Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals  —  WASHINGTON — One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda.  He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power …

Obama's campaign whisperer  —  Barack Obama's top advisers are making a mid-"core" correction in their attacks on Mitt Romney — with a little nudge from Bill Clinton, who is finding a niche as an Obama campaign whisperer and fundraiser.  —  Late last year, as Romney galloped to the right …

Romney Spokeswoman in 2010: Marco Rubio is a “Wheeling-and-Dealing” “Lobbyist-Politician w/ “Questionable Ethics”  —  On his way to becoming a Republican superstar, Marco Rubio endured a bruising Senate campaign where his ethics, his integrity and even his commitment to conservative principles were under almost daily assault.

Poll: Just three percent have favorable view of John Edwards  —  CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.  —  (CBS News) With opening arguments in the trial of former U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards set …

Jon Huntsman Trashes GOP, Expresses Campaign Regrets  —  Former Republican presidential candidate compares his party to Communist China.  Says Reagan would have trouble winning GOP primary in this political environment.  Regrets opposition to 10-1 spending cuts to tax increase deficit deal.

State GOP served with eviction papers for its St. Paul office space  —  The debt-plagued Republican Party of Minnesota is getting kicked out of its party headquarters near the state Capitol.  —  Massachusetts-based Hub Properties Trust filed paperwork in Ramsey County on Wednesday to evict …

An $8 billion trick?  —  Call it President Obama's Committee for the Re-Election of the President — a political slush fund at the Health and Human Services Department.  —  Only this isn't some little fund from shadowy private sources; this is taxpayer money, redirected to help Obama win another term.

HOW THE MEDIA COVERED THE 2012 PRIMARY CAMPAIGN  —  LESS HORSE RACE THAN 2008  —  By Tom Rosenstiel, Mark Jurkowitz and Tricia Sartor of PEJ  —  Mitt Romney needed 15 weeks once the primary contests began to gain a secure hold over his party's nomination for president.

Trayvon Martin Case - A Partially Parallel Shooting In Alabama  —  Reality generally does not provide the sort of parallel situations that would satisfy the rigors of social science.  However, let's go to Alabama for a shooting case from April 15 with many similarities to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

White killer whale adult spotted for first time in wild  —  “Iceberg” is believed to be the first mature white orca observed  —  Scientists have made what they believe to be the first sighting of an adult white orca, or killer whale.  —  The adult male, which they have nicknamed Iceberg …

NO END IN SIGHT  —  The talk in Washington these days is all about budget deficits, tax rates, and the “fiscal crisis” that supposedly looms in our near future.  But this chatter has eclipsed a much more pressing crisis here and now: almost thirteen million Americans are still unemployed.

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.  —  On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

Re: Richard Grenell: Romney has some 'splaining to do  —  Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at “Focal Point”  —  Gov. Mitt Romney stepped on a landmine by appointing Richard Grenell, an out, loud and proud homosexual, to be his spokesman on national security and foreign policy issues.

Romney's healthcare plan may be more revolutionary than Obama's  —  Instead of getting coverage at work, more Americans would shop for it on their own.  That would mean more choices — and more risk.  —  Republican candidate Mitt Romney says he would dump President Obama's healthcare overhaul and replace it with something else.

Cynthia McKinney back and running for her old congressional seat  —  Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is preparing to run for her old 4th Congressional district seat on the Green Party ticket.  —  McKinney was defeated by 4th district incumbent Hank Johnson in 2006 …

RNC Spokeswoman: Republican Economic Platform Will Be The Bush Program, ‘Just Updated’  —  Ready for an update?  —  During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican …

President Obama Edits Out Climate Change From His Earth Day 2012 Proclamation  —  You'll be glad to know that in the last 12 months, that whole climate change problem went away.  At least that's the impression left from comparing President Obama's 2012 Earth Day proclamation with the 2011 one.

Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less  —  The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill.  After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally …

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher can't enter Afghanistan  —  Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Monday he was denied entry into Afghanistan because of his critical views of that country's government.  —  “Apparently, [Afghanistan President Hamid] …

West says Muslim Brotherhood being allowed to influence strategy  —  Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) criticized the FBI on Monday for removing nearly 900 pages of training material it deemed to be offensive, saying it showed extremist Muslim groups were influencing national strategy.