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With the government's latest employment numbers due Friday, both President Obama and his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, are trying to maintain a fine balance in their rhetoric between optimism, pessimism and reality.

Republican Mitt Romney is running on the strength of his business background. He says he knows how to fix the economy in part because of his success at Bain Capital. But history is not necessarily on Romney's side. Very few businesspeople have made it to the White House.

The federal government is giving the state almost $2 billion to overhaul the health system. Part of the money will provide a new program to aid the sickest patients, and the governor wants to create organizations in each town that will connect health care providers, decrease competition and let patients go wherever they need to get the best care.

Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker holds his lead over his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in a new statewide poll of registered voters.

Mitt Romney says his win in the Texas primary puts him over the top in the delegate count and secures his nomination as the Republican candidate for president. Meanwhile, Donald Trump resurrected the "birther" debate at a Las Vegas fundraiser for Romney.

Three major Republican candidates are vying to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who's retiring after serving for nearly 20 years. The front-runner is the state's lieutenant governor, who's backed by the GOP establishment. Challenging him are a Tea Party conservative and a former mayor of Dallas.

The idea of the American Dream is woven through this country's politics, music and culture. It suggests a belief that hard work pays off, and that children will have a better life than their parents. But as the effects of the economic downturn continue to reverberate, many feel the American Dream is in jeopardy.

Throughout the summer, NPR News will look at the history, culture and current state of the American Dream. NPR's Ari Shapiro and John Ydstie join host Rachel Martin to take a political and economic look at the ultimate American aspiration.

After more than a decade busting corruption, Patrick Fitzgerald is stepping down. The federal prosecutor, known as "Eliot Ness with a Harvard degree," went after the Gambino crime family, al-Qaida and even the White House — not to mention two former Illinois governors who are now in jail.

Health care has become one of the starkest contrasts between President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign. And that's surprising, given that once upon a time they both came up with similar plans to fix the system.