POLITICAL NEWS
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Senators amended the bipartisan immigration bill on Monday to require all non-U.S. citizens to be fingerprinted when leaving the U.S. through the country's 30 busiest airports.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved several changes to the bill during a markup session that's expected to stretch into the evening. The fingerprinting system, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), is a gesture towards Republicans who favor stronger enforcement methods against unauthorized immigration. It passed on a bipartisan 13-5 vote.
The Hatch proposal would require the so-called "biometric" entry/exit system to be put into place
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Stronger Than The Storm(TRENTON, N.J.) -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his family are starring in television commercials that are part of a publicly funded $25 million tourism campaign to encourage people to visit the Jersey Shore after Superstorm Sandy, but Democrats say they are simply taxpayer-funded campaign ads.
The ad campaign called “Stronger Than The Storm” launched last week with its first ad, but five more begin Monday. Supporters of Christie note the ads are not just running in New Jersey, but out of state as well.
In the first ad, Christie and his family are visible at the end of the 30 second commercial. First
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vapolitics.us(WASHINGTON) -- This weekend, Virginia Republicans found their candidate for lieutenant governor in E.W. Jackson, a Chesapeake, Va. pastor who has compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and also suggested that black Americans are being enslaved by the Democratic Party.
“It is time to end the slavish devotion to the Democrat[ic] Party,” Jackson, who is African American, said in a 2012 YouTube video. “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was. And the Democrat[ic] Party and their black civil rights allies are partners in this genocide.”
“The Democrat[ic] Party has created
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State Dept Photo(ARLINGTON, Va.) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave annual remarks at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington on Monday, giving new Foreign Service Officers a final pep talk after their security training before they are deployed overseas.
Many of the officers will be going to what are termed “high-threat” posts, similar to Afghanistan and Libya.
“In the shadows of the attack in Afghanistan and Ankara, and of course last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, we all understand it is indelibly imprinted on us how important it is to protect our people
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Last week might have seemed like the longest one ever for the Internal Revenue Service, but this one isn't looking much better, with another congressional hearing scheduled to probe the agency's targeting of tea party groups.
Two senior IRS officials have already resigned: Steven Miller, the agency's acting commissioner, and Joseph Grant, the commissioner for tax-exempt and government agencies.
At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last Friday morning, lawmakers indicated that they believe more departures are necessary.
And this week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will call additional
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Comstock Images/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- What is the next step for the tea party groups who feel they were unfairly scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service? For many of them, it may be lawsuits against the agency.
Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, said the group will be bringing a lawsuit on behalf of many of those groups next week.
"It's the logical next step," he said.
"The admission and apology by the IRS that the criteria used [in tea party applications] was not correct and inappropriate" is grounds for a suit, Sekulow said in an interview with ABC News, because groups he represents
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Scott Olson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- As the chair of the Tea Party Caucus, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is railing against the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups, saying: “clearly, this had political implications…that would benefit President Obama.”
“Over and over and over, the common thread is the Obama administration was too willing to use the government to advance their agenda, their political agenda,” Bachmann tells ABC News.
Bachmann says individuals in the Tea Party have been voicing concerns to her about getting “ridiculous questions” from the IRS for quite some time and asserts that
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JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images(ATLANTA) -- President Obama said on Sunday he remains optimistic about the prospects for his second term agenda despite what he called a “shortage of common sense” in the nation’s capital.
“We’ve got good, common-sense solutions that we can implement right now. The bad news is, is that there’s a shortage of common sense in Washington,” he said at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “What’s holding us back is a tendency in Washington to put politics ahead of policy, to put the next election ahead of the next generation. And that mind-set is what we need
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Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post(ATLANTA) -- President Obama said Sunday that he is motivated by the knowledge that “but for the grace of God … I might have been in prison,” in a commencement address at historically black Morehouse College, where he spoke frankly about race and young men’s responsibilities to 500 male graduates.
In his second commencement address of this graduation season, the president called on the graduates to set examples for others and reach out to those who need help, telling them that as a black man he felt a unique connection to assist those in need because he could have faced similar circumstances.
“There but for the
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Comstock Images/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Sunday morning on ABC’s This Week, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the legality surrounding the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue service is “irrelevant,” but called the behavior “inexcusable.”
“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again,” Pfeiffer said.
Stephanopoulos asked Pfeiffer if he really thought the law is “irrelevant.”
“What
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iStockphoto(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) -- Delivering her only speech at a high school graduation this year, first lady Michelle Obama joked about the failures her husband, President Obama, has encountered in life as she told a graduating class of high school seniors in Nashville, Tenn. Saturday that in order to achieve success in life, they must first experience failure.
“When something doesn’t go your way, you’ve just got to adjust. You’ve got to dig deep and work like crazy, and that’s when you’ll find out what you’re really made of during those hard times, but you can only do that if you’re willing to put yourself in a position where you
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The Office of Congressman Darrell Issa(WASHINTON) -- Much has been made of the fact that senior Treasury Department officials were told about the investigation into the treatment of tea party groups in June 2012 — months before last year’s the Presidential election. Republicans who requested the investigation were also told about it at approximately the same time.
In a letter dated July 11, 2012, the man who conducted the investigation, IRS inspector general J. Russell George wrote to Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, telling him that he was investigating the issue
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Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Congressman Michele Bachmann Thursday called the various scandals facing the White House “far worse than Watergate,” blaming the Obama administration for “direct actions taken against Americans who sought to exercise their free speech rights under the First Amendment.”
Bachmann, who ran for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination and currently chairs the Tea Party caucus, held a press conference on Thursday attended by various other conservative luminaries to criticize the administration not just for the IRS targeting Tea Party groups but the Justice Department seizing phone records
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Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(WASHINGTON) -- After a week of hearings in Washington and despite cloudy skies, President Obama is spending his Saturday afternoon on the golf course.
Obama's foursome included Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Senior Policy Advisor Sam Kass.
Obama has frequented the golf course often this spring, but until Saturday always with male golfing partners. Sebelius is the first woman to join the president on the golf course this year.
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Patrick Smith/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama says he believes "the true engine of economic growth" is a "rising, thriving middle class." But in order to build on progress made over the last four years, he says in his weekly address, government should invest in three areas: jobs, skills and opportunities.
President Obama has been visiting cities across the country as part of his "Middle Class Jobs and Opportunities Tour" to highlight the innovations taking place in the U.S. to create jobs or teach skills needed to fill opportunities for middle class families. On Friday, the president wrapped up the tour's second stop in Baltimore,
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