we re now just 36 days from the presidential election and nationally our brand-new cnn/orc poll of likely voters shows the race between president obama and governor romney remaining up for grabs. the president leads 50% to 47%. but his three-point margin is within the poll s sampling error. our chief national correspondent john king is in denver getting ready for the debate over there. that s the site of the debate. john, take us into these numbers. what are you seeing? reporter: well, wolf, i can tell you this, talking to senior officials in the romney campaign, they believe after a tough week or ten days, the last several days, they have a little bit of a breeze at their back. they say the race has stabilized. you dig into the numbers. what is the most important issue in this first debate? the economy. look at this poll. which candidate would better handle the economy? the president, 49%, governor romney, 48%. a dead heat. the president has to defend his record. governor
least. this is the man before osama bin laden was on the scene who was kind of public enemy number one in many ways. he was convicted back in 1993 for planning a sort of urban war of terrorism in which he and his fellow conspirators were going to blow up two bridges in new york, two tunnels, a federal building. they were going to try and assassinate hosni mubarak. he was a pretty full-on terrorist that s now someone they are saying they want to free. now, since that speech people are rolling back saying we just want him extradited back here to serve out his sentence. but nevertheless, it s going to raise some eyebrows in the u.s. it definitely will. dan rivers out of cairo tonight. thank you so much. we want to dig a little deeper on this with cnn national security contributor fran townsend. fran, bottom line, the chances even that the u.s. would transfer him to cairo are slim to none, correct? zero. there s no possibility. look, in these really big cases where they re
captions by vitac www.vitac.com an historic and stunning showdown is under way right now between the obama administration and federal judges. a three-member appeals panel all republican appointees has taken issue with the president s jawboning of the u.s. supreme court over the health care reform law. now an unusual demand from those judges is putting a lot of heat from the justice department in washington. brian todd is following this battle for us. brian, what s going on? reporter: one seasoned court analyst says federal judges almost never do this kind of thing. whether he intended to or not an appeals court judge has publicly taken on president obama and walked into the political fire. reporter: a barometer of how high the political stakes are for the president and his opponents on the health care law. a public sparring match between president obama and the courts. on monday, mr. obama says this about the supreme court s review of health care. ultimately, i m
on this, the eve of a key gop primary in louisiana, rick santorum is charging hard. polls show him as a double digit favorite there, but santorum is also on the defensive today. he s taking a lot of heat from his rivals for hinting that reelecting barack obama might might be preferable to electing mitt romney. listen to this. you win by giving people a choice. you win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who is just going to be a little different than the person in there. if they re going to be a little different we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be an etch a sketch candidate for the future. strong words. let s go live to our senior correspondent joe johns. he s in louisiana. joe, i take it senator santorum is back peddling furiously today. joo he sort of has to, when you think about it, wolf. this is one of those situations where he said something and almost immediately the cr
president obama supported.uprising, correct? i do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason. no, that s that s different one. i got to go back, see fred woodhouse is the communications director for the republican national committee and john feehery from quinn gillespie communications. he is a strategist. i want to start with you, if that wasn t bad enough, take a look at this, here is herman cain defending himself about that little mistake later on. mr. cain, do you think the libya comments reinforce the idea that let us walk through. u don t have a thorough understanding of for rip policy? 9-9-9. oh, please. there you have t when in doubt, you go back to your economic plan, which is easy to