Congress, Obama Administration | featured news

WASHINGTON — In a move Democrats denounced as trying to sabotage the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Sen. Rob Portman and 46 other Senate Republicans yesterday warned Iran’s leadership that any agreement to limit Tehran’s apparent efforts to build a nuclear bomb would need Senate approval to stay in effect beyond 2016.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Brennan as the Obama administration's next Central Intelligence Agency director, overcoming concerns expressed by Republicans and some Democrats about the administration's use of lethal drone strikes.

The White House has agreed to give lawmakers access to the complete set of secret Justice Department memos on the targeted killing of terrorism suspects overseas, documents that the Obama administration had previously refused to share.

The Obama administration said consumers should be allowed to unlock smartphones and tablet computers without risking criminal penalties, siding with critics of a ruling from the U.S. Library of Congress.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate from July through September, much faster than first thought. The strength may fade in the final months of the year if Congress and the Obama administration fail to reach a budget deal.

A Republican-led House oversight committee opens hearings Wednesday on diplomatic security in Benghazi, where a U.S. ambassador and three others were killed on Sept. 11, adding fuel to a political debate over the issue in the final weeks before presidential elections... GOP lawmakers deny they are trying to embarrass the Obama administration before the election.

"The action that the committee took yesterday was unwarranted, unnecessary and unprecedented," he said after meeting European Union justice officials in the Danish capital."

Arizona Sen. John McCain lashed out at the Obama administration, alleging they selectively released information about US efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear program.

The latest evidence on the economy suggests that the tense standoff between Congress and the Obama administration over raising the debt ceiling is coming at a terrible time — not in a period of robust or even passable growth, but at a time the U.S. economy is barely eking out any expansion at all.

Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director both predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand.