And the Republican field is likely to keep growing: state Sen. Joni Ernst, Secretary of State Matt Schultz and Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker have expressed interest in the race. Mark Jacobs, a wealthy former oil executive who heads an education nonprofit, has also popped up at local GOP events in recent weeks and met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats, meanwhile, have closed ranks around a single candidate: fourth-term Congressman Bruce Braley, who raised over $1 million for his campaign in the first quarter of the year.

Republicans fear that a messy primary season will allow Braley to continue stockpiling cash while the eventual GOP nominee must spend down resources and run to the right in order to claim the party’s nomination.

More: Iowa Republican Senate Primary 2014 a Free-for-All - Alexander Burns

House Democratic Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said Friday that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett showed “disrespect” for the Latino community with his comments this week about the lack of Hispanics in state government.

“It’s not as if Pennsylvania is some podunk state out there in the wilderness that doesn’t have a dynamic and talented Latino population,” Becerra, the highest-ranking Latino and fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, told POLITICO in an interview.

More: Xavier Becerra Blasts Tom Corbett Over Latinos Quip - Emily Schultheis

Personal experience overrides ideological preferences, with 66 percent of Tea Party members who report personal harm from the sequester opposing the cuts. Overall, 56 percent of Americans oppose the cuts and 35 percent support them.

More: Poll: Sequester Damage Increasing - Kevin Robillard

eople in the U.S. are growing less likely to call themselves economically conservative, according to new data from Gallup.

In all, roughly four in 10 now say they’re economic conservatives, down from 51 percent in 2010 - a high water mark for the Tea Party movement.

That drop, Gallup found, has coincided with slight increases in people calling themselves economic moderates and liberals.

According to Gallup, 37 percent of people now say they’re moderates, up from 30 percent in 2009 and 33 percent in 2010. Nineteen percent say they’re liberals, roughly the same as 2009’s 18 percent but also up from 15 percent in 2010.

Gallup said those economic figures came as the number of people calling themselves social liberal reached a new peak.

The new poll figures come months before Democrats and Republicans in Washington will negotiate over how to raise the debt ceiling

More: Gallup: Fewer Economic Conservatives in U.S. - the Hill’s on the Money

Watch the full-length episodes at video.pbs.org (US Only)
Yale Professor Akhil Amar gives us a quick background of why our founders were interested in creating an “indivisible union,” and why the “United States” instead of the Articles of Confederation.

CONSTITUTION USA with Peter Sagal airs Tuesdays, May 7-28, 2013, 9 pm ET on PBS.

For more information visit: pbs.org

On May 14, as Washington officialdom was transfixed by the IRS scandal, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the budget deficit will shrink this fiscal year to $642 billion, or just 4 percent of gross domestic product. It’s the smallest deficit since 2008, and less than half 2009’s record $1.4 trillion shortfall. Since February, the CBO has cut $200 billion off its deficit projection for 2013 and $618 billion off its cumulative estimate for the next decade. Thanks to higher tax revenues and deep spending cuts, the deficit has been shrinking by about $42 billion a month for the past six months. The CBO projects that the deficit will fall to $342 billion by 2015, or only 2 percent of GDP.

Even so, the country’s improving finances haven’t lowered the din of partisan bickering over U.S. fiscal policy. Keynesian economists say that the deficit is narrowing too quickly, curtailing growth and threatening to derail an economy that grew a tepid 2.5 percent in the first quarter. Republican deficit hawks are unimpressed by the short-term reductions and want more cuts to head off exploding long-term debt driven by rising spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

More: The Deficit Is Shrinking! (And Nobody Cares)

The Department of Justice’s claim that Apple led a conspiracy to raise e-book prices is on the verge of going to trial. It will be decided by a judge without the help of a jury—and that judge is already leaning toward ruling against Apple.

“I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements [between Apple and publishers], will confirm that,” US District Judge Denise Cote said during a pretrial hearing yesterday, according to Reuters.

The US government accuses Apple of being the “ringmaster” in a conspiracy with e-book publishers to fix the standard prices of e-books at $12.99 and $14.99, above Amazon’s typical rate of $9.99. Book publishers HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin have already settled and promised to repay consumers a total of $164 million.

Apple denies being part of any conspiracy. Cote said her statement about the strength of the government’s evidence is her “tentative view.” Reuters called the judge’s statement “an unusual move before a trial” which “could add to pressure on Apple to settle the lawsuit.”

More: Apple Likely Guilty of E-Book Conspiracy, Judge Says Days Before Trial

Five years ago, an Air Force airman grudgingly married his pregnant girlfriend but began lacing her food with ground up abortion pills. She miscarried in her second trimester, after consuming a deviled egg.

Caylinn Young, 25, of Oklahoma felt isolated in her experience until she read recently about a Lutz woman named Remee Lee, 26, who miscarried in March, reportedly under similar circumstances.

The two haven’t been in contact. But their lost pregnancies link them in a debate about when it’s appropriate for government to protect an unborn child.
They appear to be the only two surviving women in the nation whose circumstances have led federal prosecutors to charge someone under the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

The law punishes the killing of an unborn human in any stage of gestation during the commission of a separate federal crime.

America’s prenatal policy is usually defined by Roe vs. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that banned states from barring early-stage abortions.

The coexistence of those two positions confuses some people and enrages others. Abortion rights advocates fear that one could undermine the other by establishing the “personhood” of a life not yet viable.

More: Abortion Pill Cases Link Tampa Woman to Stranger in Oklahoma

British counter-terrorism police arrested a man, who said he was a friend of a suspect in the Woolwich soldier killing, after he gave an interview to the BBC Friday night, the British broadcaster said.

The man, Abu Nusaybah, was arrested on suspected terrorism offenses after telling on air how his friend had been approached by Britain’s domestic intelligence service, known as MI5, according to the broadcaster.

A BBC staffer, who did want to be named, told CNN that police were inside the BBC Broadcasting House building in central London waiting for the interview to conclude before they made the arrest.

Friends, acquaintances and British media identified 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo, a British national of Nigerian descent, as the suspect seen in a gory video from the scene of the Woolwich killing.

More: Friend of Woolwich Murder Suspect Arrested After TV Interview

Prosecutors say a teen accused of bringing a bomb to his high school in Lafayette earlier this month poses a “future threat.”

“We’re very concerned about the intent of this young man and his ability to cause harm,” Deputy District Attorney Jenny McClintock told a judge Friday morning.

The 16-year-old, Andrew de Bartolome, was charged as an adult Friday with five felonies including attempted murder, using an incendiary explosive device, possession of an incendiary device and two counts of felony menacing.

He’s accused of bringing a bomb to Centaurus High School in Lafayette on May 13. The device was found in a paper bag by a teacher. The teacher took it outside and the bomb squad later detonated it. No one was hurt.

More: 7NEWS - Prosecutors Charge Centaurus High School Bomb Suspect Andrew De Bartolome as an Adult - Local Story