Politics News

BOSTON - From his carefully coifed hair to his data-driven business principles to his unwavering devotion to his oft-maligned Mormon faith, Mitt Romney is the spitting image of his father physically, professionally and morally.

NEW YORK - Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to say she was born in the middle of the country at the middle of the century, in a Chicago suburb that defined a childhood out of "Father Knows Best" or "Ozzie and Harriet."

LAS VEGAS - You would have to look hard these days for signs of "the unmade bed," as Bill Richardson has been described time and again through the years.

WASHINGTON - John McCain has stocked his arsenal with a variety of weapons over the years, like fists when he was in school and bombs when he was at war. But his WMD is a mouth that won't quit. He possesses wisecracks of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON - Santa Claus may be coming to town, but lots of people will be leaving or otherwise hard to reach in Iowa and New Hampshire. That makes for plenty of nervous pollsters preparing to take late soundings on the presidential race during the frenzied holiday period.

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed legislation Friday to implement a U.S.-Peru free trade agreement the administration hopes will not only strengthen ties with the Andean nation but also improve relations throughout Latin America.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that he got Kim Jong Il's attention by writing the North Korean leader a letter and that Kim can get his attention by fully disclosing his nuclear programs and proliferation activities.

WASHINGTON - President Bush is losing two more key aides as his presidency winds toward its end, with his chief speechwriter and lobbyist both announcing Friday that they are leaving.

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed a temporary spending bill Friday to keep the government running for a week and prodded Congress to complete work on a longer-range spending package.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that baseball players and owners must take seriously the Mitchell Report on steroid use, but cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the individuals named.

WASHINGTON - The Senate confirmed James Peake, a former Army Surgeon General, as Veterans Affairs secretary Friday.

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Friday approved a $286 billion farm bill with an election-year expansion of subsidies for growers and food stamps for the poor.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, anticipating final congressional action on energy legislation next week, said the bill will "put America on a road to energy independence," save people money at the gas pumps and increase the country's security.

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Friday passed a defense policy bill that would offer more help to troops returning from combat and set conditions on contractors and pricey weapons programs.

WASHINGTON - A Republican environmental activist who arranged lobbyist Jack Abramoff's entree into the Interior Department was sentenced Friday to two months in a halfway house and four years probation.

CHICAGO - Exelon Corp. said Friday it will replace Wackenhut Corp. with an in-house security force at its 10 nuclear power plants following the discovery earlier this year that guards at a Pennsylvania plant were sleeping on the job.

WASHINGTON - A vast swath of the United States was warmer than usual this year, leading to severe drought conditions and wildfires in the West and Southeast. Texas, the Lone Star state, stood alone, the only one to record below average temperatures.

WASHINGTON - Two consumer groups Wednesday asked a federal official to recuse herself from an antitrust review of Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of Doubleclick.

WASHINGTON - Cue the hues for the Great Emancipator. A new $5 bill, with splashes of color surrounding Abraham Lincoln will go into circulation March 13, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve announced Thursday.

GENEVA - The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday dissolved a group of experts tasked with monitoring abuses in the Darfur region after demands from African countries to ease political pressure on Sudan.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - European Union leaders decided Friday to deploy a vast police mission to Kosovo as the Serbian province edges toward independence, a move that could fuel tensions with Russia.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The number of U.N. staff killed in a bombing that wrecked two U.N. buildings in Algiers three days ago has risen to 17 after several bodies were found in the rubble, the United Nations said on Friday.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union leaders backed away Friday from offering Serbia a fast-track to membership and again cautioned Belgrade that its future entry hinges on full cooperation in handing over war crime suspects for trial.

DAKAR, Senegal - Rival factions in Congo are forcibly recruiting hundreds of children and sending them to fight on the front lines of an escalating conflict in the east of the country, the United Nations said Friday.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal judges can impose shorter sentences for crack cocaine crimes, making them more in line with those for powder cocaine — a decision with a strong racial dimension because the vast majority of crack offenders are black.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court ruled Monday judges had greater leeway in handing down sentences, allowing courts to address the disparity in punishments for crack and powder cocaine trafficking.

WASHINGTON - A consumer-rights group's challenge to a deficit reduction law ended Monday when the Supreme Court let the law stand, even though the House and Senate never approved identical versions.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court unanimously refused on Monday to broaden the impact of a law that adds extra prison time to the sentences of drug traffickers who use a gun in carrying out their crimes.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court meets Monday morning to issue opinions and announce cases it has rejected.

WASHINGTON - The Senate moved against the worsening mortgage crisis Friday, voting to make it easier for thousands of homeowners with ballooning interest rates to refinance into federally insured loans.

WASHINGTON - President Bush is losing two more key aides as his presidency winds toward its end, with his chief speechwriter and lobbyist both announcing Friday that they are leaving.

JOHNSTON, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday denounced the comments of an official in her campaign who resigned after raising questions about drug use by Barack Obama. Clinton was asked about the official's comments about Obama as she campaigned in Iowa, where the controversy has become an issue less than three weeks before the state's leadoff caucuses.

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to give Congress details of the government's investigation into interrogations of terror suspects that were videotaped and destroyed by the CIA. He said doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry is vulnerable to political pressure.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took the lead for the Republican nomination in the early-voting state of South Carolina in a poll released on Friday that mirrored his rapid rise in national polls.