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Articles by Stephen Dinan

Former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed the NSA phone-snooping program's existence in 2013, spawning a massive public backlash that forced Congress to curtail the program. (Associated Press)

NSA phone-snooping metadata still in government hands

The National Security Agency's phone-snooping program ended six months ago this Saturday, but the government is still holding on to the mountain of data it piled up over the previous five years, worrying civil liberties advocates who say it's time to start expunging the legally questionable information.

May 26, 2016
Supporters of fair immigration reform gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, April 18, 2016. The Supreme Court is taking up an important dispute over immigration that could affect millions of people who are living in the country illegally. The Obama administration is asking the justices in arguments today to allow it to put in place two programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

DHS admits it’s still violating judge’s order on immigration amnesty

Homeland Security has discovered more three-year amnesty applications it approved in defiance of a federal judge's firm injunction, lawyers told the court late Wednesday -- less than a week after the judge delivered a vicious spanking to the administration for repeatedly bungling the case.

May 26, 2016
In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya. (AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool, File)

Hillary Clinton failed to report several hacking attempts: IG

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did break her department's rules by setting up her own secret email server, the inspector general concluded in a report sent to Congress on Wednesday that says she failed to report hacking attempts and waved off warnings that she should switch to a more official email account.

May 25, 2016
The exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington is seen here on March 22, 2013. (Associated Press) **FILE**

IRS sued over erased instant messages

A watchdog group sued the IRS on Monday accusing the agency of failing to store instant messages as part of its official records, and demanding a federal judge step in and order the agency to comply with the Federal Records Act.

May 24, 2016
Lothar Eckardt, right, executive director of National Air Security Operations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, speaks with a Customs and Border Patrol agent prior to a drone aircraft flight, Wednesday, Sept 24, 2014 at Ft. Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Ariz. The U.S. government now patrols nearly half the Mexican border by drones alone in a largely unheralded shift to control desolate stretches where there are no agents, camera towers, ground sensors or fences, and it plans to expand the strategy to the Canadian border. It represents a significant departure from a decades-old approach that emphasizes boots on the ground and fences. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Border agency can’t find drone records

Homeland Security can't find a single record of a request to fly drones to help the Coast Guard, the agency said this week in a letter to a top member of Congress -- an admission that's likely to add fuel to the guard's request for its own fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles.

May 24, 2016
FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2016 file photo, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The IRS says the agency's commissioner won't appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, May 24, 2106,  examining whether he deserves to be impeached. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

John Koskinen, IRS chief: I’ve never spoken to Lois Lerner

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has declined to testify in his own defense at a congressional hearing Tuesday, but insisted in a statement that his bungling of a subpoena doesn't rise to the level of "treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors" needed for him to be impeached.

May 23, 2016
Iker Velasquez, 4, who came from Honduras with his parents, holds a U.S. glad as he listens while Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., speaks to the media with children and families from Central America, to speak about the conditions for Central American immigrants who he describes as refugees from violence, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Illegal immigrants kept in poor facilities, advocates say

Homeland Security is holding illegal immigrant children for too long, sticking them in jail-like facilities and failing to tell them they can be sent to live with relatives already in the U.S., advocates charged in new court filings Thursday, demanding a special monitor be imposed to oversee all family detention.

May 19, 2016