Battleground Tracking Poll: Obama retakes lead  —  MARION, Ohio — With eight days to go until the election, President Barack Obama has recaptured a narrow national lead over Mitt Romney, riding increased support from women and an edge in early voting.  —  A new POLITICO/George Washington …

Hurricane Sandy: 5 political questions  —  The presidential campaigns are publicly hitting pause on East Coast electioneering as Hurricane Sandy spirals toward Atlantic beaches, but privately political professionals are starting to assess important questions about how it might affect next week's elections up and down the ballot.

Mitt Romney In GOP Debate: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States … REACT:  —  FOLLOW:  —  Elections 2012, Mitt Romney, Elections 2012, Video, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Politics News, Fema, Frankenstorm 2012, Hurricane Sandy 2012, Hurricane Sandy Fema …

Medicaid on the Ballot  —  There's a lot we don't know about what Mitt Romney would do if he won.  He refuses to say which tax loopholes he would close to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts; his economic “plan” is an empty shell.  —  But one thing is clear: If he wins, Medicaid …

Column: Romney wrong to use “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts”  —  Romney may have co-opted the show's motto, but the women of “Friday Night Lights” know we need Obama.  —  STORY HIGHLIGHTS  —  2:09PM EDT October 28.  2012 - “Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose,” was the battle cry …

Romney Avoids Taxes via Loophole Cutting Mormon Donations  —  In 1997, Congress cracked down on a popular tax shelter that allowed rich people to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money.  —  Individuals who had already set up these vehicles were allowed to keep them.

Bill Clinton sneaks in before storm to boost Murphy  —  Waterbury — On the eve of a hurricane-induced break in the political season, Bill Clinton gave Democrats a 30-minute pep talk Sunday, framing U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy's race for U.S. Senate as an election of national interest.

Obama's independent problem  —  President Obama has a problem with independents.  And it's not a small problem.  —  In the last three releases of the tracking poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, Obama has trailed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among independent voters by between 16 and 20 percentage points.

Early briefings on Libya strike focused on Al Qaeda, before story changed  —  Two days after the Libya terror attack, representatives of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center gave Capitol Hill briefings in which they said the evidence supported an Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-affiliated attack, Fox News has learned.

Benghazi scandal demands answers  —  Prez shows utter lack of integrity, leadership  —  Last week, in the final presidential debate on foreign policy, Mitt Romney made a deliberate decision not to go after the president on Benghazi.  Romney's task was to present himself as a plausible commander in chief.

NYU terrorism class asks students to plot terrorist attack  —  It's Terrorism 101.  —  A New York University class on transnational terrorism is requiring students to “hypothetically plan a terrorist attack” — and shocked cops say the outrageous lesson plan is an insult to the officers killed on Sept. 11.

In Morning Joe Interview, Obama Talks Libya And Ideas ‘I Stole From A Massachusetts Governor’  —  As mentioned earlier, Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski spoke with President Barack Obama during a New Hampshire campaign stop in a segment aired early Monday morning.

Labor Department May Delay Jobs Report  —  The U.S. Labor Department on Monday said it hasn't made a decision yet on whether to delay Friday's October jobs report, the final reading on the labor market before next week's federal elections.  —  A Labor official said the agency will assess …

Obama Suggests ‘Secretary of Business’ in a 2nd Term  —  President Barack Obama signaled if he wins a second term he would appoint a Secretary of Business to oversee newly-consolidated government agencies, including the Small Business Administration, and predicted “a war” …

The Obama Curse strikes again: Detroit Tigers lose the world series  —  Not only did the Detroit Tigers lose the world series, they lost spectacularly, with the Giants winning in a solid four game streak.  I predicted this outcome a few days ago, not because I know anything about baseball …

Court grants four cases, seeks government views  —  The Supreme Court, fully at work while most of the rest of official Washington takes a weather day off, agreed on Monday to hear four new cases, including a plea to give convicted individuals a new chance to claim that their defense lawyers in state court failed to perform adequately.

Did Nations that Boosted Education Grow Faster?  —  No. Each dot in the graph below represents a nation: Change in education on the x-axis and change in per capita GDP growth on the y-axis.  Between the 60's and the 90's every country in this sample boosted its average years of education …

Broken promises  —  O has dashed lefties' hopes  —  As the 2012 presidential campaign winds to a close — it's mostly about Big Bird and binders, apparently — it's hard to recall the heady days of 2008.  But thinking back, things have really gone downhill.