ON THE CAMPAIGN CHARTER HEADING TO OHIO -- The same day as the first presidential debate of the 2012 election, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will begin a three-day debate camp.

Campaign spokesman Brendan Buck told reporters aboard the Ryan press charter Saturday afternoon Rep. Ryan will head to the battleground state of Virginia on Wednesday for an extended debate prep session, commonly referred to as ‘debate camp.’

No reason for selecting Virginia was given, however, advisers in the past have said the camp would likely be in a battleground state, likely in the Eastern time zone, and “somewhere where there aren’t distractions.”

Mitt Romney, who will be debating President Barack Obama in Denver on Wednesday, held his own debate camp in Vermont in early September.

Portman joins Romney for debate prep in Vermont

Ryan’s first formal debate prep day was Sept. 9 in Oregon with his most recent formal debate practice session held this past Sunday in a hotel in Janesville, Wis. Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, has been playing the part of Vice President Joe Biden during practice sessions and is expected to be in the Old Dominion state next week as well.

Paul Ryan holes up for debate

Ryan and Biden will debate just once during this election in Danville, Ky., on Oct. 11 – exactly two months after Ryan was tapped as Romney’s running mate, also in Virginia where debate camp will occur.

The campaign told the traveling press a few weeks ago that the seven-term Wisconsin congressman has been going through large white binders -- “organized by issue areas” -- of policy information, research, and news of the day since the Republican National Convention ended at the end of August.

While there has not been much discussion regarding the VP debate in terms of debate expectations -- as most eyes are on the first presidential debate in four days -- two Ryan advisers appeared to downplay expectations for the House Budget Chairman when they spoke to the traveling press in Reno, Nev., in early September.

“Vice President Joe Biden served over 30 years in the United States Senate, he has run for president twice and has severed as vice president for the past four years. He is one of the most experienced debaters in American political life and we definitely don’t take the challenge lightly,” an adviser said.

Ryan focuses heavily on raising money Sunday and Monday -- holding fundraisers throughout Connecticut and New York City – before heading to the key state of Iowa for four campaign events. He will then turn his focus to debate prep leading up to the final weekend before the debate in Kentucky.

By NBC's Ali Weinberg
President Obama won 66 percent of the college-age vote in 2008, but young voters seem to be losing enthusiasm for his presidency, which could mean lower turnout on election day. At each stop on the president’s three-college-town swing Tuesday and Wednesday, NBC caught up with students to talk about just how excited (or not) they were to vote this November.

RICHMOND, Va. — President Obama launched his bid for a second term Saturday by working to mobilize supporters with a forward-looking message in the face of challenges that include sluggish economic recovery.

The question facing voters, he told a boisterous crowd during the second stop on the official launch of his re-election campaign, isn't whether Americans are better off today than four years ago.  "The real question," he said, is "how we’ll be doing tomorrow."

Obama tried to accomplish this in two ways: Seeking to rekindle the enthusiasm surrounding his 2008 candidacy, and sending stark warnings about what it would mean if his presumptive Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, were elected.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama wave at a campaign event May 5 in Richmond, Va.

The word ‘Forward’ printed on placards was held by the crowds at both rallies, a kind of 2.0 version of the ‘hope and change’ theme that propelled the Obama campaign in 2008. The crowds at each were loud and enthusiastic, though the Romney campaign was quick to note that the Columbus arena wasn't filled to capacity. Both crowds were heavy on students, and the Richmond rally had a number of African-Americans in attendance, reflecting the area's large black population.

Analysis: Obama re-election launch seeks to define stakes of campaign

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Saturday: "No matter how many lofty campaign speeches President Obama gives, the fact remains that American families are struggling on his watch: to pay their bills, find a job and keep their homes.”

That statement came because the former Massachusetts governor found himself on the receiving end of a broadside by the president on Saturday, one that took aim at a cornerstone of Romney's campaign, his claim of economic competence.

"When a woman in Iowa shared the story of her financial struggles, he responded with economic theory," Obama said, painting Romney as out-of-touch.

"Corporations aren't people, people are people!" Obama later added, dredging up Romney's quote at the Iowa state fair, when he compared corporations to individuals.

The election may hinge on the economy, but Obama's first formal day of campaigning suggested he won't cede that issue to Romney. He and the first lady both played to broad middle class frustration about diminishing social mobility.

"It's that fundamental promise that no matter who you are or how you started out—if you work hard, you can build a decent life for yourself and yes, an even better life for your kids, and an even better life for your kids," First Lady Michelle Obama said in Columbus.

There was much about Obama's campaign launch that seemed familiar from his 2008 campaign.

He said he was still "fired up" and "ready to go," drawing on a campaign slogan from his last election. His two stops on Saturday were in Columbus, Ohio and Richmond, Va. — the state capitals of two crucial swing states Obama had won against Sen. John McCain. And two staple blocs of Obama's 2008 coalition, those young voters and black voters, showed up in throngs for this weekend's events.

He sought, in no uncertain terms, to draw a line from their effort that year to this fall's campaign, taking strides to remind them of the accomplishments in the meanwhile — his health care law, Wall Street reform, winding down the war in Iraq and killing Osama bin Laden, among other initiatives.

"I didn’t run, and you didn’t work your hearts out, just to win an election," Obama said in Richmond.

He added, toward the end of his remarks: "If people ask you ‘what’s this campaign about?’ you tell them it’s still about hope. You tell them it’s still about change."

But the heady optimism from 2008 has been tempered, namely by an anemic economic recovery. The April jobs report found the U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs last month, falling below expectations and suggesting that the pace of hiring has slowed.

Perhaps in recognition of the new political reality, Obama dropped the gloves versus Romney and sharply criticized the former Massachusetts governor, linking him also to a deeply unpopular Republican House of Representatives.

"For the last few years, the Republicans who run this Congress have insisted that we go right back to the policies that created this mess in the first place," Obama said. "And now, after a long and spirited primary, Republicans in Congress have found a champion — they have found a nominee for president who has promised to rubber-stamp this agenda if he has the chance."

It might not have been the lofty rhetoric that drew so many admirers to Obama in 2008, but these new, sharper themes in this campaign still resonate with the president's most ardent supporters.

"I'm just as enthusiastic as the last time, because I think it's going to be a race between an average joe and a multimillionaire," said Marc René of Richmond, an emigre from Haiti in 1994 who works at a local nonprofit.

"My wife and I work, we have great careers, but we still try to make end's meet. We don't have a net worth of $280 million dollars," he said.

Meaghan Mcinnis of Richmond, a relatively recent college graduate who lost one of her first jobs out of school before finding a new one, attended the rally with her friend Jamie Dalton. Both women said they feared the notion of Republican-led "war on women" aggressively messaged by Democrats.

"I feel like there are much bigger issues, and I don't appreciate that 50 and 60-year-old men are making decisions for my 20-something-year-old body," said Mcinnis.

ARIZONA: Democrats perfect candidate: “Richard Carmona, the Democratic candidate for senator from Arizona, had a rough childhood in New York City. His Puerto Rican parents had drug and alcohol problems, and he was homeless for a time. He dropped out of high school and went to Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars,” The Washington Post writes. “Carmona has yet to leap a tall building in a single bound, but Democrats here are counting on him to provide some political heroics: They’re hoping Carmona will not just take a Republican seat but also give President Obama the boost he needs to win Arizona, the one red state his campaign thinks can be turned blue this year.”

MASSACHUSETTS: "The half-court basketball shot that Senator Scott P. Brown sank on Friday during a visit to a youth center — recorded by his staff and widely circulated on the Web — was just the beginning,” The New York Times writes. “So far this week, Mr. Brown, a Republican, has won endorsements by Democratic former mayors of Boston and Worcester, given a speech emphasizing his votes across party lines and released a radio ad calling on Americans to “work together now” despite partisan differences. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren, his main Democratic challenger for the United States Senate seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, has been engulfed in controversy stemming from accusations by the Brown camp that she sought an unfair advantage in her academic career by claiming American Indian ancestry. For the last two days, she has kept a low profile in Massachusetts, though she spoke at a union convention in Washington on Tuesday.”

According to The Boston Herald: “A law school directory where Elizabeth Warren touted her Native American roots in the late 1980s and early 1990s once served as a tip sheet for administrators looking to identify and hire minority professors, according to a former chairman of the American Association of Law Schools…The AALS is an association of more than 160 law schools that published the directories where Warren identified herself as a minority for nearly a decade.”

VIRGINIA: The Tim Kaine (D) campaign is up with a video hitting George Allen (R) on comments he made supporting privatizing Social Security in the Senate race.

WISCONSIN: “Gov. Scott Walker raised an unprecedented $13.2 million over three months to fight off the recall bid against him, outdistancing his Democratic challengers and driving home the challenge they will have in beating the Republican incumbent,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. “Crisscrossing the country on fundraising trips, Walker has raised more than $25 million since January 2011 and has $4.9 million in cash on hand - numbers unlike any that have been seen for a political candidate in Wisconsin. Two-thirds of Walker's money came from out of state.”

“Former Congresswoman Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Giffords made a rare public appearance Tuesday night to accept the ‘We Are EMILY Award’ from Emily’s List, a political advocacy organization that supports pro-choice women seeking office,” msnbc.com’s Jason Strachman Miller reports.

PENNSYLVANIA: “U.S. Rep. Mark Critz, D-Johnstown, used his deep home base support and the heft of organized labor to win his fratricidal bout with fellow Democratic Congressman Jason Altmire, picking up an underdog victory in an increasingly conservative district,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, adding, “Mr. Altmire, elected in 2006, is a former UPMC [a Pennsylvania non-profit health system] lobbyist and his 2010 vote against President Obama's health care reform package was part of his undoing.”

Rep. Tim Holden, described as the “dean of Pa. House members,” lost his primary against Scranton personal injury lawyer Matt Cartwright. And it wasn’t close – 57%-43%. Holden has served since 1992, but redistricting did him in.

“Coal-mining millionaire Tom Smith (R), a newcomer to politics who spent $4 million of his own money on TV advertising, easily won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports,” Political Wire writes. “His candidacy "was scorned by the Republican establishment," including Gov. Tom Corbett (R).”

ARIZONA: Jesse Kelly, Tea Party favorite, won the GOP primary to take on Democrat Ron Barber to replace former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Barber is a former aide to Giffords who was injured in the mass shooting. Kelly, a former marine and construction manager, faced Giffords in 2010 and lost.

FLORIDA: “Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) will not be charged criminally by state prosecutors despite possible criminal and ethical lapses detailed in a state law enforcement agency report released earlier this week, the Miami Herald reported,” per Roll Call.

MARYLAND: The Democratic challenger in MD-6, John Delaney, released an internal poll showing him up over incumbent Roscoe Bartlett (R) in the re-drawn district.

ARIZONA: “Republicans in southern Arizona's 8th Congressional District go to the polls Tuesday to choose who will face former Gabrielle Giffords aide Ron Barber in a special election to replace the wounded ex-congresswoman,” AP writes, adding, “The four include 2010 Giffords opponent Jesse Kelly, a businessman and tea party favorite, state Sen. Frank Antenori, retired U.S. Air Force pilot and political newcomer Martha McSally, and businessman and broadcaster Dave Sitton.” Kelly is the favorite in the primary.

MASSACHUSETTS: “An attempt by Senate Democrats to pass a higher tax on millionaires failed Monday night, but the legislative defeat may prove to be a political gift to Democrats eager to counter Scott Brown’s image as a bipartisan everyman,” the Boston Globe writes.

UTAH: AP previews Utah’s convention Saturday, which could determine incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch’s fate. “To avoid a primary, Hatch needs at least 60 percent of the 4,000 delegates expected to vote. In spite of Hatch having spent more than $5 million since the beginning of 2011 to defend his seat, the fate of one of the most powerful senators in the country is coming down to just a few hundred votes,” it writes, adding, “Hatch is urging delegates to back him so he can focus on helping likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney defeat President Barack Obama and on raising money for other Republicans running for the Senate.”

The New York Times on the Obama-Romney money race: “Aides and leading donors to Mitt Romney are preparing a major expansion of the campaign’s fund-raising efforts to prepare for a general election contest against President Obama, with the goal of raising up to $600 million, according to several people involved in the discussions...  And Mr. Obama, who raised $750 million in 2008, is likely to meet or exceed that this year, according to people involved in his fund-raising operation.”

ROMNEY: The Lukewarm Candidate: “In Iowa, Tea Party activist Ryan Rhodes said he has a ‘really good clothespin.’ That would be for his nose, he said, when he votes for Mitt Romney in November,” the Boston Globe writes. “Grass-roots conservatives said Wednesday they would reluctantly get behind the former Massachusetts governor now that he has all but sewn up the Republican nomination for president. But their enthusiasm level is low, if not flat-lined, as Romney begins the general election task of rallying the party and energizing a skeptical conservative base — even as he seeks to broaden his appeal to more moderate, independent voters.”

But Romney leads in a new FOX News poll.

Mitt Romney addresses the National Rifle Association convention today in St. Louis. The St. Louis Dispatch takes a long look at Romney’s challenges with gun advocates: Head of the group Wayne “LaPierre did not have overwhelming praise for Romney's tenure in Massachussetts — ‘he tried to help people up there, and he was supportive of the Second Amendment,’ he said — but suggested many NRA members already know how they will vote in November. ‘If you talk to most Second Amendment supporters in the country, they'll tell you, 'Anybody but President Obama,'’ LaPierre said. For Romney — who got a ‘B’ rating from the group while running for governor — the challenge Friday will be to energize NRA members enough that they share that enthusiasm when they go back to their home states.”

The AP: “Mitt Romney's speech to the National Rifle Association is a high-profile chance for the Republican presidential candidate to woo conservatives who have viewed him warily for years.” And it points out: “The address on Friday in St. Louis also comes at a moment of heightened national concern about gun use because of the explosive Florida case in which a neighborhood watch volunteer fatally shot an unarmed teenager. The NRA strongly backed Florida's ‘stand your ground’ law, which is at the heart of the unfolding legal matter.”

And: “When Romney ran successfully for Massachusetts governor in 2002, the NRA gave his Democratic opponent a higher rating on gun-rights issues but made no endorsement. Massachusetts quadrupled its gun-licensing fee while Romney was governor. He signed a law that made permanent a ban on assault-type weapons, although it was coupled with measures backed by gun-rights groups, such as the creation of an appeals board for people seeking to restore their gun licenses. … Romney drew snickers in 2008 by claiming he sometimes hunts ‘small varmints.’ He showed more humility and humor last month in Alabama, where he said he hoped to go hunting with a friend who ‘can actually show me which end of the rifle to point.’”

FLASHBACK: Mitt Romney’s claims on women’s jobs losses reminded us of this: “This is the president of the United States that has killed more jobs in America than I think any president in history, certainly in my lifetime. I think the only job he cares about is the one he’s got.” – Rick Perry Aug. 19, 2011

That won Perry two Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s fact checker.

Not everyone’s throwing their enthusiastic support behind Romney. At a county GOP dinner in Pennsylvania last night (attended by Veep possibility Rob Portman), Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, the evening’s keynote speaker, seemed to resist Portman's entreaty to unify the party – at least right away. “We’re going to have a presumptive nominee for 2012 really soon,” Blackburn said, tepidly, per NBC’s Jamie Novogrod. Blackburn -- who endorsed Romney in 2008 and withdrew her support and threw it to Fred Thompson -- though, did not mention Romney by name during her speech.

Later, during an on-camera interview with NBC, though she said: “I will support our nominee. We are moving to having that presumptive nominee, and it’s going to be Governor Romney from what it appears, and I look forward to supporting the nominee.” She added, “I’m an old county party chairman, and I appreciate letting the primaries play out, and I look forward to – very quickly.  I think we’re very quickly going to have our nominee named and have that presumptive nominee.” And when asked if Romney would be a strong nominee, she said, “Oh indeed he is. Very strong economic message.”

But the Duggars are on board.

The Boston Globe: “Quietly, ‘Swift Boat’ donor throws big money behind Romney.”

ARIZONA: Political Wire: “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) "has signed a bill into law banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and making numerous other changes to abortion regulations," the Arizona Republic reports.”

WASHINGTON: Kucinich is still thinking about a run there: "I haven't really made up my mind what I'm going to be doing with my future. I'm looking at all my options, I haven't made a decision. If I made a decision, I'd tell you right now."

WISCONSIN: Politico’s Hohmann notes that Scott Walker is on air hitting Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk.

In an effort to bolster his sagging poll numbers with female voters, Mitt Romney and his campaign have made this new charge: that women have accounted for 92 percent of the job losses since President Obama took office.

Here’s what Romney said yesterday while campaigning in Delaware:

"There's been some talk about a war on women. The real war on women has been waged by the Obama administration's failure on the economy. Do you know what percentage of job losses during the Obama years of have been casualties of women losing jobs as opposed to men? Do you know how many women, what percent of the job losses were women? 92.3 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who've lost those jobs."

The Romney campaign also held a conference call making this same point. "The number of unemployed women has increased by nearly a million under Barack Obama," surrogate Bay Buchanan said. "Ninety-two percent of the jobs lost since he took office are women."

But First Read contacted the Bureau of Labor Statistics to get to the bottom of this 92 percent charge. The conclusion: The Romney campaign’s figures don’t tell the whole story.

The campaign, in a research document circulated yesterday and on its website, said the numbers come from the “Current Employment Statistics” database at BLS. The document notes that there was a net change of -740,000 nonfarm payroll jobs from January 2009 to March 2012 -- and that women accounted for 683,000 of those jobs.

That is accurate, according to BLS. But Brian Davidson, an economist at BLS, told First Read: “The math they use is correct; the terminology is completely wrong.”

Davidson noted that women actually make up a larger share of the workforce now than they did in Jan. 2008 before the financial meltdown, and since January 2009, it is a statistically insignificant change.

In January 2008, women made up 48.8 percent of the workforce; in January 2009, 49.5 percent; now 49.3 percent.

“Do we still have the same amount of women workers relative to men in the ‘net-change’? Yes we do,” Davidson said.

He added, “It’s like trying to pull a bunny out of a hat, but there’s no bunny inside.”

Independent fact-checkers like Politifact and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker also took on the claim.

Giving the claim a “Mostly False,” Politifact called it “misleading”: “We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t.”

“One could reasonably argue that January 2009 employment figures are more a result of President George W. Bush’s policies, at least as far as any president can be blamed or credited for private-sector hiring,” Politifact wrote. “We reached out to Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the BLS, for his take on the claim. He pointed out that women’s job losses are high for that period of time because millions of men had already lost their jobs. Women were next. … [I]f you count all those jobs lost beginning in 2007, women account for just 39.7 percent of the total. … There is a small amount of truth to the claim, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.”

The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, begins this way: “[W]e frown on the somewhat arbitrary dividing line of measuring jobs statistics by presidential terms. It is a common journalistic — and political — metric. But restarting the employment clock from the moment the president takes the oath of office doesn’t tell you much about a his performance, especially since it takes time for the new president’s policies to take effect.”

In fact, he writes, “[T]here is less to this stat than meets the eye. … If you start the data in February, then the overall job loss is just 16,000 jobs—while women lost 484,000 jobs. … How could women lose more jobs than the overall total? It’s a function of the dates one picks.”

And notably: “[T]he picture becomes clearer if you start running the data from the date the recession began — December 2007. With that starting point, the total decline in jobs was just over 5 million, with women accounting for nearly 1.8 million of those jobs. Now look what happens when we just look at the past year, March 2011 to March 2012. Men gained nearly 1.9 million jobs while women gained 635,000 jobs.”

*** CORRECTION *** An earlier version of this post noted that the Romney campaign used numbers from January 2009. The campaign has reached out to First Read and notes that it used January 2009 as a "baseline."

"We use January 2009 as the baseline, which means the first month of losses charged to Obama is the decline in February vs. January," said campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

*** UPDATE *** Saul also passes along a letter written by its policy director, Lanhee Chen, to dispute the Politifact story (and "Mostly False" rating) that attempted a fact check on a Tweet by Saul referencing the numbers. Chen accuses Politifact of a "failure to focus on the appropriate context."

"First, why should it matter that men had already lost millions of jobs?" Chen wrote. "Was it now women’s 'turn'? Is this part of the President’s conception of “fairness” that he talks about so frequently? If the data showed the opposite (i.e. that women had been disproportionately hurt prior to the President taking office), we imagine you would have used that as an indictment of Ms. Saul by arguing that the trend was inherent to the recession and predated the President."

Chen concluded, "In summary, your piece confirms Ms. Saul’s claim as accurate, and then relies on a direct contradiction with a prior Politifact piece and incorrect claims from two publicly acknowledged Obama supporters (including one Administration official!) as the basis for rating it “Mostly False.”  I hope you will agree that this rating was inappropriate and that the piece does not reflect the journalistic standards to which your organization intends to hold itself.  Please retract the piece and issue a correction as soon as possible."

GINGRICH: Calling it a day? “Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich yesterday signaled that he is almost ready to raise the white flag,” the New York Post writes. “The former House speaker admitted in the most striking terms yet that rival Mitt Romney is ‘far and away the most likely Republican nominee,’ and he pledged to back Romney to defeat President Obama in November. A downcast and emotional Gingrich admitted on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that his campaign was buried in debt and that running for president ‘turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be.’” And this: “I hit him as hard as I could; he hit me as hard as he could,” he said. “Turns out he had more things to hit with than I did. That’s part of the business.”

He also said, per Roll Call: “[He’s] conservative enough [and] I suspect he will accept a solid, conservative platform, but he does have consultants who are of the Etch a Sketch tradition.”

He told the Washington Post: "It never occurred to me -- and this is one of the lessons I'm contemplating for some future memoir -- it never occurred to me the scale of the Romney fundraising capability. I was fully prepared to be outspent 2-to-1, even 3-to-1. But when you're up to 5- or 6-to-1, you're being drowned. You're not going to be able to match it."

And he says he’s staying in for the donors: GOP 12: “Gingrich said his donors, including those he met Wednesday in Wilmington, “asked me to stay in the race..... They very much do not want me to drop out,” Gingrich told the Raleigh News & Observer. “They think if Romney wins it, that is one thing. But there is no reason to concede to him.”

ROMNEY: The AP’s Beaumont: “Mitt Romney faces a daunting to-do list as he transitions into the role of likely Republican presidential nominee. Among the tasks: Raise as much money as possible for the general election campaign against President Barack Obama. Hire more people and send them to the most critical states in the fall race. Hone his message to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. And do it all quickly while fending off challenges from GOP rivals who refuse to quit the primary race.”

Republican activists “expect Romney, as well as his popular wife, Ann, to make an explicit pitch to female voters on the economy and jobs, their top issues,” the AP writes. And: “[T]he Republican's challenge is stark. Romney must overcome history, political math and the missteps of a party that picked a fight over one provision of Obama's health care law and ended up on the defensive over access to birth control. Romney also has work to do with female voters after inconsistencies or misstatements on issues such as abortion and the future of Planned Parenthood.”

Speaking of that, Ann Romney is featured prominently in a new web video released Friday focusing on family, her five children, and her husband.

“It's over, and Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP nominee for president,” AP writes. “That's the growing consensus among Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the party's national convention this summer and can support any candidate they choose. Even some members who support other candidates begrudgingly say the math doesn't add up for anyone but the former Massachusetts governor.”

But first, Romney is still trying to put the race away by playing big in Pennsylvania. GOP 12: “Salena Zito reports that Mitt Romney is up in Pennsylvania today with a $2.9 million buy that will run through the April 24 primary.”

On Meet the Press Rep. Raul Labrador said the media will make Romney’s Mormonism an issue.

The New York Daily News also notes Romney revived his Harvard attack on Obama Thursday, saying, “We have a president who I think is a nice guy, but he spent too much time at Harvard, perhaps.”

Yet, the Daily News points out: “Romney has actually spent more time at Harvard than Obama. In 1975, the White House hopeful earned a joint JD/MBA degree at the prestigious school over the course of four years-one year longer than the three years Obama spent there getting his law degree. In addition, three of Romney's sons have post-graduate degrees from Harvard, and he gave $50,000 to the business school in 2003.”

On Sunday, the New York Times looked at Romney’s friendship with Israeli PM Netanyahu.

SANTORUM: “Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum will resume his campaign Tuesday with a slate of events in his home state, according to a schedule released by his campaign Saturday morning,” the Boston Globe says. “Pennsylvania holds its primary on April 24, and there have been intensifying speculation that Santorum, hoping to avoid the embarrassment of losing in his own home state, would bow out of the race.”

“Former Sen. Rick Santorum’s (Pa.) support for a troubled Clinton administration judicial nominee is drawing fresh scrutiny from conservatives as the GOP presidential candidate struggles to regain his footing against presumptive nominee Mitt Romney,” Roll Call writes. “Some Republicans see Santorum’s 1998 backing of Frederica Massiah-Jackson to be a district court judge in Philadelphia as conflicting with the staunch conservative persona he has put forward.”