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Two Tea Party-backed, defund-Obamacare-or-we'll-shut-down-the-government Senate leaders. Two very different outcomes.

Ted Cruz, who became the public face of the shutdown strategy with his 21-hour talkfest on the Senate floor, has gone back to Texas a conquering hero. He even got an eight-minute standing ovation at a San Antonio event ...

They talked about the Hillary Clinton documentary and miniseries. They talked about how well they're doing raising money. They talked about how they're building a state-of-the-art data mining and voter turnout operation.

Here's what the Republican National Committee members didn't talk about at their summer meeting, but, rather, talked around: ...

That "be on the lookout list" used to flag Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny of their tax-exemption applications?

It turns out it wasn't the only one the Internal Revenue Service had been using.

There were also other lists, covering a "broad spectrum" of categories and cases, according to a ...

The 10 biggest breaks, deductions and credits in the U.S. income tax code are costing the Treasury $900 billion this year, with more than half of that total benefiting the wealthiest 20 percent of taxpayers.

This critique is not new — liberals have complained for years that too many exceptions ...

When the House held its much-anticipated hearing on Benghazi Wednesday, one major figure not at the witness table was Thomas Pickering, the former ambassador and co-chair of the Accountability Review Board that reported on last September's attacks.

Why wasn't he there?

That's somewhat in dispute. California Republican Darrell Issa, chairman ...

Remember when Rand Paul held the Senate floor for 13 hours last month because of his concern that President Obama would use drones to target alleged terrorists on American soil?

That concern, apparently, does not always extend to alleged common criminals on American soil.

"If someone comes out ...

If it seems perplexing why an idea that has broad support nationally could fail to pass the U.S. Senate, here's an important reminder: The Senate is not a democratic institution.

It never has been, and it was never designed to be. Rather, it was structured to give small or sparsely ...

If it seemed like former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's problem with female voters couldn't get any worse, well, it appears that it might have.

Sanford, a Republican, is hoping to put the marital scandal that defined his second term behind him with a return to Congress in a May ...

In the U.S. Senate, it's down to the Final Four versus the Dynamic Duo.

Only four Democratic senators remain who do not support same-sex marriage. Across the aisle, there are now two Republicans who have announced their support.

The new alignments mean that a majority — 53 senators — now ...

The daughter of Florida political legend Bob Graham has announced she will run for Congress next year, taking on incumbent Republican Steve Southerland.

Gwen Graham, a lawyer and administrator in the Leon County school district, made the announcement Tuesday morning. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that ...

Democrats who haven't controlled the governor's mansion in Tallahassee in 14 years could have a good opportunity to win it back next November.

Thanks to Republican Gov. Rick Scott's continuing unpopularity, both of the leading Democratic candidates hold double-digit leads in hypothetical matchups in a new Quinnipiac University poll. ...

Jeb Bush got headlines last week when he opened the door to a presidential run, after years of insisting he was not interested.

So it's of some note that when CPAC attendees at the annual gathering outside Washington this week go to vote in the group's ...

As he has said many times in recent years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is no fan of President Obama's health care law. The Republican repeated his view again Tuesday as he laid out the House Republicans' proposed budget:

"We don't like this law. This is why ...

One of the most important events in the national gun violence debate will take place Tuesday — in the snows of Chicago, a thousand miles from Newtown, Conn., or Washington, D.C.

That's where Democratic voters will choose their nominee to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. Because the district is so heavily ...

Crist served as a Republican governor, but during a Senate run, he fell out of favor with conservatives.

Mitt Romney's campaign hoped to close the book on tax questions when running mate Paul Ryan released two years of tax returns. Not quite. In reality, the differences between Romney an...