According to multiple outlets, the IRS administrator who first revealed and is perhaps central to the scandal at the agency, has been placed on administrative leave. With pay.
There ended up being two speakers Thursday at the National Defense University in DC. The first, as planned, was President Obama. The other, speaking for a surprisingly long time, was Madea Benjamin, a well-known heckler.
At some point, the government violated the Constitution while conducting electronic surveillance. How and when is masked by the secret court that authorizes such action — the sort of tool Obama offers as a way in which his drone program might be made more transparent. But the existing court shows just how opaque transparency can be.
Later this summer, the Senate may at last tackle a controversial issue: if it should approve executive branch nominations decisions based on a majority vote. If it happens, the body will be taking on the warped new interpretation of Senatorial courtesy.
The mayor of Moore provided an estimate of the total cost stemming from Monday's tornado: $2 billion — a sum that's about a quarter the size of Oklahoma's state budget. It would make the Moore tornado the third-most costly in American history.
The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee would like a do-over. Rep. Issa plans to demand the IRS's Lerner return to his committee to testify, arguing that she waived her ability to plead the Fifth once she offered an opening statement. According to a lawyer we spoke with, he's almost certainly wrong.
Nearly every day of every year, even in tornado-prone areas, tornadoes don't strike. If you live in Moore, Oklahoma, 99.99 percent of the time, there's no threat that you'll be killed by a tornado. The question, as it so often does, becomes: How much do we spend to save a life? Here's a look at prevention techniques, and the politics therein.
For the third time in a week, officials from the IRS appeared before Congress to apologize for/not offer many new details on how and why the agency improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny — though one witness indicated others may have received the same treatment.
Worried that government can't be proactive? Good news out of Texas. The state's legislature has sent Governor Perry its "Merry Christmas" bill, authorizing schools to refer to the holiday in non-generic terms. Perry is expected to sign it.
New details of the Justice Department's investigation of a leak to a Fox News reporter demonstrate the scale of the inquiry: phone records, access badge information for the media, a CD of phone recordings. All to investigate a leak of incorrect information.
Tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma, are neither new nor uncommon. Monday's massive twister may be the worst the city has seen, but it's also the 22nd since 1890. We put the data for all of them on a map.
Was Oklahoma's massive storm an inevitable side effect of higher atmospheric temperatures, or was it simply a bad storm, like so many before? Here's a survey of opinions so far.
For the first time in fifty years, a member of the Kennedy family has decided not to impose a mandatory minimum sentence on a man accused of a drug crime.
To date, preparations for the trial of accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan have cost the government at least $278,000 — and that's just in the salary that Hasan received since the 2009 massacre.
Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt, convicted of committing acts of genocide earlier this month, will not be headed to prison. For the time being he'll return to house arrest, after the country's highest court ordered a restart to his trial.
As the weather in New York City creeps back toward summer-like temperatures, a bit of warning: Enjoy it while you can. By the 2080s, Manhattan could see as many as 91 percent more heat-related deaths thanks to global warming.
A massive tornado with winds near 200 miles-per-hour swept through Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon.
During last week's first-of-many hearing into the IRS scandal, one subplot emerged: Conservatives presented anecdotes to argue that the IRS didn't just target Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status but a broader swath of conservative individuals and organizations. But the anecdotal evidence does not stand up to the data on tax audits.
For decades, the High Plains Aquifer has provided irrigation for the nation's breadbasket. But we're depleting it far faster than it's being filled — just as the prospect of climate change-related drought becomes more evident.
Robert Gibbs, press-secretary-for-Obama-turned-cable-news-appearer, is not a fan of Maureen Dowd. On Morning Joe, Gibbs claimed not to read the New York Times columnist, since she's been writing the same thing for the past eight years. He might have a point.
The government will use any and all information at its disposal to find journalist sources, as shown in The Washington Post's report this morning on a Department of Justice investigation into Fox News chief correspondent James Rosen, who may face criminal charges for reporting government secrets.
The IRS' office of Exempt Organizations sounds like a terrible place to work. Four sweeping media assessments this weekend show a department that is overwhelmed, underfunded, and poorly managed.
If April seemed a bit on the cold side to you, you're not alone. The month was the 23rd coldest on record in the United States. Here's what winter looked like in 180 different US cities.
When, in 2006, the website The Smoking Gun released a secret CIA memo documenting prisoner organizing strategies at Guantanamo Bay, the FBI took notice. Now the site has posted details of the ensuing 44-month-long investigation, offering a timely glimpse into the black box of a Department of Justice leak prosecution.
As Scandal Week comes to a close, it's worth reviewing the policy proposals that have followed in the revelations' wake. There aren't many.
Advocates of action on climate change hold a trump card. When the Supreme Court in 2007 determined that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, the EPA got a mandate to regulate it. But, what the court giveth, the court can rescind in a tightly contested vote.
The link between drug smuggling and terror usually spurs images of Afghan poppy fields under the wary eye of men in fatigues. Sometimes, though, it's garbage bags filled with money from selling illegal cigarettes in Brooklyn.
Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller is testifying in front of a House committee this morning. It's one of the Congress' first opportunities to grill the agency on its use of politically loaded differentiation in assessing applicants' non-profit status.
Outgoing members of Congress are rarely hard-pressed for jobs. Tea Party star Allen West just accepted the one that was perhaps the most predictable.
Authorities in Texas provided an update on their investigation into the fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas. The short story is that the cause of the fire is undetermined. The long story is that the investigation has been as massive as was the explosion.
Reports on Thursday of a Saudi Arabian sheikh dooming Twitter users to eternal damnation may seem like inexplicable hyperbole to Americans. But it's likely an escalation of attempts by Saudi authorities to crackdown on a key tool for dissent.
Hey, great news, everyone. It's finally starting to warm up, which means it's almost time to open up those swimming pools. And we'd recommend you get to the pool quickly, before all of the other swimmers contaminate it with fecal bacteria.
It is true that there is not unanimity in the scientific community over the role of humans in climate change. But with nearly every scientific paper for 20 years agreeing that warming is linked to human behavior, we're as close to unanimity as we'll get.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives will hold its 37th vote on curtailing the Affordable Care Act. A little clarification about what that means is in order.
To be clear: There are not three scandals plaguing the Obama White House. By embracing the leaked talking points, Obama's opponents may have taken Benghazi off the table completely.
In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Rep. Devin Nunes dropped a bombshell: the Department of Justice had bugged the House cloakroom as part of its AP investigation. It's an explosive allegation — and almost certainly an incorrect one.
The 41-floor New Yorker Hotel on Eighth Avenue in New York City has 912 rooms. That's only one room short of what it would take to house the 913 New Yorkers still living in hotels in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
The White House took a step Wednesday to try and limit any political fall-out of the seizure of phone records from the AP. By making overtures to renew a media shield law, the administration gets to have its beloved subpoena power and condemn it, too.
There are few industries more exposed to financial risk from climate change than insurance. Unsurprisingly, the industry at large is trying to figure out how to limit its losses from extreme weather events. Individual insurers are a little slower to act.
It seems as if the battle over the IRS' improper focus on Tea Party groups has splintered into an attack on Obamacare. But it's simply the latest justification being used to attack the president's health-care legislation. Here's how the two are linked.
For the third time, it's official: Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor of New York. It will be official for the fourth time, if the rumors are true, when he "officially" announces it next week. Here's what comes next.
The attorney general probably wishes that this afternoon wasn't the afternoon one on which he'd agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. It is, and right in the middle of several brewing controversies, but it's unlikely that the hearing will be job-threatening.
On Tuesday, Minnesota became the 12th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Watch it join the marriage equality wave on our updated map GIF.
Somewhat after the fact, the Department of the Treasury's Inspector General for Tax Administration released its report detailing the "inappropriate criteria" used by the IRS to filter applications for non-profit status. Or, in English: here's why the IRS apologized to the Tea Party last Friday. But it owes an apology to a lot of other groups, too.
On Sunday, the low temperature was 22 degrees in Aberdeen, South Dakota — that's ten degrees below freezing. The next day, according to the National Weather Service, the high hit 92.
If anyone can tie the IRS, Benghazi, and Obamacare into one grand conspiracy, it's Michele Bachmann. And she did.
Attorney General Eric Holder and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried, in near-simultaneo
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