WASHINGTON (AP)—The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.

When the Labor Department announced on Oct. 5 that unemployment had fallen to 7.8 percent, bringing it below 8 percent for the first time in 44 months, some Republicans suggested the administration manipulated the numbers to favor Obama’s reelection effort. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch led the charge with a tweet: “Unbelievable jobs numbers … these Chicago guys will do anything … can’t debate so change numbers.” Welch later admitted he had no evidence of manipulation but maintained the government’s numbers “defy logic.”

In form, President Obama came back strongly in Tuesday's debate with Mitt Romney, but substantively he continues to lag behind the Republican candidate. That's because the president has a record to defend and it isn't a good one.

Television being what it is, the president looked and sounded good, but the air seems to have gone out of his messianic balloon as voters focus more on facts and less on spin.

If promises mean anything—and they don't to most politicians—Romney hit the president where it hurts: on his failure to live up to most of his promises.

For years I’ve spoken out against government racial preferences, euphemistically known as “affirmative action.” Sometimes I felt like a voice in the wilderness, shouting into the wide expanse and hearing only the echo of my own words. A government policy in which individuals receive favorable or unfavorable treatment from their government based on the color of their skin seems to be a low-priority issue.

Had Vice President Joe Biden behaved toward Sarah Palin in their 2008 debate the way he behaved toward Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan in their debate last Thursday, he might have been denounced as a patronizing misogynist.

In his debate with Ryan, the vice president was merely a jerk.

Two more Christian colleges have filed suit against the federal government over the demand they cover contraceptive and abortifacient drugs under their health insurance policies.

Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, face annual fines of more than $10 million each if they don't comply with the mandate.

Justice Antonin Scalia says his method of interpreting the Constitution makes some of the most hotly disputed issues that come before the Supreme Court among the easiest to resolve.

Scalia calls himself a "textualist" and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.