Wire Politics

Mitt Romney has added to his lead in the race for delegates with a narrow victory in the Maine Republican presidential caucuses.

Republican presidential contender Ron Paul says he wishes all the Maine caucuses would have met on Saturday.

Mitt Romney has won The Washington Times/CPAC Presidential Straw Poll of conservative activists.

The White House is focusing on re-election themes such as jobs and public works projects in President Barack Obama's new budget blueprint while relying on familiar but never enacted tax increases on the wealthy and corporations to reduce future deficits after four years of trillion dollar-plus shortfalls.

A profile of Maine, site of the Republican caucus on Feb. 11:

President Barack Obama's new budget proposal will ask Congress to devote millions for a new trade enforcement center and more U.S. inspectors in China as the administration takes aim at unfair trade practices abroad, a senior administration official said Saturday.

Add another dance move to Michelle Obama's repertoire. This one has to do with a certain celebrity platypus.

In just the past few days, she's danced with cheering school kids, chatted with troops, swapped ideas with busy parents and engaged in a friendly cooking competition with stars from "Top Chef."

Mitt Romney faulted President Barack Obama's original push to require church-affiliated employers to pay for birth control as an "assault on religion," but as Massachusetts governor, Romney was largely silent about a state law that required virtually the same contraceptive coverage.

It's not like he wasn't warned.

Gearing up for a tough political season ahead, Michelle Obama said Saturday she's trying to get as much done as possible before the general election campaign starts to drown out everything else.

J.R. Childress is up before the sun, bustling about in the French colonial brick house he built. He helps pack his wife's lunch, downs some eggs or cereal for breakfast, pores over online and newspaper job listings and hopes - even prays - this will be the day when his fortunes turn around.

President Barack Obama is pressuring Congress to extend a payroll tax cut for the rest of the year as another deadline nears for Congress to act or see taxes go up for millions of working people.

Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster says Mitt Romney has won the Maine caucuses by a slim margin, giving him a much needed boost following losses in three other contests in the past week.

Staggered by Rick Santorum's surge, Mitt Romney is trying to reset his presidential campaign by defining himself as a strict conservative.

What birth control debate? A half-century after the introduction of the pill, acceptance of birth control by American women is virtually universal.

A political tip sheet for the rest of us outside the Washington Beltway, Friday, Feb. 10, 2012:

President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

President Barack Obama attempted to quell a political firestorm over health care and religion Friday, saying he would still assure that every woman in America gets free contraception but agreeing that religious institutions will not be forced to provide it. Instead, insurers will.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicts that five large states will put Democrats in striking distance of gaining control of the House after the November elections.

The White House said Friday it won't recoil from raising grave human rights concerns during a getting-acquainted visit next week by China's likely future leader.

President Barack Obama's political shifting over contraception coverage has united conservative Republicans in protest even as they split over which GOP presidential hopeful should face him in the general election.

Conservatives are fired up, convinced that this will be a big year, but they worry that Mitt Romney will make their task harder.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says he thinks it would be wrong to allow women to serve in combat.

Under fierce election-year fire, President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead.

Michelle Obama says her daughters' main concern about the coming presidential election is all about them.

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul rarely even acknowledge each other in the Republican presidential race, focusing their attention and attacks on rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum instead. That curious detente is being tested in Maine's caucuses this week, where Romney's reputation as a political shape shifter is going head-to-head with Paul's consistent libertarian views.

A federal court sent a message Friday that the Texas primaries shouldn't be pushed past April because of bitterly disputed voting maps and ordered the state and minority rights groups to spend the weekend back at the bargaining table.