In a sign of the growing seriousness with which the president’s team takes the former Pennsylvania lawmaker, Obama’s campaign gave equal billing to Santorum in a memo criticizing the two Republican candidates’ tax and deficit reduction plans.Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Rick Santorum claim they will champion spending cuts deep enough to cut taxes [...]

The breathtaking pace of fundraising and spending in the race for the Republican presidential nomination also revealed why campaigns are likely to increasingly rely on independent political action committees, or PACs, to boost their efforts.Unlike campaigns, PACs have no limits on what they can raise or spend, so a few wealthy donors to a PAC [...]

On one side of the board, Messina sketched out the amounts of money he expected Republican Super PACs and other groups to raise and spend to try to defeat the Democratic president in the November 6 election.Drawing a line under that cumulative number — roughly $700 million — Messina then highlighted the amount raised by [...]

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was long the front-runner, finds himself struggling ahead of key contests in Michigan and Arizona on February 28 and the March 6 Super Tuesday when 10 states vote.Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has emerged in recent weeks as the main conservative alternative to the more moderate Romney in [...]

Netanyahu will be in Washington to address the annual policy conference of the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which will be held on March 4-6.The announcement of the White House meeting came in a briefing of a weekend visit between Netanyahu and Obama’s National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon, in Jerusalem, amid heightened concern that Israel might [...]

Obama, in his conversation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, also discussed the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran trilateral meetings held last week in Islamabad.They agreed to speak again soon to remain closely aligned as both countries continue our efforts to achieve common goals, and work to forge a long-term partnership, the White House said in a statement.The Wall Street [...]

A little more than two weeks after his off-key but enthusiastic renditions of America the Beautiful captured the spirit of a candidate who had won the Florida primary and seemed on the verge of locking down the Republican nomination for president, Romney is back in lackluster mode.It’s not just that Romney is facing a surprising [...]

Romney often cites his experience in turning around the over-budget and corrupted winter Olympics as experience that qualifies him to be president of the United States, and the crowd at two tribute ceremonies here showed their appreciation.Boy, I love you guys, Romney told the crowd. What a great experience we had together 10 years ago.After [...]

Christian Alexander Gomez died on February 2, six days after he and 31 other inmates in the Corcoran State Prison’s administrative segregation unit began refusing food, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.There was no immediate word on the cause of death, and Thornton said the prison had not [...]

National security adviser Tom Donilon’s trip from Saturday through Monday comes amid tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at securing weapons capability, but Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes.U.S. and European officials on Friday voiced cautious optimism over the latest signals from Tehran that it might be willing to resume [...]