National Republican Congressional Committee

Not just the White House is up for grabs in November -- every member of the House of Representatives faces re-election, and a top Democrat predicted Tuesday his party would "take back the majority" in 2012.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One month after taking office, President Barack Obama summoned the nation's top lawmakers and budget experts to the White House for a summit to figure out how to tame huge federal deficits.

(Reuters) - National fundraising committees for the Democratic and Republican parties, President Barack Obama, and other major politicians have declined to return campaign donations totaling $1.8 million from Houston financier R. Allen Stanford, now on trial for allegedly masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

(Reuters) - An Oregon special election in which national Democrats have sought to paint the Republican congressional candidate as a Tea Party radical foreshadows a tactic the party will employ in its quest to take back Congress seats lost in the 2010 election.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama unveils his annual budget next month, the blueprint will reveal a lot about his re-election strategy but probably little about the spending and tax policies the Congress will adopt in the coming year.

Paul, who opposed the Iraq war, has raised $76,789 from employees of the top 50 government contractors, a group led by weapons-makers such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. Romney has raised $65,800 and Rick Perry $16,250.

Emptying out the ol' reporter's notebook with your Friday Flash, including some accounting for gamers in federal politics and Rick Perry's short, unhappy Nevada campaign life:¥ The GOP's new dynamic Strip duo: Don't ask me who is Batman and who is Robin because that could end the new, beautiful friendship, but Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn are putting their money where their anti-Democratic Party mouths are. Wynn has become Fox News' favorite interviewee with his anti-President Barack Obama polemics while Adelson has always been a reliable Republican donor.

President Barack Obama should not bother coming to Nevada. Rep. Shelley Berkley might as well start drafting her concession speech now. Nevada Democrats on the ballot here in 2012 are an endangered species.That was the message reverberating across the country in the wake of new Rep. Mark Amodei's smashing special election victory Tuesday ? a frothing hysteria from rabid Republicans and echoed (with only slightly less mouth-foaming) by those with foggy telescopes in the capital media.

Democrats dismiss Amodei's victory in district that has always gone to Republican candidates. Mark Amodei's win in the 2nd Congressional District special election is the latest sign that the 2012 election could be a full-throttle struggle between Republicans and Democrats in Nevada, where neither party has a decisive edge.

The Republicans really don't want to lose again.It's not just about halting their special election losing streak, which has seen them go down to defeat in what should have been safe Republican districts.

Is that fear I smell or is the National Republican Congressional Committee just happy to be here?Is Kate Marshall a financial genius or the worst investor in history?

WASHINGTON - The idea that Òall politics is localÓ has been a political article of faith since longtime House Speaker Tip OÕNeill coined it back in the Õ80s.

Democrat Dina Titus has decided she wants to get back in Congress. Now she needs to settle on a district to represent.

After flipping New York's 26th District in a special election two months ago, national Democrats were sure they would come up with a surefire formula to win back the House next year: Medicare.

CD2 will give parties a chance to test messages. Nevada's 2nd Congressional District will be the testing ground, as Democrats and Republicans begin plotting strategies to claim the majority in the House and Senate next year.

So when a creepy congressman who has a sexting disorder becomes a distraction and liability, fretting Democrats line up to defenestrate him. But when an even creepier senator has an affair with a staffer, reveals himself to be a world-class hypocrite and importunes supplicants to hire the cuckold, Republicans say nothing.Because proportionality is so often lost in politics, especially in the 24/7 Web world where every gesture and expression is analyzed in microscopic detail, the differences between Anthony Weiner, who seems headed for resignation, and John Ensign, who has fled the capital ahead of an expulsion, are lost.

Control of House might be in Silver State's hands. From the way the campaigns are shaping up, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that who controls the Senate in 2012 may come down to which party wins in Nevada.

The US Democrat Party was jubilant Wednesday after an upset victory in a congressional by-election seen as baring a potentially fatal weakness in Republican strategy ahead of 2012 national polls.

Washington

It may not look quite like the space bar in "Star Wars" or, even freakier, a night at a party central committee meeting.But considering how open Nevada's first-ever House special election is supposed to be, Secretary of State Ross Miller's inspired formulation of a "ballot royale" may not quite do it justice. Miller said when he set the rules Monday that calling it, as I have done, a "free-for-all" is demeaning to Nevada voters and the process.