President Obama, Mitt Romney deadlocked in race, poll finds  —  AP - A pair of tepid jobs reports, landmark Supreme Court decisions on health-care and immigration laws, and an unprecedented barrage of negative ads have shaped the opening months of the fall presidential campaign.

On tax cuts, Obama decides to fight  —  The Obama administration has faced a difficult choice: Does it put off the fiscal crisis looming at the end of the year by capitulating to Republican demands to extend all the Bush tax cuts until 2013 — a move that would infuriate the Democratic base and muddle the campaign's message?

BRAD PITT'S MOM IN FEAR AFTER SLAMMING OBAMA  —  Quaking after being attacked for opposing same-sex marriage  —  Jane Pitt, mother of actor Brad Pitt, has been scared into silence by the hate-filled, vulgar and even violent reaction to her public assertion that Barack Obama is …

Cracks Appear in Republican Unity on Health Law Repeal  —  WASHINGTON — A House vote to fully repeal President Obama's health care law was supposed to be the coup de grâce for “Obamacare,” a final sweeping away of a law that Republicans thought the Supreme Court would gut and leave for dead.

As homicides spike, Chicago mayor defends tactics  —  CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago's mayor and police superintendent publicly defended their new gang-fighting strategy Monday amid growing criticism that the changes are failing and a big reason why the city's homicide rate has soared this year.

Report: 83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare  —  Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama's health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association.

Scorned Cottage Grove mom sets self ablaze  —  Police say the Cottage Grove woman, described as “vodka mom” on TV, was despondent over the asphyxiation death of her infant son.  —  A 29-year-old Cottage Grove woman set herself afire and died just weeks after being ridiculed as “vodka mom” …

Repealing health law would mean more benefits for members of Congress  —  Repealing President Obama's healthcare law would let members of Congress keep their government-subsidized insurance coverage after they retire — a benefit they lost under the health law.

Fed Harms Itself by Missing Goals  —  Ben S. Bernanke has made transparency one of the defining themes of his time at the helm of the Federal Reserve.  The virtue of this transparency is that it's easy to evaluate how well the Fed is conducting monetary policy.

Mayor Bloomberg launches contest to stir development of tiny 300-square-foot apartments for singles  —  Larger than a jail cell, but smaller than mobile home, ministudios will reflect city's changing demographics.  They'll be big enough for bathroom, kitchen, sleeping and dining areas

How economists get tripped up by statistics  —  Look at this scatter chart.  There will be a quiz.  Another dot is going to be added to this chart, in line with the distribution you see here.  You get to choose what the X value of the dot is — and your aim is to get a Y value of greater than zero.

Embattled Dems buck President Obama on taxes  —  President Barack Obama's renewed push to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000 is facing some strong head winds: Democrats running for Congress in 2012.  —  Several Democrats in critical House and Senate races say they prefer raising taxes …

Let's Draft Our Kids  —  IN late June, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former commander of international forces in Afghanistan, called for reinstating the draft.  “I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Mick Jagger's affair with David Bowie revealed in new book: They ‘were really sexually obsessed with each other’  —  Bowie's wife found them in bed, backup singer and Playboy model claimed to share their bed  —  David Bowie's “Ziggy Stardust” era had Jagger wondering if this was the future.

Kim Jong-un Appears With Disney Characters on North Korean TV  —  TOKYO — After a failed missile launching, aborted diplomacy with Washington, and continuing international pressure over the country's nuclear program, North Korea's untested young leader has tried once again to take a dramatic step …

Quarter Of Wall Street Executives See Wrongdoing As Key To Success: Survey … REACT:  —  FOLLOW:  —  Video, Labaton Sucharow, Reuters, Wall Street Executives, Wall Street Illegal, Wall Street Unethical, Wall Street Wrongdoing, Wall Street Wrongdoing Survey, Business News

As Mine Protections Fail, Black Lung Cases Surge … Coal miners are tested for black lung at a clinic in West Virginia.  —  Part one of a two-part series.  —  It wasn't supposed to happen to coal miners in Mark McCowan's generation.  It wasn't supposed to strike so early and so hard.