The 36-year Senate veteran is trounced by Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, whose business and Tea Party backers spent $2.7 million to defeat a once-powerful pol they portrayed as out of touch.

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Also bars civil unions for gay and straight couples.

North Carolina voted to pass a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage along with civil unions for gay and straight couples Tuesday. With 35 percent of precincts reporting, Amendment 1 was passing 58 percent to 42 percent. The ban recognizes marriages between one man and one woman and as “the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized.” Polls suggested that many voters did not know that the measure will also have an effect on straight couples. North Carolina already has a law against same-sex marriage and becomes the last former Confederate state to add such a ban to its constitution.

Read it at CBS News

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Ron Paul a distant second in both races.

Mitt Romney has the Republican nomination for president all but locked up, adding Indiana and North Carolina to his state tally on Tuesday night with decisive victories. Romney outpaced his only viable challenger remaining, Ron Paul, in both states, winning more than 60 percent of the vote with Paul barely getting over the 10 percent mark. With 74 percent of precincts reporting in Indiana, Romney had a convincing 64 percent of the vote. Rick Santorum, meanwhile was third in both states. Santorum endorsed Romney in an email to supporters Monday night.

Read it at CBS News

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State treasurer Richard Mourdock projected winner.

Richard Lugar, after 36 years in the Senate, is projected to lose the Indiana Senate primary to state treasurer Richard Mourdock. The 80-year-old Lugar is the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, along with Orrin Hatch of Utah, but he faced a challenge by those in his party who felt he was not conservative enough on federal spending. Mourdock was backed by a variety of conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association. The Democratic candidate will be Rep. Joe Donnelly, but it is not clear if he can raise enough money to be truly competitive in November.

Read it at MSNBC

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After potential threat.

Last week, a St. Louis Tea Party activist urged attendees at a Springfield, Mo., rally to "kill the Claire Bear," arguing that Sen. Claire McCaskill "walks around like she's some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something but really she's an evil monster." The comment was taken as a threat and now the Missouri senator is receiving extra police security. The activist insisted Tuesday that "in no way do I think the senator should be at all harmed," but explained he meant he wants to kill "the idea that Claire McCaskill is this wonderful person running around doing great things for us."

Read it at St. Louis Post-Dispatch

According to Rasmussen.

A new Rasmussen poll puts Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown running neck and neck in their respective bids to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. Both the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger are registering 45 percent of the vote, while 2 percent support a different candidate and 8 percent aren't sure who they're going to vote for. 

Read it at Rasmussen Reports

The underlying question is whether issues of equality and civil rights should be put to a popular vote.

It was Billy Graham versus Bill Clinton in North Carolina’s gay marriage ban vote—and Billy Graham won this round.

Before Tuesday, North Carolina—a high stakes general election swing state, where the research triangle meets the Bible Belt—was the last state among the former Confederacy without a constitutional ban on gay marriage, even though same-sex unions were illegal via legislation. But when Republicans took control of the state legislature, a constitutional ban became a policy priority.

Significantly, the bill went even farther, banning civil unions and domestic partnerships—legally invalidating those that currently exist in the state.

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How does he really feel about gay marriage?

Michael Tomasky asks, "What kind of Christian is Barack Obama?" In that, he means, what is Barack Obama's real stance on gay marriage? Is he "really for gay marriage but just isn't ready to say it yet"? Or, Is he "actually and genuinely a Christian and is against gay marriage on pretty straightforward religious grounds"? Tomasky thinks the former is true but notes that the second option suggests Christianity automatically entails conservativism, ignoring the fact that "there are lots of kinds of Christians out there."

Read it at Michael Tomasky for The Daily Beast

Romney camp disagrees.

"When we took office, let me remind you, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran. We were the problem," Vice President Joe Biden told the Rabbinical Assembly Convention on Tuesday, insisting that the Obama administration is actively working to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. "We were neither fully respected by our friends nor feared by our opponents. Today is starkly, starkly different." It wasn't long before the Romney campaign reacted to Biden's comments, calling them "wrong and completely inappropriate."

Read it at CNN Political Ticker

The Obama campaign is hitting the Colorado, Nevada and Florida airwaves this week with a new Spanish-language ad.

Distancing himself.

As Sen. Richard Lugar looks more likely to lose his reelection bid in Indiana's Republican primary, he's simultaneously losing the support of major Republicans, like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who does not seem to want to be associated with the long-time senator. When asked about the support the Young Guns Network—a super PAC run by two of his former aides—have been giving Lugar, Cantor insisted he has "not gotten involved in that race and this is an outside group that I have no control over." 

Read it at Politico

Hispanic Outreach Director misspoke.

The Republican National Committee and Mitt Romney really need to get on the same page. The latest miscommunication between the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and the RNC occured Tuesday when the group's Hispanic Outreach Director told reporters that she could not comment on Romney's immigration stance because he's "still deciding" how he feels. A few hours later, she walked back her words on Twitter, insisting that she "misspoke, Romney's position on immigration is clear," linking to a detailed discription of Mitt's immigration stance on his website. 

Read it at Talking Points Memo

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Will make his "Tonight Show" debut.

Following his late-night endorsement of ex-opponent Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum is hitting the late-night TV circuit. The former presidential hopeful will join Jay Leno on his show tonight, one of his staffer's announced Tuesday. 

Read it at Talking Points Memo

Governor says it’s about civil rights.

North Carolina voters are hitting the polls Tuesday, driven mostly by their support for or opposition to a state amendment that would limit legal marriages to heterosexual couples. Recent polls suggest that the measure is likely to pass. North Carolina’s outgoing governor, Bev Purdue, refused to say whether or not she is in support of same-sex marriage but urged voters to block the ban because it “takes away a lot of civil liberties, civil rights,” she said. “It’s not about gay marriage. That is not what this issue is about.”

Read it at Talking Points Memo

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Says Obama took his advice.

Instead of hoping America, and particularly the home of the American auto industry, will forget that he once urged the U.S. government to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Mitt Romney is actually trying to claim “a lot of credit” for the recovery of the country’s biggest car manufacturers. “I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” Romney said on a Cleveland TV station. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”

Read it at Associated Press

To pick up some cash in South Carolina.

Vice President Joe Biden will hit up a South Carolina event Tuesday, the last stop on his fundraising tour of the South. Tickets for the gathering, at a private residence in Charleston, cost $10,000—funds that will go directly to the combined effort of the Obama reelection campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and a few state Democratic parties known as the Obama Victory Fund.

Read it at CNN Political Ticker

The miniature media circus touched off by Joe Biden’s endorsement of gay marriage highlights the president’s complete incoherence on the issue. Jesse Singal looks at Obama’s illogical opportunism.

Joe Biden probably owes Jay Carney a bottle of wine, or at least an apology card.

In the wake of Biden's assertion that he is "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage on Sunday's episode of Meet the Press and a similar comment from Arne Duncan on Monday morning, reporters pounced on the White House press secretary during his press conference yesterday, desperately trying to transmute the officials' remarks into some long-awaited clarity on Obama's gay-marriage stance.

It's a circus, yes, and journalists could be making better use of their time by educating readers about the numerous substantive policy differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney. But there's a reason Biden's comment turned into a media microflare: it highlights the extreme incoherence of Obama's position on gay marriage.

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The stakes are high in Tuesday’s down-ballot contests, writes Ben Jacobs.

The presidential primary season is done, but down ballot there’€™s a lot to watch Tuesday, as voters in Indiana, North Carolina, and Wisconsin take to the polls. The Tea Party may claim its biggest scalp yet in Indiana, North Carolina will vote on a gay marriage ban, and the field will be set in Wisconsin’€™s high-stakes recall. Here are three things to watch as the results come in.

NORTH CAROLINA: GAY-MARRIAGE BAN

A gay-marriage ban is on the ballot in North Carolina, which would join the other 10 states that made up the Confederacy in passing a constitutional ban. While same-sex marriage has long been prohibited by statute in the Tar Heel State, the constitutional ban would be more difficult to overturn. Coming in the same week where two members of the Obama administration, Vice President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan seemed to back gay marriage, the referendum, which is expected to pass, will receive national attention.

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The Republican senator’s 36-year career is hanging by a thread in the face of an aggressive challenge from a right-wing favorite who portrays him as out of touch. Patricia Murphy on how the senator failed to heed his party’s warnings.

Republicans in Washington say they tried to warn Richard Lugar that this could happen.

With his seventh Senate term on the line Tuesday in Indiana's primary,  
Lugar is now 10 points down against his Republican challenger, Richard Mourdock, the two-term state treasurer who has run an aggressive campaign painting Lugar as an out-of-touch Washingtonian, a man known nationally as a statesman who is too liberal for the state's conservative voters.

"Lugar's team was warned in the beginning of 2011," says a top Republican aide familiar with the conservations between Lugar's side and national GOP leaders, who huddled after a series of incumbent Republicans went down in defeat in the 2010 primaries.  "We walked through everything that Bob Bennett, Lisa Murkowski, and Mike Castle had done wrong in not taking their primaries seriously enough. Those lessons were not heeded."

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Sends out email to supporters saying so.

Rick Santorum threw his support behind presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney Monday, sending out an email to his supporters in which he endorsed the former Massachusetts governor. "Governor Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our lifetime," Santorum wrote. The endorsement comes after the two former rivals sat down for a one-on-one meeting in Pittsburgh last week where Santorum said he shared with Romney "the issues most important to conservatives." Santorum added, "I strongly encouraged Romney that he add more conservative leaders as an integral part of his team." Santorum dropped out of the Republican primary in early April, revealing that his campaign had run up against the money and power of Romney's well-oiled machine.

Read it at Politico