Sandy slams into Northeast; at least 16 dead, 7.4M without power

As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.

Romney embraces executive authority

Facing off in last week's foreign policy debate, Mitt Romney nodded in agreement with much of what President Obama has done with his powers as chief executive — including a full-on embrace of the president's claim to sole authority to expand drone strikes to kill terrorist suspects.

Rust Belt finding no shining knight in White House joust

Scott Dressel has risked his life savings to help rescue this struggling old steel town that is still plagued by double-digit unemployment and banking on a natural gas boom that has yet to materialize.

D.C. businesses staying open have difficulty staying busy

On a typical morning, the staff at the Happy Paws pet grooming and boarding salon in Northwest Washington washes, trims and cares for as many as 40 dogs. As Hurricane Sandy moved into the area Monday, however, the staffers who made it to work spent as much time playing cards as playing with pets.

Quarter-billion-dollar stimulus grant creates just 400 jobs

Battery maker A123 Systems vowed thousands of new jobs when it received a nearly quarter-billion-dollar stimulus grant in late 2009, but federal job-tracking figures show only a few hundred positions were created before the company joined a growing list of federally backed energy businesses that ended in bankruptcy.

Obama advisers say president leads early voting in Iowa, Nev.

President Obama's campaign advisers said Monday he has a clear advantage in Iowa and Nevada as early voting in battleground states kicks into high gear, while Republican nominee Mitt Romney has an edge in Colorado, and the impact of early voting is less certain in Ohio and Florida.

Clinton: U.S. wants Algeria to play key role in Mali intervention

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed optimism Monday that Algeria could play a key role in a growing international push toward a military intervention in Mali, where recent months have seen an al Qaeda-linked extremist group seize control of an area roughly the size of California.

Report: 'Fast and Furious' failures at the top were ignored

The Justice Department has yet to confront widespread management failures in the botched Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation or to order operational changes that would prevent future "disasters" from occurring, two senior Republican lawmakers who first questioned the federal probe said Monday.

Sandy throws wet blanket over campaign plans

President Obama rushed out of the battleground state of Florida on Monday to return to Washington and oversee the response to one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the Northeast.

Inside the Beltway: The ebbing charm

Critics wonder how long women will tolerate certain aspects of President Obama's more curious re-election efforts. There's the odd new campaign video, for example, showcasing HBO's "Girls" actress Lena Dunham, who compares voting for the first time to losing her virginity.

Court won't take up Okla. 'personhood' issue

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a lawsuit over an Oklahoma "personhood" amendment that sought to grant state constitutional protections to human embryos starting at conception, but pro-life advocates say the issue is far from over.

Sandy takes swipe at nation's wallet

Wall Street stock markets and Atlantic City casinos shut down, hundreds of flights were canceled, and numerous companies postponed earnings announcements. The short-term economic impacts of Hurricane Sandy were already evident by Monday evening, but the ultimate bill for the struggling nation's economy could take a while to add up.

Reports of violent crime dips for 5th consecutive year

The number of reported incidents of violent crime last year dropped by 3.8 percent to 1.2 million, the fifth consecutive year that the total has declined, the FBI said.

Report: Iran has drone pictures of Israeli bases

Iran has images of sensitive Israeli military bases taken by a drone that was launched by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and downed by Israel earlier this month, a senior Iranian lawmaker claimed Monday in the latest boast from Tehran about purported advances in the capabilities of its unmanned aircraft.

International observers critical of bias in Ukraine vote

Ukraine's parliamentary election was marked by an uneven playing field and biased media coverage that reversed many of the democratic gains the country had made earlier, international observers said Monday.

Mother of Mo. Sen. McCaskill dies at age 84

The mother of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has died.

Commentary

SANTORUM: Standing up for marriage and families

Since the 2008 presidential campaign, when then-Sen. Barack Obama told the Rev. Rick Warren that he supported traditional marriage defined as the union of "one man and one woman," the president's position on this topic has "evolved," and now, of course, has reversed.

CARDENAS: Obama charisma not working in foreign policy

One of the most talked-about and tweeted segments of the final presidential debate on foreign policy involved President Obama's Middle East tour at the beginning of his term. This tour, incidentally, did not include a stop in Israel -- a country that the president has never visited while in office.