The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a controversial Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting him as a judicial loose cannon and Republicans raised concerns about his alleged bias in favor of sex offenders.
President Obama has set an aggressive schedule for completing work on the bulk of the year-in-the-making health care package and may be getting the jump on the raft of Tea Party events set for the coming weeks.
The top Republican on the Senate committee that received an e-mail warning staffers not to visit the Drudge Report said there is no evidence "whatsoever" of an embedded virus on the news site and suggested the warning was a ruse to steer people away from the sometimes-incendiary page.
The number of states that saw their unemployment rolls rise was lower than the previous month but states reporting gains couldn't change their jobless percentages.
Lawmakers on both sides are trying to respond to voter anger over spending by considering a moratorium on pork-barrel projects that are seen as payback to contributors.