Republicans disappointed with the president's stimulus plan are expected to hit the Obama administration and Democrats hard Wednesday during a House hearing on oversight of the stimulus spending. Republican lawmakers will accuse the administration of misreading the effectiveness of the stimulus and say the administration has "rigged the game" by using what they call the immeasurable metric of "jobs created or saved," according to a Republican memo obtained by CNN. The House Oversight and Government Reform hearing is at ...

They called themselves the elite six — and the name was meant to be ironic. This was Wasilla, Alaska, 30 miles north of Anchorage, in the early 1990s — when the sagging economy meant, as a local recalls, "everyone had dust on their ass." There was nothing élite about this little town on the stretch of highway along the railroad. And there was nothing élite about the group either — six stay-at-home moms who sought one another out ...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin caught the political world by surprise when she announced that she will resign at the end of July. Her decision has not only rankled political pundits and observers in Alaska and across the country, it has, oddly enough, united Democrats and Republicans in confusion. But the 45-year-old governor's future could be aimed at being the ultimate GOP superstar, whether it's giving million-dollar speeches, traveling the lower 48 states on a book tour or even getting her ...

The Palins were staying with Sarah's in-laws Bob and Blanche Kallstrom when the soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska sat down for an interview. The Kallstroms are two of the 2,500 full-time residents of Dillingham, Alaska, and owners of the Bristol Bay Inn and a hardware store. The town's population swells to 7,000 in the summer, as it's a magnet for sport fishermen. Todd Palin grew up in a house across the street from the hardware store — a building that has ...

No legal "bombshell" or personal scandal lies behind Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's resignation, but off-color jokes by talk-show host David Letterman contributed to her decision to step down, Palin's attorney said Monday. Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, abruptly announced Friday that she would leave office in late July. The decision to resign a year and a half before her term ends, and her rambling, often-disjointed resignation speech, have fueled days of debate among political analysts. But Thomas ...

The FBI, in a rare response to rampant rumors on the Internet, said it is not investigating Alaska Gov. Sara Palin on public corruption charges. "Normally, we don't confirm or deny those kind of allegations out there. But, by not doing so, it just casts her in a very bad light," said FBI Special Agent Eric Gonzalez, who confirmed for CNN the statement he made to the Anchorage Daily News. "There is just no truth to those rumors ...

Astounding. Risky. Quitter. And that's what fellow conservatives had to say Sunday about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her decision to step down with 18 months left in her term. Democrats left it to Republican and conservative voices to assess what Friday's unexpected announcement by Palin means for her and a possible run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. For example, Vice President Joe Biden called it a personal decision, offering no analysis of why she did it. By contrast, ...

Alaskan Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will succeed Gov. Sarah Palin after she leaves office later this month, called Palin Alaska's greatest gift to the United States on Saturday. "I was very surprised at first," he said of Palin's decision to resign, which he said she told him Wednesday. "But then as she began to explain why she was doing it, I began to see it was Sarah Palin, once again, moving to put Alaska's interest first," Parnell told CNN. ...

I doubt that any of us have ever considered any of our past vice-presidential candidates a sex symbol. But if recent Internet searches are any measure of the average American's current interest in politics, that may be changing. On the Richter scale of Internet search energy, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's announcement on Friday that he had chosen Sarah Palin, the current governor of Alaska, as his running mate measured a magnitude 10. If you compare the number ...

In bowing out as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin harkened back to her high school basketball days — although there was no sign of the "Barracuda," as she was nicknamed for her ability to cut through the opposing team's offenses. In a hastily called press conference on the eve of a three-day holiday, Palin presented herself as a point guard exhausted by the "full court press from the national level." The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee explained how the ...