(Reuters) - Republican challenger Mitt Romney has extended his lead over President Barack Obama to 3 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Thursday, ahead of a high-stakes debate between the two candidates' running mates.

Romney now leads the Democrat by 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the online poll, with less than a month before the November 6 election. The Republican had a one-point lead over Obama in survey results on Wednesday, his first in more than a month.

Romney has been enjoying one of his best runs of the campaign after handily winning the first presidential debate last week, partially due to Obama's passive performance in that contest.

"The momentum is in Romney's direction right now," Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said...

"...the budget that [Rep. Paul Ryan] came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion. ... The president came out with his own plan and the president, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I don't think anybody took that budget very seriously."

-- Erskine Bowles, Democratic co-chairman of President Obama's debt and deficit commission, in a Sept. 8, 2011 speech at the University of North Carolina.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have been escalating their attacks in the days since soon-to-be Republican nominee Mitt Romney tapped Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to be his wingman. But not in the way everyone expected.

Suggesting Republicans want to enslave people and reverting to a 29-year-old charge that Romney was unkind to his dog isn't where the Democratic debate was supposed to be today.

Mitt Romney has selected strongly pro-life Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate. Ryan is a Wisconsin congressman know for his conservative stances on fiscal and budget issues but he is very strongly pro-life — saying he would never vote for abortion.

Ryan has made a solid pro-life pledge that will endear him to millions of voters looking for a pro-life Vice President to replace pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden.

During the 2010 elections, Ryan told The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, “I’m as pro-life as a person gets.”

He responded to a controversial “truce” that Mitch Daniels of Indiana had put forward saying social issues should be put on the back burner, and repudiated it.

“You’re not going to have a truce. Judges are going to come up.

President Obama is expected to discuss his position on same-sex marriage during a hastily arranged interview at the White House Wednesday afternoon, a source close to the president told Fox News.

The source, who is a Democratic adviser outside the White House, said Obama during this interview is likely to go further than he has in the past on the controversial topic.

"He'll make some news," the source said. "He's not just going to talk about old ground ... and will not be rehashing" his old position...

Vice President Joe Biden spoke to students at Iowa State University yesterday afternoon and admitted that the Obama Administration “screwed up” on protecting rights of conscience when the Obama administration issued its controversial mandate.

“I was the one that was tasked to meet with the National Conference of Bishops, and others and Cardinal Dolan, to talk about this,” Biden said in videotaped remarks that are making their way across the Internet today. “The fact of the matter is, the ultimate resolution to this problem is where it should have been in the first place.”

“The conscience clause is being honored in its literal sense. What is happening now is that we have been able to provide what was hard to set up — it got screwed up in the first iteration — is that any hospital, no matter where it is, no matter who runs it, profit or non profit, religious based or otherwise, has to provide insurance to their employees like everybody else does,” he said...

ATHENS, Greece – U.S.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Monday that Vice President Joseph Biden's comments tying passage of the White House jobs proposal to lowering the nation's rape and murder statistics were "strange."

"Vice President Biden has had a bit of a language-control problem over the years and this just adds to the list of very strange things he has said," the former Massachusetts governor, vying for front-runner status in the GOP race, said in an interview on The Washington Times-affiliated "America's Morning News" radio program.

Mr. Biden has "probably forgotten that the new stimulus plan the president has introduced has been turned down by the Democrats in the Senate. His own party has turned it down," Mr. Romney said. "Because they looked at the first stimulus and it did not work...

Republicans are stepping up their criticism of Vice President Biden for his claim that rapes and murders will climb if Congress does not approve proposed aid for police and first responders.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said the vice president is using "fear tactics." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Biden's remarks were "over the top."

And as the Senate Thursday night turned down a pared-back jobs bill to send $35 billion to the states for teachers and first responders, the Republican National Committee threw up a web video accusing Biden of using "scare tactics" to try to push it through. The video excerpted several remarks, including Biden's claim to a reporter this week that "murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise" without more aid.

Texas governor Rick Perry has quickly vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential race and he now faces questions from pro-life advocates about what he would do as president. One news report says Perry has answered one question by saying he would name a pro-life Vice President.

A pro-life vice president is important for any presidential administration, as pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden reconfirmed recently when he failed to condemn the forced abortions and other human rights abuses associated with the one-child policy in China.

Paul Bedard of U.S.

Joblessness looms large in the 2012 race for the White House and with unemployment hovering above 9 percent, on September 6 former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is poised to release his plan to put Americans back to work just days before President Obama plans to unveil his latest jobs bill.

In a Keene, New Hampshire town hall meeting on Wednesday, Romney touted his business experience before a crowd of 200 people, saying it would help him create jobs if he's elected president.

"I think that if you want to create jobs it helps to have had a job, and I have," Romney said. "I want to make this the most attractive place in the world to grow a business"...