National News from NPR

As the presidential campaign kicks into high gear, a fight is brewing over stricter voting laws that could affect turnout and influence general election results in battleground states.

New laws in several states will require millions of voters to show photo identification when they cast ballots this year, the result of a nationwide push mostly by Republicans who claim the measures will prevent election fraud. Democrats and voting rights activists oppose the laws, arguing that they are unnecessary because voter fraud is rare.

President Obama acted within his legal authority to appoint Richard Cordray to lead the National Consumer Protection Bureau last week, during a period when the Senate was conducting "pro forma" holiday sessions, according to a memo released this morning by a key unit of the Justice Department.

Steven Rattner, the Wall Street financier who oversaw the Obama Administration's successful rescues of General Motors and Chrysler, now comes to the aid of some other beleaguered members of corporate America — Mitt Romney in his former role as a private-equity CEO, and Bain Capital, the company the Republican presidential candidate once ran.

In a Politico opinion piece, former "car czar" Rattner defends Romney and Bain which he says was among the better angels in the world of private-equity firms.

We've been through this with him before, so talk from Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert about running for president needs to be viewed with suspicion.

But he's at it again and promises a "major announcement" on his show tonight (it airs at 11:30 p.m. ET).

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced his presidential campaign in South Carolina last August, but now his campaign may soon come to an end in the same state where it started. Ben Philpott of KUT News reports on Morning Edition that with the clock ticking down to the Jan. 21 primary, Perry is polling in single digits.

That means Perry has just over a week to convince South Carolinians to vote for him. Philpott spends some time on the campaign trail with Perry, reporting that those attending stops, like Lexington resident Glenn Gainey, know the deal.

Sure, it's tiny. But is it the tiniest?

There's a frog in Papua New Guinea that researchers announced this week is "the smallest known vertebrate species" (that is, a creature with a spine).

It's so small, in fact, that the picture posted by the journal PLoS One with the scientists' report shows the little Paedophryne amauensis sitting on a dime with plenty of room to spare.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Video Depicting Urination On Corpses Won't Derail Peace Talks, Taliban Says.

-- Judge Blocks Pardons Issued By Outgoing Mississippi Gov. Barbour.

The number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose by 24,000 last week from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports. There were 399,000 such claims.

Also, "the 4-week moving average was 381,750, an increase of 7,750 from the previous week's revised average of 374,000," the agency says.