A string of unrelated events is highlighting divisions among Republicans just when they'd like to show a united front and take full advantage of President Barack Obama's latest political problems.
Members of a House panel angry over the growing epidemic of sexual assaults in the military took a key step toward tackling the problem by passing legislation Wednesday that would strip commanding officers of their longstanding authority to unilaterally change or dismiss court-martial convictions in rape and assault cases. Lawmakers believe the revision will lead to a cultural shift and encourage victims to step forward.
The works do seem to be "gummed up" on Capitol Hill. And President Barack Obama isn't the only one to say so.
When a small anti-abortion group in Iowa sought nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service asked its board to promise not to organize protests outside Planned Parenthood and demanded to know how its prayer meetings and protest signs were educational.
Republican Rep. Mike Rogers has pulled off a rare feat in a bitterly divided Congress - a working, productive relationship with Democrats in overseeing the nation's 16 spy agencies.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Wednesday with officials in Oman to discuss their plans to buy a $2.1 billion air defense system from American manufacturer Raytheon.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the author of a unanimous decision delivered at the Supreme Court on Monday, but Sotomayor was hundreds of miles from Washington when the court convened.
Arkansas' state treasurer resigned Tuesday after being accused of accepting at least $36,000 cash in exchange for steering business to an investment broker, bowing to bipartisan calls to step down or face removal from office.
A federal appeals court Tuesday backed the U.S. government's decision not to release photos and video taken of Osama bin Laden during and after a raid in which the terrorist leader was killed by U.S. commandos.
A far-reaching bill to remake the nation's immigration system is headed to the full Senate, where tough battles are brewing on gay marriage, border security and other contentious issues, with the outcome impossible to predict.
President Barack Obama will be meeting with his disaster response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, on Tuesday before delivering a statement on the devastating tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday.
The Pentagon is asking Congress for more than $450 million for maintaining and upgrading the Guantanamo Bay prison that President Barack Obama wants to close.
Republicans controlling the House pressed ahead Tuesday with slashing cuts to domestic programs far deeper than the cuts departments like Education, Interior and State are facing under an already painful round of automatic austerity.
President Barack Obama says a far-reaching immigration overhaul approved by a Senate panel is largely consistent with his own principles.
A Senate panel voted on Tuesday to provide weapons to rebels battling the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the first time lawmakers have endorsed the aggressive U.S. military step of arming the opposition in the 2-year-old civil war.
The U.S. Senate this week has started to fine-tune the huge, new five-year farm bill, working through votes on a series of amendments that will include a proposal to eliminate federal subsidies for tobacco insurance.
Los Angeles County prosecutors said Tuesday they'll seek to retry five former officials in the city of Bell who were accused of corruption and overpaying themselves with public funds.
A House committee chairman has withdrawn a subpoena to compel a retired diplomat to answer questions in private about an independent investigation of last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Even though governors and lawmakers in five Deep South states oppose a plan to cover more people through Medicaid under the health care overhaul, 62 percent of the people in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina support expanding the program, according to a new poll.
The Peace Corps says it will begin accepting applications from same-sex domestic partners who want to serve together as volunteers overseas.
A look at the 867-page immigration overhaul bill approved Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee:
The key witness in the trial of the man convicted of killing former intern Chandra Levy had a previously undisclosed history as a government snitch, a court hearing revealed Tuesday.
The House has taken up a Republican-sponsored bill that would speed approval of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.
The Obama administration’s timeline for who knew what and when about the Internal Revenue Service scandal changed again Tuesday with revelations that the Treasury Department and White House officials had discussed how to stage-manage the release of the explosive information. The latest revelation came as acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told Congress that he’s responsible for the secretly planted question answered by subordinate Lois Lerner that triggered the scandal that’s now gripping the nation’s capital.
The federal government has given the job of compiling statistics used by the State Department to analyze trends in global terrorism to an academic group, a move that may complicate accurate unclassified assessments of patterns of terrorist activity for years to come.
President Barack Obama believes journalists shouldn't be prosecuted for doing their jobs, the White House said Tuesday, showing solidarity with First Amendment advocates alarmed by a pair of high-profile federal probes into national security leaks.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Tuesday he will delay final decisions on about 20 applications to export liquefied natural gas until he reviews studies by the Energy Department and others on what impact the exports would have on domestic natural gas supplies and prices.
As of Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at least 2,091 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Republican bid to turn the federal food stamp program over to the states.
Republicans are trying to block Obama administration overtures to Russia on missile defense, creating a potential obstacle to arms control talks.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, easing up on his long-held tough stance on Myanmar, said Tuesday he planned to allow key sanctions legislation against the Southeast Asian nation to lapse because of the country's progress toward democracy.
A key figure in the Internal Revenue Service controversy plans to invoke her constitutional right not to testify at a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Lawmakers are seeking to prohibit the U.S. from removing missile defense equipment from East Asia, even if the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea is eliminated.
At the center of a political storm, an Internal Revenue Service supervisor whose agents targeted conservative groups swore Wednesday she did nothing wrong, broke no laws and never lied to Congress. Then she refused to answer lawmakers' further questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.
Top lawmakers and officials said Tuesday that the federal government has plenty of money on hand to pay for recovery efforts in the wake of the devastating tornado that struck Oklahoma.
The Army says the commanding general of Fort Jackson, S.C., has been suspended in connection with charges of adultery and involvement in a physical altercation.
Five men are under round-the-clock U.S. surveillance in Libya, wanted for questioning in the attack last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. The White House believes there is enough proof for a military force to seize them as terrorist suspects, officials say, but prefers to wait until investigators have enough evidence to try them in a U.S. civilian courtroom.
Two people familiar with the Senate immigration deliberations say the White House has suggested to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy that it would be best to put off a controversy over gay marriage until a bill goes before the full Senate.
Conservative Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn says that any additional federal aid to help tornado victims and to rebuild devastated areas of his state should be financed with cuts to other programs in the government's $3.6 trillion budget.
It was a rare moment in relations between the media and the government: In 2008, FBI Director Robert Mueller called the top editors at The New York Times and The Washington Post to apologize because the bureau had improperly obtained reporters' telephone records four years earlier.
President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of "one of the most destructive" storms in the nation's history.
Councilman Eric Garcetti, who jammed with pop star Moby and fashioned himself as a voice for a new generation of city leaders, has opened a growing lead in the race for Los Angeles mayor with the pool of uncounted ballots steadily shrinking.
His latest legislative achievements put him in the vanguard of his party's liberal base. He's been a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama. And he's ramping up his travel to help fellow Democrats around the country.
President Barack Obama has called Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin to express his concern about a monstrous tornado that wreaked havoc in the Oklahoma City suburbs.
A New York Police Department detective told a federal judge that he's seen no evidence that one of his informants brought up the subject of jihad as a way to bait Muslims into making incriminating remarks. But text messages obtained by The Associated Press show otherwise.
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