypic changes. Putting them together into the big picture of how certain genes translate into a survival advantage will require more focused research based on the Tishkoff lab's findings.

We're chipping away at this question," Scheinfeldt said. "Every little bit helps."

Such research holds promise beyond understanding the history of these populations.

"There's a lot of interest in this kind of research from the biomedical community, in terms of lung physiology and oxygen transport," Tishkoff said. "If one can understand how it is that people who have these genetic adaptations can do fine at these high altitudes while the rest of us suffer, it could help us better understand one of the body's vital systems."

This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

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Journal Reference:

1. Laura B Scheinfeldt, Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, Dawit Wolde Meskel, William Beggs, Charla Lambert, Joseph P Jarvis, Dawit Abate, Gurja Belay, Sarah A Tishkoff. Genetic adaptation to high altitude in the Ethiopian highlands. Genome Biology, 2012; 13 (1): R1 DOI: 10.1186/gb-2012-13-1-r1

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/VlFtRkUZDrY/120120184530.htm

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2012 Republican Primary Mud-Slinging in Historical Perspective (ContributorNetwork)

Mud-slinging is an inherent part of elections in the United States, and 2012 is no exception. Here's a rundown on mud slung so far in this year primaries, who slung it, and how it compares to mudslinging in elections of years past.

2012 Republican Primary Mud

* Ron Paul opponent Jere Brower allegedly hatched a plot to plant Ku Klux Klan-robed volunteers with pro-Paul signs at his rallies, Digital Journal reported Sunday. Paul's been linked to a decades old newsletter containing racially inflammatory material, the Christian Science Monitor noted.

* Youtube user "LibertyforPaul" posted a video attempting to smear former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman as "the Manchurian candidate," mocking his Chinese fluency and questioning his U.S. loyalty and the legality of his Asian daughters' adoptions.

* Pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future said of Newt Gingrich in a television ad, "You know what makes Barack Obama happy? Newt Gingrich's baggage. Newt has more baggage than the airlines." The ad impliedly reminds voters of Gingrich's association with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, his 1997 reprimand for failing to ensure his use of tax-exempt groups was legal and lying to the House leadership, and his Freddie Mac consultancy profits.

* A Ron Paul ad portrays Rick Santorum as holding a "blackbelt in hypocrisy," alleging Santorum reversed course on a balanced budget amendment and right to work legislation, while taking more money from lobbyists than anyone else in Washington.

American Mud-Slinging History

* In 1876, Democrats bristled at accusations that Samuel J. Tilden was a tax evader who profited from corruption, Our White House noted. In retaliation, his supporters claimed Rutherford B. Hayes stole money from dead soldiers and shot his own mother.

* "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha," became the rallying cry of Grover Cleveland supporters in 1884, after Republicans chanted, "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" to shame him for fathering a child out of wedlock. At a James Blaine speech, the emcee called Democrats the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," smearing pro-Cleveland Irish-Catholic voters.

* In 1988, an independent group for George H.W. Bush used a race-baiting ad against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. The ad cast blame on Dukakis for a black felon going AWOL on a weekend prison pass and raping a woman.

* The 2004 Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry was similarly a product of a pro-Bush group. According to the Washington Post, the ad accused John Kerry of exaggerating his military service record to win medals and dishonoring the country by participating in anti-war protests on his return from Vietnam.

* John McCain was smeared in 2008 by anonymous false rumors he fathered an out-of-wedlock black baby and was married to a drug addict.

* An unidentified party circulated a Christmas card in 2007 attacking Mitt Romney's religion. The card, purportedly from Romney's family, contained a quote about God having several wives.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120119/pl_ac/10850839_2012_republican_primary_mudslinging_in_historical_perspective

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The 2012 tech primary (Politico)

As GOP presidential contenders stump for votes from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina, Google, Facebook and Twitter are in a race of their own ? for millions of dollars in political ads.

The tech giants are offering candidates new ways to advertise ? Mitt Romney has spots on YouTube and Rick Perry?s Facebook ads target Christian college kids in South Carolina ? and hiring political consultants, sponsoring debates and poaching from each other?s ad sales teams to jockey for the top spot in political social media circles.

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?This is the Twitter election,? boasted Peter Greenberger, who Twitter recently lured away from Google, where he started the search giant?s political ad sales team in 2007. ?We?ll be a core component.?

Not so fast, says Google, the most experienced Web company when it comes to political advertising. Google has expanded its team to work directly with campaigns to come up with ad strategies and every Republican presidential candidate has already bought in, and several have also?bought newly refined YouTube ads that target viewers in specific states or cities.

?What we saw in Iowa and New Hampshire was campaigns using search ads to recruit volunteers and get out the vote,? said Rob Saliterman, who heads Google?s political ad sales on the Republican side. ?They?re reaching people at the exact moment where someone has expressed interest in the campaign.?

In 2008 and 2010, candidates largely used Google ads to fundraise. Now, in a sign of new sophistication, candidates are using the ads to persuade voters. For example, they?ve begun to run search ads on each other?s names. In Iowa, a Google search for Rick Santorum would bring up a critical ad paid for by Perry?s campaign. When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Romney, his campaign bought ads to pop up when voters searched for Christie.

Google also owns YouTube, the Web?s biggest online video network, where candidates frequently post short ad spots and commercials. New for this election, YouTube offers a ?TrueView? feature that tracks how long viewers watch a video ad, so campaigns only pay when a viewer watches most of the ad.

Then there?s Facebook, which also has practice when it comes to working with politicians, though its user base was smaller for previous elections. The social networking behemoth allows campaigns to target voters of a specific demographic with specific interests because users volunteer their personal information.

In Iowa, for example, Perry?s campaign marketed his faith-focused commercials to Iowans who identified themselves as Christians on Facebook. The campaign also made sure a spot featuring his wife, Anita Perry, was prominent on the pages of conservative women in the state.

Last week, Perry?s campaign launched a new ad targeting students at Furman University, a Baptist college in South Carolina, according to Vincent Harris of Harris Media, who manages Perry?s digital strategy.

Twitter, already central to the national political conversation, is a newcomer to the political ad arena. In September, it launched its first political product aiming to get a cut of the lucrative 2012 ad spend.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories0112_71461_html/44194967/SIG=11ml5fdbf/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71461.html

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Romney says he may release tax returns in April

Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, right, speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, listens Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidateTexas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) ? Mitt Romney's four remaining challengers for the Republican presidential nomination did their best to knock the front-runner off stride in a contentious debate, but the best they could do was to get him to grudgingly agree to consider releasing his tax returns.

Romney didn't bend under heavy rhetorical pressure on the issue of his job-creation record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, nor did he apologize on stage for his evolving views on abortion. The former Massachusetts governor stressed the independence of the super PACs that have been running negative ads in his behalf against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other rivals, including former Sen. Rick Santorum.

Monday's night's debate was as fiery as any of the more than dozen that preceded it.

Romney did say that while he might be willing to release his tax returns, he wouldn't do so until tax filing time in April. And the multimillionaire former businessman didn't get much gratitude from his rivals for his halting change of heart.

"If there's nothing there, why is he waiting 'til April?" Gingrich told reporters.

Romney at first sidestepped calls from his rivals to release his records, then acknowledging later that he'd follow the lead of previous presidential candidates.

"I have nothing in them that suggests there's any problem and I'm happy to do so," he said. "I sort of feel like we're showing a lot of exposure at this point," he added.

Romney, the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination after back-to-back wins in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, was under fire from Gingrich and fellow GOP rivals Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in Monday night's debate as they sought to knock him off stride.

The five will meet again in debate in Charleston Thursday night, the last time they will share a stage before Saturday's South Carolina primary.

The first Southern primary could prove decisive in the volatile contest. Gingrich has virtually conceded that a victory for Romney in South Carolina would assure his nomination as Democratic President Barack Obama's Republican rival in the fall, and none of the other remaining contenders has challenged that conclusion.

That only elevated the stakes for Monday night's debate. It was feisty from the outset, with the attacks on Romney often couched in anti-Obama rhetoric.

"We need to satisfy the country that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way," said Gingrich.

The five men on stage also sought to outdo one another in calling for lower taxes. Texas Rep. Ron Paul won that competition handily, saying he thought the top personal tax rate should be zero.

In South Carolina, a state with a heavy military presence, the tone turned muscular at times.

Gingrich drew strong applause when he said: "Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear idea about America's enemies. Kill them."

Perry also won favor from the crowd when he said the Obama administration had overreacted in its criticism of the Marines who were videotaped urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Gingrich and Perry led the assault against Romney's record at Bain Capital, a private equity firm that bought companies and sought to remake them into more competitive enterprises, with uneven results.

"There was a pattern in some companies ... of leaving them with enormous debt and then within a year or two or three having them go broke," Gingrich said. "I think that's something he ought to answer."

Perry referred to a steel mill in Georgetown, S.C. where, he said, "Bain swept in, they picked that company over and a lot of people lost jobs there."

Romney said the steel industry was battered by unfair competition from China. As for other firms, he said, "Four of the companies that we invested in ... ended up today having some 120,000 jobs." And he acknowledged, "Some of the businesses we invested in were not successful and lost jobs."

It was Perry who challenged Romney to release his income tax returns. The Texas governor said he has already done so, and Gingrich has said he will do likewise later in the week.

"Mitt, we need for you to release your income tax so the people of this country can see how you made your money. ... We cannot fire our nominee in September. We need to know now," Perry said.

Later, a debate moderator pressed Romney on releasing his tax returns. His response meandered.

"If that's been the tradition I'm not opposed to doing that," Romney said. "Time will tell. But I anticipate that most likely I'm going to get asked to do that in the April time period and I'll keep that open."

Prodded again, he said, "If I become our nominee ... what's happened in history is people have released them in about April of the coming year, and that's probably what I'd do."

April is long after the South Carolina primary and the Republican nomination could easily be all but decided by then, following Super Tuesday contests around the country in March.

Santorum stayed away from the clash over taxes, instead launching a dispute of his own. He said a campaign group supporting Romney has been attacking him for supporting voter rights for convicted felons, and asked Romney what his position was on the issue.

Romney initially ducked a direct answer, preferring to ask Santorum if the ad was accurate.

He then said he doesn't believe convicted violent felons should have the right to vote, even after serving their terms. Santorum instantly said that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney hadn't made any attempt to change a law that permitted convicted felons to vote while still on parole, a law the former Pennsylvania senator said was more liberal than the one he has been assailed for supporting.

Romney replied that as a Republican governor, he was confronted with a legislature that was heavily Democratic and held a different position.

He also reminded Santorum that candidates have no control over the campaign groups that have played a pivotal role in the race to date.

"It is inaccurate," Santorum said of the ad assailing him. "I would go out and say: 'Stop it. That you're representing me and you're representing my campaign. Stop it.'"

That issue returned more than an hour later, when Gingrich said he too has faced false attacks from the same group that is criticizing Santorum. He noted that Romney says he lacks sway over the group, "which makes you wonder how much influence he would have if he were president."

Romney said he hoped no group would run inaccurate ads, and he said the organization backing Gingrich was airing a commercial that is so false that "it's probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot."

He called for scuttling the current system of campaign finance laws to permit individuals to donate as much money as they want to the candidates of their choice.

Noting that the debate was occurring on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, one moderator asked Gingrich if his previous statements about poor children lacking a work ethic were "insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans."

"No," Gingrich said emphatically, adding his aim was to break dependence on government programs. "I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn to get a better job and learn someday to own the job," he said.

Romney is the leader in the public opinion polls in South Carolina, although his rivals hope the state's 9.9 percent unemployment rate and the presence of large numbers of socially conservative evangelical voters will allow one of them to slip by him.

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Associated Press writer Dave Espo contributed to this report.

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Follow Shannon McCaffrey at www.twitter.com/smccaffrey13

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-17-GOP%20Campaign/id-461dda67bd4043de931836df07265ad9

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