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The House will vote Friday on a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security for three weeks in an attempt to avert a shutdown slated for Saturday at the massive agency. If the bill is approved by the House, the Senate is expected to quickly follow suit — though the upper chamber also plans to move forward with a bill funding Homeland Security through the end of the fiscal year. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the new strategy to his rank-and-file members during a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday night. Senior Republicans predicted it would win enough support to clear the...

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Thursday approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, setting up a looming veto showdown with the White House. The legislation passed on a 62-36 vote

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called protesters "low-life scum," after they interrupted a hearing by calling for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to be arrested for war crimes.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren urged Democrats Wednesday to withhold support for a massive government funding bill, as opposition on the political left mounted over a set of changes to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law buried in the legislation.

THE WHITE House has defended President Obama’s unilateral decision to legalize the presence of nearly 4 million undocumented immigrants as consistent, even in scope, with the executive actions of previous presidents. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the sweeping magnitude of Mr. Obama’s order is unprecedented.

Six types of pie are also listed on the menu, including banana cream, coconut cream, pumpkin, apple, pecan and cherry.

Buzz surrounding a video showing President Obama stepping off Marine One on Tuesday and saluting two U.S. Marines while holding a travel cup has not been a point of conversation between the president and his top spokesman. The video uploaded to the White House Instagram on Tuesday showed Obama saluting the Marines while holding a white cup in his right hand as he apparently fiddled with his suit coat button with his left.

“CMS's processes are inconsistent with certain federal accounting and internal control standards,” the report states. To improve the system, the GAO recommends that CMS staff create new procedures to provide more timely and reliable information to the public. “Particularly for programs subject to a significant degree of public and congressional scrutiny,” the GAO reports. The report marks the third time in two weeks that a federal audit has criticized the rollout of ObamaCare. The auditors pointed to one particularly troublesome area within CMS — its Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight, which works largely with state governments. That agency...

Army chief of staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said Friday that more U.S. ground troops would likely deploy to Iraq to train local forces fighting Islamic militants. "We are going to increase a little bit," he said. "As we do that, I think we have to do an assessment of how well that's going."

Among other discrepancies, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee allege Morell insisted the talking points were sent to the White House for informational purposes, and not for their input -- but emails, later released by the administration, showed otherwise. "We found that there was actual coordination which could influence then -- and did influence -- what CIA conveyed to the committees about what happened [in Benghazi]," Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told Fox News.

Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.He attacked the "widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs", calling on governments to implement "effective policies" to guarantee people's fundamental rights, including access to capital, services, educational resources, healthcare and technology.

“You don’t need to be buddies with someone to establish an effective relationship,” said Mr. Burns, who now teaches at Harvard. “Not everyone can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the Second World War.” Even with friends, however, there is tension. President François Hollande of France was initially thrilled with Mr. Obama because he saw him as an ally against Ms. Merkel on economic issues.

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities. This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot”...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks. The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance. “I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview...

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws. You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail today if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray not to testify before his committee: “Absent contrary guidance from the United States Supreme Court, you do not meet the statutory requirements of a validly...

A federal judge seemed skeptical Wednesday of the Justice Department's bid to dismiss a congressional lawsuit seeking records related to Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled federal gun-tracking operation in Arizona. Judge Amy Berman Jackson sharply challenged the department's claim that federal courts have no jurisdiction in the dispute. Department lawyer Ian Gershengorn said the battle over the documents should be resolved by the checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches. "I'm a check and balance," countered Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "The third branch exists."

n. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) panned an agreement to expand background checks on gun sales that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) unveiled on Wednesday. "The Manchin-Toomey proposal is a good faith but unworkable plan," Coburn said in a statement. "The proposal will impose new taxes and unreasonable burdens on law-abiding citizens."

(CNN) -- Britain, Italy and Greece on Sunday confirmed that hostages from their countries were among seven construction workers reported killed in Nigeria over the weekend. "This was an act of cold-blooded murder, which I condemn in the strongest terms," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement announcing that a British construction worker was among the dead. Nigerian militant group Ansar al-Muslimeen claimed responsibility for the February kidnappings of the seven construction workers from an office in northeastern Nigeria. The group, widely known as Ansaru, released images of some of the bodies Saturday.

John Kerry is going to have a rough tenure as secretary of state. But let’s face it, whoever came after Hillary Clinton was going to have to deal with a foreign affairs press corps that has been sleeping for four years. From the moment Hillary entered Foggy Bottom, political reporters have treated their beloved secretary of state with kid gloves. Watching media outlets now play catch-up on just how dangerous the world really is makes you feel a bit sorry for Kerry. Suddenly the State Department reporters have realized that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon, GITMO is...