(CBS News) DETROIT - Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering of more than 3,000 teachers on Sunday that Mitt Romney and fellow Republicans think that teachers are selfish.

"They characterize you as only caring about yourself," Biden said at the American Federation of Teachers conference. "But the fact of the matter is, I don't think they know you. I don't think [Romney] knows you."

The AFT speech was Biden's third address to a national union this month -- he earlier spoke to the national police union in Florida and the national firefighters union in Pennsylvania. In those previous speeches, he used similar language to make the case that Democrats are far more attuned to the concerns of the unions' constituencies.

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(CBS News) LAS VEGAS -- Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday went on the attack for the Obama campaign once again, telling Hispanic voters Mitt Romney wants to demand proof of their citizenship, but is secretive about his own finances.

"Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his," Biden said to thunderous applause during a keynote address to the National Council of La Raza Conference in Las Vegas. He was accompanied by his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, who introduced him as an advocate for the Hispanic community.

Biden drew the parallel between Romney showing only one year of tax returns - suggesting he is hiding something - to Hispanics showing proper documentation that they are American citizens.

"When his father, George Romney, was a candidate for President in 1968, he released 12 years of tax returns because, as he said, 'One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show," Biden said. "That was his father. His son has released only one year of his tax returns, making a lie of the old adage, 'like father, like son.'"

Watch an excerpt of the vice president's remarks in the video to the left.

The Romney campaign has said the former Massachusetts Governor has released all of the necessary documents required by law. And one campaign surrogate went further today, saying the Obama campaign needs to "get over" the tax issue.

"Governor Romney has been very successful," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said. "Get over it."

The vice president ended his speech to the room full of more than 1,800 Hispanics in a crescendo, advising, "Ladies and Gentlemen - don't miss this. This is your moment, this is the moment for your community.

Vice President Biden makes an awkward sex joke in the video to the left.

"Your population is too talented, too capable, too grounded, too proud, and too patriotic. More than 1.3 million Hispanics have served in our armed forces, more than 637 have died, more than 2,789 have been wounded," Biden continued, building to the top of his lungs. "Don't tell me you're not ready."

(CBS News) Columbus, OH -- Some Tea Party activists at a state convention here are less than enthused about their presumptive presidential nominee, but are looking to him as their best hope to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

"I believe that I am being forced to vote for the lesser of the two evils, which would be Mitt Romney," Kelly Sanders, a registered nurse from Fairfield County, said at a "We the People" Tea Party Convention here over the weekend. "I am not excited about Mitt, but I do like some of the things he has proposed."

"He was not my original choice," said retiree Edward Vincent of Suffield Township. "He was a career politician and some of his stuff that he did in the past was not conservative enough."

At the top of that list is the Massachusetts health law that Romney signed in 2006 when he was governor. President Obama and others have called it the model for the new federal health law which, to the dismay of conservatives, the Supreme Court upheld last week as constitutional.

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Updated at 3 p.m. ET

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday lashed out at Mitt Romney in Iowa for the second straight day, this time taking issue with the Republican's reluctance to embrace tax credits for wind and solar energy.

President Obama and his administration have pushed Congress to extend tax credits that they argue would save jobs in the field of clean-energy production. But Romney, in his economic plan, has criticized Obama's investment in renewable energy, singling out solar and wind as "two of the most ballyhooed" forms of alternative fuel.

"We are importing less oil than [at] any time in the last 16 years," Biden said. "But we think you got to bet on it all ... You had our good friend Mitt Romney saying he dismissed wind and solar by saying they're 'two of the most ballyhooed forms of alternative energy.' Tell that to the 7,000 workers manufacturing wind power here in Iowa."

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(CBS News) WATERLOO, Iowa -- Resuming the mantle of attack dog, Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday laced into Mitt Romney for allegedly outsourcing jobs while at Bain Capital and reviving the charge that Romney is out of touch because he once held a Swiss bank account and investments in the Cayman Islands.

Biden's denunciation was part of a larger Obama re-election team strategy to try to define Romney as "outsourcer-in-chief." It ran attack ads in Virginia and Ohio as well as Iowa -- all key battleground states -- driving home that point.

"He said his experience as a businessman is what gives him the great understanding of what it takes to bring jobs back to the U.S. of America," Biden said as a crowd of about 400 people cheered. "That's his premise ... but like so many other things the governor talks about, there is a huge disconnect between what he says and what he means and what he has done."

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(CBS News) WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Vice President Joe Biden continued on the attack on Wednesday, saying that it is "not enough" that President Obama has created 27 months straight of private sector growth and slamming Republican alternatives to the administration's plans to boost the economy.

"It is up and it is down, but it has been constantly forward but not enough," Biden told a crowd in North Carolina about the economy. "We have to do more we have to keep fighting through this period of transition and this God awful recession we inherited."

The vice president put the blame on Republicans in Congress, saying their proposals for the economy would not work.

"The problem here isn't so much what our friends, Republican friends, refuse to do, it is what they propose to do," Biden said.

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(CBS News) PATERSON, N.J. - Former President Bill Clinton, seeking to contain the political damage from his earlier praise of Mitt Romney's "sterling" business background, said on Friday that his remarks shouldn't be construed as an endorsement.

Appearing on CNN on Thursday, Clinton said of Romney: "A man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold." Conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh crowed that the former president had "basically endorsed" the presumptive GOP nominee.

But at a rally in Paterson to support Rep. Bill Pascrell, Clinton said his remarks got "twisted around."

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Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., today advocated working with international partners to help the Syrian rebels struggling to take down the regime of President Bashar Assad.

"It is time to act now," Rubio told an audience at New York's Council on Foreign Relations. "I don't want to score political points on this issue, but I want to see it resolved because it benefits our national interest, and it is the right thing to do from a humanitarian point of view."

Just days ago, pro-Assad forces massacred more than 100 Syrian civilians in the city of Houla, prompting an international outcry. United Nations efforts to broker a cease-fire in the more than year-long conflict have so far proved futile.

The Florida senator said today the time had come for the U.S. and its allies to increase aid to the opposition forces in the country.

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(CBS News) Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren has closed the gap on Republican Sen. Scott Brown in their battle for Brown's Massachusetts Senate seat despite a controversy over her heritage, according to a new poll.

The Suffolk University/7NEWS poll showed the two candidates in a statistical tie among likely general-election voters in Massachusetts, with Brown taking 48 percent to Warren's 47 percent. (That's within the poll's four point margin of error.) In a February Suffolk/7NEWS poll, Brown led Warren by nine points.

The race has been dominated for the last month by a debate over whether Warren improperly identified as Native American in order to further her professional career. 

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Updated 4:30 p.m. ET

(CBS News) MARTINS FERRY, Ohio -- In what is likely to become a recurring theme for the Obama campaign, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday ridiculed Mitt Romney's assertion that he deserves some credit for the auto industry's recovery.

"He said quote, 'I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that the industry has come back,'" Biden said jokingly, referring to an interview Romney gave to a local TV station earlier this month. "And by the way, I'll take a lot of credit for a man having land on the moon, because all the while in school, I rooted for it."

Romney has said that he pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy for the car companies. But GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy on the strength of a massive bailout that Romney opposed, and that neither Republican President George W. Bush nor President Obama believes the automakers would have survived without.

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(CBS News) Youngstown, Ohio -- Kicking off his first of two economy-focused campaign events in Ohio on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden continued the Obama campaign's attack against Mitt Romney's experience in the private sector at Bain Capital.

Biden told the story of Randy Johnson, who used to work at Ampad, a paper plant in Marion, Indiana, that was acquired in 1994 by a company owned by Bain and became SCM Office Supplies.

"The workers were fired, including Randy, and told they could reapply for their jobs but the wages would be lower, health benefits would be less," Biden said, speaking about Johnson, who introduced the vice president. "Then a year later they shut the plant down -- everyone lost their jobs."

"They brought in security guards. They fired us all," Johnson said, as he shared his story to the crowd. "They walked us out of the building."

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Updated at 10:30 p.m. ET

(CBS News) NEW YORK - Campaigning for the president on his foreign policy record, Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday that his decision to kill Osama bin Laden shows that the president has a "backbone like a ramrod."

"Thanks to President Obama, bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Biden said, referring to last year's killing of Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan and the taxpayer bailout of General Motors.

"You have to ask yourself, 'had Governor Romney been president, could he have used the same slogan in reverse?' People are going to make that judgment. It's a legitimate thing to speculate on," Biden said.

In his remarks at the New York University Law School, the vice president reminded the audience of a statement Romney made in 2007 to the Associated Press that the United States shouldn't waste billions of dollars chasing bin Laden.

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Updated 7:30 p.m. ET

TULSA, Okla. -- Rick Santorum said on Thursday that his presidential rivals haven't been as consistent as him on gay rights and abortion issues. He also blasted President Obama in unusually harsh terms for what he called the president's insufficient support for Israel.

Addressing an audience of more than 4,000 people at Oral Roberts University, Santorum fielded a student's question about the potential attacks he would receive on those two issues from President Obama if he were to win the Republican nomination.

"The other candidates in this race have the same positions I have on these issues." Santorum said. "At least, that is what they say right now."

He told the audience they should vote for him in the primary if they want a candidate who understands the issues and articulates them consistently. "If you are someone who is a voter who may not agree with me on those issues, or agree with any of us on those issues, who are you going to feel more comfortable with?" he asked.

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OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - No more Mr. Nice Guy for newly energized Rick Santorum.

The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday launched a full-throated attack of front-runner Mitt Romney, saying the former Massachusetts governor's campaign "has been about serially tearing down opponents without offering any kind of vision for what he wants to do for this country.

"This is the gotcha politics of Mitt Romney," Santorum said, sounding complaints almost identical to those lodged by rival conservative Newt Gingrich against Romney after Gingrich won the South Carolina primary last month.

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