Trailing badly in the polls behind health-care executive Rick Scott in the fight for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Attorney General Bill McCollum sought to reinforce his crime-fighting credentials Monday.

Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

Former House Speaker Marco Rubio, Republicanfront-runner in the U.S. Senate race, promised Monday to rein in federal spending and offered proposals to help slash the size and cost of the federal government.

While Sen. Bill Nelson pushes his "compromise" plan for space exploration, private entrepreneurs are moving ahead with ventures that threaten to leave Florida and NASA eating stardust.

Heading into the fall elections, congressional Democrats appear ready to let the Bush tax cuts expire at year end.

The Department of Education continues to press its testing contractor for penalties for late delivery of test scores, adding more than $11 million on Friday to what it says NCS Pearson must pay for damages.

School's almost out for the summer oops, I mean Congress. The House will recess at the end of this week for a six-week summer vacation. The Senate will follow suit at the end of next week.

A legislative proposal to ask voters to relax class-size limits on Friday joined a host of other proposed constitutional amendments being challenged in court.

Congress spent the week preparing for its more-than-month-long recess by finally passing the extension of the federal unemployment benefits. This $34 billion bill was passed in the Senate on Tuesday, just minutes after the newest senator from West Virginia was sworn in as the 100th United States senator for the 111th Congress.