By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The man who led the Internal Revenue Service when it was inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status said Tuesday that he intentionally kept himself in the dark about those kinds of decisions because he thought, as a political appointee, he should keep his distance.
The Senate immigration bill cleared the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote Tuesday night, ducking — for now — big fights on guns, gay rights and how broadly the legalization is drawn, and leaving the 867-page overhaul mostly unscathed by conservative attacks.
The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department.
Like a bad restaurant, the Obama administration attracts scathing reviews from Republicans and conservative critics who are tired of what's on the policy menu, and repelled by the signature "culture" of White House operations. The trio of scandals centered on Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department has ramped up the tirade, and until facts and conclusions emerge, the talk of the moment is culture-centric.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday described the leak about a foiled terrorist plot in Yemen to The Associated Press as a "very, very serious" matter that "put the American people at risk," but he did not remember when he recused himself from the investigation into it, did not put his recusal in writing and never told the White House.
Questions have surfaced over a Justice Department plan to hire 44 more attorneys for its Civil Rights Division, which has been accused of bias by members of Congress and been described in a government report as having deep ideological differences that have fueled disputes harmful to its operation.
During the week that found America coping with the Boston Marathon terrorist attack and a deadly factory explosion, the broadcast networks remained in biased business-as-usual mode.
Senate Democrats shelved their gun control bill Thursday, saying that despite passionate pleas from families whose children died in December's Connecticut rampage, they cannot muster enough votes to pass any of the major new restrictions they had hoped for.
A Mississippi man was arrested Wednesday, accused of sending letters to President Barack Obama and a senator that tested positive for the poisonous ricin and set the nation's capital on edge a day after the Boston Marathon bombings.
Army Lt. Col. Don Carlos Faith Jr. will be buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery 62 years after he was killed on a North Korean battlefield.
A group of top congressional Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill that would require the Homeland Security Department to come up with a way to measure how secure the borders are — at a time when the Obama administration has been resisting those efforts.
Even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has stripped the controversial "assault weapons" ban out of the Democratic gun-control package headed to the Senate floor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has vowed to graft parts of her arbitrary ban onto other gun-control legislation with bipartisan support.
It was the trash that first drew Roger Barnett's attention.
Roger Barnett began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 after they started to vandalize his property — destroying water pumps, killing calves, vandalizing fences and gates, stealing trucks and breaking into his house.
As the budget debate begins in earnest in Congress this week, President Obama and Senate Republicans have something in common — neither of them has produced a federal budget yet this year.
"I don't think that qualifies as an apology," replied Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, Texas Republican.
Former IRS commissioner says scrutiny was not his job as a political appointee →
His Republican colleague Sen. John Cornyn of Texas agreed that there must be more to the story.
White House aide: 'Nothing that suggests' IRS official at center of scandal 'did anything wrong' →
