Mitt Romney

Stepping back into the spotlight for the first time Sunday, Mitt Romney offered a blunt critique of President Obama - accusing his former rival of playing politics rather than finding a resolution to across-the-board spending cuts now being enacted. The former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee acknowledged a handful of mistakes in his first post-campaign interview with "Fox News Sunday," during which he also said he did not envision a future in politics. He called his failure to engage minorities in 2012 "a real mistake" and admitted that he had suffered "real damage" from the fallout of his now-infamous comments that 47% of Americans were dependent on government assistance and unlikely to vote for him. But he did not back away from his controversial assertion that Obama won the election by securing the loyalty of key groups such as Latinos and African Americans with programs like his healthcare plan.

The Las Vegas casino company headed by high-profile Republican donor and billionaire Sheldon Adelson said it probably violated a federal law that prohibits the bribery of foreign government officials. Las Vegas Sands Corp. said its auditors found that "there were likely violations" of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars Americans from bribing foreign officials to secure an advantage. The disclosure was made in a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Customized TV Listings are available here: www.latimes.com/tvtimes Click here to download TV listings for the week of March 3 - 9, 2013 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SERIES "The Graham Norton Show" Richard Gere, John Malkovich, Saoirse Ronan are guests and Taylor Swift performs in this new episode. 7:15 and 10:15 p.m. BBC America "The Surrogate" Cameron Mathison and Amy Scott star in this new TV movie about a couple who seek help in having a baby.

WASHINGTON -- Almost four months after his presidential election defeat, Mitt Romney is planning a return to the national political stage. The 2012 Republican nominee will appear, with his wife Ann, on Fox News Sunday next weekend, Chris Wallace, the program's host, announced Sunday. It will be his first televised interview since the November election. Romney also plans to speak next month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a high-profile forum for conservative politicians.

Re "Obama sells economic ideas, but GOP resists," Feb. 14 This is weird. Even though the GOP was soundly defeated in the last election, its elected officials continue to think they had a really good strategy to take back the White House. Their plan was to attack the president and his ideas and hope that everyone would say, "Yeah, Barack Obama is bad, so I'm voting for Mitt Romney. " So here we are: Obama is back in the Oval Office, and the Republicans are attacking and obstructing without offering anything of substance.

In my Sunday column , I suggested that Republicans in Congress have begun to evolve in a more pragmatic, less ideological direction after their losses in last year's election. As evidence, I noted that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) backed off last week from a threatened showdown with President Obama over the federal government's debt ceiling. Today brings another sign that the GOP is determined to change its image, at least on some issues: the bipartisan agreement among eight senators on basic principles for comprehensive immigration reform.

Had things gone his way, Mitt Romney would have raised his right hand Monday and sworn an oath to serve as the nation's 45 th president. Instead, the vanquished Republican nominee spent the day at home in La Jolla, out of sight if not quite out of mind. Former campaign aides said they had no details on how Romney spent his day, or whether he was among the millions of TV viewers who watched the events in Washington from afar. But his absence from public view was consistent with the low profile Romney has kept since being soundly defeated by President Obama in both the Electoral College and popular vote.

Comedian Rob Delaney rose in profile after becoming Mitt Romney's chief antagonist on Twitter (with acerbic posts that often got more traction than Romney's own). Now that the election's over, he's returning to a busy stand-up career with this buzz-over Largo set. Largo at the Coronet, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Sun. $25. largo-la.com.

Re "Politics of age skew spending debates," News Analysis, Jan. 3 Surprise! Mitt Romney probably drew much support from his infamous 47%. As the Times reported, 56% of the over-65 demographic voted for Romney. Why would a group dependent on Social Security and Medicare vote for a team eager to curtail those programs? Ignorance, in part. (A poll of Ohio Republicans by Public Policy Polling found that 1 in 7 of them credited Romney with Osama bin Laden's killing.) But I think there's an even more powerful force: tradition.