WICHITA, Kan. -- U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown, the nation’s oldest sitting federal judge, has died at age 104.

Brown died Monday evening at Larksfield Place, an assisted-living center where he had lived for several years, Judge Monti Belot told The Wichita Eagle.

“There comes a time, and he was just ready,” Belot, who also sits on the federal bench in Wichita, told The Eagle.

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Brown was appointed as a federal district judge in 1962 by then-President John F. Kennedy. In 1979, Brown officially took senior status, a type of semi-retirement. But he continued to carry a full load of cases for the next three decades. It was only in recent years that he began to lighten his workload.
  
Brown's long tenure on the federal bench rivals that of Joseph Woodrough, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, who had been the longest practicing judge in the federal judiciary when he died in 1977 at age 104.

 Belot said Brown had been in weaker health and had not come to the courthouse within the past month.

“I hope to be remembered as a good judge, and not just an old judge,” Brown told The Eagle last year, sitting in his office.

• Read local coverage from The Wichita Eagle

Brown graduated from law school at the University of Kansas in 1933. He was appointed a bankruptcy judge in Wichita in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

On March 8, 1962, Kennedy nominated him to a seat on the U.S. District Court for Kansas vacated by Delmas C. Hill. Federal judgeships are lifetime appointments.

Brown was known for his compassion for defendants, according to a 2010 profile in the Huffington Post.

In sentencing a 28-year-old woman to more than three years in prison in March 2010, he told the tearful defendant how much he and other court officials wanted her to succeed in the future. "As an old man, it is hard for me to say I am sorry it happened," Brown told her, according to The Huffington Post. "I know you will do the right thing. Good luck and be well."

The Associated Press and msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this story.

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Regardless of who Republicans eventually select as their party’s standard bearer for November’s election, Obama’s record will be central to the political argument.  His opponents charge that his policies and actions have been overbearing and outside the lines of federal responsibility. Other critics, many of whom line-up with the president ideologically, contend he has been too timid and overly disposed to compromise.  

But those who supported Obama’s agenda in 2008 have many reasons to vote for him this November.

And according to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2019 the law will still leave 23 million residents uninsured, about one-third of whom would be illegal immigrants. Still, the major overhaul of the nation’s health care system stands as one of the largest legislative achievements in decades. 

In a few cases Obama has disappointed some of his supporters – for example, he hasn’t closed Guantanamo Navy Base as a prison camp for al-Qaida members and other terrorist suspects, as he pledged to do in an executive order he signed on the day be took office in 2009. But this was largely to due to Republican opposition.

Here’s an accounting of the reasons Obama supporters have to vote for him again – and some promises he hasn’t been able to keep.

The economy 
When judging any president’s record, one difficulty is choosing a fair baseline to evaluate economic performance. How much of a recovery, or a recession, is due to a president’s actions? How much is due to long-term changes in patterns of international trade, in the American and foreign labor forces, in technology and in other factors which transcend a president’s four-year term?

When Obama signed the $825 billion economic stimulus plan into law in February of 2009, there were 141.7 million Americans working and 12.5 million unemployed.By February of 2011, two years after the stimulus was enacted, there were 139.5 million Americans working and 13.7 million unemployed.

Between the month he signed the stimulus into law and February of 2011, the unemployment rate went from 8.1 percent to 8.9 percent. These numbers explain Republican criticism of the stimulus as a squandering of taxpayer money that didn’t result in increased employment. 

In recent months, the jobs data has improved but there were still almost one million fewer people employed last month than when Obama signed the stimulus into law.

Obama’s critics on the left, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, argue the stimulus was too small, while Obama’s defenders say it prevented a far worse economic slump. 

The Obama administration also decided to spend $80 billion to keep General Motors and Chrysler alive, and as of last November, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $35 billion of that money had been repaid to the Treasury, $7 billion had been written off as a loss, and $37 billion was still outstanding. The two car companies are still operating; in fact, GM reported a few days ago that it has reclaimed its title as the world’s largest seller of automobiles.

Obama himself said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in 2008, “We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.” 

Clinton served for eight years and Obama has served so far for only three, but the Census reported that median household income, adjusted for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent between 2009 and 2010. This was part of longer-term trend that predates Obama’s presidency: since 2007, median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the peak ($53,252) that occurred in 1999.

The Census also reports that the poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent—up from 14.3 percent in 2009, the third consecutive increase in the poverty rate. 

When Obama launched his candidacy in Springfield in 2007, he portrayed these economic woes as Bush Era problems, about which the Republicans were in denial: “For the past six years, we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter. We've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion.” 

One sector of the economy where Obama appears to have fallen short is housing. In his first debate with John McCain in 2008, he said: “We've got to make sure that we're helping homeowners, because the root problem here has to do with the foreclosures that are taking place all across the country.”

Clifford Rossi, a housing policy expert at the University of Maryland business school said, “As well intended as the Administration appears to be with trying to assist underwater and struggling homeowners, if I were grading their performance thus far it would be a C-.” 

He added, “Their various attempts to address loan modifications have been ad hoc and missed the mark entirely of what needs to be accomplished... We are five years into a housing crisis unlike anything we've seen since the Great Depression and we have few policy solutions to show for it.” 

In the face of Republican opposition, Obama has been unable to fulfill his promise to enact legislation reducing use of tax deductions by upper-income taxpayers and raising income tax rates for those with incomes over $250,000. But as part of the health care law he did increase Medicare taxes on upper-income people. The law also other imposes other major tax increases including the penalty on people who choose to go without insurance and the tax on high-cost “Cadillac" health plans which takes effect in 2018.

Obama promised in 2008 to cut taxes for “95 percent of working families.” The 2009 stimulus included more than $300 billion in tax cuts and credits — including the Making Work Pay Credit, a big tax cut for workers earning less than $75,000 and couples making less than $150,000 a year. Making Work Pay has now been replaced by the payroll tax cut.

But tax cutting and spending on the stimulus as well as other spending, has helped enlarge the national debt – which has grown from $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office to $15.2 trillion. 

Environmental policy
In his 2007 Springfield speech Obama said, “We can set up a system for capping greenhouse gases. We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation and job creation … .” 

He said in another campaign speech in 2008 that after his election “we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment … when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

When he first took office, Obama proposed to enact a cap-and-trade bill and to use revenues to reduce deficits and pay for new spending initiatives. 

Although the House passed a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas bill in 2009, Obama along with Sen. John Kerry, D- Mass., Sen. Joe Lieberman, I- Conn., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., the three Senate leaders on the issue, failed to come up with the compromises needed to pass a bill. The effort died in the summer of 2010.

The Obama administration has made grants and loans to alternative energy companies, but it was embarrassed when $535 million in taxpayer money was lost in a loan to Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt last September.

Social and labor policy 
Obama shored up the liberal wing of the Supreme Court by appointing Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens. 

And he pleased gay rights advocates when he ended the legal defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Obama also ended the Clinton Era “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on gays serving in the military. 

He also made recess appointments to National Labor Relations Board, which helped fulfill a campaign pledge he made in 2007 to help union organizers “lift up this country’s middle class again.”

Foreign policy
As Obama promised to do in 2008, he has withdrawn American troops from Iraq. He has also ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden and American-born Moslem cleric and al-Qaida organizer Anwar al-Awlaki. He has continued and expanded the use of drones to kill alleged terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere. 

All this is in line with his 2007 Springfield speech in which he pledged to “confront the terrorists with everything we’ve got” and “to track down terrorists with a stronger military.” 

On Afghanistan, Obama said in his first 2008 debate with McCain, “I think we need more troops. I've been saying that for over a year now. And I think that we have to do it as quickly as possible, because it's been acknowledged by the commanders on the ground the situation is getting worse, not better … I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan” – in other words up to about 15,000 additional troops.

When Obama took office there were 32,000  troops in Afghanistan. In March 2009 he announced he’d send an extra 4,000. 

On Dec. 1, 2009, he increased U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan by another 30,000, bringing the total to 100,000. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said. 

The tone of politics and ethics in government
Many voters were drawn to Obama in 2008 by his rhetoric denouncing “the smallness of our politics, the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial … our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle the big problems of America.”

He lashed out at “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” 

And on the night he won the Iowa caucuses, he said that he and his supporters had “beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism … .” 

In his inaugural address he said, “We come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

There’s no objective way to measure whether Obama has “beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism” or ended “pretty grievances” and “recriminations.”  

But the Washington reform groups Common Cause and the Center for Public Integrity have accused him of falling short of his anti-lobbyist rhetoric. 

Obama signed an executive order on his first day in office which imposed limits on former lobbyists and others who worked in his administration. An ex-lobbyist working in the administration could not for two years after his appointment be involved in any policy matter on which he’d lobbied in the two years before his appointment, or work in a federal agency that he had lobbied within the two years before being appointed.

But the executive order provided a waiver from the rules if it was deemed in the national interest. Former Clinton administration Defense Department official and former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn was given a waiver to serve as deputy secretary of defense. And the New York Times reported in 2010 that White House officials regularly met with lobbyists at the Caribou Coffee shop down the street from the White House, avoiding disclosure on the public White House visitors’ log.

Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman, chided Obama last year for accepting campaign funds for his 2012 run which were raised by “bundlers” working for Washington lobbying firms. 

A 19-year-old New Jersey man is accused of tossing explosives into two synagogues, including one in Rutherford where a rabbi and his family were sleeping, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli identified the suspect as Anthony Graziano, of Lodi, N.J.

Authorities believe he acted alone in both attacks, a week apart, and was motivated by anti-Jewish bias.

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No one was seriously injured when several objects, including a rigged aerosol can and a Molotov cocktail, were thrown into the synagogue in Rutherford on Jan. 11, but Graziano has been charged with first-degree attempted murder, bias intimidation and aggravated arson in that attack.

Read the original story on nbcnewyork.com

The building houses Congregation Beth El, a school, and a residence where Rabbi Nosson Schuman lives with his family.

One of the firebomb devices crashed through Schuman's second-floor bedroom window at about 4:30 a.m., burning him on the hand. His wife, five children and mother- and father-in-law escaped unscathed.

In the Paramus attack on Jan. 3, Graziano is charged with first-degree aggravated arson and bias intimidation.

Authorities released photos of a possible suspect last week. He was seen on surveillance video wearing a red and black track suit, black sneakers and a red wool skullcap. He was carrying a camouflage backpack.

Prosecutors say they received several tips after releasing the photos, and confirmed it was Graziano on Monday.

It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney.

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NEW YORK --  A glaring misspelling on a street sign outside a Manhattan high school has some laughing that the mistake’s gone unreported for months and stauncher critics condemning what they perceive to be a symbol of the “dumbing down" of American society.

The painted pavement on Stanton Street outside Marta Valle High School reads "SHCOOL X-NG."

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The Department of Transportation claims the mistake was made by a utility provider, not the city, according to The New York Post. The agency said it would reach out to the contractor to have the error fixed.

But that hasn't quelled the outcry.

“It’s sad,” Derek Pacheco, a securities worker who passes by the sign on his way to the office each day, told the Post. “It speaks volumes about the dumbing down of American culture.”

• Read original story on nbcnewyork.com

A city worker who asked not to be identified told the Post regardless of who made the mistake, a student or administrator at the school should have noticed and reported it some time ago.

Another worker in the area laughed when the Post asked him what he thought of the pavement sign.

"It's embarrassing for the city," said Luis Maldonado. "Teaching kids to read and write correctly is very important."

Area residents said construction crews labored on the street over the summer.

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ESTACADA, Ore. -- An Oregon man raced along the rain-swollen Clackamas River but couldn't keep up with his 6-year-old daughter who had fallen into the stream and was swept downriver, authorities said.

Rescue workers searched without success Monday for Vinesa Snegur, who fell Sunday into the river, running fast and cold from a recent winter storm.

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The Clackamas County sheriff's office said the search would resume Tuesday.

"It was just a second of inattention," sheriff's Sgt. James Rhodes said of the little girl's fall, explaining that her father turned away, "then splash, and she fell in. He ran and tried to keep up with her, but he was unable to."

Rhodes said the girl and her parents, Igor and Marina Snegur, are from southeast Portland and drove Sunday to play in the snow. They parked near Austin Hot Springs in the Mount Hood National Forest where a road is close to the stream.

The spot is about 60 miles southeast of Portland. There's no cell service, and the family couldn't call for help until they got to a phone at a ranger station an hour later, Rhodes said.

The water temperature Monday was just above freezing, and the river is carrying a heavy load of trees and roots, imperiling rescue workers, he said.

About 50 ground searchers and divers suspended their search at nightfall Monday. A helicopter with thermal imaging equipment also was used to scan the river.

Purple jacket, pink hat
Steve Duin, who joined the search and wrote about it in a column for The Oregonian, said that by noon Monday about 50 people had joined the search, including divers in the water and relatives of the child, who was wearing a purple jacket, pink hat and white pants when she fell.

"Flares have been set out on the road into Austin Hot Springs, the smoke drifting over the divers and the bridge. The black ice is long gone as I slide down the hill, but I slow each time the river comes into view, searching for a blink of purple or pink somewhere," he wrote.

The Oregonian reported that Vinesa's parents were still on the mountain "surrounded by family and trauma specialists" late on Monday.

At Vinesa's Mill Park Elementary School, about 140 students visited a special 21-person crisis counseling team Monday, The Oregonian reported. Barbara Kienle, students services director, said half a dozen employees, including some of Vinesa's teachers, also talked to counselors.

"She has many friends," Principal Rolando Florez told the newspaper. "There were lots of sad kids in her class today."

Like many streams in western Oregon, the Clackamas River is swollen by heavy rain that fell late last week as a winter storm moved into the region. The storm caused flooding in many communities in the Willamette Valley.

• Deadly storm grips Northwest in ice, snow

A mother and her 1-year-old son died after a creek swept away their car from an Albany, Ore., parking lot. A father and his son were able to escape.

Most streams have receded, but more rain is been forecast this week in western Oregon, raising the possibility of more floods.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A 21-year-old Syrian-American has been missing for three weeks after returning to Syria from suburban Detroit, according to a family member in Michigan.

Obada Mzaik flew to Damascus from Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Jan. 3, but wasn't seen leaving an immigration checkpoint, Dr. Firas Nashef, his uncle in Farmington Hills, said.

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Mzaik, who was born in Columbus, Ohio, was planning to study civil engineering at Al-Yarmouk University.

He had been temporarily living in the Detroit area with a younger brother while taking fall classes at Oakland Community College, Nashef said.

The brother, Obaie Mzaik, 19, who was on the same flight, was not detained in Damascus, Nashef said.

"We have no idea what happened," the dentist said.

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"It's horrendous because knowing what we know about the prison system over there, anything goes," Nashef told the Detroit News Monday. "The prison system and justice system over there is not very impressive."

He added that Mzaik had been detained in Syria for 37 days last year, but had not been charged officially.

The State Department said it was aware of the matter and was working with authorities in Syria.

On Jan. 11, the U.S. government urged Americans to get out of Syria and to avoid any travel there.

• More of msnbc.com's Syria coverage

Mzaik has citizenship in the U.S. and Syria. Nashef said the family returned to Syria in 1994 when his nephew was about 3.

"Most of his life he's been in Syria," Nashef said.

'Deep concern'
The Detroit News noted that a Facebook page, entitled "Freedom to our friend Obada Mzaik," has been set up.

It had 1,220 likes as of early Tuesday morning.

A link on that page led to a petition on the www.change.org website, which urges the State Department to help free Mzaik.

• NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin answers reader questions from Syria

"As Syrians looking for freedom, we are outraged by the obscure circumstances surrounding Obada's arrest, and we express our deep concern over his safety in the Syrian regime's custody," the petition says.

One message, which msnbc.com was immediately unable to verify, says "because he is my son ... I want him free and now."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BOSTON -- President John F. Kennedy's library is releasing 45 hours of privately recorded meetings and phone calls, providing a window into the final months of his life.

The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.

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On one recording, made days before Kennedy's assassination, he asks staffers to schedule a meeting in a week.

He tells them he's booked for the weekend, with no time to meet with an Indonesian general then.

"I'm going to be up at the Cape on Friday, but I'll see him Tuesday," JFK tells staffers.

The tapes, released on Tuesday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and downloadable in .zip file format from the archive website, are the last of more than 260 hours of recordings of meetings and conversations JFK privately made before his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

In the scheduling discussion three days before his killing, JFK also eerily comments on what would become the day of his funeral.

"Monday?" he asks. "Well that's a tough day."

"It's a hell of a day, Mr. President," a staffer replies.

Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides. He made the last one two days before his death.

Kennedy library archivist Maura Porter said Monday that JFK may have been saving them for a memoir or possibly started them because he was bothered when the military later gave a different overview of a discussion with him about the Bay of Pigs.

The latest batch of recordings captured meetings from the last three months of Kennedy's administration. In a conversation with political advisers about young voters, Kennedy asks, "What is it we have to sell them?"

"We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil," he says. "He's not unprosperous, but he's not very prosperous. ... And the people who really are well off hate our guts."

• STORY: JFK hearse goes on auction block

Kennedy talks about a disconnect between the political machine and voters.

"We've got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn't have much identity where these people are concerned," he says.

On another recording, Kennedy questions conflicting reports military and diplomatic advisers bring back from Vietnam, asking the two men: "You both went to the same country?"

He also talks about trying to create films for the 1964 Democratic Convention in color instead of black and white.

"The color is so damn good," he says. "If you do it right."

Porter said the public first heard about the existence of the Kennedy recordings during the Watergate hearings.

In 1983, JFK Library and Museum officials started reviewing tapes without classified materials and releasing recordings to the public. Porter said officials were able to go through all the recordings by 1993, working with government agencies when it came to national security issues and what they could make public.

In all, she said, the JFK Library and Museum has put out about 40 recordings. She said officials excised about 5 to 10 minutes of this last group of recordings due to family discussions and about 30 minutes because of national security concerns.

• STORY: JFK Jr. assistant: I urged Carolyn to get on that plane

Porter has supervised the declassification of these White House tapes since 2001, and she said people will have a much better sense of the kind of leader JFK was after hearing them. While some go along with meeting minutes that also are public, she said, listening to JFK's voice makes his personality come alive.

She said he comes across as an intelligent man who had a knack for public relations and was very interested in his public image. But she said the tapes also reveal times when the president became bored or annoyed and moments when he used swear words.

The sound of the president's children, Caroline and John Jr., playing outside the Oval Office is part of a recording on which he introduces them to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

"Hello, hello," Gromyko says as the children come in, telling their father, "They are very popular in our country."

JFK tells the children, mentioning a dog Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the family: "His chief is the one who sent you Pushinka. You know that? You have the puppies."

JFK Library spokeswoman Rachel Flor said the daughter of the late president has heard many of the recordings, but she wasn't sure if she had heard this batch.

"He'd go from being a president to being a father," Porter said of the recordings. "... And that was really cute."

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KATMANDU, Nepal -- Police in Nepal have arrested a U.S. man who was allegedly a member of a smuggling ring that sent illegal drugs into the United States by concealing them in Buddhist prayer wheels.

The drugs, which were also put into metal bowls, were sent via Federal Express, authorities said.

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Police official Navraj Silwal said Kristian Peter Stiegler, 45, was detained while trying to send 2.5 pounds of hashish, a form of cannabis, and 2 pounds of suspected opium.

If tests confirm the substance is opium, Stiegler could face up to 20 years in prison.

However, Silwal said Stiegler would likely get a lighter sentence because he was cooperating in the investigation into the alleged drug ring.

'Hefty sum'
Silwal said Stiegler has lived in Nepal and India for three years and was suspected of sending several drug shipments.

The Himalayan News Service said hashish was allegedly sent to Europe, as well as to the United States.

It reported the smuggling ring was discovered when police in Dubai intercepted two parcels of hashish that Steigler had allegedly sent to a New Orleans woman.

"Stiegler used to send hashish to the woman via airmail in the form of parcels and the woman used to distribute the drug in black market for a hefty sum," Yadav Raj Adhikari, chief of the Narcotic Drug Control Law Enforcement Unit, told the Himalayan News Service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released tax records on Tuesday indicating he is paying $6.2 million in taxes on a total of $42.5 million in income over the years 2010 and 2011.

Bowing to increasing political pressure to provide more detail about his vast wealth, the former private equity executive released tax returns indicating he and his wife, Ann, paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010. They expect to pay a 15.4 percent rate when they file their returns for 2011.

Romney's 2010 returns show the candidate is among the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

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Romney's tax rate is below that of most wage-earning Americans because most of his income, as outlined in more than 500 pages of tax documents, flows from capital gains on investments.

• Vote: How would you change the tax code?

Under the U.S. tax code, capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, compared with a top tax rate of 35 percent for wage earners.

Rival Newt Gingrich made public his returns on Saturday, showing he paid almost $1 million in income taxes — a tax rate of about 31 percent.

'Not a dollar more'
Romney released the tax returns after a week in which Gingrich questioned whether Romney was hiding information about his finances and cast him as being out of touch with most Americans.

Romney's campaign confirmed the details of his tax information after several news organizations saw a preview of the documents. He had said planned to release his returns in full Tuesday morning, and campaign officials would be prepared to discuss them in detail with reporters.

"You'll see my income, how much taxes I've paid, how much I've paid to charity," Romney said during Monday night's debate in Tampa. "I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes."

Gingrich's attacks on Romney helped him upset the former Massachusetts governor in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

• Q & A: What Romney's tax returns reveal - and omit

Since then, Romney has vowed to be more aggressive in returning fire.

He has launched a series of attacks questioning Gingrich's character, judgment and lucrative work as a Washington consultant, and released his tax returns to try to nullify Gingrich's criticisms on that front.

• Gingrich contract with Freddie Mac leaves questions unanswered

The tax rates Romney reported paying could add fuel to a national debate over the fairness of the tax code, and coincides with broader concerns about income inequality symbolized by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Swiss bank account closed in '10
Romney's campaign officials stressed that his tax rate is based mostly on income from investments. His holdings include an undisclosed amount in funds based in the Grand Cayman Islands and other overseas entities.

Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans -- along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney -- were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes.

• Slideshow: Mitt Romney's life in photos

They also stressed that Romney, whose holdings are in three blind trusts, makes no decisions as to how his money is invested.

Regardless, the emerging picture was of a man of great means who contributes mightily to charity. The documents showed he and his wife contributed $7 million in charity over the two years, much of it going to his Mormon church. That represents more than 15 percent of the Romneys' income for those years.

• New state, new strategy as Romney comes out swinging

Romney, whose estimated net worth is $190 million to $250 million, is among the wealthiest Americans ever to seek the presidency.

Top campaign officials and the director of Romney's blind trust, Brad Malt, briefed Reuters on the details ahead of a more general release of the information Tuesday morning.

'We're proud of it'
Campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg, asked why Romney was not releasing tax records for the years in the 1980s and 1990s in which Romney made his fortune at private equity firm Bain Capital, said the two years covered by the tax returns should give a broad picture of Romney's financial situation.

"We're not going to get into the game of once you give them something, they demand more," Ginsberg said. "This is a fulsome release and we're proud of it."

The tax issue may have been a factor in Romney's loss to Gingrich in South Carolina. It became a distraction to Romney's campaign, and Romney's fuzzy answers on when and if he would release his records aggravated the problem.

First he said he might release them, or might not. When the questions kept coming, he said he would put them out in April, after his 2011 forms were completed. Only after he was defeated in South Carolina did his aides say he would release them this week. Gingrich has released his returns for 2010, but has not released an estimate for last year, as Romney did.

Long considered the front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Romney was staggered by Gingrich's lopsided win in South Carolina, and is looking to regain enough momentum to defeat Gingrich in Florida, which votes on January 31.

• Gingrich foes fight to remind GOP of ex-speaker's ethics woes

Before the tax records were released, Romney's old investments in two controversial government-backed housing lenders stirred up new questions at the same time his campaign targeted Gingrich for his work for Freddie Mac.

Gingrich earned $1.6 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac even though Romney has as much as $500,000 invested in the U.S.-backed lender and its sister entity, Fannie Mae.

Tax experts told The Associated Press that Romney's income tax returns may contain other charity structures and tax strategies designed to both boost his income and charity donations, while minimizing his involvement because of his presidential ambitions.

 Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of abortion opponents marched to the U.S. Supreme Court in chilly, soggy weather on Monday to mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the court's decision legalizing abortion.

The "March for Life" has been held every year since 1974, a year after the landmark Supreme Court ruling. It is consistently one of the largest protests of the year in Washington, although weather likely kept this year's numbers down a bit.

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House Speaker John Boehner told the crowd that he is one of 12 children and that anti-abortion views are part of his identity.

"With your help this bipartisan majority is standing up for life," he said. "We are heeding the voice of the people who oppose taxpayer funding of abortion."

Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, urged supporters to "make sure we have a pro-life House and elect a pro-life Senate ... and most importantly that the most pro-abortion president in American history, President Obama, no longer occupies the White House."

Participants carried signs reading "I Vote Pro-Life First," "Defund Planned Parenthood" and "Face It ... Abortion Kills a Person."

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., urged anti-abortion voters to unite behind the eventual GOP nominee.

"We don't have the luxury of disunity or nominee disappointment or apathy," Smith said. "For the sake of the innocent, failure to unite is not an option."

Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney has said he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. But Janet Hoven, 55, of Chester, N.J., said he still needed to do more to court anti-abortion activists.

"He's going to have to come out very strong for life. I certainly will pray that he will," said Hoven, a Romney supporter.

Carolee Zentkovich, 68, of Columbia Station, Ohio, said she supports Santorum but would gladly vote for Romney in the hopes of getting Obama out of office.

Americans remain strongly divided on abortion.

A Gallup poll last year showed that 49 percent of respondents identified themselves as "pro-choice," while 45 percent called themselves "pro-life." The same survey found that 50 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under some circumstances, 27 percent said it should be legal in all cases and 22 percent said it should always be illegal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A Washington state senator on Monday joined those lawmakers who support gay marriage, ensuring enough votes to pass a bill out of the state Senate.

"I have very strong Christian beliefs, and personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others," Democratic Sen. Margaret Haugen said in a statement posted on her website. "I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision. I do not believe it is my role to judge others, regardless of my personal beliefs."

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The state House already has enough support, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has endorsed the plan.

Still, it's expected that opponents of gay marriage will oppose the measure on a statewide ballot.

Haugen's announcement came moments before the state Legislature held its first public hearing on the issue.

STORY: King5.com's coverage of the legislation

If ultimately approved, Washington would join New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia in approving gay marriage.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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