WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama’s political influence a year after his election is being tested as voters cast ballots in Virginia and New Jersey, two states he’s worked hard to keep in Democratic hands. A handful of congressional and mayoral races and a same-sex union initative also are among the featured face-offs this Election Day.
Obama [...]

WASHINGTON  – The United States says North Korea’s use of more nuclear fuel for weapons violates the North’s past commitments at international disarmament talks.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Tuesday that the Obama administration is focused on getting back to stalled six-nation nuclear talks.
He says that “reprocessing plutonium is contrary to North Korea’s own [...]

By: SARAH HOYE
Media General News Service
One professor called it spiteful. Another said it was far-fetched.
Those were the reactions to a request by three Republican congressmen that President Barack Obama get the permission of Congress before he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize.
On Monday, U.S Reps. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida, Cliff Stearns of Florida and Ron Paul [...]

WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama says small businesses that participate in a proposed government health care plan could save a quarter on their premiums by 2016.
Obama on Thursday told small business leaders that few people have a bigger stake in health reform than they do. He says the House version of a health care bill [...]

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama seriously considered Hillary Rodham Clinton for the vice presidency, even though his top aides weren’t enthusiastic about it, his presidential campaign manager says in a new memoir.
“Neither Ax (top-level adviser David Axelrod) nor I were fans of the Hillary option,” David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 race, said in his memoir, [...]

WASHINGTON  – A senior administration official says President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future and is inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep al-Qaida at bay.
The assessment comes from an official who has been involved in the president’s discussions [...]

WASHINGTON  – You can’t see it, but there’s a quiet cultural revolution under way at the White House.
The Obamas are decorating their private spaces with more modern and abstract artwork than has ever hung on the White House walls. New pieces by contemporary African-American and Native American artists are on display. Bold colors, odd shapes, [...]

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Wednesday there will be no quick decision on whether to send more U.S. troops into wartorn Afghanistan, saying “my determination is to get this right.”
The U.S. and NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, delivered a grim assessment of the war to Washington last month and is expected to follow up [...]

President Obama promotes pitches his economic policies to General Motors workers.