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In Election 2000, Florida was the decisive state in the Electoral College. In 2004, Ohio was the ultimate battleground that put George W. Bush over the top. This year, it might come down to Wisconsin. That's a state President Obama won by 14 points four years ago. But Wisconsin has gone through an amazing two years of nonstop campaigning since Gov. Scott Walker was elected in 2010. After he took on the teachers unions, there were efforts to recall several Republican state senators and then Walker himself. The governor not only survived, but he won more votes in his recall...

Political Insider Your morning jolt: ‘I might not agree with repeal and start over’ on health care, says Phil Gingrey 9:02 am March 24, 2010, by Jim Galloway At least a few Republicans have begun parsing what they mean when they call for the repeal of the new health care law. On Tuesday, in a CNN interview, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta) admitted there were portions of the legislation he likes – including the provision that would allow parents to carry their offspring on their insurance until age 26. Said Gingrey: “When we say start over, we don’t mean throw...

PHILADELPHIA – The Department of Veterans Affairs was fined $227,500 after incorrect radiation doses were given to 97 veterans with prostate cancer at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, a federal agency announced Wednesday. (Article excerpted per Yahoo's rule).

So who at NBC thought it would be a good idea for the special today to be, among other things, fried chicken, “in honor of Black History Month”? Because, spoiler alert – it wasn’t a good idea at all. And now NBCU employee Questlove is bringing it to the attention of his 1 million plus Twitter followers. Questlove, the band leader and drummer for The Roots (the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) tweeted this picture from the NBC Commissary at 30 Rock, with the comment: “Hmm HR?”

ABC's Ammu Kannampilly reports from London: Local reports say that Saudi health authorities have closed down a women’s fitness center attached to a hospital in Jeddah, with officials saying it is illegal to run health clubs or fitness centers for women in the country. Speaking to Arab News Muhammad Abdul Jawad, director of Jeddah’s Medical Licensing Administration said, “Anyone who violates regulations governing the running of health facilities would be punished severely because this involves people’s health.” ABC News’ Martha Raddatz wrote about feeling “like a second-class citizen” when she tried to use the gym at the Marriott Hotel in...

A new Public Policy Polling survey -- the group's final poll before Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts -- gives Scott Brown a 5-point lead over Martha Coakley. While we've had a lot of polls that have been all over the place depending on the assumptions the pollsters make about the composition of the electorate, the new PPP poll is helpful because we can compare it to a poll taken by the same firm a week ago and detect a trend. In the poll taken by PPP last week, Brown was up 1 point. At the time, that was seen as...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe signed papers Monday signaling a possible run for governor next year in Virginia. McAuliffe told The Associated Press he set up a campaign committee and will tour Virginia for the next 60 days before making his candidacy certain. He signed papers setting up his committee after a series of barnstorming campaign appearances across the state on behalf of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. McAuliffe would face two other Democrats already in the governor's race. State Senator Creigh Deeds narrowly lost the attorney general's race in 2005, and House Democratic Caucus...

What if the Electoral College ended up tied, 269-269, prolonging this Alice-in-Wonderland campaign? That's what would happen if Barack Obama won every state that went for Al Gore in 2000 plus Colorado, or if Obama carried every state that John Kerry won in 2004 plus Iowa, New Mexico, and fast-changing Nevada. If the electoral vote is tied, the Constitution's 12th Amendment requires that the election be thrown into the newly elected House. There, each state, regardless of population, would have one vote. The votes of 26 states would be required to elect a president. Otherwise, the Senate-elected vice president would...

With two weeks to go until Election Day, the exceptionally volatile and closely watched U.S. Senate race in Minnesota has tightened up. The latest Star Tribune Minnesota Poll shows DFLer Al Franken at 39 percent to Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's 36 percent. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley was the choice of 18 percent of likely voters.

In the media week that has been Scott McClellan, my former colleague has had his motives questioned, his character impugned, and his own book dismissed as something he could not possibly have written himself. Yet in the midst of the storm, the press has largely skipped over what is at once Scott's central claim, and his silliest argument: that the president's big mistake was to embrace the "permanent campaign" and that this led to a strategy that meant "never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned." The decisions on Iraq that followed Scott's departure tell a...

So this is fun: In a statement from Wal-Mart today, former Senator John Edwards had a staffer contact the electronics manager in a Raleigh, North Carolina store to try and get his hands on a PlayStation 3. Problem was, later that night he reportedly told a story to people on a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union-sponsored call that his son had ridiculed a classmate about his shoes, which were purchased at Wal-Mart. Upon hearing the news, the company invited Edwards to visit the local store to check out its electronics as well as its shoes for men and...

House GOP leaders agreed last night to strip plans to permit oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the offshore continental shelf from a $54 billion budget-cutting measure, probably securing the votes to pass the bill today. The move is a blow to President Bush, who has made expanded oil exploration a priority since he took office. Lawmakers said the White House applied pressure yesterday to Republicans to save the drilling provisions, especially in Alaska, even wooing conservative Democrats who have steadfastly opposed the GOP budget package.

SAN FRANCISCO Aug 21, 2005 — The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents. Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific. Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a...

SEATTLE (AP) - The sentence itself was fairly straightforward: An Algerian man received 22 years for plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium. It was what the judge said in imposing the term that raised eyebrows. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists, but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics. "We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right...

Major League Baseball is expected to announce the name of the Washington team within the next two weeks, and Nationals is the likely choice. snip A new logo and uniform designs for the Washington team also are nearing completion, industry sources said. The team colors predictably will be red, white and blue. It is not known which of the three will be the primary color for caps and uniforms.

DID THE MAYOR OF PHILLY MEAN TO ADMIT THIS? [KJL] From Hardball: MATTHEWS: let's talk resources. how much money are you getting to run this city operation, this get out the vote campaign? a couple million bucks? how much money is being spread around by the campaign to win philadelphia? i heard you're aiming at higher an 350, but to get that, that's a lot of street money, to use a term we're all familiar with, isn't it? STREET: that's an awful lot of money. we will distribute -- we have distributed to our party workers probably between -- between...

SYDNEY, Australia Oct. 9, 2004 — Prime Minister John Howard scored a stunning victory in Australia's federal election Saturday in a vote ensuring the country keeps its troops in Iraq. Labor Party leader Mark Latham conceded defeat in a speech to his supporters in western Sydney, saying he called Howard to congratulate him on his fourth straight election victory. "Tonight was not our night," Latham said. The election was widely seen abroad as the first referendum for the three leaders who launched the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with President Bush facing a ballot next month and British Prime Minister...

October 7, 2004--The race to replace John Edwards as North Carolina's next U.S. Senator is too close to call. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows Republican Richard Burr with 47% of the vote and Democrat Erskine Bowles with 45%. The survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted Monday, October 4, 2004. Burr leads by six points among men and trails by one among women. During the summer, most polls showed Bowles with a double-digit lead. In the fall, Burr's advertising campaign has highlighted Bowles' working relationship with former President Bill Clinton.

About 300,000 new Georgia voters --- a 50 percent increase over the last presidential election --- have registered so far this year, apparently indicating high interest in the November contests. In 2000, the secretary of state's office said, 195,544 Georgians registered to vote between January and August. Over the same period this year, the number was 295,384 new voters. About 4 million people were registered to vote in Georgia as of Sept. 1. "We're working overtime, six days a week right now," said John Sullivan, registration chief for Fulton County, which has added 48,222 voters in the past 12 months,...

WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush (news - web sites)'s handling of the Iraq (news - web sites) war. But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House. "This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant...