Washington (CNN) — After a high profile political battle this week over legislation to help victims of domestic abuse, its fate appears to be in limbo. And this policy-dispute-turned-election-year-brawl seems to be far from over.

The House and Senate have both passed different versions of a bill renewing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The next step would be for congressional leaders to appoint negotiators to hash out the differences between the two pieces of legislation.

That process, though, is now at an apparent standstill, with both sides pointing the finger at the other for holding up progress.

DENVER (AP) — Minutes after President Barack Obama announced he supported gay marriage, the Democratic governor of Colorado choked back tears in Denver as he ordered state lawmakers to reconsider a civil-unions measure that Republicans had defeated the day before.

In the week that followed, the debate over equal rights for same-sex couples consumed the state Capitol. And while Republicans ultimately succeeded in killing the measure, Republicans and Democrats alike acknowledge that the emotional standoff over the issue could help shape the White House campaign in this presidential battleground state this fall.

(AP) WASHINGTON — The House on Friday endorsed the indefinite detention without trial of terrorist suspects, even for U.S. citizens seized on American soil.

A coalition of Democrats and tea party Republicans fell short in their effort to end the controversial policy established last year and based on the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

The Republican-controlled House rejected an amendment by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Justin Amash, R-Mich., that would have barred indefinite detention and rolled back mandatory military custody. The vote was 238-182.

The nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service is moving ahead with plans to close dozens of mail processing centers, saying on Thursday it can no longer wait as Congress remains deadlocked over how to help.

At a news briefing, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the agency’s mail processing network had simply become too big, given declining mail volume and its mounting debt. It will now consolidate nearly 250 plants as originally planned, including 48 this summer, but will stretch out the remainder over a longer time frame in 2013 and 2014.

(CNN) – The Barack Obama campaign dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to eastern Ohio Wednesday to push the president’s economic record and take direct aim at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s history as a venture capitalist.

In a sometimes fiery speech at M7 Technologies, an advanced manufacturing plant in Youngstown, Ohio, Biden added new emphasis to the attack on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital that the Obama campaign has waged all week, labeling his policies in a negative light as “Romney economics.”

Washington (CNN) — The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would replace looming Pentagon spending cuts opposed by the GOP with a series of domestic program reductions opposed by congressional Democrats.

The bill passed in a strongly polarized 218-199 vote. No Democrats supported the measure.

While the legislation has no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate or surviving a certain presidential veto, it helps set the stage for a campaign showdown over fiscal priorities. It also offers a partial preview of what is shaping up to be a titanic year-end fight over deficit reduction measures set to take effect in 2013.

After making his historic remarks on same-sex unions last week, President Barack Obama led a conference call with black church pastors to explain his support for gay marriage, the New York Times reports. The call, which was held with “eight or so African-American ministers,” occurred about two hours after the president’s interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts.

Obama explained to them that he struggled with the decision, pastors on the call told the paper, but several voiced their disapproval.

“They were wrestling with their ability to get over his theological position,” the Rev. Delman Coates, a Maryland pastor who was on the call, told the Times.

The conference call was part of a quiet effort by the president to control potential political damage caused by his support of same-sex marriage.

For the first time the parents of an American who could face the death penalty in Iran for alleged espionage have gone before a camera in stirring video to speak about their young son and the suffering they’ve endured since the arrest of the “typical American boy.”

“Everywhere I go I see him. His face is in front of me everywhere,” Behnaz Hekmati, mother of arrested Amir Hekmati, says as tears stream down her face in the new video posted on FreeAmir.org. “I miss him so much. I miss him so much… [But] I keep myself strong because I know my boy needs me. I need to help him.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Obama honored several dozen law enforcement officers today after they were recognized by a national police order for acts of courage or exemplary service. Standing in the spring sun of the White House’s rose garden, the president told the officers and their assembled families he had looked forward to the event to simply say “thank you.”

“They don’t ask for a lot of credit,” the president said of the nation’s police force. “They don’t go to work planning to be heroes. They just do their jobs.”

The officers were in town for the annual awards ceremony of the National Association of Police Organizations. Since 1994, NAPO has run its “Top Cops” program to pay tribute to officers who have gone “above and beyond the call of duty.”

(CNN) — Same-sex marriage was thrust into the political spotlight earlier this week after North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in the state, and President Barack Obama, who will accept the Democratic Party’s nomination in North Carolina later this year, announced Wednesday that he personally supports same-sex marriage. Obama’s announcement brought cheers from gay rights activists and Democratic allies and jeers from religious conservatives and some quarters of the GOP.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, responded to all of the political chatter by reaffirming his belief that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman and that states should be able to extend some rights short of marriage to same-sex couples.