Three big scandals. Two Marine umbrellas. And a non-salute en route to Memorial Day. Plus more visual evidence from 12 days of scandal town.
Gun advocates spent their Wednesday fighting on Capitol Hill for the right of female civilians to carry semi-automatic assault weapons while their compatriots on the right are mourning the decision to allow female soldiers to carry guns on the battlefield.
Wayne LaPierre will say some controversial things in his testimony before Congress Wednesday, and while he's said some shocking things since the Newtown massacre sparked a gun control debate, the archives show that LaPierre has actually toned it down in the two decades he's been the face of the National Rifle Association.
The president's proposals from a speech on Tuesday afternoon are remarkably similar to those released by a bipartisan group of senators Monday, except that while both call for tougher enforcement of immigration laws, only the Senate version really invokes a keyword you'll be hearing a lot about in the coming weeks.
Sen. Marco Rubio went on Rush Limbaugh's show to sell his proposal for comprehensive immigration reform on Tuesday, a day after the radio host said only he and Fox News stand can stop amnesty now, and while Rubio charmed Limbaugh, the Senator from Florida didn't win a new supporter for his immigration proposal.
Rush Limbaugh warned on Monday that "It's up to me and Fox News" to stop the threat of amnesty for illegal immigrants he sees in a new bipartisan immigration reform plan. But it's looking like it's up to Sen. Marco Rubio to sell the plan.
For much of the past year, the hottest debate in the world of women's stuff has been, Can women have it all?, as memorably answered in the negative by The Atlantic's July cover story last year. More than six months later, The New Republic's Noreen Malone, as part of that mag's relaunch, has suggested that "Beyoncé says yes" they can.
One of the recurring arguments against women serving in combat appears on its face to be just good common horse sense: women just don't have the upper body strength to carry a heavy male soldier out of combat. The thing is, you don't need much upper body strength to carry a guy out of combat.
Hillary Clinton received a ringing endorsement from President Obama out of their joint interview on 60 Minutes Sunday night, but what did Obama get out of it? He got the chance to tell any other Democrats planning a 2016 run to back off.
A bipartisan group of senators is releasing a new immigration plan today, the core selling point of which is a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is a maze of apparently punitive bureaucratic red tape.
The Pentagon has ended its ban on women serving in combat, and while the changes might not take effect for years, some women are already gloating on Facebook about the chance to wear an award that basically says "I was in the sh*t."
Republicans are flirting with changing the basic American principle of "one man, one vote," into something a little more flexible — something like "one man, one to three votes."
Given the increasingly public spats between Palin and the network, you have to wonder if Palin's camp is trying to control the post-split spin.
The National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre will testify before the Senate about gun violence on January 30, and it should be fun to watch, because LaPierre never fails to put on a good show.
President Obama officially announced his new chief of staff at the White House on Friday while flanked by two adorably self-effacing geeks, both of whom clutched their hands together looking kind of like shy tweens whose crush had finally noticed them.
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss is not running for reelection in 2014, which opens the door for a comeback of perhaps the funnest candidate of all time. Maybe.
The Republican Party has two comeback plans after the 2012 election, and they are total opposites: Plan A is to win presidential elections by appealing to broader audience that reflects America's "changing demographics." Plan B is to just change the rules of presidential elections so that rural white voters get a disproportional vote.
Serious people won't pay attention to you if your only objection to women serving in combat if you just say, "No sir, I don't like it!" So people with dated ideas about what women can do are forced to invent objections that look at least superficially rooted in fact, instead of sexism. Closer examination reveals they are dumb.
One of the common criticisms of President Obama is that he's too aloof and too uninterested in making friends in D.C. to make to end partisan gridlock in Washington (see Michelle Obama's eye-rolling and John Boehner's speech about Obama trying to "annihilate" the GOP). But the recent deal in the Senate on filibuster reform shows that chumminess isn't working, either.
As Republicans grilled Hillary Clinton on the Obama administration's response to Benghazi in congressional hearings Wednesday, they repeatedly hit on a talking point that doesn't seem like it'd do them a lot of good: It's been four months.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will reportedly lift the Pentagon's ban on women serving in combat — even though women actually have been serving in war zones for years.
While bucking one of the administration's few proposals on firearms that Republicans might actually accept, Wayne LaPierre offered no new ideas — indeed, old ideas — during a speech that reveals the backwards thinking behind the gun lobby's future.
You'd think a small, temporary retreat would make things easier, but in their retreat, Republican leaders have made promises that put them in a more difficult position.
The First Lady wore a bright red gown made of chiffon and velvet and designed by Jason Wu to the inaugural balls Monday. Red, surprisingly, has not been a very popular color among first ladies' inaugural gowns, despite its popularity in campaign signs.
The First Lady wore a bright red halter dress designed by Jason Wu to President Obama's second inaugural ball.
At the end of his second inauguration ceremony, the president turned around in reflection: "I want to look out one more time because I'll never see this again." But Obama has had Obama nostalgia for much of the last year.
Some conservatives had feared for months, even years, that President Obama would wait till after he was reelected to unmask his a true political identity. Well, with his second inaugural address Monday, he finally showed them: Obama is a center leftist.
Conservatives are hate-watching Obama's inauguration -- can you blame them? -- and their complaints fit into two major categories.
Sifting through past presidential inauguration photos offers plenty of insight into the character of the guy getting sworn in and what was happening in the country at the time.
What an Inauguration Day it was. Countless memes, intimate moments, some fashion, viral videos, a lot of GIFs, and — oh, yeah — maybe some history. Here's your complete recap, with everything you need to know and (mostly) nothing you don't.
The election was fought over lots of big issues — tax reform, immigration, how to wind down our wars — before the Newtown shooting added gun violence to the list. Here's a preview of what President Obama will say about them at his second inauguration.
The National Rifle Association did not have a good election last fall — a mere 0.83 percent of the campaign cash it donated went to races with the outcomes it wanted — and yet the political clout of the gun lobby is accepted as veritable fact.
There are several signs House Republicans will agree to raise the debt ceiling without demanding huge concessions in spending cuts.
BuzzFeed has a fascinating cultural investigation that claims that gun culture has so permeated America that even media elites and "hipster hunters" are "the new 'gun nuts'" because three media dudes went to a shooting range and tweeted a photo about it. It is fascinating, but also false. Maybe it's fascinating because it is false.
Of the four things President Obama urged Congress to pass at his gun control speech Thursday, background checks seem like the least unpopular.
It was Washington conventional wisdom that Obama would do nothing on guns once the outrage over the Newtown shooting quieted. But he signed 23 executive actions meant to reduce gun violence, and began a major push in Congress. What changed?
As the White House prepares to unveil its gun-violence proposals Tuesday, the NRA has released an attack ad calling President Obama an "elitist hypocrite" for having armed protection of his daughters but not believing that putting an armed guard in every public school in America is the only way to stop school shootings.
When Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign ended, she faced a decision: pay former aides the money they were owed, or make them sign a nondisclosure agreement first? She chose poorly.
The federal government delayed the arrest of an inter for New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez until after the November election, new government documents confirm. The story is complex, so here's what we know about the timeline.
Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer was hyped as the biggest obstacle to Chuck Hagel becoming Secretary of Defense, but Schumer has officially backed Hagel, CNN's Dana Bash reports after Schumer recieved "reassurances" about Iran and Israel during a 90-minute meeting on Monday.
President Obama is looking at issuing 19 executive actions on gun control, and while gun enthusiasts fear a gun ban that can't happen by executive order, there is one proposal that should make the gun lobby plenty nervous: allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.
The president said at his press conference Monday that he wouldn't negotiate "ransom" with hostage-taking terrorists, which is how he is construing the House GOP threat. So what's left to do if we actually hit the debt limit?
The only unpopular policy idea to help stop gun violence is the only one that's really been enacted since the Newtown school shooting.
"What I will not do is have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people," President Obama said at his press conference Monday.
Tareq Salahi, the former The Real Housewives of D.C. star has been flirting with a run in Virginia, since last fall, but clashed with the state party over signing a pledge, required for all Republican candidates, to support the eventual nominee. Now he's in.
The highest ranking Democratic Senators urged Obama to "take any lawful steps" to allow the Treasury to pay U.S. debt obligations if the debt limit isn't raised — including, but not limited to, invoking the 14th Amendment.
The National Rifle Association's proposal to put armed guards in every single school in America was unimaginably tone-deaf, but it's not unimaginable. After a public outcry for security, we've had a massive nationwide effort to hire thousands of security agents for low wages relatively recently. You might know it as the Transportation Security Administration.
It's looking like the biggest obstacle to Chuck Hagel's confirmation as Secretary of Defense is not Republican opposition, but Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
In a move that may offer Republicans an opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in the next midterm elections., Sen. Jay Rockefeller has decided not to run for reelection in West Virginia in 2014.
The National Rifle Association promised to lobby Congress to block the proposals offered by Vice President Joe Biden's gun control commission, which will issue a report to President Obama on Tuesday.
Tactical Response CEO James Yeager made his best case against gun control (and inadvertently, the best case for it) on Thursday by posting a video in which he promised to "start killing people" if President Obama uses executive orders to regulate guns.
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