The IRS official who revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups on Friday did so on purpose -- by asking a tax lawyer to ask her about it at American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting.
Chuck Hagel's battlefield experience from the Vietnam war should come in handy as he faces a pitched battle with Republican senators in his confirmation hearings to become the next Secretary of Defense. Just kidding, a Washington war is actually nothing like a real war.
Now that he's teaching at Yale and writing memoirs, Stanley McChrystal is getting brutally honest about the ethically questionable war he helped architect in Afghanistan and environs.
A 25-year veteran of the agency, the New Jersey native began his career at Langley in a manner you don't often hear about all that often: answering an ad in the newspaper.
In a sign of his full-on awareness of the wave of criticism already trailing former Senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama nominated his next Secretary of Defense with a simple defense Monday afternoon: Hagel's top qualification? He's a Vietnam vet.
There has been a lot of political coverage this morning about the gathering opposition to President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. But what there hasn't been a lot of is people saying on the record that they oppose his nomination.
After John Kerry was appointed Secretary of State, the worst kept secret surrounding Obama's new cabinet has been Chuck Hagel's appointment to Secretary of Defense. It's coming now, for certain, on Monday.
Behind the scenes, Vice President Joe Biden has been working diligently to come up with recommendations for gun reform by later this week, and in a move that will make many gun-control advocates happy, he's been listening to the New York mayor.
After weeks of speculation and before weeks of heated partisan bickering over his appointee's controversial record, President Obama will nominate former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense "as early as Monday."
Everybody knew that Obama was going to tackle immigration reform in his second term. We just didn't know how soon. Well, the word is out.
While you were out enjoying your New Year's Eve, members of the Senate and some of our top lawmakers rang in the new year working on, and eventually passing, a deal to avert the fiscal cliff.
Even as the United States found itself poised to go over the fiscal cliff on New Year's Eve, a deal was emerging — and liberals did not particularly like it. Here's why, exactly, they think he's got no game.
During a statement at the White House Monday, the president said the following: "I'm going to be president for the next four years. I hope." Did Obama let all those comparisons to Lincoln get to him?
Looks like no one will be questioning President Obama or Hillary Clinton's popularity again anytime soon.
We've been batting around this fiscal cliff debate for months, and now with just hours left until the deadline, Senators say they remain "apart on some pretty big issues." What are they? And what will we learn on Monday morning?
So, yeah, NBC's Meet the Press had the biggest guest on this weekend. Just a little ol' guy you may know as the President, who came on to talk about his frustrations with the fiscal cliff, and to quickly touch on Chuck Hagel, the looming gun reform fight, and Benghazi.
Illinois is about to take up the gay marriage debate, and the President is using a pretty great strategy for trying to convince lawmakers to take up the cause: passive-aggression.
You've all seen the photo, which the Obama campaign tweeted on election night and quickly became the most-retweeted in Twitter history. Now Barbara Walters gets the president to induce a collective national moment of "aww."
After a nice long holiday weekend, President Obama and members of Congress suddenly remembered that they never took care of that fiscal cliff thing that happens in just six days.
After the markets had closed and elected Washington had headed home for the holidays, President Obama took to the White House podium early Friday evening and suggested Congress cool off over Christmas.
Many defense-watchers believe President Obama will sign the final version of the fiscal 2013 defense bill, despite the White House's earlier veto threat of the legislation over some of the more controversial provisions
House Republicans embarrassed "poor, orange man" John Boehner and rejected his backup plan, leaving the negotiations with a complex future. Here's how Obama and the Speaker might move next, if Boehner's even still the Speaker.
The "We the People" section of the administration web site has been flooded with 32 separate petitions since the Newtown shootings, and early Friday the president released a video response as another vehicle for pushing new legislation.
Instead of putting pressure on Obama and the White House, which immediately rejected and then announced its intention to veto the idea, Plan B has brought more attention to infighting among Republicans.
President Obama's highly anticipated press conference — in which he offered his strongest remarks about new gun legislation since the Newtown shootings, and officially announced a commission to be led by Vice President Biden — wasn't very interesting to the White House press pool. They wanted to talk about the fiscal cliff. Here's an anatomy of the insiders' priority shift.
In a press conference at the White House, the president formally announced a commission led by Vice President Joe Biden to draft a set of "concrete proposals no later than January" — a strong pledge that acknowledged a countrywide debate over the past week.
If the White House won't buy the House Republicans' backup plan, does that mean it's time for fiscal cliff panic?
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama is "actively supportive" of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bill to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. Will it be enough?
Within hours of its being floated publicly, the White House has already rejected House Speaker John Boehner's backup plan on the fiscal-cliff negotiations.
Even as reports surface that he has asked his cabinet to look into an assault-weapons ban and that an old Justice Department report may be back on the table, the president could use executive orders to impose some gun restrictions — today.
Leaked details of Obama's third attempt to compromise with Republicans on solutions for the fiscal cliff made headlines on Monday night, mainly the bit about increasing the earnings threshold to $400,000 for higher tax rates.
As the gun debate reaches a fevered pitch, from Washington to Twitter to Newtown and back again, in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, here is some much needed context.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Here's a tally of public figures who've called for a change in the wake of the tragedy. Or not.
With more and more states legalizing marijuana, President Obama's administration hasn't said how it will reconcile federal laws against it, but in a new interview with ABC News's Barbara Walters, the president said he has "bigger fish to fry."
Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel is "likely" to be named the next Secretary of Defense by President Obama, Bloomberg is now reporting. Here's what to expect out of him.
Everyone seemed to ignored one thing that made Boehner's Thursday press conference new and special: a chart — from Paul Ryan, no less.
We're still more than a month away from Barack Obama's second inauguration, but the planning is well underway — and apparently includes military personnel playing with this huge toy map of Washington, D.C.
The latest poll numbers show that a record number of Americans favor raising taxes on the rich as a solution to our budget problems. With the fiscal cliff just weeks away, one question remains: Who cares?
Why is the fiscal cliff so boring? It's not because it's about math. But whether or not you freak out over tax hikes depends on what you think about how many details Republicans have made public. A guide.
SNL's image of a "poor orange man" who needs to be left alone may be funny, but it may not be true: Georgia Rep. Tom Price isn't quite coming for John Boehner's speakership, even if some of the House GOP is coming for his head.
The White House has released a photo of President Obama accepting Mitt Romney's concession call on Election Night, which is cool for historical purposes, but the thing you can't help but notice is how skinny the president has gotten.
Even though we don't know what's going on behind closed doors in the fiscal cliff negotiations — or on the phone lines (they talked!) — we can measure progress on the fight in a couple clear ways.
President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons would bring "consequences" to Syria, but with nerve gas bombs already being filled, would the United States act before Bashar al-Assad unleashes them? Can they act?
Let's evaluate the new evidence from a White House video for the president's keyboard prowess... with GIFs!
The president's latest attempt to portray congressional Republicans as unreasonable now boils down to something like this: What? What did I say? It was y'all's idea all along.
What a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff.
Paul Krugman on the post-cliff trouble, Hendrik Hertzberg on the House, Amy Butte on the stock market's opacity, Doyle McManus on drones, and Nathan Brown on Morsi.
For now, all the "negotiating" amounts to little more than House Republicans and President Obama giving press conferences full of catchy phrases. Here are some of the best from Friday's back-and-forth, and a look into the subtext therein.
As Republican senators suddenly break out the effusive praise for Democratic Senator John Kerry as the right choice over Susan Rice for Secretary of State, well, there's a whole lot of flip-flopping on the not-so-fast track to Foggy Bottom.
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