Poll: Rick Santorum takes slight lead in GOP race  —  CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.  —  Rick Santorum has pulled slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in Republican primary voters' preference for the presidential nomination …

Romney op-ed: Taxpayers should get GM shares' proceeds  —  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns in Portland, Maine.  The candidate contends that the Obama administration should sell its ownership in GM and return the money to taxpayers.  (Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press)

Media Matters memo called for hiring private investigators ‘to look into the personal lives’ of Fox employees  —  A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns.

Despite birth control controversy, Obama suffers no erosion among Catholics  —  Since the birth control controversy broke, it has been an article of faith among even some neutral commentators that the battle would cause Obama to lose crucial support among Catholic swing voters.

Fox News ‘course correction’ rankles some  —  As a white, male, middle-aged conservative talk radio host from Virginia, John Fredericks is something close to the Platonic ideal of a Fox News fan.  —  And until last year, he was one.  But then Fox's treatment of the Republican primary race …

CDC Warns Untreatable Gonorrhea is On the Way  —  A new strain of gonorrhea is resistant to one of the last known effective treatments  —  Gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States, is increasingly showing resistance to one of the last known effective …

VALENTINE'S DAY GOOGLE DOODLE: Today's charming musical animation makes for one sweet gift  —  SOMETIMES, not even Google keywords can navigate the search for love.  —  Today, Google is celebrating Valentine's Day the world over with a charming animated “Doodle” that is free of dialogue — yet is all heart.

Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller Screen  —  By By LORRAINE LUK in Taipei and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO in San Francisco  —  TAIPEI-Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said …

The Internal Contradictions of Mitt Romney  —  And by “internal”, I mean in the same paragraph: … Yep, Obama has failed to resolve the problem of excessive entitlement spending; furthermore, he's cutting entitlement spending!  —  It gets even better when you bear in mind that Romney …

Oliver Stone's son converts to Islam in Iran  —  US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP.  —  “The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with.

It Was Lehman Wot Did It  —  These days the bizarre economic notions are flying so thick and fast that it's hard to keep up.  Economics of Contempt informs us that Taylor and Cochrane(pdf) are denying the importance of the Lehman shock.  —  This is, among other things …

Upton's niece makes splash with S.I.  —  Kate Upton, the buxom blonde on the cover of this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, has a Washington connection.  —  She's the niece of a congressman: Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The Materialist Fallacy  —  The half-century between 1912 and 1962 was a period of great wars and economic tumult but also of impressive social cohesion.  Marriage rates were high.  Community groups connected people across class.  —  In the half-century between 1962 and the present …

Pentagon working with FAA to open U.S. airspace to combat drones  —  The military says the nearly 7,500 robotic aircraft it has accrued for use overseas need to come home at some point.  But the FAA doesn't allow drones in U.S. airspace without a special certificate.

Music director's marriage leads to his firing from St. Gabriel Catholic Church  —  The last five months have been eventful for Steav Bates-Congdon.  —  First he got married.  Then he got fired.  —  The popular music director at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in south Charlotte lost his job …

It's Time to Bring Lugar Home  —  “Earmarks,” also known as pork-barrel spending, are considered a “gateway drug” to corruption and bigger government in Washington.  They got that well-deserved title because there's a history of both Republicans and Democrats using earmarks as a currency to buy votes for all sorts of bad policies.

Report: 1.8M dead registered to vote  —  The United States's voter registration system is in chaos — with about 24 million registrations are no longer valid and nearly 2 million dead people still on voter rolls, according to a new report Tuesday.  —  Along with the one of every eight voter registrations …

Happy Valentine's Day: Economist Edition  —  You might think that the dismal science has very little to offer on matters of the heart.  But I disagree.  And so does Elisabeth Fosslien.  She's a brilliant young analyst interested in design, math, and economics.

Newt Gingrich reveals sexy Valentine's Day plans for wife Callista while stumping in California  —  The intimate remarks come as Team Gingrich tries to rev up Callista's public presence on the campaign trail  —  Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich …