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The Romney campaign has been taking pains to emphasize they believe the individual mandate is not a tax. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus didn't get that memo. On CNN Tuesday morning, Priebus said that the position of both the RNC and the Romney campaign is that the mandate is, in fact, a tax.

Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), knocked his Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth - a veteran who lost both of her legs as a helicopter pilot in Iraq - for talking about her military career too much. Discussing her accomplishments, Walsh suggested, meant that Duckworth was not a "true [hero]."

The path Mitt Romney needs to walk on health care got a little bit narrower Monday, when one of the Republican’s top advisers declared in a TV interview the presumptive GOP nominee agrees with the Obama administration that the individual mandate to buy health insurance is a penalty, not a tax.

Mitt Romney and his wife Ann Romney are vacationing this week at Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, N.H., where Romney has a vacation home. Below, the two enjoy a jet ski ride. (Credit: AP)

This point hadn't really sunk in to me. But it did click pretty quickly with TPM Reader SR. From the start, Mitt Romney has faced the problem that his party is doggedly opposed to a policy that he originated (or was at least the first to enact).

Yet Another Reason To Love Emma Stone: She spent her teenage years being a geek on the internet, just like the rest of us. ..

For about a month now, guardians of conventional wisdom have read just about every piece of political news, significant and trivial, as a disaster for the Obama campaign. Now along comes new polling data that suggest President Obama has actually widened his margins over Mitt Romney in key swing states.

Republicans responded in near unison to Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's decision to skip the Democratic National Convention: You can't escape President Obama that easily. McCaskill, who is facing an uphill reelection bid in a state where the president's popularity has waned, will not attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in September, her office confirmed to TPM Tuesday.

Apple has quietly yanked language from its website claiming its Mac OS X operating system "doesn't get PC viruses" and replaced it with "It's built to be safe," among other substantial changes to security assurance language, as cybersecurity firm Sophos discovered. Computerworld Australia notes the change came in the wake of...

Progressives and labor leaders who led the charge against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took away a curious lesson from their crushing defeat earlier this month: Keep doing what you're doing. Leaders from organized labor and the progressive movement told TPM this week that in the wake of the failure of the organized left to recall Walker, they plan to double down on the tactics used in that race.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has changed her public position on an issue that divided Democrats during the fight over raising the debt ceiling last summer. She now says that President Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling by fiat - to preserve the country's credit rating and avoid another economically harmful brinksmanship over the country's borrowing limit.

There are signs that Democrats are starting to open their wallets to Democratic-leaning super PACs, which have struggled to match the fundraising pace of Republican-leaning groups. Priorities USA Action, the super PAC supporting President Obama's reelection, announced it raised $4 million in May, the group's best fundraising month to date....

Senate Dems give The Washington Post the jump on a new analysis that puts one of the worst kept secrets in Washington into helpful numerical context: Republicans want the broad middle class to pay more taxes than they currently do, and the upper class to pay significantly less.

In the department of bad photo placement, today's front page of the Des Moines Register: As NBC News campaign embed Garrett Haake put it: This is why you do a bus tour. RT @AlexNBCNews: Front page of the Des Moines Register today -- Romney.instagr.am/p/MD2ODrTAg7/ - Garrett Haake (@GarrettNBCNews) June...

Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 5, 2003)] [Senate] [Pages S1928-S1958] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] EXECUTIVE SESSION ______ NOMINATION OF MIGUEL A. ESTRADA, OF VIRGINIA, TO BE UNITED STATES CIRCUIT JUDGE FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT The PRESIDING OFFICER.

Outside the Montana state Republican convention this weekend was an outhouse labeled the "Obama Presidential Library" and covered in painted-on bullet holes. Inside the outhouse contained a fake birth certificate for Barack Hussein Obama, according to the Helena Independent Record. It was stamped "Bull--."

The two banner names topping the possible vice president list for the GOP side kicked off the 2012 Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington D.C. Thursday. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (FL) and Rob Portman (OH), are rising stars in their party, but on Thursday, they played the rockstar and the comedian.

In an effort to court Latino voters, the RNC's Spanish-language outreach website installed a prominent photo of adorable Latino children as its main image. Or at least that's what the RNC thought the photo depicted. It turns out the kids aren't Latino at all.

After losing the special election in Arizona to succeed Gabrielle Giffords in Congress, two-time Republican candidate Jesse Kelly has announced that he is dropping out of the race for a full term in November.