In a private email provided to the Huffington Post, a vice chairman of the California Republican Party questioned the value of continuing the 9-year war in Afghanistan in light of its heavy costs to American taxpayers.

Jon Fleischman, a political consultant and veteran GOP official in California,...

Tonight, in a little strip-mall office next to the local Safeway, a teenage student from Alameda, California will spend the evening dialing up strangers to make an earnest request: please save my school.

The budget ax is about to fall on this Bay Area city. Seven million dollars in K-12...

Asked about his "confrontational tone" by a liberal columnist for the website NJ.com, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) went on a rant about the need for political disagreement and insisted he was hardly being confrontational. "You should really see me when I'm pissed!" he said. "This is who I...

Vice President Joe Biden appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday to discuss Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Some highlights:

On Kagan opposing military recruiters at Harvard Law: "She was right. ... All during that period, she has reached out to veterans in the law school,...

Arch-conservative Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okl.) has become the first Senator to officially oppose Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

"As with her nomination to serve as Solicitor General, I remain concerned about Elena Kagan's record," Inhofe said in a statement. "Now as a nominee to the Supreme Court, her...

Ed Whelan, a conservative writer for National Review Online and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is under fire for using a prostitute metaphor in making the case against Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

In a post on National Review's website on Friday, Whelan criticized Kagan for allowing...

During CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, host Bob Schieffer revealed that a congressional leader who recently appeared on his show requested (via a staffer) a separate private room "because the boss didn't want to share a waiting room with someone from the other party."

Schieffer shared the detail during...

Attorney General Eric Holder said for the first time today on ABC's "This Week" that the Obama administration is open to modifying Miranda protections to deal with the "threats that we now face."

"The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective," Holder told host Jake Tapper....

UPDATED below with statement by Virginia's attorney general.

Virginia's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hard at work on the important issues of the day -- like making sure the Roman goddess depicted on his state's official seal isn't exposing herself.

The current seal shows "Virtus, the goddess of virtue, dressed...

UPDATE: Palin has made her first comments on the spill, scroll down to see.

More than a week has passed since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers, injuring over a dozen more, and causing a massive oil spill that

Sen. George Voinovich may switch his vote and help Democrats advance their Wall Street reform bill tomorrow, the Ohio Republican told CNN on Tuesday.

The American people "want us to get something done," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said in explaining why he would eventually join Democrats in...

Jim Jones has apologized for his joke, see updates below.

Conservative media outlets are trying to stir up controversy around a joke that Obama National Security Advisor Jim Jones told during a speech last week. Speaking before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- described by the Israeli paper...

A conservative media activist named Jason Mattera confronted Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) last weekend and has posted video of the incident on YouTube.

In the video, Mattera introduces himself warmly to Franken and then asks him, "Which portions of the health care bill lower costs? Is it the provision giving...

President Obama's decision to bypass the vacationing Senate and directly appoint 15 nominees has produced some expected cries of outrage from Republicans.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pronounced himself "very disappointed" with the move, charging that it showed "once again" that the Obama administration has "little respect for the time honored...

"Hands off my health care!" has been a near constant refrain from Republican leaders and conservative activists in recent months.

Now that health care reform is the law of the land, however, Americans across the country are going to be hearing that message from Democrats.

The Democratic National Committee is...

Read below for a new update on December 4.

During his speech from West Point on Tuesday, President Obama specified the date when U.S. forces would start to withdraw from Afghanistan. "[A]dditional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces," he said,...

I'm blogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me on Twitter. Send me instant messages at nico.pitney@gmail.com or njpitney on AIM. Scroll down for news related to the front-page headlines. Local Iran time is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern...

I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me on Twitter. Send me instant messages at nico.pitney@gmail.com or njpitney on AIM. Scroll down for news related to the front-page headlines. Local Iran time is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern...

I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me on Twitter. Send me instant messages at nico.pitney@gmail.com or njpitney on AIM. Scroll down for news related to the front-page headlines. Local Iran time is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern...

I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me on Twitter. Send me instant messages at nico.pitney@gmail.com or njpitney on AIM. Scroll down for news related to the front-page headlines. Local Iran time is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern...