By Samson Reiny Playing with one of the more enduring controversies of his administration, President Obama joked on Tuesday that he had the perfect place for a gift confirming his Irish heritage: right next to his much ballyhooed birth certificate.

Visiting Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny gave Obama the “formal certificate” at an evening reception in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, which earlier saw Maryland Governor Martin  O’Malley singing upbeat Gaelic-inspired tunes alongside a band.

“This will have a special place of honor alongside my birth certificate,” Obama said to raucous applause and laughter.

A lot of brouhaha was made over Obama’s ancestral ties to the island nation.

The president recounted his third great grandfather Falmouth Kearney’s immigration from the town of Moneygall — which Obama visited as part of his official trip to Ireland last May– to New York City in 1850. He went on to praise Irish influence in American culture and history.

“The green strands they have woven into America’s heart, from their tiniest villages to our greatest cities, is something truly unique on the world stage,” Obama said.

On hand to help the president celebrate the occasion was his eighth cousin Henry Healy, whom the president met on his visit last year. Healy had also accompanied the president  Saturday to the The Dubliner, a Washington pub , where they shared a pint  of Guinness.

A question about contraception caused a flareup in the culture wars during the last Republican presidential debate before next week’s Arizona and Michigan primaries and “Super Tuesday.”

The question drew boos from the audience and impassioned statements from the four candidates on the stage in Mesa, Arizona, last night.

“Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why?” was the question posed via cnnpolitics.com.

It sparked a lengthy discourse by the candidates on religious freedom, contraception, and family structure. None of the White House hopefuls directly responded to the question.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has taken on the media in previous debates, said it was legitimate to question “the power of the government to impose on religion activities which any religion opposes,” before questioning CNN moderator John King and zeroing in on Democrat Barack Obama.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney provided backup, saying Obama had launched “the worst attack on religious conscience in the history of the United States.”

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he wasn’t questioning Barack Obama’s faith on Saturday when he said the Democratic president’s agenda was based on “some phony theology.”

Santorum explained his comments during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, saying he was questioning the president’s world view — not his faith.

“I accept the fact that the president’s Christian,” Santorum said. “I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man says that, you know, we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the earth by things that are frankly just not scientifically proven.”

A devout Roman Catholic and social conservative, Santorum brought up the theology issue a day earlier in Columbus, Ohio, as he addressed supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement. (Here’s the story from Reuters’ Sam Jacobs)

On ABC’s “This Week,” Robert Gibbs, a senior advisor to Obama’s re-election campaign said Santorum’s “phony theology” comment crosses a line and was dragging the presidential campaign down.

“I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line,” Gibbs said. “It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems that we all face together as Americans.”

Here’s Santorum on “Face the Nation”

“It was a stupid joke,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says about a wealthy backer’s “aspirins for contraceptives” comment.

Whatever it was, Santorum — a staunch social conservative – said he’s not going to be responsible for what his supporters say.

“I’m not going to play that game,” the former Pennsylvania senator told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Thursday night when asked about what Foster Friess said earlier in the day.

Friess, the chief donor to the pro-Santorum SuperPAC, was asked whether he had any concerns about the candidate’s views on social issues. Part of his response raised eyebrows.

“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

Here’s video from the MSNBC interview:

For a $100 donation, this free poster of Newt Gingrich and his conservative “Dream Team” can be yours.

The poster — featuring the Republican presidential candidate flanked by endorsers of his White House bid  — was offered to supporters Tuesday in a new fundraising appeal.

The Dream Team photo was unveiled at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington last week. The Gingrich campaign said it was hit, and now conservatives across the  country are clamoring for a copy of their own.

We wondered whether the Gingrich folks were inspired by the reported success of rival Rick Santorum’s sweater vest campaign.  But there was no immediate response to an email inquiry about the initial poster offering.

By its own account, the Santorum campaign’s  “thank you” gift to small donors — supporters without SuperPAC money — has been a hit too.

The Santorum camp has  “extended by popular demand” — for a limited time — its offer of  the official Rick Santorum For President sweater vest, which can be had for a minimum contribution of $100.  “It’s a great way to show your support for Rick,” the campaign says, describing the vest  as 100 percent cotton, made in the USA, and grey (shouldn’t that be g-r-a-y?).

And that’s not even the biggest acknowledgement being offered to people willing to make small contributions to their favorite candidate.

Valentine’s Day is as good a day as any for China and the United States to work on the kinks in their relationship.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping signaled beforehand that tending to the state of the  “dynamic and promising” U.S.-China connection would be the at the heart of his White House visit on Tuesday.

The economic and trade relationship between the two countries is far too important to be frayed by “frictions and differences,” Xi wrote in a Q&A submitted to the Washington Post and published on the eve of his White House meeting with President Barack Obama.

“What is important is that we properly handle these differences through coordination based on equality, mutual benefit, mutual understanding and mutual accommodation. We must not allow frictions and differences to undermine the larger interests of our business cooperation,” Xi wrote.

The man many see as China’s leader-in-waiting promised to do better and called on the United States to make an effort too — but he might not be feeling any love from the Republicans seeking to upset Obama in the Nov. 6 election.

Tough talk on China has been a recurring theme on the campaign trail — especially for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.  He calls China a cheater and says, if elected, he’d work  to get Bejing labeled a currency manipulator,  something the U.S. Treasury has so far refrained from doing.

In a speech last week, the Republican lumped China with Russia and jihadism. (It didn’t have the same ring of George W. Bush’s axis of evil, but the point was made.) Romney, a leading candidate now tied in recent polls, said that trio threatened to compete with the United States and the West for world leadership.

By Judy Wiley

Roughly  1,000 supporters filled the Fairview Farms Corral Barn in Plano, Texas and spilled out the door  of the party hall where they’d come to see the man in the day’s political spotlight — Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum.

Those who stood outside in the cold could only hear bits and pieces of Santorum’s talk, but that didn’t stop them from cheering after he raised his voice to declare, “Now is the time for America to rise up and say, “Enough!”

They took up a chant of “We pick Rick,” after he asked, “Are you going to give me the opportunity?”

Santorum’s  visit  to The Lone Star State opened  14 miles away in McKinney at a forum with  local pastors. Between the Bella Donna Chapel  and the barn at Fairview Farms, there was a stop at a Plano hotel ballroom where some 300 supporters turned out to “meet-and-greet” Santorum.

The Wednesday night rally at the Corral Barn  capped a  Texas campaign swing, with an exuberant Santorum buoyed  by  his three-state sweep in Tuesday’s GOP  nominating contests.

Joseph Cabrera and his sister Esperanza Cabrera of Dallas were in Plano with her two daughters — at their first political rally — but never got inside the 8,200 square foot barn behind Mario’s Chiquita Restaurant.