CNN exclusive: White House email contradicts Benghazi leaks  —  This story has been updated from its original version.  —  CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi …

Understanding the Politics of the IRS Scandal  —  We're just at the front end of investigating the IRS scandal.  And all the standard blah blah blah about how we don't know just what we'll find.  But I think we do know pretty much exactly what the political implications will be.  And they're significant.

Holder Defends Justice Department in Journalists' Records Seizure  —  WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday defended the Justice Department's sweeping seizure of telephone records of Associated Press journalists, describing the article by The A.P. that prompted …

Updated Budget Projections: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023  —  If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, CBO estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008.  Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year …

Race And IQ.  Again.  —  [Re-posted from earlier today.]  —  I should know better than to bring this up again.  But the effective firing of a researcher, Heritage's Jason Richwine, because of his Harvard dissertation should immediately send up red flags about intellectual freedom.

D.C. turns on Obama  —  The town is turning on President Obama - and this is very bad news for this White House.  —  Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama - and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now.

Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World  —  They are 1 percenters who are 100 percent despicable.  —  Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members …

Why Washington scandal-mania may save Medicare and Social Security  —  The Monica Lewinsky scandal may have helped save Social Security in the late 1990s.  Now the scandal fever currently gripping Washington — IRS, Benghazi, Associated Press phone records — may save Social Security and Medicare two decades later.

Franklin Graham: IRS targeted us, too  —  The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama.  —  Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family's international humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse …

Convicted Pa. abortion doctor gets life in prison  —  PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies who were born alive in his grimy clinic agreed Tuesday to give up his right to an appeal and faces life in prison but will be spared a death sentence.

Anthony Weiner hires campaign manager  —  Anthony Weiner's new campaign manager for his nascent mayoral bid is a recent Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee adviser who spent four months working on a failed Staten Island congressional race last year, two sources familiar with the hire told POLITICO.