The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a controversial Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting him as a judicial loose cannon and Republicans raised concerns about his alleged bias in favor of sex offenders. 

Former New York Rep. Eric Massa said sure he groped his male staff, but never sexually misbehaved and doesn't think that rough-play with other men is unusual, even at age 50.

Conservative Republican Doug Hoffman says he plans to run again for upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District seat. 

The president's speech comes as congressional Democrats stand on the brink of delivering the president a success with passage of his sweeping overhaul legislation -- or a colossal failure if they can't get it done.

An intelligence official says that in the two months since a Nigerian man tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane, the government's list of suspected terrorists banned from flying grew from about 3,400 to 6,000.

Without giving specifics, the defense secretary said the withdrawal, "would have to be conditions-based."

Grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system, the president says he'll bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's first State of the Union address was "very troubling" and that the annual speech to Congress has "degenerated into a political pep rally."

President Barack Obama stood with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Tuesday and pledged that the United States would work with its ally, even as Greece's enormous debts sparked frenzied trading.

HarperCollins announced Tuesday that it will publish Brown's memoir, currently untitled, in early 2011.

Health insurers are a frequent and easy target, of course, but the question is whether their profits are responsible for higher health care costs or whether they're just a symptom of them.

With NASA's space shuttle program coming to an end and the future of the manned space flight in doubt, President Obama is facing intense pressure over his budget priorities for the space agency.

Legislation to give additional months of unemployment benefits to people who have been out of a job for more than half a year has won key GOP support that means it will soon pass the Senate.

The White House says the United States condemns Israel's approval of 1,600 new settlement homes in disputed East Jerusalem.

The Senate's official gatekeeper, said the Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator, and whitepages.com "are responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate," according to an e-mail to the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The White House on Tuesday denied assertions by former Rep. Eric Massa that he was pushed out of office because he voted no on health care.

A Florida state senator is reportedly pushing for new legislation that would increase tax breaks for the movie industry but deny the same incentives to films featuring gay characters.

Some leading Republican groups are trying to guide a revival of conservative student activism in the "era of Obama" -- the latest push comes this Thursday at California's Reagan Ranch Center, where dozens of high school students who caught the conservative bug will converge to get inspired, get organized and get active. 

Dozens of same-sex couples made a historic walk down the aisle in Washington Tuesday as gay marriage became legal in the nation's capital.

Facing dismal poll numbers in his home state, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid has devised a re-election strategy: welcome third party candidates who can split the opposition in the uphill battle to hold on to his U.S. Senate seat.