2012 Presidential Election News

This week, scandal fever engulfed cable news, radio, and Republican dinner tables across the country, as the GOP embarked on all-out crusade against President Obama over Benghazi, IRS political targeting, DOJ hacking AP phones, and yes, the President asking for an umbrella on a rainy day .

President Barack Obama, in a soaring commencement address on work, sacrifice and opportunity, on Sunday told graduates of historically black Morehouse College to seize the power of their example as black men graduating from college and use it to improve people's lives.

I celebrated another birthday this past week, and as always I reflected on the past, present and future of what I do covering and analyzing politics.

President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

Why were a diplomatic outpost and the visiting U.S. ambassador left so poorly protected? Should the Pentagon have rushed jets or special forces to the rescue when the assault began? Did President Barack Obama's administration obscure the true nature of the terrorist attack to help him get re-elected? Congressional Republicans are poking for ... (more)

President Barack Obama is delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College, the historically black, all-male institution that counts Martin Luther King Jr.

A new report on voting in the 2012 presidential election found that blacks in New Jersey, like those across the nation, turned out in greater percentages than any other racial or ethnic group and the youngest voters, those age 18 through 24, turned out in the smallest numbers.

The cascade of scandals coming out of the Obama administration has been almost exhausting to keep up with on a daily basis.

The Internal Revenue Service's watchdog told top Treasury officials around June 2012 he was investigating allegations the tax agency had targeted conservative groups, for the first time indicating that Obama administration officials were aware of the explosive matter in the midst of the president's re-election campaign.

Editor's note: Paul Butler is a law professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of "Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice." That is how President Obama should begin one of the most significant speeches of his presidency: the commencement address at Morehouse College this Sunday.

The nation's tax agency has admitted to inappropriately scrutinizing smaller tea party organizations that applied for tax-exempt status, and senior Treasury Department officials were notified in the midst of the 2012 presidential election season that an internal investigation was underway.

I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani's U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

Tim Walz that explicitly banned insider trading by congressional members and government employees was hailed by watchdog groups as one of the most significant congressional reforms in more than a decade.

The congressman leading the Republican investigation into last year's terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Friday ordered retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering to submit to questioning behind closed doors next week over an internal State Department review Pickering helped lead into the attacks.

A group of researchers from the Floating Sheep project - who also mapped racist tweets surrounding President Barack Obama's re-election - have geotagged racist and homophobic tweets in the United States and plotted them on an interactive map.

Republican attempts to turn the row over the IRS into a scandal engulfing the White House fizzled on Friday when the ousted head of the agency delivered a public apology at a congressional heading into the affair.

He's appointing a new boss at the tax agency and Friday the ex-boss will face tough questions on Capitol Hill, CBS 2's Marcia Kramer reported.

But President Obama may not prove to be the only one hurt by the eruption of controversies around the Benghazi attack, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups, and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records.

The candidates have spent a record amount of money. They've stumped hard in a city that isn't easy to campaign in - 470 square miles sliced up into neighborhoods divided by a web of freeways.

Our president is one cool customer, careful to stay a little distant from his Scandal of the Day, sidestepping any embarrassing questions rather than confronting them, analyzing his critics rather than answering them, looking down on the political circus even as he stars in it.