“The U.S. Congress is poised to give final approval to legislation aimed at boosting lending to small businesses in what is likely the Democrats’ final jobs bill before the Nov. 2 elections,” Bloomberg News reports. “The House is slated to vote today on a measure offering a mix of tax cuts, loans and revived stimulus provisions aimed at easing the flow of credit and signaling voters, who head to the polls in six weeks, that Democrats are trying to boost the economy. Passage would send the bill, which was approved by the Senate last week, to President Barack Obama for his signature”

"Senate Republicans defied expectations Wednesday and did not remove Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) as the senior Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee," The Hill notes.

"A Republican gay-rights group presented Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) with a leadership award Wednesday night despite his vote against a repeal of the ban on allowing openly gay people to serve in the military nearly 24 hours before the event," The Hill writes. "In an effort to build party unity around fiscal issues, the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) honored Cornyn and five House Republicans - Reps. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Anh 'Joseph' Cao (R-La.), Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), and Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) – at a dinner banquet at the National Republican Club on Capitol Hill."

"When Christine O'Donnell seemingly came out of nowhere to win her party's Senate nomination in Delaware, journalists quickly unearthed a treasure trove of information about her. Their not-so-secret source: the C-SPAN Video Library," the Washington Post's Kurtz writes. "The online archive, available for free, has turned out to be a deep sea in which reporters can fish for embarrassing or revealing tidbits."