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President Obama openly spoke of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act at a fundraiser Monday, as he defended his personal view that gay couples should have the right to marry. While his administration has put out statements on the idea of repealing the 1996 federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, it's unusual for Obama to call for its repeal. He did so Monday as one of a list of policy goals for what he hopes will be a second term, along with passing the immigration legislation known as the Dream Act, reforming Wall Street and...

Turns out he’s not Kenyan after all. He’s KGB. All this time, people were worried that President Obama was born in Africa and that his radical agenda had been crafted by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky on the streets of Chicago’s South Side. Now we know his real radical hidden agenda is in service of the Kremlin.

(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum challenged President Barack Obama's Christian beliefs on Saturday, saying White House policies were motivated by a "different theology." A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using "political science" in the debate about climate change. Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different...

While combat drones are not allowed in the U.S. airspace without a special certificate from the FAA, the military is in a fix over the 7, 500 military drones deployed overseas, that need to be recalled home.... After returning home, the robotic aircraft would be stationed in military bases around the nation for use in emergencies... Last week, Congress approved legislation requiring the FAA to create a plan for wide-scale integration of drones in the national airspace by 2015.

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global's Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts...

They are fuzzy about some issues but the Republican presidential candidates leave little doubt about where they stand on gun rights. President Barack Obama, on the other hand, is virtually silent on the issue. Obama's history in support of strict gun control measures prior to becoming president makes it difficult for him to claim he's a Second Amendment champion, even though he signed a bill allowing people to take loaded guns into national parks. At the same time, he's apparently decided that his record backing gun safety is nothing to boast of, either, perhaps because of the power of the...

Washington —For most of the last two decades, Supreme Court conservatives led by Justice Antonin Scalia dominated the debates during oral arguments. They greeted advocates for liberal causes with sharp and sometimes caustic questions, putting them on the defensive from the opening minute.But the tenor of the debate has changed in recent months, now that President Obama's two appointees to the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, have joined the fray and reenergized the liberal wing.Gone are the mismatches where the Scalia wing overshadowed reserved and soft-spoken liberals like now-retired

If Republicans succeed in taking over the House and come even close to gaining a majority in the Senate, expect calls for the president to "move to the center." These will come not only from Republicans but also from conservative Democrats, other prominent Dems who have been defeated, Fox Republican News, mainstream pundits, and White House political advisors. After the 1994 midterm, when Dems lost the House and Senate, Bill Clinton was told to "move to the center." He obliged by hiring pollster Dick Morris, declaring the "era of big government is over," abandoning much of his original agenda, and...

Republicans should focus on President Obama's "left-wing" policies and not get sidetracked by "false" issues such as the validity of his birth certificate, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Wednesday. Giuliani lamented the lack of a strong Republican leader who could direct the party's attention to what he called "the most left-wing agenda ... since Roosevelt." "We don't have a real leader of the party right now because we don't have a president, we don't have presidential candidates," Giuliani said. "So everybody gets to speak their minds." Giuliani, an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008,...

The “Climate Security Act”, also known as Cap-and-Trade or the Lieberman-Warner Bill was being debated in the US Senate last year and came close to becoming law. For a bill that will literally ruin our economy forever, it did not get near the attention it deserved. Thanks to a Republican filibuster by Senator Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Larry Craig and a promise of a VETO by former President Bush it was stopped, but after the election everyone can expect it to raise its ugly head again. Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Patrick Lahey, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Barack Obama,...

President Obama's chief of staff said conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, and suggested that Limbaugh's desire for the president's policies to fail is the uniform position of the GOP. Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Limbaugh is the "intellectual force" of the GOP and Republicans now have to live with that choice. "He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party. And he has been up front about what he views, and hasn't stepped back from that, which is he hopes for failure. He said...

Some Democrats Unhappy With Obama Iraq Plan. BY LUIS MARTINEZ In a speech later today at Camp Lejeune, N.C., President Obama will announce an 18- month troop withdrawal plan from Iraq that will result in what aides say will be the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq Aug. 31, 2010. However, even before the plan has been unveiled top Democrats are raising concerns that the president's plan will leave behind a larger force than they had anticipated. Sen. John McCain, however, who had battled Obama over his Iraq plan during the presidential campaign, had indicated that he supports...

President Obama lent his voice last night to the push for a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions, using his first speech to a joint session of Congress to lobby for controversial legislation sure to spark a heated debate during tight economic times. Obama campaigned for president last year with climate change and energy issues atop his agenda. And he returned to those themes yesterday, saying that a cap-and-trade bill would help spark economic recovery by giving U.S. companies greater incentive to start producing more wind turbines, solar panels, biofuels and battery-powered automobiles. "To truly transform our economy, to protect...

BY JACKIE CALMES WASHINGTON — President Obama is eager to seek a bipartisan solution to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, people who have spoken with him say, but he is running into opposition from his party’s left and from Democratic Congressional leaders who contend that his political capital would be better spent on health care and other priorities. Mr. Obama considered announcing the formation of a Social Security task force at a White House “fiscal responsibility summit” that he will convene on Monday. But several Democrats said that idea had been shelved, partly because of objections from House...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Representative James Clyburn held a roundtable meeting to discuss how the newly-signed stimulus package will affect South Carolina. He said not only would it create jobs, but also repair roads and bridges around the state. Clyburn also had some strong comments for Gov. Mark Sanford on why he thinks he opposed the stimulus. "The governor of Louisiana expressed opposition. Has the highest African-American population in the country. Governor of Mississippi expressed opposition. The governor of Texas, and the governor of South Carolina. These four governor's represent states that are in the black belt. I was insulted...

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BY EDWARD LUCEA & KRISHNA GUHA Nationalisation, long regarded in Washington as a folly of Europeans, is gaining rapid ground among US opinion-formers. Stranger still, many of those talking about federal ownership of banks are Republicans. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for North Carolina, said that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”. Mr Graham said that people across the US accepted his argument that it was untenable to keep throwing good money after bad into institutions such as Citigroup and Bank...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - As the stimulus plan goes into effect, Sen. Lindsey Graham has some concerns and hopes he and the president can find some common ground. Graham says things are still going to get worse. He supports spending for bridges, roads and infrastructure, but says with other spending measure the stimulus bill missed the mark. "If we would have spent some of this money or half of this money on banking and housing, we'd a had a better result in my opinion," Graham said. Graham highlighted his own bi-partisan spirit. "I think I've had a reputation for reaching...

When the Tax Policy Center graded 17 key tax-cut provisions in President Obama's economic-stimulus bill last week, 10 received a C or D grade and none merited an A. The tax-policy analysis group, sponsored jointly by the liberal Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, said its scores were an attempt to evaluate whether the bill's tax credits and other tax incentives will boost the economy and deliver the biggest "bang for the buck." Many of the tax provisions in President Obama's two-year, $787 billion stimulus plan were found wanting, either because the stimulative effects were small, came too late to have...

The courtship of Senator Olympia Snowe started in December with a phone call from Joe Biden. The Vice President-elect made sure Snowe had his home telephone number in Delaware so she would know how to reach him on weekends. In the weeks that followed, the two traded memos back and forth about how an economic stimulus package should work. "I had an infinite number of ideas, because they had been stored up," says Snowe, a Maine Republican who never got that kind of treatment when her party controlled the White House. "Now somebody was listening." Snowe isn't the only GOP...