Interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans doubled on July 1 from 3.4% to 6.8% because the U.S. Congress failed to reach an agreement on legislation. As a result, a renewed battle between Democrats and Republicans for a lack of a good plan has also resurfaced.
U.S. District Judge William Conley has granted a temporary restraining order preventing Wisconsin from enforcing a new and restrictive abortion law, CNN reported. Signed by the state's governor Scott Walker on Friday, bans doctors from performing abortion if they do no not have admitting privileges to hospitals within 30 minutes of their practice.
The Senate on Thursday passed an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws that would clear the way for millions of undocumented residents to have a chance at citizenship, attract workers from all over the world and devote unprecedented resources for security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A bill that opponents said threatened to all but eliminate every abortion clinic in Texas failed to pass late Tuesday after lawmakers missed a deadline by minutes due to a nearly 13 hour filibuster by one Democratic state senator. Chaotic scenes erupted after a filibuster attempt fell just short as protesters shouted for over 15 minutes up to midnight, as lawmakers tried to hold the vote before the session ended at midnight.
The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature moved closer on Monday to passing some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, as the State House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers, the New York Times reported. Senate Bill 5, as it is known, will require clinics to be surgical centers and mandating that doctors have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. These measures will would force dozens of abortion providers in the state to close, news reports said.
In his first congressional testimony since disclosure of the secretive programs, the director of the National Security Agency gave a forceful defense of spy operations that have stirred fears of government snooping and violations of privacy rights
President Obama defended the U.S. policy's long-standing Internet and phone monitoring programs as valuable tools in an effort to fight terrorism, deflecting criticism that government intrusion to people's phone calls has been too overreaching.
The U.S. military brass came under tough criticism from senators who slammed them for their handling of repeated allegations of sexual assault cases by military personnel.
New York City Mayor Michael 's office in New York, and his nonprofit group in Washington D.C. were targets receiving poison letters contained with ricin, the NYPD revealed on Wednesday. Two letters were sent to Bloomberg's offices in D.C. And Manhattan. An undisclosed number of NYPD who were responded to on of the letters "are being examined for minor symptoms of ricin exposure," but the it never reached him directly
IRS official Lois Lerner insisted at a hearing on Wednesday that she had done nothing wrong, and invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
"I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations. I know some people will assume that I have done something wrong. I have not," she said before the House Oversight Committee. Lerner is the head of the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups that targeted conservative groups.
Two senior aides to President Barack Obama knew in late April about a watchdog report that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups in 2012, Reuters reported.White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was told on April 24 about an upcoming report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on the IRS practice, which an IRS official apologized for on May 10. The question persists whether this information had never been relayed to the president himself, who said that he learned about the report through the media.
Senior members of the Obama Administration's Treasury Department were made aware that investigators were looking into complaints from Tea Party groups that they were being harassed by the IRS in June 2012, revealing that the probe was being conducted during the presidential campaign.
Steven Miller, the outgoing IRS Commissioner had apologized n Friday on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for unjustly targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. However, "partisanship" was not the reason for the agency's practices.
The Justice Department on Tuesday defended its decision to subpoena phone records from Associated Press bureaus and reporters, saying the requests were limited and necessary to investigate a leak of classified information regarding a severe threat to national security,
US. cities on Tuesday with Medicare fraud schemes that the government said totaled $223 million in false billings. More than 400 law enforcement officers including FBI agents made arrests of 89 suspects who posed as physicians and scammed the $590 billion healthcare program with phony or unnecessary bills. About one in four defendants was a doctor, a nurse, a physical therapist or some other medical professional.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday that he recused himself from a case involving a Department of Justice decision to subpoena phone records from Associated Press. Holder also said that the Justice Department has ordered a criminal investigation into the IRS' targeting of different conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
President Obama, in a news press conference to the White House Press Corps, vowed to close Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba - an unkept promise he had in his first term in office.
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune that perhaps she and her colleagues should have turned down the George W. Bush campaign's appeal of a Florida Supreme Court decision to allow a recount request by the Al Gore campaign. Justice O'Connor had been in the majority in the high court's 5-4 decision that stopped the recount, sealing Bush's election.
Lawyers for Ingmar Guandique, the man convicted of killing Washington intern Chandra Levy are returning to court, claiming his conviction was "predicated on a lie." The hearing is scheduled Thursday for Guandique, an undocumented El Salvadoran immigrant who was convicted in 2010 for murdering Levy in 2001.
The Senate today moved forward with a critical piece of the Obama administration's gun safety proposals, CBS News reported. The Senate voted 68-31 to begin debate on a bill that would significantly expand background checks for gun sales. It surpassed the 60-vote needed with support of several Republicans.
On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was killed by assassin in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in the state to help support a sanitation workers' strike. The legendary figure had been at the forefront of the civil rights movement, beginning with the Montgomery boycott in 1955, all the while leading a series of nonviolent protests against discrimination.
