CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

(CBS News) With opening arguments in the trial of former U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards set to begin on on Monday, a CBS News/New York Times poll shows that public opinion of him has plummeted since he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007. Now, he is now most known for cheating on his wife.

The CBS/NYT poll reveals that only 3 percent of those polled hold a favorable view of Edwards, who has been charged with misusing campaign funds. That is down from 30 percent in 2007 when he was running for the Democratic nomination, which is also the last time the question was asked among registered voters.

Since 2007, Edwards' unfavorable ratings have risen eleven points, from 30 percent to 41 percent today. However, half of those polled are undecided or don't have an opinion of Edwards.

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(CBS News) Orrin Hatch of Utah overcame Tea Party-tied opposition to advance his quest for a seventh term in the Senate, but did not perform well enough at the Republican Party's state convention to avoid a run-off election.

Obtaining 59.2 percent of the vote of delegates at Saturday's state convention, Hatch will face Dan Liljenquist, a former member of the State Senate, in a run-off on June 26.

Although the veteran lawmaker easily obtained 40 percent of delegates' support to advance, he fell a hair short of obtaining the 60 percent support of state delegates necessary to avoid a run-off.

Hatch was forced to fight a tough race as conservative activists continued their push to elect new members into Congress. Furthermore, the group FreedomWorks (run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, which organizes the Tea Party) has been working to unseat Hatch.

After Tea Partiers ousted Hatch's former Senate colleague Bob Bennett at the state convention in 2010 with ardent opposition from activists, Hatch strategically began organizing to perform well at this year's meeting, at which the most activist elements of the Republican Party participate. Hatch also moved his positions to the political right in an attempt to secure his seat.

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Updated 11:15 a.m. ET

(CBS News) Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the head of the Secret Service Friday evening asking if White House staff are also subjects of the investigation into the Colombian prostitution scandal.

Grassley is questioning the "possible involvement of staff from the White House Communications Agency and the White House Office of Advance," spokesperson Beth Levine wrote in a statement.

The consequences of the scandal expanded Friday as three more Secret Service personnel stepped down, bringing the number to six who have left or are in the process of leaving the agency. The number of Secret Service agents and uniformed personnel being investigated now totals 12, while 11 members of the Department of Defense are also being investigated.

Grassley, whose committee has oversight of the Secret Service, sent the letter to Director Mark Sullivan and Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Charles Edwards on Friday evening after his staff received the latest briefing on the incident.

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Updated 9:15 a.m. ET

(CBS News) The president kicks off his next policy battle - student loans - by dedicating his weekly address to the issue.

"In America, higher education cannot be a luxury. It's an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford," the president said.

The president is set to visit universities in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa next week, as well as appear on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," to put pressure on Congress to extend a lower student loan interest rate before the rates are set to increase from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.

"Nearly seven and half million students will end up owing more on their loan payments. That would be a tremendous blow. And it's completely preventable," the president said.

Mr. Obama argued that the cost of higher education keeps people from attending, and he said interest rates on student loans add to the deterrent.

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Updated 9:40 a.m. ET

(CBS News) Freshman Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said the Senate's vote on the Buffett Rule is a symptom of misplaced priorities.

Blunt called the Buffett Rule "a gimmick that would do nothing to jump-start jobs or lower fuel prices for average Americans." The Buffett Rule, which failed to clear a Senate vote earlier this week, would impose at least a 30-percent tax rate on those making more than $1 million per year.

"Unfortunately, instead of working together to pass bipartisan solutions that would relieve pain at the pump and pressure on jobs, this administration is focused on the wrong things," Blunt said in the Republican weekly address.

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(CBS News) SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Seeking to begin the healing after the GOP's hard-fought presidential primary, likely nominee Mitt Romney commended the eight other candidates who he said "had the courage to run for president on our side of the aisle this year." He thanked each of them by name and offered praise to the group.

"Each of them campaigned in an aggressive and dynamic way to spread our message of conservatism," Romney told members of the Republican National Committee at their annual meeting. "And each is going to play a vital role in making sure that we win in November."

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(CBS News) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is over $4 million in debt and the pace of its fundraising has fallen significantly behind its spending, according to figures released by the campaign Friday evening.

In its March report, the campaign posted spending of a little over $2 million while it raised only $1.6 million. It reported debt of $4.3 million.

However, the pro-Gingrich Super PAC is in much better financial shape. In March, Winning Our Future raised $5,036,485, almost all of which came on March 21 with a $5 million check from Miriam Adelson, wife of billionaire Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Adelson and family, the nation's top individual super PAC donors, have given $21.5 million to the pro-Gingrich group, which entered April with $5.8 million cash on hand.

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Last Updated Saturday 12:39 p.m. ET

(CBS News) NEW YORK - As the presidential campaign turned toward the general election last month, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney raised three times more money than the super PAC supporting Barack Obama. But the president's campaign committee ended the first quarter of 2012 with ten times the cash on hand as the Republican challenger's.

During March, the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC raised $8.7 million and spent $12.7 million, according to its required monthly fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission. Some of its biggest givers were a Koch brother, investor Charles Schwab, tycoon Harold Simmons, and the hotel-running Marriott brothers.

Restore Our Future bumped up its donations by $2 million compared to the month before, and the pro-Romney group continued to out-pace the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action. Priorities USA raised $2.5 million in March, leaving it with $5 million entering April. It has already spent close to $1 million this month to run a pair of anti-Romney ads in general election battleground states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, and Virginia.

The pro-Romney super PAC came into March with $10 million cash on hand but reported having only $6.454 million coming into April. So far this month, Restore Our Future has spent at least $1.6 million on ads in Wisconsin - which held its primary April 3 - and in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware, which all hold primaries on Tuesday.

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(CBS News) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday reacted sharply to Montana Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer's suggestion that Romney wants to avoid talking about his family history and immigration because "then he'd have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico."

In an interview with Fox News, reporter Carl Cameron asked Romney about Schweitzer's assertion that as a candidate, he refrains from talking about his father, George Romney, being born and raised in Mexico because of the family history of polygamy. Romney replied, "My dad's dad was not a polygamist. My dad grew up in a family with a mom and a dad, a few brothers and one sister.

"They lived in Mexico and lived a very nice life, from what I understand. And when he was 5 or 6, there was revolution in Mexico and they escaped," Romney said, describing how the family moved from El Paso to Idaho and then California in search of a new home. "My dad had a very tough upbringing," he said.

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(CBS News) It's no coincidence that Mitt Romney's top aide, Beth Myers, can be painted in the same shades of beige as her boss. From his first foray into governing in 2003 to all of his subsequent political activities, and now as head of his vice presidential search process, Romney's right-hand woman has been someone who's awfully like him.

Unlike some political pairings - President Obama and his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, come to mind - Myers is not the yin to Romney's yang. Instead, people she's worked with over the years use the same terms to describe her that they'd use to talk about Romney himself: well-organized, meticulous, discreet, good at assembling a team, devoted to family, fiercely loyal.

Though Myers says she met Romney in the 1990s after moving to Massachusetts, the two didn't come to know each other well until they faced off in a debate in 2002. He was running for governor; she was a volunteer playing the stand-in for Shannon O'Brien, his Democratic opponent. She was such a tough sparring partner that she came out of the first session worried she might have offended him. Just the opposite.

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