Week In The News: Akin Stays In, Romney On Energy, Isaac Coming

With Bob Oakes in for Tom Ashbrook

Todd Akin stays in the race for the U.S. Senate. Wildfires burn on. Isaac heads toward the Republican Convention.  Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin tripped up big time as the abortion debate tumbles back into the campaign for the White House. A new culture war kicks off before  the Grand Old Party’s convention. Isaac may crash the party. The White House draws red lines for the conflict in Syria.

Prince Harry parties a little too hard in Vegas Lance Armstrong  falls. West Nile Virus, wildfires, drought — all spreading in the Lower 48.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Bob Oakes

Eleanor Clift, contributor to Newsweek magazine and the Daily Beast web site.

Walter Shapiro, covers politics for Yahoo News.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

Gawker "Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade."

New York Times "The Romney-Ryan proposal to reshape Medicare by giving future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy health coverage is deeply unpopular in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, according to new polls that found that more likely voters in each state trust President Obama to handle Medicare."

Foreign Policy "For insurgents that are outgunned and lacking support, Syria's rebels are a consistently cheerful lot. It's not hard to see why: Here in the country's northern Aleppo province, they have largely driven Syrian troops out of the countryside, and are forcefully challenging President Bashar al-Assad's grip on the city of Aleppo."