Signs of donor fatigue at Obama's Bay Area fundraisers  —  President Obama hit the Bay Area for a fast cash-and-grab fundraising drive Wednesday, but there were signs that even in one of the nation's most reliable Democratic ATMs, donor fatigue is setting in.

John McCain: Arizona execution ‘torture’  —  A botched execution in Arizona on Wednesday amounted to “torture,” said the state's senior senator John McCain.  —  The longtime Republican lawmaker, who experienced years of torture while being held in captivity by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War …

David Gregory: Dead Head Talking?  —  NBC News' chief White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, and Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are jockeying to replace the moderator of Meet the Press.  —  Whenever he got around to reading the unpleasant item in the Page Six column on Wednesday …

Hillary Clinton: I need to ‘work on’ press relations  —  Hillary Clinton, who has long had a tempestuous relationship with the media, on Thursday said she may need to “work on” her “expectations” of the press.  —  Her comments, which came on NPR's “On Point” program, follow criticism …

Video: Woman in Labor ‘Not Allowed’ to Cross Street to Hospital Over Obama's Impending Motorcade  —  Witnesses say a pregnant woman in labor was prevented by authorities from crossing a Los Angeles street to a hospital Wednesday because the road had been closed for President Barack Obama's impending motorcade.

Michigan GOP Mayor Compares Atheists To Nazis, KKK  —  The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and two other groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Warren, Mich., who banned an atheist group from setting up a station alongside one run by a prayer group in the city hall atrium.

Texas gun nuts' scary ritual: How hatred of a president turned profane  —  The “open carry” crew is now spouting right-wing conspiracy theories and waving guns in the worst place imaginable  —  Three weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a concerned citizen from Dallas named …

Behind the Scenes in Putin's Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator  —  The President wakes late and eats shortly after noon.  He begins with the simplest of breakfasts.  There is always cottage cheese.  His cooked portion is always substantial; omelette or occasionally porridge.

Why Am I Moving Left?  —  I used to be right down the middle.  But America's changed, and so have I.  —  In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward.  —  This is unexpected.

Obama Campaign Vets: Pay Us $5,000 To Learn — And Work On A Campaign  —  Started by top Obama campaign vets, 270 Strategies' new training program has drawn skepticism from Democrats and progressives on the campaign trail.  —  Darren Hauck / Reuters  —  WASHINGTON — Two top veterans …

An Idiot's Guide to Inequality  —  We may now have a new “most unread best seller of all time.”  —  Data from Amazon Kindles suggests that that honor may go to Thomas Piketty's “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which reached No. 1 on the best-seller list this year.

GOP Has Midterm Engagement Advantage  —  But ‘Enthusiasm Gap’ Narrower than in 2010  —  The Republican Party holds a clear advantage in voter engagement in this fall's midterm elections, according to a new national survey by the Pew Research Center.  Yet GOP voters are not as enthused …

Glenn Beck's audacious defense against Boston Marathon bombings defamation suit  —  On April 15 of last year, a thin kid with a bright smile named Abdulrahman Alharbi decided he would stop and watch the Boston Marathon for a few minutes.  A Saudi Arabian studying English in Boston …

BuzzFeed Editor Caught Lifting Text From Yahoo! Answers  —  Yahoo! Answers, one of the great artifacts of Internet history, is intently studied at viral news website BuzzFeed, where its trove of half-literate questions (and even less literate answers) has supplied material for at least fifty different posts and listicles.

The Solution to Border Disorder  —  The best antidote to illegal immigration is a functioning system of legal immigration.

Conservatives Write an Assertive New Script to Fight Abortion  —  It was not on the public schedule for the Republican National Committee's spring meeting at the stately Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis.  But inside a conference room, a group of conservative women held a boot camp to strengthen …

Grim Details Emerge in FSU Professor's Shooting Death … A criminal law professor at Florida State University gunned down at his home was shot in the side of the head at relatively close range, ABC News has exclusively learned.  —  Professor Dan Markel, 41, was fatally shot Saturday …

Isis ‘ordering female genital mutilation’ in Iraq - UN  —  A top UN official in Iraq has said the Sunni Islamist group Isis controlling the city of Mosul is seeking to impose female genital mutilation.  —  All females aged 11 and 46 in the northern city must undergo the procedure …

Senate: 2014 a Year All Its Own  —  Republicans' takeover odds remain decent, but this isn't 2006 or 2010  —  Analysts always strain to generalize about elections.  We want to “model” them, find the common elements, and project them as early as possible based on the commonalities.

Morning Plum: GOP lawsuit against Obama could play into Dems' hands  —  Democratic leaders are planning an aggressive effort to turn the House GOP lawsuit against President Obama into a political positive in the 2014 elections, with ads and other paid media designed to cast the GOP as extreme …