Jun 9, 2011 – NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Even though the nation's jobless rate is on the rise, millions of people could see their unemployment checks stop coming at the end of the year. Nearly all Americans who find themselves out of work starting next month will likely receive only 26 weeks of state...

Jun 9, 2011 – (CNN) - Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch would not support Sarah Palin for president, but Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty appeals to him. "He's not the jazziest guy in town and he's not the most exciting, but if you look at what he says, his vision for America …...

Jun 9, 2011 – President Barack Obama retains strong personal appeal even as his overall job approval rating has weakened. An overwhelming number of Americans — 75 percent — say they give President Obama a thumbs up regarding approval of him as a person, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released on...

Jun 9, 2011 – It seemed like a straightforward question on a second-tier issue: Would Mitt Romney disavow the science behind global warming? The putative Republican presidential front-runner, eager to prove his conservative bona fides, could easily have said what he knew many in his party’s base wanted to hear. Instead, the former Massachusetts...

Jun 9, 2011 – The debate over the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality moved into another courtroom on Wednesday. This time it was a panel of judges from the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, listening to an appeal of the most sweeping decision of all: Judge Roger Vinson’s decision invalidating not just the individual mandate but...

Jun 9, 2011 – If next year the American people pull the plug on the Obama presidency, mark down the past week as the beginning of the end . . . and what looks like the real beginning of Tim Pawlenty's candidacy. Incumbency isn't merely a function of political inevitability but of the...

Jun 9, 2011 – (Reuters) - Libya's rebels said they hoped to restart oil production and gained pledges of over $500 million aid on Thursday, as Western powers nudged them to plan for the day after Muammar Gaddafi's fall from power. NATO pounded Tripoli from the air, and Western and Arab nations met the...

Jun 9, 2011 – Warren Cole Smith stirred up a hornet’s nest. Writing at Patheos (where I’m also a columnist), the evangelical journalist had the courage to say out loud what many evangelicals think: that a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Mormonism. At last count, his column had generated more than...

Jun 9, 2011 – SALT LAKE CITY — More than a dozen Latin and South American countries have joined Mexico in expressing potential international fallout over Utah's illegal immigration enforcement law. In a court brief filed Tuesday, the Mexican government lists several reasons for its opposition to HB497, including impeding diplomatic relations, hindering trade...

Jun 9, 2011 – Immigration officials are teaming up with federal and state prosecutors, the Federal Trade Commission, lawyers’ groups and immigrant advocate organizations in a new nationwide effort to combat an epidemic of schemes by people posing as immigration lawyers. The campaign, which will begin in Washington on Thursday, is an effort...

Jun 9, 2011 – Let’s start with what economic growth is. “Rules in economics should always be taken with a grain of salt,” says Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and a former White House economist, “but the speed limit on growth is understood to be (roughly) the...

Jun 9, 2011 – WASHINGTON — Recent signs that the economic recovery is flagging have introduced a new tension into the bipartisan budget negotiations, giving rise to calls especially from liberals to limit the size of immediate spending cuts or even to provide an additional fiscal stimulus. On Thursday, for the first time...

Jun 9, 2011 – Around 150 militants armed with rockets attacked a security checkpost in Pakistan's Waziristan on Thursday, killing eight soldiers, intelligence officials said, as tensions rise in the volatile northwestern region along the Afghan border. The attack, in which about 12 militants were killed, appeared to be part of a new strategy...

Jun 9, 2011 – President Obama's reelection campaign on Friday announced the hiring of Katherine Archuleta as national political director. Archuleta serves as chief of staff to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and formerly worked as an aide to former Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, helping to coordinate the 2008 Democratic National Convention in the...

Jun 9, 2011 – Former Sen. Rick Santorum is running for the Republican presidential nominee as the principled, unbending conservative stalwart -- which means he's also running from his past. Santorum's beliefs are conservative, and he's been a hero for pro-lifers nationwide. But last decade he exhibited the standard Bush-era misguided pragmatism of...

Jun 9, 2011 – ALEXANDRIA, Va. — President Obama, battling the public’s loss of confidence in his handling of the economy, came to a community college here on Wednesday to talk up a $2 billion program aimed at tailoring classes to match the needs of manufacturing companies. Speaking at Northern Virginia Community College,...

Jun 9, 2011 – Washington (CNN) – Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman had dinner Wednesday with five influential Republican senators in Washington as he puts the finishing touches on his near-certain presidential campaign. Huntsman and wife Mary Kaye were seen entering The Monocle, a popular steakhouse and political watering hole on the Senate side...

Jun 9, 2011 – Reporting from Washington— As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside...

Jun 9, 2011 – In the next week, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, thanks mostly to her decision to participate in next week's Republican primary debate, is going to be getting her first big moment in the national political spotlight. For the last two years, she's been a caricature -- a spoof on "Saturday Night...

Jun 9, 2011 – Real estate mogul Donald Trump reiterated Wednesday that he might reconsider a presidential run as an independent if the GOP does not field a suitable candidate that can take the presidency from President Barack Obama. Trump also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the House budget plan is going...

Jun 9, 2011 – JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon’s public questioning of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on bank regulatory costs has “thrown down the gauntlet” in the industry’s increasingly aggressive fight to curb higher capital requirements and other rules. “They threw out the first ball, now...

Jun 9, 2011 – A group of wealthy Americans that calls itself the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength has sent a letter to President Obama and Congress asking them to raise their taxes and the taxes of the 370,000 other Americans who earn more than $1 million a year. In a video the group...

Jun 9, 2011 – Several 2012 Republican presidential candidates are slated to participate in an Iowa bus tour that seeks to make returning the country’s monetary system to the gold standard a key election issue. The Iowa Tea Party and the group American Principles in Action announced that they are launching their 18-day bus...

Jun 9, 2011 – LIVONIA, Mich. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is defending himself in Michigan against questions over why he opposed a federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler two years ago. Romney told a diner at the Senate Coney Island restaurant Thursday morning that the automakers should have gone...

Jun 9, 2011 – NEW DELHI — India test-fired a short-range, nuclear-capable missile Thursday that hit its target accurately, the defense ministry said. The surface-to-surface Prithvi missile was fired from the testing range in Chandipur in the eastern state of Orissa, said Sitanshu Kar, the defense ministry spokesman. It reached the target in...