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Articles by Stephen Dinan

**FILE** President Obama pauses July 4, 2012, during a naturalization ceremony for active duty service members at the White House. (Associated Press)

Auditors: Obama administration is bending health law

Congress's non-partisan investigators said Wednesday President Obama is stretching the law to give bonuses to mediocre private Medicare plans — an $8 billion program the auditors had already urged the administration to cancel.

July 11, 2012
"They wanted to see how certain pieces of court decisions came out. ... I can tell you that resolving the issue in Cook County is very important for me," said John Morton, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director. (Associated Press)

Sanctuary cities may be facing legal action

After eviscerating most of Arizona's strict immigration law in court last month, the Obama administration is now considering going after the other side by suing sanctuary cities to force them to cooperate with federal deportation efforts, an agency chief told Congress on Monday.

July 10, 2012
** FILE ** Trays of printed Social Security checks wait to be mailed from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Management Services facility in Philadelphia in 2005. (Associated Press)

Social Security’s master list littered with dead people

More than a million dead people are still listed as being alive on Social Security's master list, according to an inspector general's audit released this week that found the agency still recorded hundreds of people as having earned wages — even after they'd been dead for more than a year.

July 10, 2012
The Capitol building in Washington, D.C. (Associated Press)

CBO: The wealthy pay 70 percent of taxes

Wealthy Americans earn about 50 percent of all income but pay nearly 70 percent of the federal tax burden, according to the latest analysis Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office — though the agency said the very richest have seen their share of taxes fall the last few years.

July 10, 2012
**FILE** An illegal immigrant from El Salvador is searched June 26, 2012, on the tarmac at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Ariz., as the sun rises prior to boarding an MD-80 aircraft for a repatriation flight of 80 immigrants to their home country. (Associated Press)

Majority backs Arizona on immigration crackdown law

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision to uphold Arizona's law allowing police to check the immigration status of those they detain, an overwhelming majority of Americans say they want to see their own states enact the same kinds of laws.

July 10, 2012
President Obama speaks before signing the Surface Transportation Bill during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Friday, July 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Obama loses ground to Romney in key measures of poll

Mitt Romney continues to hold a whisker-thin 1-percentage-point lead over President Obama in a head-to-head election match-up, but the former Massachusetts governor is eating into the president's air of inevitability, according to the latest The Washington Times/JZ Analytics poll released Monday night.

July 9, 2012
** FILE ** This June 11, 2012, file photo shows Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter, Michigan Republican. (Associated Press)

Michigan Republican McCotter quits Congress

Rep. Thad McCotter, one of Congress's quirkiest members, resigned his seat Friday evening, closing out a dismal chapter that had seen him go from one-time, long-shot presidential hopeful to lame-duck congressman who couldn't even file enough valid signatures to run for re-election.

July 6, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks July 6, 2012, at Bradley's Hardware in Wolfeboro, N.H., about job numbers. (Associated Press)

Romney: Jobs figures underscore Obama failure

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Friday that the latest jobs numbers released Friday, showing anemic job growth and an unemployment rate unchanged at 8.2 percent, are the latest proof that President Obama's economic plans have failed the country.

July 6, 2012
A combine cuts a path through the wheat field Saturday on a farm in Westfield, Vt. (Associated Press)

Farm payments hit as report lays out abuse

The federal government paid out $10 billion in direct farm payments over the past decade to farmers who in a given year didn't grow the crop they were being paid to grow, according to a government audit released Tuesday.

July 3, 2012
President Obama responds on Friday, June 15, 2012, during a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House when he is interrupted while announcing that his administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. (Associated Press)

Obama’s halt on deportations already under way

Federal immigration authorities have begun granting tentative legal status to illegal immigrants under President Obama's deportation halt — and in some cases are even ignoring the administration's eligibility rules to stop deportations for those who shouldn't qualify, according to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

July 2, 2012
**FILE** Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks June 19, 2012, in Holland, Mich. (Associated Press)

Romney goes against GOP on ‘tax’ label

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling last week, Republicans on Capitol Hill spent four days laying out an attack on President Obama's health care law as a massive tax increase.

July 2, 2012
** FILE ** Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, reads from a book on June 20, 2012, at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, quoting the president's right to assert executive privilege after learning that President Obama has done so in the "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking case, refusing to turn over related documents to Congress. The committee proceeded with its markup to vote on whether to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for his failure to produce those documents. (Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times)

Issa’s secret gunwalking wiretaps revealed in Congressional Record

Rep. Darrell Issa managed to push the details of a secret wiretap application from the botched "Fast and Furious" gunwalking operation into the public domain this week when he entered summaries into the Congressional Record, apparently using Congress' protection under the speech and debate clause to get around legal boundaries.

June 29, 2012
Holder

House could arrest Holder with inherent contempt power

Despite voting to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress, there's little House Republicans can do in the short term to compel him to turn over documents — unless it wanted to revisit a long-dormant power and arrest him.

June 28, 2012
Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a news conference in New Orleans, Thursday, June 28, 2012. The Obama administration and House Republicans refused to find a middle ground in a dispute over documents related to a botched gun-tracking operation, and the GOP plunged ahead with plans for precedent-setting votes Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in civil and criminal contempt of Congress. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

House holds Holder in contempt over ‘Fast and Furious’ documents

The House on Thursday cited Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for contempt of Congress in a historic vote weighted with political significance — though it does little to break the stalemate over his decision to withhold documents regarding the Justice Department's actions in a botched gunwalking operation.

June 28, 2012