Editor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.

Rick Santorum was thrice victorious in Tuesday's GOP contests, leading some to wonder if he's gaining momentum. Some, like opinion writer Timothy Stanley, are wondering what real impact he will have. Is Santorum the "coulda, shoulda, woulda" candidate, as Stanley asserts?

Santorum, the 'coulda, shoulda, woulda' candidate

We heard from a few Santorum supporters, who said they believe the candidate could be a good option for Republicans.

AngelThree: "He is looking better each primary. He is a devoted family man who appears to have no skeletons in his closet. He is a devout Christian who puts family first. He is a moderate who is not aggressive militarily. He truly cares about our country. He also seems to have a bit of that Kennedy mystique about him that will attract the independent voters. He does not attack the other candidates. Like all humans, he will have faults, but they seem minimal as opposed to the other candidates or the incumbent. I believe he has a chance to serve."

This reader didn't think Santorum's success over Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich would carry over in other places.

Evilchicken: "Of course the surge isn't real. States like Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota do not reflect popular opinion anywhere outside of the Midwest. Romney will win ... sadly."

There were quite a few comments from those who are not fans of Santorum, as evidenced by this comment addressed to Stanley. It was the most-liked response.

angie412: "A professor at Oxford, huh? Do you study past speeches of candidates, sir? Mr. I-Want-to-Ban-All-Abortions and Amend-the-Constitution-to-Suit-My-Own-Personal-Religious-Beliefs is the most frightening candidate I've ever seen. I can't believe, given his terrible track record of crazy, that you'd even suggest he's an appropriate candidate in any party for the President of the United States. I'd vote Bush in for a third term before I'd vote for Santorum!"

Some of the posts were about a dissatisfaction with the choices available for Election 2012.

AWL23: "Our choices are Obama, Santorum, Romney, Gingrich or Paul. God help us all."

herself26: "I'm going to write in Kermit the Frog. I think he's got a better chance and the State of the Union addresses would actually be watchable."

This reader was thankful that Santorum came along and shook up the race.

Guest: "Good for you Rick. You shook up the Republican race, and you most definitely have the potential to shake up the general election too. As an intelligent voting person with an advanced degree, you have my vote for having the courage to stand up for what is right. A lot of people like me feel this way; the silent majority who are tired of all of the other inadequate choices that will be presented to us in the next general election."

Some of our readers gave scathing appraisals of the Republican Party.

Evelyn2: "My uncle, in his mid 90s now, helped organize the Republican party in Denver in the mid 1950s. Long a fiscal conservative and social moderate, he laments what has happened to the party he always belonged to. He sadly noted that while he votes in local and state elections, he hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush. When I spoke with him last Sunday, I asked him what he thought about the candidates. His response: 'The circus is in town.' Nuff said."

This commenter said many supposed conservatives aren't all that conservative.

lvanhelsing: "Santorum is the only candidate I want to beat Obama in 2012. I think if either Romney or Gingrich beat Obama, it would only hurt conservatism in America. The reality is they are NOT conservative. Yet because they are Republican, most people will think they are, and when their moderately liberal policies don't work (liberal policies never work), then America will blame conservatism. Same as when W was in office."

These posters took a satirical angle.

BGko: "I have a feeling America just got 'Rick-rolled.'

JustTruth1: "Makes more sense that way - to be honest."

What do you think about the GOP race as it now stands? Share your opinion in the comments area below and in the latest stories on CNN.com. Or sound off on video via CNN iReport.

Compiled by the CNN.com moderation staff. Some comments edited for length or clarity.

A woman trying to run for the San Luis, Arizona, City Council will not appear on the ballot after the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a ruling that her English was not good enough.

Alejandrina Cabrera has been locked in a political battle regarding her proficiency of the English language.  But her story is more than a local election dispute, with possibly widespread implications in a country that prides itself as a melting pot.

In the border town of San Luis, 87% of residents speak a language other than English in their home, and 98.7% are of Hispanic origin, according to 2010 U.S. census data.  Most of the people there, by all accounts, speak both English and Spanish.

“I think my English is good enough to hold public office in San Luis, Arizona,” Cabrera told CNN en Español in an interview conducted in Spanish.

“I am not going to help (at the White House). I will be helping here.”

Last month, Yuma County Superior Court Judge John Nelson ruled the woman's name should be taken off the ballot after testimony from linguistics experts and Cabrera. A U.S. citizen born in Yuma, Arizona, Cabrera moved to Mexico and then returned to Yuma for the last three years of  school, graduating from Kofa High School.

Cabrera was able to tell her attorney her name and where she was born but struggled with what school she had graduated from, according to the Yuma Sun. After being asked the question three times, without being able to answer in English, the judge allowed Cabrera to leave the witness stand and issued his ruling, the paper reported. In his ruling, Nelson said he wanted to be clear he wasn't saying that Cabrera had an "intelligence" issue but felt she should be removed from the ballot because of her lack of proficiency in English.

Cabrera appealed the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision Tuesday. CNN has not been able to reach Cabrera, her attorneys and city officials for responses to the ruling.

“It is ordered that the trial court's judgment and orders filed January 27, 2012 are affirmed,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch said. “The City Clerk shall not include appellant's name on the March 13, 2012, City Council election ballot. A written decision of this court shall follow in due course.”

At present it's unclear what factored into the justices' decision, but Cabrera's story has caught the attention of people nationwide and sparked a debate about who is best able to represent the people of a certain community.

“When he took my right to be on the ballot, he took away the right of the people who want to vote for me,” Cabrera said after the judge's initial ruling.

As Cabrera's story attracted attention, much of the debate centered on two issues. First, some of CNN's readers said candidates for public office should be able to speak English well. But others argued that the people of San Luis could decide if Cabrera was qualified and choose whether or not to vote for her.

The dispute began when Juan Carlos Escamilla, the mayor of San Luis, said he was concerned that Cabrera might not have the proper grasp of the language for the job. Escamilla filed a lawsuit in December asking a court to determine whether Cabrera's skills qualified her under state law to run for the council seat.

Cabrera admits she isn't the most fluent in English.

Instead of the confident, strong way she speaks in Spanish to the residents of San Luis, Cabrera speaks a bit more slowly, and perhaps with less conviction, when she switches to English. She says she can communicate at the level she needs to in English, given where she lives. She grades her English proficiency as a 5 on a scale from 1 to 10.

“I am a very honest so I can tell you I’m not fluid in English, but I do understand it. I can read a letter. I can read a book,” Cabrera said. “Right now I have a private tutor helping me improve my English.”

In 2006, Arizona passed a law that made English the official language of the state. Nearly a century before, in 1910, Congress passed the Enabling Act, which allowed Arizona to become a state with certain requirements. Among them was one that addressed the English language.

"The ability to read, write, speak, and understand the English language sufficiently well to conduct the duties of the office without aid of an interpreter shall be a necessary qualification for all state officers and members of the state legislature," a section of the act reads.

But Cabrera's attorneys argued in court that her disqualification was unfair and may be unconstitutional, saying there is no standard for a specific level of proficiency for a City Council candidate.

“Unbelievable,” John Minore, one of Cabrera's attorneys told the Yuma Sun after the high court ruling. “This is a fine example of judicial activism. Arizona now has a English standard to be on a ballot but doesn't tell you what that standard is. It's amazing that people in government who are in power can spend taxpayer money to keep people off the ballot. This is Hispanics keeping Hispanics off the ballot, compliments of the San Luis City Council.”

The court battle is part of a growing discussion about English in a country where people come from a variety of backgrounds. During a recent presidential debate, GOP candidates said that English should be the official U.S. language and should be the only one taught in school.

Bob Vandevoort of the advocacy group ProEnglish said that the country would be more cohesive if English were made the standard language in government.

"We are concerned as far as government goes; we don't want to see us become a multilanguage nation. We want to see a nation that has one language as far as government is concerned," he said, adding that what people speak at home is a different issue.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said there should be more opportunities to ensure everyone has the resources to learn English. He said there are long lines to get into classes in several cities, with so many people trying to learn English.

But Vargas argues a candidate doesn't necessarily need to have full English proficiency to run for office.

"I think it should be up to the voters to decide what kind of representative they want," he said. "I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to not be able, to not allow someone to present themselves to the voters as a candidate because of their language abilities."

It's unclear what Cabrera's next move may be, but there may still be one way for her to run for the San Luis City Council: as a write-in candidate.

Nevertheless, Cabrera's battle will surely advance the debate about language in America and politics.

Let us know what you think about the issue in the comments below. Do you think the right decision was made?

Alcohol has been involved in most of the deaths blamed on the extreme cold in Ukraine, the country worst affected by the icy temperatures gripping eastern Europe, the country's emergencies minister said Wednesday.

Nine out of 10 of the deaths reported have been alcohol-related, the country's Emergency Situations Minister Viktor Baloga said.

At least 135 deaths have been reported in Ukraine in the past two weeks, but he suggested the actual number that can be blamed on the winter weather is somewhat lower, at 112.

Authorities in Ukraine have set up an emergency hospital to deal with people suffering from cold-related conditions, and distributed 3,000 emergency relief tents across the country, they said. The tents are heated, and people with nowhere else to go can get hot food and drinks.

Police attacked the former Maldives president Wednesday, beating him up a day after he stepped down, the Maldivian Democratic Party said.

"We strongly condemned the violent attack by the Maldivian Police Service on President (Mohamed) Nasheed and senior officials of the MDP," the party said in a written statement. "President Nasheed is being beaten up as of now in an ongoing peaceful protest."

Four members of Parliament were abducted as violence gripped the nation's capital, Male, lawmaker Eva Abdulla said, and the head of the party was hospitalized in critical condition.

Police sprayed tear gas and beat demonstrators with batons, she said, and the brutal violence left some protesters bleeding in the streets.

The last known surviving veteran of World War I has died. Florence Green, 110, was a waitress in Britain's Royal Air Force.

"In a way, that the last veteran should be a lady and someone who served on the home front is something that reminds me that warfare is not confined to the trenches," Retired Air Vice-Marshal Peter Dye told Time.

"It reminds us of the Great War, and all warfare since then has been something that involved everyone," Dye, director-general of the RAF Museum, told Time. "It's a collective experience. ... Sadly, whether you are in New York, in London, or in Kandahar, warfare touches all of our lives."

Green was 17 when she joined the Women's Royal Air Force in 1918, two months before the armistice, the BBC reported.

She recalled her wartime experiences in a 2008 interview, retold in Time.

"I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates," she said. "I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes but I was scared of flying. I would work every hour God sent. But I had dozens of friends on the base and we had a great deal of fun in our spare time. In many ways, I had the time of my life."

Two weeks shy of her 111th birthday, Green died in her sleep Saturday night at a home care facility in King's Lynn, Norfolk, according to the BBC.

The Republican presidential race heads to Maine Saturday for a caucus.  Watch CNN.com Live for up-to-the-minute coverage from the campaign trail.

Today's programming highlights...

9:00 am ET - Pentagon briefing on Afghanistan - A U.S. military official discusses current military operations in the war-torn country.

10:30 am ET - Santorum speaks to pastors - Fresh off his three-state win on Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum holds a forum with pastors in McKinney, Texas.

10:30 am ET - Gingrich in Ohio - GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich hopes to kickstart his campaign by touring and speaking to employees of a business in Cleveland.

12:45 pm ET - White House briefing - The crisis in Syria and the situation in Iran will likely top Jay Carney's agenda with the White House press corps.

4:00 pm ET - Romney goes to Georgia - GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney takes his campaign to Atlanta, where he'll hold an event for supporters.

CNN.com Live is your home for breaking news as it happens.

A shooting suspect and one of three people he shot Tuesday at a Dallas Area Rapid Transit station just north of Dallas have died of their wounds, officials said.

The shootings happened at 3:30 p.m. at the Arapaho station in Richardson, Texas, according to DART spokesman Mark Ball.

Police have not released the identities of the shooter or the victims.

Ten suspected militants were killed Wednesday when a U.S. drone fired two missiles at an insurgent hideout in Pakistan's northwest tribal region, three security officials said.

The early morning attack took place 10 kilometers east of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media on the matter.

The attack Wednesday morning was the fourth U.S. drone strike on Pakistani soil this year, all of them targeting locations in North Waziristan.

Not long after Russia's foreign minister touted the Syrian president's "commitment" to ending violence, 42 more people were killed Wednesday in the devastated city of Homs, an opposition activist said.

The dead included three children, said Omar Shakir, who tallied the number after visiting and calling field hospitals in three Homs neighborhoods.

"There is nonstop shelling," Shakir said. He said those wounded by government troops must resort to the ill-equipped, makeshift clinics because rockets struck one of two hospitals; the other was taken over by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Eleven months into a government-led slaughter of dissidents, the situation has gone from unbearable to unimaginable.

Rick Santorum swept the three Republican presidential contests Tuesday in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, reshaping the race and raising questions about frontrunner Mitt Romney's ability to attract broad conservative support.

Santorum's trifecta halts front-runner Mitt Romney's momentum after the former Massachusetts governor had won the previous two contests and three of the first five prior to Tuesday.

Santorum claims momentum after 3-state sweep