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)

59% of Catholics Disapprove of Obama's Job Performance  —  Catholics strongly disapprove of the job President Obama is doing as the debate continues over his administration's new policy forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception they morally oppose.

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.

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 …

Pressure mounting for GOP caucus reconsideration  —  AUGUSTA, Maine — Pressure is on the Maine Republican Party to reconsider its weekend declaration that Mitt Romney won the state's caucuses.  —  The Maine GOP announced Saturday that Romney narrowly edged Ron Paul, 39 percent to 36 percent …

Protesters Shout Down Santorum As He Speaks Against Marriage Equality In Washington State  —  Occupy Wall Street protesters nearly drowned out Rick Santorum for 44 minutes as he tried to deliver remarks at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington on Monday night.

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.

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.

Christie plans tribute to Whitney Houston  —  With a funeral service for the late Whitney Houston scheduled to take place in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday, Gov. Chris Christie says he is planning to order flags to be flown at half-staff in the singer's honor.

Christie's Valentines Message To Gays In New Jersey: Your Marriages Are ‘A Good Bunch Of Theater’  —  New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) described yesterday's vote in favor of marriage equality in the state Senate as “a good bunch of theater” and predicted that the legislature …

Fliers griping over Obama ‘grope hike’  —  ‘What do our taxes pay for?’  —  No grope tax!  —  That's the message from Bay State fliers, already saddled with sky-high ticket prices and now fuming over the president's proposal to triple the cost of passenger security fees …

Coach resigns over nude photo on Facebook … High school football coach, Paul Withee, resigned after accidentally posting a naked picture on Facebook.  (Source: WMTW/CNN)  —  SOUTH PARRIS, ME (WMTW/CNN) - A high school football coach in Maine has resigned after accidentally posting a naked picture on his Facebook page.

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 …

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.

Schumer won't say if Senate Dems will vote on GOP's stand-alone payroll tax cut  —  Senate Democrats signaled on Tuesday that they would keep their foot on the throttle in negotiations over extending the payroll tax cut, a day after House GOP leaders dropped their demand to offset the tax break.

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 …

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.

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.

FIFTY MEDICAL DOCTORS FOR SINGLE PAYER URGE SUPREME COURT TO STRIKE DOWN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE  —  Fifty medical doctors who favor a single payer health insurance system today urged the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate.  —  In a brief filed with the Court …