HemmersChess

With Rick Perry's support dropping and Herman Cain's rising in GOP presidential race polls, Cain, a former pizza company executive who has mostly avoided attacking his Republican rivals, is now taking aim at the Texas governor.

Federal prosecutors announced an aggressive crackdown on California pot dispensaries Friday, vowing to shut down dozens of growing and sales operations and saying that the worst offenders are using the cover of medical marijuana to act as storefront drug dealers.

The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation's health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Thursday.

Declaring "This is as much fun as I will have as president of the United States," President and sports fan in chief Barack Obama on Friday saluted his hometown team for winning the Super Bowl a quarter century ago.

An active-duty Navy SEAL commando was found guilty Friday in Nevada on 13 federal charges alleging he headed a scheme to sell machine guns, explosives and military hardware from Iraq and Afghanistan in the United States.

The Obama administration was considering whether to pump another $5.4 million into the failing solar panel manufacturer Solyndra in late August, according to hundreds of pages of new emails obtained by Fox News. 

The pastor who introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a conservative gathering Friday said rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney is not a Christian and is in a cult because he is a Mormon.

Attorney General Eric Holder, under new pressure from Republicans over when he learned of "Operation Fast and Furious," has mounted his most forceful defense to date, accusing critics of using "irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric" and insisting his statements have been "truthful and accurate." 

A protest organizer says he paid people to demonstrate with the Occupy Wall Street-offshoot rally held Thursday in Washington, D.C. 

One group, the National Organization for Women, went as far as to suggest that Brown should not run for re-election – a suggestion that the female GOP senators batted down.

A U.S. government report released on Friday predicts that the federal budget hit a near-record $1.3 trillion in the just-completed fiscal year. 

A Florida lawmaker wants "Big Brother" to stop interfering with how little people make their living -- even if their living entails being tossed around in a bar. 

The White House has issued an executive order aimed at safeguarding classified information and protecting U.S. government computer networks against unauthorized disclosures such as last year's release of thousands of pages of secret documents by the website WikiLeaks. 

The federal government asked an appeals court on Friday to halt an Alabama immigration law considered by many as the toughest in the United States, saying it invites discrimination against foreign-born citizens and legal immigrants.

George Soros, the billionaire financier and liberal activist, was dealt a legal blow this week when the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn his nine-year-old criminal conviction for insider trading.

A new study shows viewers often take into account celebrities' political ideology before going to see their films. 

Mitt Romney, the leading Republican presidential candidate, is calling for a century of American dominance in his first major foreign policy address, outlining plans to strengthen the U.S. military while rejecting multilateral institutions like the United Nations when necessary.

The president dodged various facts and and left some evidence in the dust in his latest challenge to Republicans to get behind his jobs program or offer a real alternative. 

This is the national version of what we saw in Wisconsin early this year when government unions occupied the state house in Madison in an effort to stop legislation that stripped their groups of the power to strike. The Democratic senators fled into Illinois, the Obama campaign helped organize the early protests and government unions across the country expressed their solidarity.

The nation's unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.1 percent in September despite an uptick in hiring, as the latest labor report fueled debate in Washington over how to jump-start an economy that President Obama acknowledges has weakened since the start of the year.