Coordinates	23°32′28″N46°22′08″N
name	Missouri
fullname	State of Missouri
former	Missouri Territory
flag	Flag of Missouri.svg
seal	Seal of Missouri.svg
map	Map of USA MO.svg
nickname	The Show-Me State (unofficial)
motto	Salus populi suprema lex esto (Latin)
mottoenglish	Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law
capital	Jefferson City
largestcity	Kansas City
largestmetro	Greater St Louis Area
demonym	Missourian
governor	Jay Nixon (D)
lieutenant governor	Peter Kinder (R)
legislature	General Assembly
upperhouse	Senate
lowerhouse	House of Representatives
senators	Claire McCaskill (D)Roy Blunt (R)
representative	6 Republicans, 3 Democrats
postalabbreviation	MO
officiallang	English
arearank	21st
totalareaus	69,704
totalarea	180,533
landareaus	68,886
landarea	178,415
waterareaus	818
waterarea	2,119
pcwater	1.17
poprank	18th
2000pop	(2010) 5,988,927
densityrank	30th
2000densityus	88.3 (2010)
2000density	33.62
humandevelopmentindex	0.912
medianhouseholdincome	$46,867
incomerank	35th
admittanceorder	24th
admittancedate	August 10, 1821
timezone	Central: UTC-6/-5
latitude	36° N to 40° 37′ N
longitude	89° 6′ W to 95° 46′ W
widthus	240
width	385
lengthus	300
length	480
highestpoint	Taum Sauk Mountain
highestelevus	1,772
highestelev	540
meanelevus	800
meanelev	240
lowestpoint	St. Francis River
lowestelevus	230
lowestelev	70
isocode	US-MO
website	www.mo.gov }}

name	Missouri
bird	Bluebird
amphibian	American Bullfrog
fish	Channel Catfish
grass	Big bluestem
flower	White hawthorn
insect	Honey bee
mammal	Missouri Mule
tree	Flowering Dogwood
dinosaur	''Hypsibema missouriensis''
dance	Square Dance
dessert	Ice Cream Cone
fossil	Crinoid
gemstone	Aquamarine
mineral	Galena
musical instrument	Fiddle
staterock	Mozarkite
slogan	''Show Me (unofficial)''
song	"Missouri Waltz"
Route marker	MO-blank.svg
Quarter	Missouri quarter, reverse side, 2003.jpg
quarterreleasedate	2003 }}

Missouri () or () is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It comprises 114 counties and one independent city. Missouri's capital is Jefferson City. The four largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. Missouri was originally acquired from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase and became defined as the Missouri Territory. Part of the Missouri Territory was admitted into the union as the 24th state on August 10, 1821.

Missouri mirrors the demographic, economic and political makeup of the nation (in general) with a mix of urban and rural culture. It has long been considered a political bellwether state. With the exceptions of 1956 and 2008, Missouri's results in U.S. presidential elections have accurately predicted the next President of the United States in every election since 1904. It has both Midwestern and Southern cultural influences, reflecting its history as a border state. It is also a transition between the Eastern and Western United States, as St. Louis is often called the "western-most Eastern city" and Kansas City the "eastern-most Western city." Missouri's geography is highly varied. The northern part of the state lies in dissected till plains while the southern part lies in the Ozark Mountains (a dissected plateau), with the Missouri River dividing the two. The confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers is located near St. Louis. The starting points of the Pony Express Trail and Oregon Trail were both in Missouri. The mean center of United States population is currently the town of Plato in Texas County, Missouri.

Etymology

The state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the Siouan-language tribe. They were called the ''ouemessourita'' (''wimihsoorita''), meaning "those who have dugout canoes", by the Miami-Illinois language speakers. The Illini were the first natives encountered by Europeans in the region and they adopted the name of the Missouri from them. Bob Dyer's tribute song, "River of the Big Canoes" is based on that etymology.

Geography

Missouri borders eight different states, as does its neighbor, Tennessee. No state in the U.S. touches more than eight states. Missouri is bounded on the north by Iowa; on the east, across the Mississippi River, by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; on the south by Arkansas; and on the west by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River). The two largest Missouri rivers are the Mississippi, which defines the eastern boundary of the state, and the Missouri River, which flows from west to east through the state, essentially connecting the two largest metros, Kansas City and St. Louis.

Although today the state is usually considered part of the Midwest, historically Missouri was considered by many to be a Southern state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War. The counties that made up "Little Dixie" were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.

Residents of cities and rural areas farther north and of the state's large metropolitan areas, where most of the state's population resides (Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia), typically consider themselves Midwestern.

In 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling , giving it $7.41 mil. in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.

Topography

North of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, gentle rolling hills remain from the glaciation that once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.

The southeastern part of the state is the Bootheel region, part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or Mississippi embayment. This region is the lowest, flattest, and wettest part of the state. It is also among the poorest, as the economy is mostly agricultural. It is also the most fertile, with cotton and rice crops predominant. The Bootheel was the epicenter of the four New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812.

Climate

Missouri generally has a humid continental climate (Koppen climate classification Dfa) with cold winters and hot and humid summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate borders on a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa). Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extremes in temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954 while the lowest recorded temperature is also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.

Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of thunderstorms and powerful tornadoes. The most recent EF5 tornado in the state to cause damage and casualties was the 2011 Joplin tornado, which destroyed roughly 1/3 of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1–3 billion dollars in damages, killed 159 (+1 non-tornadic), and injured over 1,000 people. The tornado was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957. The tornado was the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the 7th deadliest tornado in American history, but the 27th deadliest in the world.

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History

Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeological excavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE, there arose the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans, because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.

The first European settlers were mostly ethnic French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day Ste. Genevieve, about an hour south of St. Louis. They had migrated about 1750 from the Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. Ste. Genevieve became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans.

St. Louis was founded soon after by French from New Orleans. It became the center of a regional fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which dominated the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury goods. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy, and as the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the steamboat and the increased river trade.

Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname "Gateway to the West" because it served as a major departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West in the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which departed up the Missouri River in 1804 to explore the western territories to the Pacific Ocean. St. Louis was a major supply point for decades for parties of settlers heading west. As many of the early American settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans for labor, and a desire to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as "Little Dixie". In 1821 the territory was admitted as a slave state in 1821 as part of the Missouri Compromise with a temporary state capitol in St. Charles. In 1826 the capital was shifted to its permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri.

The state was rocked by the 1812 New Madrid earthquake. Casualties were light due to the sparse population.

Originally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1835 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about to Virginia's 65,000 square miles (which then included West Virginia).

In the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an "Extermination Order" by Governor Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcefully expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands.

Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. In 1838–1839 a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling up militias along the border.

With increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most of the newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As they were mostly Catholic, they mostly set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Having fled famine and oppression in Ireland, and revolutionary upheaval in Germany, the immigrants were not sympathetic to slavery. Many settled in cities, where they created a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. Nineteenth-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.

Most Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than 5 each. Planters, defined by historians as those holding 20 or more slaves, were concentrated in the counties known as "Little Dixie", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery had chiefly to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860 enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012. To try to control regular flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, by 1860 the state had completed construction of of levees along the river.

American Civil War

After the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union. Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. Alarmed at this action, Union General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and they opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them. Soldiers killed unarmed prisoners as well as men, women and children of St. Louis in the incident that became known as the "St. Louis Massacre".

These events heightened Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session. They enacted a secession ordinance. However, even under the Southern view of secession, only the state convention had the sole power to secede. Since the convention was dominated by unionists, and the state was more pro-Union than pro-Confederate in any event, the ordinance of secession adopted by the legislature is generally given little credence. The Confederacy nonetheless recognized it on October 30, 1861.

With the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save 20 that fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant, and installed Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state as well as volunteer regiments for the Union Army.

Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.

Though regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. "Citizen soldiers" or insurgents such as Colonel William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Recently historians have assessed the James brothers' outlaw years as continuing guerrilla warfare after the official war was over. The activities of the 'Bald Knobbers' of south-central Missouri in the 1880s has also been seen as an unofficial continuation of insurgent hostilities long after the official end of the war.

20th century to present

In 1930, there was a diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic.

During the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other Midwestern industrial cities. In 1956 St. Charles was the site of the first interstate highway project. Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.

Demographics

According to the 2010 Census, Missouri had a population of 5,988,927; an increase of 392,369 (7.0 percent) since the year 2000. From 2000 to 2007, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths), and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. Over half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state's two largest metropolitan areas–-St. Louis and Kansas City. The state's population density 86.9 in 2009, is also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state.

The U.S. Census of 2000 found that the population center of the United States is in Phelps County, Missouri. The center of population of Missouri itself is located in Osage County, in the city of Westphalia.

As of 2004, the population included 194,000 foreign-born (3.4 percent of the state population). The five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent). "American" includes some of those reported as Native American or African American, but also European Americans whose ancestors have lived in the United States for a considerable time.

German Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis, Kansas City, and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Eastern Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Southern Missouri.

In 2004, 6.6 percent of the state's population was reported as younger than 5 years old, 25.5 percent younger than 18, and 13.5 percent was 65 or older. Females were approximately 51.4 percent of the population. 81.3 percent of Missouri residents were high school graduates (more than the national average), and 21.6 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. 3.4 percent of Missourians were foreign-born, and 5.1 percent reported speaking a language other than English at home.

In 2000, there were 2,194,594 households in Missouri, with 2.48 people per household. The homeownership rate was 70.3 percent, and the mean value of an owner-occupied dwelling was $89,900. The median household income for 1999 was $37,934, or $19,936 per capita. There were 11.7 percent (637,891) Missourians living below the poverty line in 1999.

The mean commute time to work was 23.8 minutes.

Language

The majority of people in Missouri speak English. Approximately 5.1 percent of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home. The Spanish language is spoken in small Latino communities in the St. Louis and Kansas City Metro areas.

Missouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves ''Creoles'', are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French and Louisiana Creole French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.

Religion

Of those Missourians who identify with a religion, three out of five are Protestants. There is also a moderate-sized Roman Catholic community in some parts of the state; approximately one out of five Missourians are Roman Catholic. Areas with large Catholic communities include St. Louis, Jefferson City, Westplex, and the Missouri Rhineland (particularly that south of the Missouri River). The St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas also have important Jewish communities who have contributed much to the culture and charities of the cities; more recently, those same areas have Indian and Pakistani immigrants, who have created Hindu and Muslim congregations as well.

The religious affiliations of the people of Missouri according to the American Religious Identification Survey:

Christian – 77%

*Anglican – 4%

**Episcopal – 4%

*Protestant – 45% (Combined)

**Baptist – 22%

**Methodist – 7%

**Lutheran – 4%

**Other Protestant – 12%

*Roman Catholic – 19%

*Latter Day-Saint – 1%*

*Other or unspecified Christian – 8%

Other religions – 2%

Not religious – 15%

No answer – 5%

The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2000 were the Roman Catholic Church with 856,964; the Southern Baptist Convention with 797,732; and the United Methodist Church with 226,578.

Several religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis. Kansas City is the headquarters of the Church of the Nazarene. Independence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which maintains several sites/visitors centers, and whose members make up about 1 percent, or 62,217 members, of Missouri's population. Springfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Pentecostal Church of God is headquartered in Joplin. The Unity Church is headquartered in Unity Village.

Economy

The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Missouri's total state product in 2006 was $225.9 billion. Per capita personal income in 2006 was $32,705, ranking 26^th in the nation. Major industries include aerospace, transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing, electrical equipment, light manufacturing, and beer.

The agriculture products of the state are beef, soybeans, pork, dairy products, hay, corn, poultry, sorghum, cotton, rice, and eggs. Missouri is ranked 6th in the nation for the production of hogs and 7th for cattle. Missouri is ranked in the top five states in the nation for production of soy beans. As of 2001, there were 108,000 farms, the second largest number in any state after Texas. Missouri actively promotes its rapidly growing wine industry.

Missouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all of the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portion of the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.

Tourism, services and wholesale/retail trade follow manufacturing in importance.

Personal income is taxed in 10 different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5 percent to 6.0 percent. Missouri's sales tax rate for most items is 4.225 percent. Additional local levies may apply. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property. Most personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges and for purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.

Missouri is the only state in the Union to have two Federal Reserve Banks: one in Kansas City (serving western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, northern New Mexico, and Wyoming) and one in St. Louis (serving eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and all of Arkansas).

As of January 2010, the state’s unemployment rate is 9.5%.

Transportation

Air

The state of Missouri has two major airport hubs: Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and Kansas City International Airport.

Rail

Two of the nation's three busiest rail centers are located in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad. Kansas City is the second largest freight rail center in the US (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Amtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee's Summit, Independence, Warrensburg, Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff.

The only urban light rail/subway system in Missouri is the St. Louis MetroLink which connects the city of St. Louis with suburbs in Illinois and St. Louis County. It is one of the largest (track mileage) systems in the USA. In 2007 preliminary planning was being performed for a light rail system in the Kansas City area, but was defeated by voters in November 2008.

The Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in St. Louis is the largest active multi-use transportation center in the state. It is located in Downtown St. Louis next to the historic St. Louis Union Station complex. It serves as a hub center/station for the city's rail system St. Louis MetroLink and regional bus system St. Louis MetroBus, Greyhound, Amtrak and city taxi services.

Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.

Bus

Many cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound, Trailways, and Megabus all provide inter-city bus service in Missouri.

Rivers

The Mississippi River and Missouri River are commercially navigable over their entire lengths in Missouri. The Missouri was channelized through dredging and jettys and the Mississippi was given a series of locks and dams to avoid rocks and deepen the river. St. Louis is a major destination for barge traffic on the Mississippi River.

Roads

:''Main article List of Missouri highways'' Several highways, detailed below, traverse the state.

Following the passage of Amendment 3 in late 2004, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) began its Smoother, Safer, Sooner road-building program with a goal of bringing of highways up to good condition by December 2007. From 2006–2008 traffic deaths have decreased annually from 1,257 in 2005, to 1,096 in 2006, to 974 for 2007, to 941 for 2008.

Interstate freeways

20px Interstate 55, 25px Interstate 155, 25px Interstate 255 (the perimeter around the Illinois side of St. Louis)

20px Interstate 49 (In Progress)

20px Interstate 66 (Proposed)

United States Routes

''North-south routes''	''East-west routes''
	25px U.S. Route 460 (decommissioned in Missouri) 20px U.S. Route 66 (decommissioned)

Law and government

Framework

The current Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise the Missouri General Assembly.

The House of Representatives has 163 members who are apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts, sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield), and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the election of 2008, all but one of Missouri's statewide elected offices are held by Democrats.

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945–1953), was born in Lamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected Vice-President in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring.

Status as a political bellwether

+ Past Presidential Elections Results
! Year	Republican Party (United States)>Republican	Democratic Party (United States)>Democratic	Third party (United States)>Third Parties
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Missouri is widely regarded as a state bellwether in American politics. The state has a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted with the nation in every election since 1904 with two exceptions: in 1956 when it voted for Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois over the winner, incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower of Kansas, and in 2008 when it voted for Senator John McCain of Arizona over national winner Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, both by extremely narrow margins. Missouri was the closest state in both of those presidential elections.

Laissez-faire alcohol and tobacco laws

Missouri has been known for its population's generally "stalwart, conservative, noncredulous" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the "Show-Me State." As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol and tobacco-producing states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America.

With a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referenda in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934. Today, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (thus allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. Missouri had no laws prohibiting "consumption" of alcohol by minors (as opposed to possession), and state law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication. Missouri law expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry. Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children. The Power & Light District in Kansas City is one of the few places in the United States where a state law explicitly allows persons over the age of 21 to possess and consume open containers of alcohol in the street (as long as the beverage is in a plastic cup).

As for tobacco, as of May 2010 Missouri has the lowest cigarette excise taxes in the United States, and the electorate voted in 2002 and 2006 to keep it that way. In 2007, ''Forbes'' named Missouri's largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, America's "best city for smokers." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 Missouri had the fourth highest percentage of adult smokers among U.S states, at 24.5%. Although Missouri's minimum age for purchase and distribution of tobacco products is 18, tobacco products can be distributed to persons under 18 by family members on private property. No statewide smoking ban ever has been seriously entertained before the Missouri General Assembly, and in October 2008, a statewide survey by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found that only 27.5% of Missourians support a statewide ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants. Missouri state law permits bars, restaurants which seat less than 50 people, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors to decide their own smoking policies, without limitation.

Additionally, in Missouri, it is "an improper employment practice" for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or otherwise to disadvantage any person because that person lawfully uses alcohol and/or tobacco products when he or she is not at work.

Counties

Missouri has 114 counties and one independent city (St. Louis).

The largest county by size is Texas County (1,179 sq. miles) and Shannon County is second (1,004 sq. miles). Worth County is the smallest (266 sq. miles). The independent city of St. Louis has only of area. St. Louis City is the most densely populated area (5,724.7 per sq. mi.) in Missouri.

The largest county by population (2008 estimate) is St. Louis County (991,830 residents), with Jackson County second (668,417 residents), St. Louis third (354,361), and St. Charles fourth (349,407). Worth County is the least populous with 2,039 residents.

Important cities and towns

Jefferson City is the state capital of Missouri.

The five largest cities in Missouri are Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Independence, and Columbia.

St. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, comprising seventeen counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of those counties lie in the state of Illinois. As of 2009, St. Louis was the 18th largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.83 million people. However, if ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is 15th largest with 2.89 million people. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis Metro area in Missouri include St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Creve Coeur, Wildwood, Maryland Heights, O'Fallon, Clayton, Ballwin, and University City.

Kansas City is Missouri's largest city and the principal city of the fifteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including six counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2009, it was the 29th largest metropolitan area in the nation, with 2.068 million people. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Raytown, Liberty, and Gladstone.

Branson is a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri.

Education

Missouri State Board of Education

The Missouri State Board of Education has general authority over all public education in the state of Missouri. It is made up of eight citizens appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.

Primary and secondary schools

Education is compulsory from ages seven to seventeen per Statute 167.031, RSMo, states that any parent, guardian or other person having custody or control of a child between the ages of seven (7) and the compulsory attendance age for the district, must ensure that the child is enrolled in and regularly attends public, private, parochial school, home school or a combination of schools for the full term of the school year.

The term "compulsory attendance age for the district" shall mean seventeen (17) years of age or having successfully completed sixteen (16) credits towards high school graduation in all other cases. Children between the ages of five (5) and seven (7) are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school their parent, guardian or custodian must ensure that they regularly attend. Missouri schools are commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. The public schools system includes kindergarten to 12^th grade. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district. High school athletics and competitions are governed by the Missouri State High School Activities Association or MSHSAA.

Homeschooling is legal in Missouri and is an option to meet the compulsory education requirement. It is neither monitored nor regulated by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

A supplemental education program, the Missouri Scholars Academy, provides an extracurricular learning experience for gifted high school students in the state of Missouri. The official MSA website describes the goals of the Academy to be as such: "The academy reflects Missouri's desire to strive for excellence in education at all levels. The program is based on the premise that Missouri's gifted youth must be provided with special opportunities for learning and personal development in order for them to realize their full potential."

Another highly accepted gifted school is the Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which is located at the Northwest Missouri State University.

Colleges and universities

The University of Missouri System is Missouri's statewide public university system. The flagship institution and largest university in the state is the University of Missouri in Columbia. The others in the system are University of Missouri–Kansas City, University of Missouri–St. Louis, and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), University of Central Missouri (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905), Missouri Western State University (1915), and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris-Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.

Among private institutions Washington University in St. Louis is a top 20 university and Saint Louis University is ranked in the top 70s. There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A. T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world. Hannibal-LaGrange University in Hannibal, MO, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, MO, and moved to Hannibal, MO, in 1928).

The state funds a $2000, renewable merit-based scholarship, Bright Flight, given to the top three percent of Missouri high school graduates who attend a university in-state.

The 19th century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between the University of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry is chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities. It is the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi River and the second oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities meet to play, the game is coined "Border War." An exchange occurs following the game where the winner gets to take a historic Indian War Drum, which has been passed back and forth for decades.

Sports

Missouri hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics at St. Louis, the first time the games were hosted in the United States.

Professional Sports Teams

Major ouis Athletica''' (franchise folded in June 2010)

Major Indoor Soccer League: St. Louis Steamers and Kansas City Comets

Arena Football: Kansas City Brigade and River City Rage (UIFL)

World Team Tennis: Kansas City Explorers, Springfield Lasers and St. Louis Aces

Cycling: Tour of Missouri

Major League Baseball: St. Louis Cardinals and ''' Kansas City Royals

NFL St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs

NHL "'St. Louis Blues'"

Minor leagues

Baseball:

*Springfield Cardinals (Class AA, Texas League)

*River City Rascals (O'Fallon) (Independent, Frontier League)

*Chillicothe Mudcats (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*Excelsior Springs Cougars (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*Farmington Firebirds (Independent, KIT League)

*Joplin Outlaws (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*Marysville Magpies (Independent, Jayhawk League)

*Nevada Griffins (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*Ozark Generals (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*St. Joe Mustangs (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*Sedalia Bombers (Independent, M.I.N.K. League)

*St. Louis Tribe (Independent, MSBL National League)

*Sikeston Bulls (Independent, KIT League)

*Hannibal Cavemen (Prospect League) Kansas City T-bones (Kansas City)

Ice Hockey:

*St. Louis Chill (Midwest Hockey League)

*Missouri Mavericks (Central Hockey League)

Former professional sports teams

National Football League:

*St. Louis Cardinals (moved from Chicago in 1960; moved to Tempe, Arizona in 1988 and are now the Arizona Cardinals)

*St. Louis All Stars (active in 1923 only)

*Kansas City (NFL) (Blues/Cowboys) (active 1924–1926, folded)

*St. Louis Gunners (independent team, joined the NFL for the last three weeks of the 1934 season and folded thereafter)

Major League Baseball (American League):

*St. Louis Browns (moved from Milwaukee in 1902; moved to Baltimore, Maryland after the 1953 season and are now the Baltimore Orioles)

*Kansas City Athletics (moved from Philadelphia in 1955; moved to Oakland, California after the 1967 season and are now the Oakland Athletics)

National Basketball Association:

*St. Louis Bombers (charter BAA franchise in 1946, joined the NBA when it formed in 1949; ceased operations in 1950)

*St. Louis Hawks (moved from Milwaukee in 1955; moved to Atlanta in 1968 and are now the Atlanta Hawks)

*Kansas City Kings (moved to Sacramento in 1985 and are now the Sacramento Kings)

National Hockey League:

*Kansas City Scouts (1974 expansion team, moved to Denver, Colorado in 1976 and became the Colorado Rockies, and would move again to Newark, New Jersey; now called the New Jersey Devils)

*St. Louis Eagles (1934 relocation of the original Ottawa Senators, folded after the 1934–35 season)

Major League Soccer:

*Kansas City Wizards (founded in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1995; moved to Kansas City, Kansas in 2007)

Continental Basketball Association:

*Teams in Kansas City and St. Louis

Naval vessels

Four US Navy vessels have been named after the state.

, a sidewheel frigate launched in 1841 and destroyed by fire in 1843 , a ''Maine''-class battleship in service from 1900 to 1922 , an ''Iowa''-class battleship in service from 1944 to 1998; site of the official Japanese surrender of World War II; decommissioned in 1998; now a floating war memorial at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii , a ''Virginia''-class submarine joined the fleet after a commissioning ceremony July 31, 2010 at the Naval Submarine Base New London.

State nickname

The use of the unofficial nickname the Show-Me State has several possible origins. The phrase "I'm from Missouri" means 'I'm skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced'. This is related to the state's unofficial motto of "Show Me," whose origin is popularly ascribed to an 1899 speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver, who declared that "I come from a country that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me." However, according to researchers, the phrase was in circulation earlier in the 1890s. According to another legend, the phrase was a reference to Missouri miners brought to Leadville, Colorado to take the place of striking miners and being unfamiliar with the mining methods there required frequent instruction.

It has also been known as the Puke State, perhaps on account of an 1827 gathering at the Galena Lead Mines. "...so many Missourians had assembled, that those already there declared the State of Missouri had taken a 'puke.'" Within the state, “pukes” referred before the Civil War to impoverished citizens who nonetheless supported slavery, the equivalent of “poor white trash.” Walt Whitman has listed “pukes” as a nickname for Missourians.

Missouri is also known as "The Cave State" with over 6000 recorded caves (second to Tennessee). Perry County has both the largest number of caves and the single longest cave in the state.

Other nicknames include "The Lead State", "The Bullion State", "The Ozark State", "Mother of the West", "The Iron Mountain State", and "Pennsylvania of the West".

There is no official state nickname. However, the official state motto is "Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto", Latin for "Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law."

See also

List of National Register of Historic Places in Missouri

List of people from Missouri

Mississippi River

Missouri River

U.S. state

References

External links

Missouri Government

Missouri Digital Heritage

State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia

Missouri's African American History

Missouri State Tourism Office

Energy & Environmental Data for Missouri

USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Missouri

U.S. Census Bureau

*Missouri QuickFacts. Geographic and demographic information.

Missouri State Facts

List of searchable databases produced by Missouri state agencies hosted by the American Library Association Government Documents Roundtable.

Missouri History, Geology, Culture

Historic Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Missouri

1930 Platbooks of Missouri Counties

Category:States of the United States Category:States and territories established in 1821

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Coordinates	23°32′28″N46°22′08″N
birthname	Richard John Santorum
jr/sr	United States Senator
state	Pennsylvania
party	Republican
term	January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2007
preceded	Harris Wofford
succeeded	Bob Casey, Jr.
state2	Pennsylvania
district2	18th
term2	January 3, 1991 – January 3, 1995
preceded2	Doug Walgren
succeeded2	Mike Doyle
birth date	May 10, 1958
birth place	Winchester, Virginia
dead	alive
occupation	Attorney, politician
residence	Penn Hills, Pennsylvania
law school	Dickinson School of Law, 1986
spouse	Karen Garver Santorum
alma mater	Pennsylvania State University University of Pittsburgh Dickinson School of Law
religion	Christian (Roman Catholic)
footnotes	}}

Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum is a member of the Republican Party and was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative. He is known for his stances on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design, homosexuality, and the Terri Schiavo case.

In March 2007, Santorum joined the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC. He was to primarily practice law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., offices, where he was to provide business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. In addition to his work with the firm, Santorum also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a contributor to Fox News Channel.

Santorum is a candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on June 6.

Early life, education, and legal career

Santorum was born in Winchester, Virginia, and raised in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and Butler County, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Aldo Santorum (born 1923) and Catherine Keane (née Dughi; born 1918). His father was an Italian immigrant, and his mother was of half Italian and half Irish descent.

Both of Santorum's parents worked at the Veterans’ Administration (VA) Hospital in Butler, and the family lived on the VA hospital post. His father became licensed as a psychologist in August 1974. He attended schools in the Butler Area School District, where he gained the nickname “Rooster”, allegedly because he "always had a few errant hairs on the back of his head that refused to stay down", and he was "noisy, showy, dogged and determined like a rooster and never backed down".

Santorum graduated from Carmel High School in Mundelein, Illinois, in 1976, where his father transferred within the VA hospital system. He lists his residency as Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, and maintains a home in Leesburg, Virginia, for his work in Washington, D.C.

Santorum earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, having majored in Political Science, from The Pennsylvania State University in 1980, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. He is a member of Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity.

In 1986, Santorum earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the Dickinson School of Law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, and began practicing law in Pittsburgh. While working at the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, he represented the World Wrestling Federation, arguing that professional wrestling should be exempt from federal anabolic steroid regulations because it was not a sport. Santorum left private practice after first being elected to the House in November 1990.

Family

Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have seven children: Elizabeth Anne (born 1991); Richard John ("Johnny"), Jr. (born 1993); Daniel James (born 1995); Sarah Maria (born 1998); Peter Kenneth (born 1999); Patrick Francis (born 2001); and Isabella "Bella" Maria (born 2008). Bella was subsequently diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a serious genetic disorder which is fatal before birth in 90 per cent of cases. In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Oxytocin to speed the birth.

Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: ''Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum''. In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital. The anecdote was also written about by Michael Sokolove in a 2005 ''New York Times Magazine'' story on Santorum. Karen is also the author of a book on etiquette for children.

Santorum and his family usually attend Latin Mass at Saint Catherine of Siena Church, near Washington, D.C. On November 12, 2004, Santorum and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Political career

Santorum first became actively involved in politics through volunteering for the late Senator John Heinz.

After earning his Juris Doctor, Santorum became an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Doyle Corman (until 1986). He was director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's local government committee from 1981 to 1984, then director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's Transportation Committee until 1986.

In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 18th District, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset, defeating a seven-term Democratic incumbent, Doug Walgren. Although the 18th was heavily Democratic, Santorum attacked Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. He was re-elected in 1992, in part because the district lost its share of Pittsburgh as a result of redistricting. In Congress, as a member of the Gang of Seven, Santorum worked to expose congressional corruption by naming the guilty parties in the House banking scandal.

In 1994, at the age of 36, Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Harris Wofford, who was 32 years older. The theme of Santorum's 1994 campaign signs was "Join the Fight!" Santorum was re-elected in 2000 defeating Congressman Ron Klink by a 52.4% to 45.5% margin.

In 1996 he endorsed Arlen Specter for president.

In a 2002 PoliticsPA feature story designating politicians with yearbook superlatives, he was named the "Most Ambitious".

As chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Santorum directed the communications operations of Senate Republicans and was a frequent party spokesperson. He was the youngest member of the Senate leadership and the first Pennsylvanian to hold such a prominent position since Senator Hugh Scott was Republican leader in the 1970s. In addition, Santorum served on the Senate Agriculture Committee; the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Senate Special Committee on Aging; and the Senate Finance Committee, of which he was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy.

In January 2005, Santorum announced his intention to run for United States Senate Republican Whip, the second-highest post in the Republican caucus after the 2006 election. The move came because it was presumed the incumbent whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was viewed as having the inside track to succeeding Bill Frist of Tennessee as Senate Republican leader.

During the lame-duck session of the 109th Congress, Santorum was one of only two senators who voted against Robert Gates to become Secretary of Defense. He opposed Gates' advocacy of engaging Iran and Syria to solve the problem, saying that talking to "radical Islam" would be an error.

During his third term re-election campaign for his Senate seat against Bob Casey, Jr., Santorum introduced the term "Islamic fascism", while questioning "his opponent's ability to make the right decisions on national security at a time when 'our enemies are fully committed to our destruction.'"

Santorum sat at the Senate's candy desk for ten years and kept it stocked with Hershey’s chocolates, Peanut Chews and Hot Tamales.

Santorum was defeated 59% to 41% in the 2006 U.S. Senate election by Democratic candidate Bob Casey, Jr. This was the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980.

Political ideology

He is known for his “confrontational, partisan, ‘in your face’ style of politics and government.”

In September 2005, Santorum gave a speech that outlined the successes and failures—but more centrally the future—of conservatism, at the Heritage Foundation's First International Conservative Conference on Social Justice. In November 2005, he adapted his speech into an op-ed piece for the political website Townhall.com outlining his vision for "Compassionate Conservatism".

The Associated Press reported that on July 20, 2006, Santorum stated that "Islamic fascism rooted in Iran is behind much of the world's conflict, but he is opposed to military action against the country", in a speech where he "also defended the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay." The senator indicated that "effective action against Iran" would require America's fighting "for a strong Lebanon, a strong Israel, and a strong Iraq."

On September 7, 2006, Santorum outlined his views on foreign policy in an op-ed piece for the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' and discussed Islamic fascism, closing with a rally cry:

Santorum has referred to his grandfather's historical encounter with Italian fascism as an inspiration for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Legislation and issues

Santorum has attracted support and criticism because of his socially conservative and strong views, including his views on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. His views are presented in his 2005 book, ''It Takes a Family'', published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Delaware.

Santorum has been active in addressing the issues of welfare reform and government accountability. He is a self-described conservative who favors restricting or prohibiting abortion. Santorum has said he is personally against abortion and has expressed disapproval of homosexuality, issues that he believes should be decided by elected officials rather than the Supreme Court: “what I’d like to do is have these kinds of incredibly important moral issues be decided by the American public, not by nine unelected, unaccountable judges.”

Illegal immigration

In 2006, Santorum opposed the Senate immigration reform proposal. Instead, Santorum stated that the U.S. should act to enforce currently existing laws. He has openly stated his strong opposition to amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He supports the construction of a barrier along the U.S.–Mexican border, an increase in the number of border patrol agents on the border, and the stationing of National Guard troops along the border. He also believes that undocumented immigrants should be deported immediately when they commit crimes, and that undocumented immigrants should not receive benefits from the government. Finally, the former senator believes that English should be established as the national language in the United States.

Intelligent design

In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools. The amendment, crafted with the assistance of the Discovery Institute, would have required schools to discuss possible controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example, opening the door for intelligent design as an opposing theory to be presented in science classrooms. A federal court in Santorum's own state, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", portraying it as being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.

Though not included in the final version of the Act made law, the language from the amendment was included in a report attached to the Act known as the Conference Report. The Discovery Institute and many intelligent design proponents, including two Ohio Congressmen, have repeatedly invoked this to suggest that intelligent design should be included in public school science standards as an alternative to evolution.

In a 2002 ''Washington Times'' op-ed article Santorum wrote that intelligent design "is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." By 2005 Santorum had adopted the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy approach, stating in an interview with National Public Radio "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom. What we should be teaching are the problems and holes, and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution", a statement which mirrors the Teach the Controversy strategy, the most recent iteration of the intelligent design movement. The day after the ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' decision that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature came down, Santorum announced that he was resigning from the advisory board of the Thomas More Law Center which had defended the Dover school board. Most recently Santorum wrote the foreword for the March 2006 book, ''Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson And the Intelligent Design Movement'' a collection of essays largely by Discovery Institute fellows honoring the "father" of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson.

Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Santorum and U.S. Senator John Kerry, (D-MA), were the lead sponsors of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), which would require employers to accommodate the religious observances of their employees as long as such accommodations would not impose an "undue hardship" on the employer. Thus, employers would be required to afford employees flexible work shifts so that they could observe religious holidays and to permit employees to wear religiously required clothing at work. Versions of the WRFA have been introduced in 1997, 2000, and 2003, but have failed to be enacted.

National Weather Service

On April 14, 2005, Santorum introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 to "clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service (NWS), and for other purposes". This legislation, if enacted, would prohibit the NWS from publishing weather data to the public when private-sector entities, such as AccuWeather, a company based in Santorum's home state, perform the same function commercially. Accuweather employees have contributed at least $5500 to Santorum since 1999, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Opponents of this bill contend that weather data is collected at taxpayer expense, and therefore it should be made freely available to the public, and not provided solely to private corporations that will charge fees for access. They also claim that the vague language in the bill is an attempt to prevent the NWS from issuing free forecasts because such functions are currently provided by the private sector and would be considered competition.

The bill was never enacted or voted upon, dying in committee.

Statements regarding homosexuality

A controversy arose following Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press that was published on April 20, 2003. In response to a question about how to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests, Santorum said the priests were engaged in "a basic homosexual relationship", and went on to say that he had "[...] no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts"; that the right to privacy, as detailed in ''Griswold v. Connecticut,'' "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution"; that, "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family"; and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts that "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family". When the Associated Press reporter asked whether homosexuals should not then engage in homosexual acts, Santorum replied, "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality".

When questioned for his remarks, Santorum stated that they were intended not to equate homosexuality with incest and pedophilia, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults (such as bigamy, incest, etc.).

In protest of the remarks, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched a contest among his readers in May 2003 to coin a new word "santorum" with an unflattering sexual definition, and followed this with a Google bombing campaign to spread the new term. Since 2004, Savage's Google bomb has regularly been the top search result for Santorum's surname, leading to what commentators have dubbed "Santorum's Google problem". Santorum has characterized the campaign as a "type of vulgarity" common on the Internet.

During the presidential debate held August 11, 2011, in Ames, Iowa, Santorum stated that the Iranian regime "tramples the rights of gays", suggesting that he opposes bias against gays as part of his general support for past U.S.-backed intervention in domestic Iranian politics.

Comments about the Boston Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal

In 2005, a controversy developed over comments about Boston, Massachusetts, that Santorum made in a 2002 article about the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Santorum wrote: }}

These comments came to wider attention through an opinion column in the ''Philadelphia Daily News'' on June 24, 2005. Columnist John Baer cited Santorum's article, stating, "I'd remind you this is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis."

Santorum's remarks were criticized, especially in Massachusetts. On July 12, 2005, ''Boston Globe'' columnist Brian McGrory called on Santorum to explain his statement, and reported that Robert Traynham, Santorum's Director of Communications, told him "It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that's what the senator was speaking to." Julie Teer, a spokeswoman for Governor of Massachusetts, Republican Mitt Romney, said "What happened with the church sex abuse scandal was a tragedy, but it had nothing to do with geography or the culture of Boston."

Later that day, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) delivered a personal rebuke to Santorum on the Senate floor, saying "The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say." Santorum has stood by his 2002 article and has not apologized.

On July 21, 2005, Rush Limbaugh interviewed Santorum about Kennedy's speech. Santorum said that he was being targeted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which, he said, coordinated with the media to publicize Kennedy's speech. He argued that his statement about Boston was taken out of context from an article he had written three years earlier. Santorum agreed with Limbaugh's summary that it was "no surprise that the center of the Catholic Church abuse took place in very liberal, or perhaps the nation's most liberal area, Boston." Santorum reiterated his broader theme of a cultural connection, saying that it is "no surprise that the culture affects people's behavior. [...] the liberal culture—the idea that [...] sexual inhibitions should be put aside and people should be able to do whatever they want to do, has an impact on people and how they behave." When asked why Boston specifically was mentioned, Santorum pointed out that, in July 2002, the outrage of American Catholics, as well as his own, was focused on the Archdiocese of Boston.

Hurricane Katrina

On September 4, 2005, Santorum spoke to a Pittsburgh television station, WTAE, about the evacuation warnings given for Hurricane Katrina:

The campaign of Bob Casey, Jr., his Democratic opponent for the Senate, criticized Santorum's remarks.

On September 6, in a follow-up interview with WTAE, Santorum said,

On September 8, during an interview with public-radio station WITF-FM, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Santorum said

Santorum was the sponsor of legislation proposed to ''prevent'' the National Weather Service from issuing those warnings, thus competing with private-sector weather services, as discussed above.

Santorum added a synthetic-fuel tax-credit amendment to a larger bill introduced in the Senate by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who headed the Senate Finance Committee. ''Time Magazine'' called this tax-credit scheme "a multibillion-dollar scam." The amendment was inserted in the Tax Relief Act of 2006, which provides aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and sets new policies for tax-exempt groups.

Pennsylvania residency and tuition fee

In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is a three-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he purchased for $87,800 in 1997 and is located next to the home of his wife's parents. But since 2001, he has spent most of the year in Leesburg, Virginia, a town about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border, in a house he purchased for $643,000. The ''Penn Hills Progress'', a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife paid about $2,000 per year in property taxes on their Pennsylvania home ($487.20 per year to Allegheny County, 2006 through 2008, based on a 2007 value of $106,000, plus Penn Hills School District tax). The paper also found that another couple—possibly renters—were registered voters at the same address.

At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.

When news reports showed Sen. Santorum was renting his Penn Hills home, Santorum withdrew his five children from the cyber education program that Penn Hills School District paid for. That saved Penn Hills taxpayers about $38,000 a year. Although Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, he insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. Once the controversy surfaced, the children were withdrawn from the cyber school and were then home schooled.

On July 8, 2005, a Pennsylvania state hearing officer had ruled that the Penn Hills School District had not filed objections to Santorum's residency in a timely manner and dismissed the complaint. Santorum hailed the ruling as a victory against what he termed "baseless and politically motivated charges". Santorum told reporters that "[n]o one's children—and especially not small, school-age children—should be used as pawns in the 'politics of personal destruction.'" In the 2006 senate campaign, Santorum ran television commercials with Santorum's son saying "My dad's opponents have criticized him for moving us to Washington so we could be with him more."

In September 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Education agreed to pay the district $55,000 to settle the dispute over money withheld from the district to pay for the children of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum to attend a cyber charter school.

The matter rose again in May 2006. Santorum has said that his family stays during holidays and at times on weekends at the Penn Hills house. But the ''Progress'' reported in May that the house appeared unoccupied, and Casey's campaign noted that in a press release. Santorum then accused Casey's campaign of supporting trespassing on his property, saying of Casey "Now that he is a nominee, it is time for him to start acting like a candidate instead of a thug." Casey, in a statement, called the charges "false and malicious." His campaign, in a news release, described Santorum's actions as "weirdness".

In September 2006, Santorum formally asked that the county remove the homestead tax exemption from his Penn Hills residence. He said that he had made similar requests to county officials in conversations in 2005 and earlier in 2006, but to no avail. In his letter, Santorum insisted that he was entitled to the exemption, which is worth about $70 annually, but chose not to take advantage of it because of the political dispute. While homeowners in the county are eligible for a tax savings averaging $70 a year on their primary residences, the county council president noted that Santorum had "said during a televised debate that he spends about 30 days in his Penn Hills house each year.".

Allegheny County Election Office records indicate that, while a registered voter in the county, Santorum had since 1995 voted absentee.

The only way for Santorum to not pay for his children's private education was to enroll them in the Penn Hills School District. Virginia state law only requires local school districts to pay for private school tuition fee when a student has disabilities and enrolls in a school that can satisfy his or her needs, according to Charles Pyle, Virginia Department of Education spokesman. Otherwise, children in Virginia must attend their local public schools.

Santorum's supporters have said that the controversy is politically motivated because the school board is controlled by Democrats (Erin Vecchio, the school board member who first publicly raised the issue, is the chair of the local Democratic Party). They also have said that since Santorum votes in Penn Hills and pays property and school taxes there, he is entitled to the same privileges as any other Penn Hills resident and should not be deprived of these privileges as a result of his service in the U.S. Senate. Non-residency issues have raised questions of hypocrisy, in that Santorum had previously castigated Representative Doug Walgren for moving away from his district.

Declaration regarding WMDs in Iraq

In June 2006, Santorum declared that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had been found in Iraq. The specific weapons he referred to were chemical munitions dating back to the Iran–Iraq War that were buried in the early 1990s. The report stated that while agents had degraded to an unknown degree, they remained dangerous and possibly lethal. Officials of the Department of Defense, CIA intelligence analysts, and the White House have all explicitly stated that these expired casings are not part of the WMDs threat that Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched to contain.

Santorum's declaration was based, in part, on declassified portions of a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Portions were declassified in a summary that made six key points:

Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded or vacant mustard or sarin nerve agent casings.

Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre–Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled warheads are believed to still exist. They have no viable military capability, however.

Pre–Gulf War chemical munitions could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups could have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq.

The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectile casings.

The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, the residue could be hazardous upon dermal contact.

It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

Animal rights

In 2005 a coalition of animal rights groups, spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) mounted a failed effort to push the ''Pet Animal Welfare Statute of 2005'' (PAWS) through Congress. The bill was proposed by Senator Santorum and sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (then-R-PA). PAWS would have reclassified most small and hobby breeders as commercial breeders subjecting them to USDA regulations, allowed home inspections and placed fees and compliance expenses on pet breeders. Fellow Congressmen were told that PAWS was "the puppy mill bill". This was Santorum's third failed attempt at pet-related legislation.

ACLU suit

In 2005, four teenagers were ejected from a bookstore in Wilmington, Delaware, where Santorum was scheduled for a book signing, after they were overheard expressing critical opinions of the senator. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, which was settled in 2007. As a result of the settlement, the Delaware State Police were required to pay legal fees for the plaintiffs and provide training to officers on free speech rights. The Santorum staff members who requested the ejection were required to apologize and to relinquish their salaries for the event—$2,500.00—to plaintiffs in damages.

Other

As a key member of the Gang of Seven (a group of seven freshmen Republican Congressmen), Santorum helped expose a scandal at the House Bank. The Gang of Seven's reform-minded agenda is often cited as a foundation of the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

In 1996, as a U.S. senator, Santorum served as Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform.. The legislation that became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 written by Florida congressman E. Clay Shaw, Jr., passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Though not a named author of the special Schiavo legislation, Santorum played a key role in shepherding the bill through the Senate to a vote on March 20, 2005. Santorum has frequently stated that he does not believe a "right to privacy" exists under the Constitution, even within marriage; he has been especially critical of the Supreme Court decision in ''Griswold v. Connecticut'' (1965), which held that the Constitution guaranteed the aforementioned right, and on that basis, overturned a law prohibiting the sale and use of contraceptives.

Santorum is also a supporter of partial privatization of Social Security. Since the 2004 presidential election, Santorum has held forums across Pennsylvania on the topic.

In 2005, Santorum sponsored the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which appropriated $10 million aimed at regime change in Iran. The Act passed with overwhelming support. However, Santorum nevertheless voted against the Lautenberg amendment which would have closed the loophole which allows companies like Halliburton to do business with Iran through their foreign affiliates.

In reference to the Iraq war in 2006, Santorum drew an analogy with ''The Lord of the Rings'' in one of his addresses:

Santorum informed senator John Ensign that Ensign's affair with a staff member was about to become publicly known.

2006 campaign

In 2006, Santorum sought re-election to a third term in the U.S. Senate. His Democratic opponent was State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., the son of popular former governor Robert Casey, Sr.(D) Santorum's seat was a prime target of Democratic efforts to gain Senate seats in the 2006 elections. Casey's candidacy was bolstered by his opposition to abortion, negating one of Santorum's key issues.

Republican strategists took as a bad omen Santorum's primary result in 2006, in which he ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. Republican gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann, also unopposed, garnered 22,000 more votes statewide than Santorum in the primary, meaning thousands of Republican voters abstained from endorsing Santorum for another Senate term. This may have been partly due to Santorum's support for Arlen Specter, over Congressman Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Even though Santorum is only slightly less conservative than Toomey, he joined virtually all of the state and national Republican establishment in supporting the moderate Specter. This led many socially and fiscally conservative Republicans to consider Santorum's support of Specter to be a betrayal of their cause.

On May 22, 2006, the polling firm Rasmussen Reports declared that Santorum was the "most vulnerable incumbent" among the Senators running for re-election. However, in August 2006, polling showed Santorum with his highest approval rating in months, 48 percent, a twelve-point jump between July and August. Nearly as many Pennsylvanians, 45 percent, said they had an unfavorable view of the Senator.

For most of the campaign, Santorum was behind by 15 points or more. Most polls during the summer of 2006 showed the race between Casey and Santorum becoming increasingly competitive, but a poll released by Quinnipiac University on September 26 showed Casey's margin ballooning back to a double-digit lead.

One day before the Quinnipiac poll was released, a Pennsylvania state judge ruled against a potential third-party candidate, Carl Romanelli of the Green Party. Romanelli fell about 8,900 petition signatures shy of the threshold needed to be placed on the statewide ballot in November. On October 4, 2006, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court also rejected Romanelli's legal challenge. This was a potential blow to the Santorum campaign, as Romanelli was expected to siphon off some Casey voters.

There is also some question as to whether Romanelli and Pennsylvania's Green Party violated federal election laws when they accepted tens of thousands of dollars in donations from people also backing Santorum's campaign.

Santorum found himself mired in controversy over his residency. For many years, he has maintained a modest home in Penn Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he claims as his official residence. However, his family lived in the Virginia suburbs of Washington when the Senate was in session. Since this meant Santorum spent most of the year away from Pennsylvania, critics argued it was not unlike the living arrangements he denounced in his 1990 House race against Walgren. Santorum accused Walgren of being out of touch with his Pittsburgh-area district, symbolized by his home in the Virginia suburbs. On NBC's Meet the Press on September 3, 2006, Santorum admitted that he only spends "maybe a month a year, something like that" at his Pennsylvania residence.

Santorum also drew criticism for enrolling five of his six children in an online "cyber school" in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh and most of its suburbs), despite the fact the children lived in Virginia. The Penn Hills School District was billed $73,000 in tuition for the cyber classes.

At least one of Santorum's television ads called into question his campaign's use of the facts regarding Casey and persons who have donated money to the Casey campaign. According to the ad, some of the persons who have given Casey money are or have been under investigation for various crimes. An editorial in Casey's hometown newspaper, ''The Scranton Times-Tribune'', points out that all but one of the contributions "[was] made to Casey campaigns when he was running for other offices, at which time none of the contributors were known to be under investigation for anything." In fact, two of the persons cited in the Santorum campaign ad had actually given contributions to Mr. Santorum's 2006 Senate campaign. Another died in 2004. However, the Santorum campaign pointed out that the money the Santorum campaign received from those donors was not kept by the campaign, but rather donated to educational institutions.

A heated debate between the candidates occurred on October 11, 2006. There, according to coverage by ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', the candidates appeared "less statesmanlike than either Gov. Ed Rendell or challenger Lynn Swann, who had debated each other in Pittsburgh the [previous] week".

In late October, during the Lebanon County Republican Committee’s annual dinner at the Lantern Lodge, Santorum said "If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change." "We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s, and this election will decide whether we are going to continue to appease or whether we will stand and fight while we have a chance to win without devastating consequences."

Santorum on August 28 gave a speech to Pennsylvania media at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg (which he earlier gave to the National Club) claiming that terrorist attacks on America by "radical Islamists" were part of a more than three-century-old plot to restore Shia clerics to power and bring "the 12th Imam" out of hiding. He said, according to the online news service, Capitolwire: “They believe, as all Shias do, in the Hidden Imam, the 12th Imam," the 12th descendant in a straight line from Mohammed the Prophet, who disappeared in 874, at the age of 5. “The Shia believe that he is the Messiah and he is in hiding and that he will return. … They believe … he will return with radical Islam, when Shia dominates the world. Well, for over 1,000 years, ... the East and West fought, up until 1683 ... In 1683, not that long ago, the Islamists had surrounded the gates of Vienna and were on the verge of toppling it after a siege; ... but the West united, and led by the Poles, [King] John Sobieski and the Polish Hussars defeated [the Arab forces] in a one-day battle on the plains outside Vienna. “What was the high-water mark of this 1,000-year war? It was the day before. What was the date the day before? Sept. 11, 1683.”

This speech eventually led to Santorum launching a tour called "The Gathering Storm," comparing himself to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who alerted his nation and the world to the Nazi menace in the 1930s, and then fought with America, Russia and others to defeat the Germans, Italians and Japan in World War II in the 1940s. The Associated Press' Jennifer Yates wrote on Oct. 27 that Santorum said: "This is a moment, a critical crossroads in American history," as she noted that "Santorum, who invoked Winston Churchill's memoir – "The Gathering Storm" – about the causes of World War II" then told her and audiences: "The parallel is so profound."

Days before, Yates reported, Santorum said: Casey's election and that of other Democrats trying to take over the U.S. House and Senate would be "a disaster for the future of the world."

On the Sunday before the election, Casey responded to the comment, telling Capitolwire: "Who runs a campaign like that? No one believes terrorists are going to be more likely to attack us, because I defeat Rick Santorum. Does even he believe that?"

Santorum wrote that many women have disclosed to him that it is more "socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.... What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else – or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon – find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism." Polls showed many female voters resented this description of why they worked, especially Republican and independent women whose abandonment of Santorum doomed his campaign, reported the online news service Capitolwire, based in Harrisburg. In a question-and-answer session on Aug. 28 at the Pennsylvania speech, Santorum tried again to address the issue and said his problem was that federal taxes now consumed 27 percent of family wages, and the second wage earner in most families made only 25 percent of the first's wages.

“First, I would say, read the book and I think if you read the book, you can answer the question yourself. Because anyone who has read the book instead of the comments pulled out by the Democratic National Committee about the book, which was four sentences, by the way, in a 430-page book, … would tell you I am supportive of families in a variety of different ways. ... What does the average second-earner in the family make? Twenty five percent of the first earner. ... Because of our tax code, we make it virtually impossible to maintain a standard of living and at the same time, be home with your children. ... Number two, look, I believe that women should have choices when it comes to the workforce. And they should be real choices. "And look, I came from a family where my mother worked, all her life, made more money than my dad (N.B.: his mother and father were a registered nurse and psychiatrist, respectively). I have more people working in my office who are women, in senior policy positions, than men. So I don’t have a hang-up with women working. I do have a hang-up with the government and others in society not nurturing, supporting and encouraging parents to be home with their kids when they need to be home. And I think we need to do more as a society to help them.”

In the November election, Santorum lost, with 41% of the vote to Casey's 59%, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania.

Post-Senate career

Before failing to win re-election in 2006, Santorum had frequently been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. Such speculation faded when, during the course of the campaign and in light of unimpressive poll numbers, he declared that, if re-elected, he would serve a full term. After he lost, Santorum once again ruled out a presidential run.

In March 2007 Santorum joined Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC, where he primarily practiced law in the firm's Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. offices providing business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. He also joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a D.C.-based conservative think tank. Santorum was also a contributor on the Fox News Channel. Santorum also writes an Op/Ed piece titled "The Elephant in the Room" for the Commentary Page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Santorum told the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' that he would address many geopolitical issues, and then joked, "I don't do Anna Nicole Smith, that's all." After leaving the Senate, Santorum joined the Board of Directors of Universal Health Services, a hospital management company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

On February 1, 2008, Santorum said he would vote for Mitt Romney in the 2008 Presidential Republican primary race, stating: "If you're a Republican, if you're a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that's Mitt Romney.". He has criticized John McCain, questioning his pro-life voting record and whether Sen. McCain holds true conservative values. In September 2008, Santorum expressed support for McCain, citing Sarah Palin as a step in the right direction: "Knowing McCain, he's choosing someone in whom he sees a lot of himself...He tries to find people who have a similar head as he does, and if he sees him in [Palin]...that gives me a better feel for him and a little more confidence in him." In 2011 he said McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war, did not understand how the "enhanced interrogation" process works.

On April 12, 2007, political action committee America's Foundation, Highmark and a former Highmark vice president were fined by the Federal Election Committee for sponsoring Santorum with corporate money. The problem had been reported by Highmark, which uncovered the matter during an internal review.

Santorum was mentioned as a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2010. At one point, he was said to have "quietly but efficiently put his fingerprints on a wide-array of conservative causes in the state." However, Santorum declined to seek the gubernatorial nomination and instead endorsed eventual winner Tom Corbett.

2012 presidential campaign

In the fall of 2009, Santorum hinted that he was considering a run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. On September 11, 2009, Santorum spoke to a group of Catholic leaders in Orlando, Florida and told them, "I hate to be calculating, but I see that 2012 is not just throwing somebody out to be eaten, but it's a real opportunity for success." He scheduled various appearances with political non-profit organizations that took place in Iowa.

Santorum repeated his consideration of a 2012 run in an e-mail and letter sent on January 15, 2010 to supporters of his political action committee, saying, "After talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids – I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race. I'm convinced that conservatives need a candidate who will not only stand up for our views, but who can articulate a conservative vision for our country's future," he wrote. "And right now, I just don't see anyone stepping up to the plate. I have no great burning desire to be president, but I have a burning desire to have a different president of the United States". He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011.

Santorum formally announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination on ABC's ''Good Morning America'' on June 6, 2011, saying he's "in it to win."

Works

References

External links

Rick Santorum ''official campaign site''

Column archives at ''Townhall.com''

;Articles

Excerpt from Santorum interview ''USA Today'', April 23, 2003

Lawsuit Abuse Critic Explains Suit ''ABC Primetime'', November 10, 2005

Editorial: Charities on the Hill ''Washington Post'', March 7, 2006

Santorum Against the World, Michael Dougherty, ''The American Conservative'', July 30, 2007

{{U.S. Senator box | before=Harris Wofford | state=Pennsylvania | class=1 | years=1995–2007 | alongside=Arlen Specter | after=Bob Casey, Jr.}}

Category:1958 births Category:American political writers Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American Traditionalist Catholics Category:American writers of Italian descent Category:Animal rights advocates Category:College Republicans Category:Dickinson School of Law alumni Category:Intelligent design advocates Category:Knights of Malta Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania Category:Pennsylvania State University alumni Category:Pennsylvania lawyers Category:Pennsylvania Republicans Category:People from Winchester, Virginia Category:The Philadelphia Inquirer people Category:Politicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Republican Party United States Senators Category:Traditionalist Catholic writers Category:United States Senators from Pennsylvania Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:Writers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Writers from Virginia

de:Rick Santorum es:Rick Santorum fr:Rick Santorum it:Rick Santorum la:Ricardus Iohannes Santorum nl:Rick Santorum ja:リック・サントラム pl:Rick Santorum ru:Санторум, Рик fi:Rick Santorum sv:Rick Santorum zh:里克·桑托勒姆

This is a list of people whose names in English are commonly appended with the phrase "''the Great''", or who were called that or an equivalent phrase in their own language. Other languages have their own suffixes such as ''e Bozorg'' and ''e azam'' in Persian and Urdu respectively.

In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to be a colloquial version of the Old Persian title "Great King". This title was first used by the conqueror Cyrus II of Persia.

The Persian title was inherited by Alexander III of Macedon (336–323 BC) when he conquered the Persian Empire, and the epithet "Great" eventually became personally associated with him. The first reference (in a comedy by Plautus) assumes that everyone knew who "Alexander the Great" was; however, there is no earlier evidence that Alexander III of Macedon was called "''the Great''".

The early Seleucid kings, who succeeded Alexander in Persia, used "Great King" in local documents, but the title was most notably used for Antiochus the Great (223–187 BC).

Later rulers and commanders began to use the epithet "the Great" as a personal name, like the Roman general Pompey. Others received the surname retrospectively, like the Carthaginian Hanno and the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. Once the surname gained currency, it was also used as an honorific surname for people without political careers, like the philosopher Albert the Great.

As there are no objective criteria for "greatness", the persistence of later generations in using the designation greatly varies. For example, Louis XIV of France was often referred to as "The Great" in his lifetime but is rarely called such nowadays, while Frederick II of Prussia is still called "The Great". A later Hohenzollern - Wilhelm I - was often called "The Great" in the time of his grandson Wilhelm II, but rarely later.

Rulers

Abbas I of Persia (1571-1629), Shah of Iran

Akbar (1542-1605), ruler of the Mughal Empire of South Asia, mainly India

Alain I of Albret (1440-1522), French aristocrat

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), King of Macedonia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, and all of Mesopotamia

Alexander I of Georgia (1386–1446), King of Georgia

Alfonso III of León (c. 848-910), King of León, Galicia and Asturias

Alfred the Great (848/849-899), King of Wessex

Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BC), ruler of the Seleucid Empire

Ashoka the Great (c. 304–232 BC), Indian emperor of the Maurya dynasty

Ashot I of Iberia “the Great”(died 826/830), presiding prince of Iberia (modern Georgia),

Askia Mohammad I (c. 1442–1538), ruler of the Songhai Empire

Bhumibol Adulyadej (born 1927), King of Thailand

Bolesław I Chrobry (967-1025), sometimes called "the Great", first King of Poland

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the following section)

Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (1736-1809), founder and ruler of the Rattanakosin Kingdom (in what is now Thailand)

Cnut the Great (c. 985 or 995-1035), King of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden

Casimir III the Great (1310-1370), King of Poland

Catherine the Great (1729-1796), Empress of Russian

Chandragupta II (reigned 375-413/415), also known as Vikramaditya, ruler of the Gupta empire in India

Charlemagne (died 814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans

Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), King of Siam (now Thailand)

Chlothar II (584-629), King of Neustria and King of the Franks

Conrad, Margrave of Meissen (c. 1097-1157), Margrave of Meissen

Constantine I (c. 272-337), Roman Emperor

Cyrus the Great (c. 600 BC or 576 BC–530 BC), founder and ruler of the Persian or Achaemenid Empire

Darius the Great (550 – 486 BC), third ruler of the Persian Empire

Devapala (died 850), ruler of the Pala Empire in the Indian subcontinent

Dionysius I, Greek tyrant of Syracuse

Ferdinand I of León and Castile (c. 1015–1065), King of León and Count of Castile

Frederick the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia

Genghis Khan (1162?-1227), founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire

Gero (c. 900–965), ruler of Marca Geronis, a very large march in Europe

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594-1632), King of Sweden, founder of the Swedish Empire, and noted military leader

Gwanggaeto the Great, King of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea

Hanno the Great, the name of three leaders of Carthage, in the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd centuries BC

Henry I, Duke of Burgundy (946–1002)

Henry IV of France (1553-1610), King of France and King of Navarre

Herod the Great (73/74 BC-4 BC), King of Judea

Hugh the Great (898-956), Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris

Hugh Magnus of France (1007-1025), co-King of France

Hugh I, Count of Vermandois (1057-1101)

Humphrey I de Bohun (died c. 1123), Anglo-Norman aristocrat

Ivan III of Russia (1440-1505), Tsar of Russia

John I of Portugal (1358-1433), King of Portugal and the Algarve

John II of Aragon (1398-1479), King of Aragon and, through his wife, King of Navarre

Justinian I (483-565), Byzantine Emperor

Kamehameha I (c. 1758-1819), first King of Hawai'i

Kanishka (died c. 127), ruler of the Kushan Empire in Central Asia and parts of India

Kvirike III of Kakheti (1010-1029), King of Kakheti in eastern Georgia

Kublai Khan (1215-1294), Mongol ruler in the 13th century and Emperor of China; founder of the Yuan Dynasty

Llywelyn the Great (c. 1172–1240), Prince of Gwynedd and de facto ruler of most of Wales

Louis I of Hungary (1326-1382), King of Hungary, Croatia and Poland

Mangrai the Great (1238-1317), Lanna, northern Thailand

Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), Emperor of Japan

Mircea I of Wallachia (1355–1418)

Mithridates II of Parthia (died 88 BC), ruler of the Parthian Empire (in present day Iran)

Mithridates VI of Pontus (134 BC–63 BC), ruler of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom

Mstislav I of Kiev (1076-1132), Grand Prince of Kievan Rus

Narai (1633-1688), King of Ayutthaya (in what is now modern Thailand)

Naresuan (1555-1605), King of Ayutthaya

Odo the Great (died c. 735), Duke of Aquitaine

Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912-973)

K'inich Janaab' Pakal (603-683), ruler of the Mayan city-state of Palenque

Parakramabahu I of Polonnaruwa (1123–1186), King of Sri Lanka

Peter Krešimir IV of Croatia (died 1075), King of Croatia

Peter the Great (1672-1725), Tsar of Russia

Peter III of Aragon (1239-1285), King of Aragon and King of Sicily

Pompey (106 BC-48 BC), military and political leader of the late Roman Republic, rival of Julius Caesar

Radama I (1793–1828), first king of greater Madagascar

Raja Raja Chola I (c. 947-1014), Indian emperor of the Cholas.

Rajendra Chola I (reigned 1014-1044), Tamil King of India

Ramesses II (reigned 1279 BC – 1213 BC), considered the greatest pharaoh of Ancient Egypt

Ram Khamhaeng (around 1237 to 1247-1298), King of Sukhothai (in present day Thailand)

Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona (1082-1131), also Count of Provence and various other counties

Rhodri the Great (c. 820–878), King of Gwynedd (in present day Wales)

Roman the Great (after 1160-1205), Grand Prince of Kiev

Samudragupta (c. 335–375), ruler of the Gupta empire in the Indian subcontinent

Sancho III of Navarre (c. 992-1035), King of Kingdom of Navarre

Sargon of Akkad (died c. 2215 BC), ruler of the Akkadian Empire

Sejong the Great (1397-1450), Korean king

Shapur II (309-379), king of the Sassanid Empire, Persia

Simeon I of Bulgaria (864/865-927), ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire

Stephen III of Moldavia (1433-1504), Prince of Moldavia (Romania)

Stephen Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia (c. 1308-1355), King of Serbia and Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks

Taksin (1734-1782), King of the Thonburi Kingdom (Thailand)

Timur (1336-1405), better known as Tamerlane, founder of the Timurid Dynasty

Theobald II, Count of Champagne (1090–1151), Count of Blois and of Chartres as Theobald IV, Count of Champagne and of Brie

Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths, regent of the Visigoths and a viceroy of the Byzantine Empire

Theodosius I (347-395), Roman emperor

Tigranes the Great (140-55 BC), Emperor of Armenia

Tiridates III of Armenia (285-339), King of Armenia

Umar (c. 586 to 590–644), second caliph of the Muslim Empire

Valdemar I of Denmark (1131-1182), King of Denmark

Valentinian I (364-375), Roman Emperor

Vladimir I of Kiev (c. 958-1015), ruler of Kievan Rus

Vytautas (c. 1350-1430), archduke of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy

William I, Count of Burgundy (1020-1087), Count of Burgandy and Mâcon

William V, Duke of Aquitaine (969-1030), also Count of Poitou

Xerxes I (519-465 BC), King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia)

Yu the Great (c. 2200-2100 BC), legendary ruler in ancient China

Religious figures

Abraham the Great of Kashkar (ca. 492-586), monk and saint of the Assyrian Church of the East

Abraham Kidunaia (died c. 366, hermit, priest, and Christian saint of Mesopotamia

Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280), medieval German philosopher and theologian

Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), early Christian saint of Egypt

Babai the Great (c. 551–628), Assyrian church leader

Basil of Caesarea (330-379), Greek bishop and theologian

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the previous section)

Euthymius the Great (377-473), abbot and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint

Gertrude the Great (1256-c. 1302), German Benedictine, mystic, theologian and Roman Catholic saint

Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604)

Hiyya the Great, 3rd-century rabbi, Palestine

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)

Pope Leo I (c. 391 or 400-461)

Macarius of Egypt (c. 300-391), Egyptian hermit

Pope Nicholas I (c. 800-867)

Photius I of Constantinople (c. 810–c. 893), Eastern Orthodox saint and Patriarch of Constantinople

William of Maleval (died 1157), founder of the Catholic congregation of Williamites

Other

Beli Mawr, a figure in medieval Welsh literature and genealogies

Emmy the Great, folk singer

Matteo Rosso the Great, Roman politician and father of Pope Nicholas III

Prokop the Great, Hussite general in Bohemia

See also

Epithet

List of monarchs by nickname

List of nicknames of European Royalty and Nobility: G-I

James, son of Zebedee, also known as James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus

Ajax (mythology), called Ajax the Greater

Notes

Category:Monarchs Great, List of people known as The Category:Greatest Nationals Category:Epithets

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