A top EPA official has resigned after coming under scrutiny for 2010 remarks in which he compared the agency's enforcement strategy to Roman crucifixion.

Al Armendariz, the top environmental official in the oil-rich South and Southwest region, resigned in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Sunday, saying he did not want to be a distraction for the agency. The resignation is effective Monday .

"As I have expressed publicly, and to you directly, I regret comments I made several years ago that do not in any way reflect my work as regional administrator. As importantly, they do not represent the work you have overseen as EPA administrator," he wrote. "I take great pride in having built a career based on integrity and hard work. These are the principles that guide me personally as well.

Lake in the Hills, Ill. - Whether it's high gas prices, social security, paying off the national debt, or encouraging innovation in America, Newt Gingrich has big solutions for them all: increased domestic drilling, private savings accounts, the vision of a settlement on the moon.

Now, after two humbling defeats in Alabama and Mississippi, Gingrich told reporters he is ready to make changes to his campaign, "I think what you'll see is a much clearer definition of a visionary conservative as compared to the more traditional Romney Santorum conservatism."

But prompted for more details - would he plan to hone his message so it doesn't sound like he has an array of ideas - Gingrich said, "No, I'm going to fine tune my message to say, without vision the people perish. We need a visionary leader with very big and bold ideas.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA., praised passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act on Thursday and criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for deriding it.

“We have to start somewhere,” Cantor said during an interview on Special Report with Bret Baier.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Soaring gasoline prices are threatening to undercut President Barack Obama's re-election prospects and offering Republicans an easy target. With prices pushing $4 a gallon and threatening to go even higher, Obama sought Thursday to confront rising public anxiety and strike back at his GOP critics.

"Only in politics do people root for bad news, do they greet bad news so enthusiastically," Obama said of Republicans. "You pay more; they're licking their chops."

Obama said dismissively that all the Republicans can talk about is more drilling — "a bumper sticker ... a strategy to get politicians through an election" — when the nation's energy challenges demand much more. In a speech in Miami, he promoted the expansion of domestic oil and gas exploration but also the development of new forms of energy.

For all the political claims, economists say there's not much a president of either party can do about gasoline prices. Certainly not in the short term.

The Heritage Foundation has issued a new report that charges the Obama administration sent presidential earmarks, taxpayer dollars, to Democratic lawmakers to help convince them to vote for controversial proposals such as cap and trade and the health care bill.

"When you examine the recipients of those grants, there were at least 32 vulnerable house Democrats who received significant federal grant money during the run-up or directly after the votes on those pieces of legislation," says Lachlan Markay, one of the authors of the report.

The amount of earmarks spiked around the time of difficult votes such as cap and trade, then dropped, only to spike again around controversial financial regulations known as Dodd/Frank, and spiked the most just before the vote on the health care bill.

Cap and trade was tough for many Democrats, especially in the Midwest, because even the president acknowledged it would, as he put it, cause energy prices to "skyrocket."

The health care law rema

President Obama's re-elect team defended White House energy policy on Sunday as gas prices shoot toward the $4 mark and beyond, a level that could devastate voters' pocketbooks as well as Obama's chances for a second term.

Nationally, gas prices are $3.53 a gallon, up 25 cents since Jan. 1, and likely headed to $4.25 a gallon by late April. Republicans have demanded more oil production at home, as well as building the Keystone XL pipeline across the middle of the U.S. to allow oil from Canada to reach Texas refineries.

Obama rejected the plan, but one of his spokesmen, Robert Gibbs, said the president is looking to increase domestic energy production.

"Just on Friday, the Department of Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic. The president has increased our fuel efficiency and energy efficiency standards so we do use less energy, which will help drive down the price," Gibbs said.

House Republicans plan to punt until late February a controversial transportation bill that includes a provision to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline, as rank-and-file Republicans raise concerns and the White House issues a veto threat.

Some conservatives in the House GOP caucus oppose the levels of highway spending in the bill, despite efforts by Republican leaders to pay for the provisions and strip out earmarks, as well as include sweeteners like the Keystone rider.

On the other side, the Obama administration says the bill doesn't spend enough, and is adamantly opposed to congressional meddling in the pipeline debate.

Complicating matters is the fact that nearly 300 amendments have been filed to the package.

Amid the debate, senior House GOP leaders told Fox News on Wednesday that they do not intend to finish the bill until late February. Formal debate on the bill was likely to begin on Thursday...

President Obama's State of the Union blueprint for economic recovery relies heavily on government intervention and tax hikes on the wealthy, but will likely do little to lower the temperature in Washington or gain traction in an election year, say lawmakers and analysts who wonder why the president didn't address the most critical factor for growth -- eliminating debt.

President Obama heads out on the road Wednesday to visit battlegrounds states where he will try to sell his agenda, and his reelection bid, outlined in a lengthy address to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night.

In an ambitious speech that focused on manufacturing, clean energy investment and educational training as economic opportunities, the president said he wants to return America to prosperity by eliminating inequalities that he claims favor the rich at the expense of the rest. He prioritized extending a payroll tax cut and suggested raising the rates on wealthy Americans to pay for it.

In an election-year decision that pits the Democrats’ twin pillars of big labor and environmentalists against each other, the Obama administration Wednesday rejected the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have provided tens of thousands of jobs from the Canadian border to Texas.

President Obama issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying he agreed with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decision to reject the $7 billion, 1,700-mile project, which would have carried oil from tar sands in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. He said the project as proposed “would not serve the national interest.”

The State Department was involved because the project would have crossed an international border.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Mr.

The State Department will announce the decision on Keystone XL pipeline is "no," as early as Wednesday, an industry source told Fox News, suggesting that the department will say 60 days is inadequate time to do the required environmental impact assessment on the path of the coveted pipeline.

But State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in her afternoon briefing that she had nothing to share.

"As of 30 seconds before I walked in, it was my understanding that a decision had not yet been made," she said.

For three years, the State Department has been reviewing the initial proposal to run a pipeline from Canada down to Texas through a sensitive Nebraska aquifer -- authority it has because of the transnational path the route takes.