EXCLUSIVE: Richard Grenell hounded from Romney campaign by anti-gay conservatives  —  Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.

USA TODAY interview: Gingrich ready to support Romney  —  WASHINGTON - Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, on the eve of suspending his roller coaster presidential bid, said in an interview with USA TODAY that he will embrace Mitt Romney's candidacy Wednesday and is ready to campaign for his former rival.

How The White House Smothered The News Of Obama's Trip To Afghanistan  —  How the White House played whack-a-mole, and why I deleted my tweet.  Drudge wouldn't budge.  —  Shortly before 9:19 a.m. this morning the Afghanistan-based 24-hour broadcast news station TOLONews tweeted that President Barack Obama had landed in Afghanistan.

Berean Baptist pastor disavows advice to punch gay kids as a joke  —  A Fayetteville pastor says he was joking when he told parents in a sermon Sunday to hit children who show signs of being gay.  —  Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church on Glensford Drive, said he does …

Obama's whopper about an Ohio River bridge  —  (LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS) “I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and firefighters …

Presidential Proclamation — Loyalty Day, 2012  —  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA  —  More than two centuries ago, our Founders laid out a charter that assured the rule of law and the rights of man.  Through times of tranquility and the throes of change …

A beating at Church and Brambleton  —  The Virginian-Pilot  —  Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.  —  The victim's friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car.  Attackers came after her, pulling her hair …

“Occupy” Movement Was Infiltrated By FBI Informant In Cleveland Bridge Bombing Probe  —  Buster  —  The federal probe that resulted last night in the arrest of five purported anarchists for allegedly plotting to bomb an Ohio bridge began last year at an Occupy Wall Street rally in Cleveland …

Obama appears in ad for Warren  —  Via the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson, Elizabeth Warren's campaign is set to air an ad with President Obama, using footage in which he offered her strong praise.  —  “She's a janitor's daughter who has become one of the country's fiercest advocates for the middle class,” Obama says in the spot.

China's Vanishing Trade Imbalance  —  America's economic imbalance with China has been a singular concern of policy makers for more than half a decade.  Senators Charles E. Schumer and Lindsey Graham wanted to punish China for pegging the exchange rate to the dollar in 2005 …

GOP: Cut state bonuses for children's health care  —  House Republicans want to stop rewarding states for finding and enrolling low-income children in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, and public health advocates are livid.  —  The Republicans say it's a smart fiscal move …

The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy  —  Ever since the financial crisis started, we've heard plenty from the 1 percent.  We've heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants.

A better case for Keystone XL  —  THE CASE FOR ultimately approving the Keystone XL pipeline — always strong — has grown stronger.  —  A key environmentalist argument against Keystone XL has been that the project would encourage the extraction of bitumen, a particularly dirty oil-like substance, from the “oil sands” in Alberta.