“This was household income when President Obama took office. This was the national debt. Under Obama, families have lost over $4,000 a year in income, and the national debt is now $16 trillion and growing. Barack Obama: More spending, more debt — failing American families.”

Nearly all of the independent advertising aired for the 2012 general-election campaign has come from interest groups that do not disclose their donors, suggesting that much of the political spending over the next six months will come from sources invisible to the public.

Last year's deadly attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya is shaping up as a real political problem for President Obama, with concern extending well beyond the conservative base. More than half of Americans say his administration is trying to cover up the facts of the attack, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Thirteen months after he took over the troubled General Services Administration as acting chief, Dan Tangherlini will be nominated by President Obama Wednesday for Senate confirmation as the agency's official administrator.

“Why does Benghazi go on? No one was ever fired? So, people made tragic errors. No one’s accepting responsibility and no one was fired.”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), on CNN’s “State of the Union,” May 19, 2013

A federal court Tuesday struck down Arizona’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy absent a medical emergency.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said the law violated a woman’s constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is able to survive outside the womb.

The controversy over the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attack last year began at a meeting over coffee on Capitol Hill three days after the assault.

It was at this informal session with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.

It is never good for an administration when a front-page newspaper article about an ongoing controversy begins as follows: “The White House offered a new account Monday of how and when it learned . . . ” That’s what readers of The Post awoke to on Tuesday. In trying to contain the controversy and protect President Obama, White House officials have only added to questions about what happened.

Suppose you gave a demonstration and nobody came — at least, almost nobody.

The United States Capitol Black Police Association expected 50 to 200 people to protest what it has described as an unfair, discriminatory and hostile work environment.

This IRS scandal is, as expected, getting most interesting.

People are asking questions about who knew what when — a variant of Sen. Howard Baker’s famous question at the Watergate hearings 40 years ago: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

* Conservatives are rallying against the immigration bill.

* Senate Republicans worked out a compromise.

* While the finance committee grilled the IRS.

* Inhofe says Oklahoma will not be like Sandy.

American Future Fund has now spent over $1 million defending Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), thanks to a new $452, 000 ad buy in New Hampshire and Boston.

The buy is part of an ongoing air war over Ayotte's opposition to expanded background checks for gun buyers. Ayotte was the only senator in the Northeast to vote against the legislation, and both supporters and opponents of gun control see New Hampshire as a testing ground for their power going forward.

Most U.S. high-tech companies would not be required to offer jobs to Americans before hiring foreign workers under a compromise worked out Tuesday by Senate negotiators on an immigration reform bill.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the deal, which came as amendment to the immigration legislation, to satisfy concerns from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), whose support is seen as crucial to building strong bipartisan momentum.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who first disclosed the agency's improper targeting of conservative groups two weeks ago, will invoke her right not to testify Wednesday for fear of self-incrimination, her lawyer has told the House Oversight Committee.

If I hadn't seen Joplin, Mo., almost two years ago, I wouldn't believe the extent of the devastation in Moore, Okla.

By the time I visited Joplin on Labor Day 2011, after the May 22 tornado had struck the southwest Missouri community, much of the damage was still visible. Entire city blocks of houses and buildings lay pulverized to piles of rubble. No newspaper photograph or television news clip could capture the damage. Areas where the debris had been cleared had become the silent ghosts of neighborhoods that no longer existed. Signs spraypainted on remnants of houses ranged from the threatening "You loot, we shoot" to the reassuring "all ok."

When the news and pictures streamed in from Oklahoma, it was terrible and shocking. The tornado hit Moore, leveling homes and obliterating a school, where frightened children turned to teachers who comforted them, kept their cool and tried to protect their charges, with their own bodies if it came to that.

Oklahoma has one of the most conservative congressional delegations of any state: seven Republican men, including fierce advocates for cutting federal spending.

Five of those seven voted no this January on a bill to provide $50 billion in disaster funding for states hit by Hurricane Sandy.

A slim majority of Americans say President Obama is focusing on things that matter to them personally, while a clear majority say Republicans in Congress are not, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday sent a host of personnel to Oklahoma in response to the massive tornado that ravaged parts of the state the previous day.

FEMA spokesman Daniel Watson did not have a number for boots on the ground, but he said three of the agency's search-and-rescue teams arrived early Tuesday morning. He said it had already sent a liaison to the state's emergency-response center on Sunday, well before a tornado claimed dozens of lives as it ripped through the city of Moore, Okla.

A primary opponent of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is among the 10 people President Obama has named to his commission on elections.

Trey Grayson, who lost to Paul in a 2010 Senate primary, is currently serving as director of the Harvard Institute of Politics.