As the chances for a big deal on debt and deficits evaporate in the heat of deadline negotiations, fiscal hawks are growing increasingly frustrated.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is releasing his “Back in Black” plan for massive debt reduction and four of his former compadres from the Gang of Six are rolling out their less-ambitious deficit plan.

House Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing through the conservative-backed proposal for deep cuts now, spending caps later and a balanced budget amendment farther down the road.

None of these big-ticket items seem to be going anywhere before a projected government shutdown begins sometime in the next few weeks, so why bring them up now?

Part of it is the hope for a miraculous ending to this months-long debate in which a very liberal president and very conservative members of Congress decide to ditch their dogmas in the name of bipartisan compromise. It’s never happened before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything, right?

The nation's largest education union has endorsed President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.

Members of the National Education Association voted to support Obama on Monday at their annual convention in Chicago.

In a statement, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel says Obama and the union share a vision and members wanted early and strong support to help his election.

The endorsement comes a day after Vice President Joe Biden addressed thousands of educators at the convention. The association has 3.2 million members and bills itself as the largest labor union nationwide.

Wary of a new surge in gas prices, the Obama administration has decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the country's emergency reserve as part of a broader international response to lost oil supplies caused by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Libya.

The release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will amount to half of a 60 million barrel international infusion of oil planned for the world market over the next month.

"We are taking this action in response to the ongoing loss of crude oil due to supply disruptions in Libya and other countries and their impact on the global economic recovery," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday.

The administration said the uprising in Libya has resulted in a loss of about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. The release comes as the United States approaches a period of high energy use in July and August.

Obama will announce in a televised address at 8 p.m. EDT (midnight GMT) a plan to pull out 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end, followed by about 23,000 more by the end of next summer, congressional aides told Reuters.

News that Obama will pull the entire 'surge' force he sent to Afghanistan in 2010 caps weeks of speculation about the future of U.S. involvement there and could increase friction between Obama and military advisors who have warned about the perils of a hasty drawdown.

Nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks that triggered the war, U.S. and NATO forces have been unable to deal a decisive blow to the insurgent Taliban. The Afghan government remains weak and notoriously corrupt and billions of dollars in foreign aid efforts have yielded meager results.

Former Massachusetts Gov. and current GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney is refusing to sign a pledge penned by the pro-life group 'The Susan B. Anthony List.' The pledge calls for the nomination of judges "who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, not legislating from the bench."

It also demands the selection of pro-life appointees for cabinet positions and the advancement of "pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion," as well as the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

"Mitt Romney pledged in the last campaign that he would be a pro-life president and of course he pledges it today," said Romney Campaign communications director Gail Gitcho. "However, this well-intentioned effort has some potentially unforeseen consequences and he does not feel he could in good conscience sign it."

The Obama administration wants to help more struggling Americans stay in their homes by reducing the amount they owe on their troubled mortgages, a top Treasury official said Saturday.

"We are very definitely trying to facilitate more principal reductions," said Timothy Massad, Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability. "It is a very important piece of the overall solution," he said.
The administration is trying through taxpayer-funded programs to prevent homeowners from losing their homes. Nearly $50 billion has been set aside from the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, to help distressed homeowners.
Persistently high unemployment and a weak housing market pose a threat to President Obama's re-election prospects next year.
So far, one of the programs has helped some 670,000 distressed homeowners win lower mortgage payments. But that has done very little to help the overall housing market, which remains depressed...

ATLANTA -- Local elections in 23 counties ran without a hitch on Tuesday in the biggest test yet of the state's new law requiring a photo ID to cast a ballot, election officials said. "I didn't notice anything different," said Jennifer Rivers of South Fu