Politics

It is time for the much-winnowed field of Republican presidential contenders to shrink a little further. It is time for Newt Gingrich to bid adieu and wrap up his bid for the nomination.

Rick Santorum, who won the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, has proven himself the conservatives' favored alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney. He did this by winning the voters who mattered most in the deep-dyed red states of Alabama and Mississippi, the white evangelical "born again" voters who cast more than two-thirds of the vote in each state.

On Tuesday, President Obama received the endorsement of the nation's largest organized labor organization, the AFL-CIO. Collective bargaining has been under attack in several states, which has drained union resources. But labor leaders say that's made them more determined than ever to keep Obama in the White House.

"We did it again," declared Rick Santorum during his victory speech in Lafayette, La.

Indeed, the former Pennsylvania senator swept the Republican presidential primaries in Alabama and Mississippi and once again threw Mitt Romney, who has from the very beginning been the presumptive nominee, on the defensive.

Of course, there are two other contests going this evening: Hawaii and American Samoa are holding caucuses, and if Romney takes both of those, he may very well end the night with the most delegates.

As part of a new campaign, dozens of citizen groups around the country are searching voter registration lists, looking for problems.

They're also training poll watchers to monitor this fall's elections.

Leaders of the effort — spawned by the Tea Party movement — say they want to make sure that elections are free from voter fraud. But critics say it's part of a campaign to suppress the votes of minorities, students and others who tend to vote Democratic.