I am Sam Adams

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The first day of voting in the Republican presidential nominating contest is still seven months away, but Mitt Romney is trying to sound and act like the nominee.

On Thursday afternoon, as Air Force One touched down in Philadelphia to ferry President Obama to two fundraisers, Romney came to a shuttered steel plant about 70 miles north to assail the president’s stewardship of the nation’s distressed job market.

In 2009, Obama visited the Allentown Metal Works plant here, touting it as a symbol of the nation’s manufacturing might — an employer that would benefit from his $787 billion economic stimulus bill. But by this year, the plant had closed, laying off its workers and ending this city’s century of manufacturing history.

Senate Republicans on Thursday boycotted a hearing on three pending free-trade agreements, delaying action on a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s effort to boost U.S. exports.

Republicans object to a worker assistance program the administration wants to include as part of a free-trade agreement with South Korea. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program costs about $1 billion and has drawn bipartisan support in the past.

But in the charged environment over spending and debt negotiations, the dispute is complicating what the administration had hoped would be an easy push to broaden trade with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

Goodbye to the big blackboard. Goodbye to the turn-it-on tears. Goodbye, too, to the suppertime serving of anger, conspiracy and the coming apocalypse.

Glenn Beck — populist ranter, Barack Obama scourge, self-described “rodeo clown” — stepped away from his biggest stage Thursday. After a volcanic rise and a muddled denouement lasting just 30 tumultuous months, the host ended his run on the Fox News Channel, going out with what sounded almost like a threat: “For those members of media who are celebrating [his departure] . . . you will pray for the time I was only on the air for one hour a day.”

With the Obama administration warning that the U.S. could default on its debt for the first time ever if Congress doesn't raise the the nation's $14.3 trillion borrowing limit by Aug. 2, a Democratic official with knowledge of the debt talks says a deal is needed in the next two to three weeks for procedural reasons.

WASHINGTON — Another unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care law has emerged: Older adults of the same age and income with similar medical histories could pay widely different amounts for private health insurance due to a quirk of the complex legislation.

Those differences could be substantial. A 62-year-old could end up paying $1,200 a year more than his neighbor, in one example. And experts say the disparities among married couples would be much larger. A leading GOP senator is considering a fix.

President Obama surprised Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, paying tribute to his four decades of public service at a regal farewell ceremony outside the Pentagon.

The honor came on Gates’s last day as defense secretary after 4¹ / ₂ years in the job. The citation for the medal — the highest civilian honor the commander in chief can bestow — said that Gates has “selflessly dedicated his life to ensuring the security of the American people.”

The secretary appeared humbled and genuinely surprised by the honor.

The Justice Department has opened full criminal investigations of the deaths in CIA custody of two detainees, including one who perished at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The decision, announced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., means continued legal jeopardy for several CIA operatives but at the same time closes the book on inquiries that potentially threatened many others. A federal prosecutor reviewed 101 cases in which agency officers and contractors interrogated suspected terrorists during years of military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but found cause to pursue criminal cases in only two.