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politico.com — In a reprise of a long-ago clash between Democratic presidential candidates, House Republicans contend that they can answer the mocking challenge “Where’s the beef?”

The GOP response: Create incentives for new jobs, cut federal spending and clean up Congress. Although the specifics remain a work in progress, Republican leaders are inching toward a substantive campaign agenda after a behind-the-scenes battle over how specific the policy proposals should be.

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huffingtonpost.com — Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) offered a candid criticism of the House Republican leadership and other members of his party in a C-SPAN appearance on Thursday.

Inglis -- who was defeated in his bid for re-election in a primary runoff last month -- took aim at House Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor.

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blogs.abcnews.com — ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: A day after the NAACP voted to rebuke the Tea Party movement over what the organization labeled “racist factions within the organization,” we asked Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a top-ranking member of House Democratic leadership, for his take.

“The Tea Party movement is an amorphous movement, so I would say that the Tea Party movement, as a whole, cannot be easily identified,” Van Hollen, D-Md., said on ABC/Washington Post’s “Top Line.”

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cnn.com — The NAACP has passed a resolution that condemns what it feels is rampant racism in the Tea Party movement. Members passed the measure on Tuesday at the organization's 101st annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri.

Tea Party activists have swiftly denounced the action as unfounded and unfair.

The resolution pits the nation's oldest civil rights organization, with its storied history of wins on behalf of racial justice, against a grassroots conservative movement that has won some recent political races and is flexing its muscle in Republican circles.

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abcnews.go.com — Republican Sharron Angle says her campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada is "a calling" from God and that her faith is helping her endure a fiercely competitive race in which Democrats have depicted her as a conservative extremist.

"When you have God in your life ... he directs your path," Angle told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview posted on its website Wednesday.

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huffingtonpost.com — Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday he's seriously considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination and will announce his decision early next year.

Gingrich, 67, told The Associated Press that he would focus on helping Republican candidates through the midterm elections in November, then decide in February or March whether to seek the GOP nomination.

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huffingtonpost.com — The frustration and anxiety of Americans about the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico grows by the day. Those whose livelihood is tied to the Gulf -- or who live in the wetlands of Louisiana, and communities along the coast -- are justifiable demanding the deployment of war-time levels of personnel and equipment to stop the dark, deadly oil that is invading from the sea.

In times of national crisis, Americans look to the President to lead -- and to deliver. That's why President Obama was absolutely correct to make it crystal clear that he is personally responsible to deal with the oil spill crisis -- and has told his Administration to spare no effort to stop the leak, oversee the cleanup, and assure that BP completely compensates the massive number of victims.

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hosted.ap.org — Boeing Co. agreed to pay the U.S. government $25 million to settle claims the company did defective work on critical military refueling planes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The settlement arose out of a whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Texas by two former Boeing workers who will now receive $2.6 million for drawing attention to the issue. The Justice Department had investigated the Chicago-based aerospace giant for allegedly defective work on the Air Force fleet of KC-10 Extenders, which are used for in-flight refueling in the Iraq and Afghanistan war theaters. The work was done while performing maintenance on the planes at the Boeing Aerospace Support Center in San Antonio, Texas. The government investigation found Boeing overcharged the government for installing insulation blankets by padding the estimated hours of work and charging an excessive hourly rate for labor.

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latimes.com — Karl Rove and other officials in George W. Bush's White House played an active role in the firing of the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico, according to documents released that also show Bush political aides tried to influence Justice Department officials on other matters. The e-mails and interview transcripts made public by the House Judiciary Committee show Rove and other White House aides paying particular attention to complaints from Republican officials in New Mexico that U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias had failed to help their election prospects by prosecuting alleged instances of voter fraud. Iglesias was fired in 2006, one of nine dismissals of U.S. attorneys that Democrats said were motivated by politics. The firings became the subject of a long-running political fight in Washington. House Democrats called Rove the driving force in several of the firings and said the new evidence confirmed that partisan politics played an unusual role in the dismissals.

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latimes.com — Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees. The reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses about 33,000 detainees a day and that has been sharply criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.

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