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Bush-era FEMA Chairman Michael Brown is standing by his suggestion that President Barack Obama acted too soon to call attention to federal disaster response efforts to Hurricane Sandy. “In the context of the election, I simply said he should have waited,” Brown told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon. “The storm was still forming, people were debating whether it was going to be as bad as expected, or not, and I noted that the president should have let the governors and mayors deal with the storm until it got closer to hitting the coastal areas along the Washington, D.C.-New York City corridor.”

MIAMI – Early voting opened on Saturday in Florida, the largest battleground state in the presidential election, with people waiting hours in some cases to cast ballots. “I’ll wait six hours” if necessary, said Mia Waters, 45, of Miami, a retired U.S. Army soldier, as she stood outside a county government building in downtown Miami, waiting to vote. “I want to exercise my right, no matter how long it takes.” Wait times at some Miami-Dade county polling locations reached five hours as of mid-afternoon Saturday, the county elections department said.

We have two impressive people running for president. I fully realize that is not a judgment universally shared in our polarized, partisan, red-blue divided nation. But Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are both smart and knowledgeable leaders of admirable character who have succeeded in every aspect of their careers. The campaign has showcased, however, their strikingly different life experiences and worldviews. There is every reason to believe they would take us in very different directions in foreign policy.

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign on Wednesday denounced GOP Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's "outrageous and demeaning" comments on rape and pressed Mitt Romney to repudiate his fellow Republican.

Mitt Romney is not particularly new to gaffes but when it comes to one about the relationship between Syria and Iran, he has shown extraordinary courage in repeating it at least six times just in the past year. During last night's foreign policy debate, Romney said: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea."

The trajectory of the U.S. presidential race did not change Monday night. Not substantively, in a debate that featured Mitt Romney’s constant endorsements of Barack Obama’s policies. (For instance, on the question of aggressive drone strikes against suspected terrorists: “I support that entirely and feel the President was right.”) And probably not politically, given that foreign policy is a low priority for most voters, and that the debate lacked a breakthrough “moment” that will hound one candidate or the other for days.

"Poop transplants" are an effective way to treat people with one type of intestinal bacteria infection, a new study shows. Researchers transplanted fecal matter from healthy people into the colons of people infected with the notoriously hard-to-treat Clostridium difficile bacteria, which causes severe, watery diarrhea. The researchers found that 46 out of 49 patients got better within a week of the treatment.

The Democratic Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century is hitting Missouri Rep. Todd Akin (R) with a talking direct mail piece that highlights his "legitimate rape" comments.

Every trip is unique. On this trip, Artie Goldstein travels across the country to attend his daughter's same-sex wedding, a journey that will test him, challenge him, and ultimately change him in unexpected ways

ROUND ROCK, Texas-- Round Rock resident Doug McLean is a Democrat. McLean recently asked his neighbors to post “Obama 2012” signs in their front yards. But earlier this week, he noticed his Obama signs were disappearing. So McLean said he called the police.

If there were any doubts about which Presidential candidate would carry Arkansas, you can erase them. GOP nominee Mitt Romney holds a 21-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama in the latest Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll. The survey, conducted on Sept. 17, combined 4 different Congressional District polls into one to create a statewide sample of 2,228 likely voters with a margin of error of +/-2%.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) If there's one thing that can unite political foes in Wisconsin, it just may be the Green Bay Packers. Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who made a national name for himself by going after public employee unions last year, posted a message on Twitter calling for the return of the NFL's locked-out unionized officials after a disputed call led to a Seattle Seahawks 14-12 victory over the Packers on Monday night. "After catching a few hours of sleep, the (hash)Packers game is still just as painful. (hash)Returntherealrefs," Walker tweeted early Tuesday.

During a Saturday fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Calif., which took in $6 million, Mitt Romney expressed his concerns over Ann Romney’s emergency landing on Friday. The candidate cast doubt on the mechanical design of airplane windows, in a general sense. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous....” he said.

The NFL is in sore need of a few recounts after another weekend of on-field farce put on by the replacement referees. But as long as the season goes on, the Signal will tally the games that, according to a rigorous historical study—my own—have been determined to predict the presidential election. Last week, I posted a rule for every franchise that predicts the winner of the election every four years, or at least nearly so. For example: If Tampa Bay scores more than 14 points in its fourth game, the out-of-power party wins the White House. Otherwise, the incumbent party...

HELENA – Republican Mitt Romney leads Democratic President Barack Obama by 9 percentage points in Montana, a Lee Newspapers poll shows. The poll results showed Romney with 51 percent, Obama with 42 percent and Libertarian Gary Johnson with 2 percent. Five percent of the voters were undecided.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Kevin McClatchy, the former owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates and now the board chairman at the McClatchy Company newspaper chain, said in an interview with The New York Times that he is gay.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a New Orleans law recently used to arrest Christian evangelists preaching on Bourbon Street during Southern Decadence, the annual celebration of gay culture in the French Quarter. Part of the city's recently enacted "aggressive solicitation" ordinance orders people not to "loiter or congregate on Bourbon Street for the purpose of disseminating any social, political or religious message between the hours of sunset and sunrise."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is warning Americans to avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan as protests over an anti-Islam video grow and turn violent. The department issued an alert Thursday. It's stepping up existing advice for Americans to be aware of the risks of travel to Pakistan and said they should defer all non-essential travel to the country. It says protests and demonstrations, some targeting U.S. interests, are likely to continue.

The Clint Eastwood on gay marriage episode of Ellen DeGeneres' talk-show showed "Dirty Harry" again in the "raw." The actor-director shared his views on same-sex-marriage and his role with the Libertarian Party. In the wake of the RNC, viewers got an even closer glimpse at the Hollywood legend.

Police have arrested a suspect in the bomb threat at Louisiana State University that led to the campus-wide evacuation of thousands of people earlier this week. Police Capt. Corey Lalonde said officers arrested William Bouvay Jr., 42, of Baton Rouge late Tuesday night after an investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies.