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President Obama's Thanksgiving meal will be a lot like last year's - heavy on the meats and sweets. Mr. Obama, his family, friends and staff will share ham, turkey and [...]

WASHINGTON - Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday named Representative Steve Israel of New York to lead the House Democratic campaign committee into the next election, putting him in charge of [...]

Heath Shuler's political aspirations may go well beyond netting a third term as the congressman for his conservative western North Carolina district. As most endangered House Democrats run from Speaker [...]

Dick Morris, a Fox News commentator who was an adviser to former President Bill Clinton, has put nearly $1.5 million behind 15 Republican Congressional candidates in the last week, spending [...]

QUINCY, Mass. -- Jeff Perry has a role model: Senator Scott Brown. Mr. Perry, a Republican state representative in Massachusetts, is running for an open House seat that Democrats have [...]

With the Senate race in Pennsylvania turning into a tight one, the conservative Club for Growth is not about to let one of its own go down without a fight. [...]

WASHINGTON -- In the days leading up to the Delaware primary, Sal Russo hosted a radio fund-raiser, organizeda political rally and pressed the case with reporters that Christine O'Donnell was [...]

The Tea Party Express is rolling in Delaware. The group that endorsed conservative insurgents in primaries in Nevada and Alaska is out to claim another establishment upset, starting a $250,000 [...]

Members of the freshly minted House Tea Party Caucus spent their first day of existence Wednesday trying to clarify just who they are -- a tricky task when the Tea [...]

WASHINGTON -- Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, sought to contain a growing furor within his party on Sunday as three Republican lawmakers questioned his effectiveness because [...]

WASHINGTON -- Senator Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving senator in United States history, is ''seriously ill,'' his office announced Sunday afternoon. Mr. Byrd, a 92-year-old Democrat from West Virginia, was [...]

CORRECTION APPENDED WASHINGTON -- Midshipman Jessica Wilcox, who graduates from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis this month, said she first pictured herself aboard a submarine when she was [...]

Former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson said Thursday that he would not run against Senator Russ Feingold this year. ''My family didn't want me to run,'' Mr. Thompson, a Republican, told [...]

WASHINGTON -- Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he [...]

Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple accused of sneaking into President Obama's first state dinner in November, declined to answer questions posed by lawmakers on Wednesday. Subpoenaed by the House [...]

The federal government must continue to provide grant money to the national community organizing group Acorn, a federal court ruled Friday, saying that the House violated the Constitution when it [...]

A member of the mosque attended by the five young American Muslims arrested in Pakistan said Thursday that they had been a constant presence, always in traditional Muslim dress, at [...]

The Congressional committee that oversees the Secret Service voted to subpoena the couple who dodged White House security to attend President Obama's first state dinner. The vote was 26 to [...]

Three Secret Service officers have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation into how two uninvited guests managed to crash President Obama's first state dinner last […]

It's better to be Googled once than not at all. At least, that's what Senator John McCain may be saying now that he has been named the 'fastest-falling' Google search […]

Edward Brooke, a Republican senator from Massachusetts in the 1960s and 70s, rebuked lawmakers for partisan bickering on Wednesday at a ceremony awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal, the body's […]

One of the biggest challenges facing lawmakers who favor universal health care coverage is coming up with a plan for 20-somethings, the so-called young invincibles. A government-run insurance plan might […]

Republicans are using a clip from President Obama's recent Sunday morning news media blitz to make a political point about the vocabulary of health care reform. In a Web video […]

Some House Democrats are holding on to the idea of a public insurance option despite growing concern that their stance could jeopardize President Obama's effort to overhaul the health care […]

Immigration files containing a wealth of information collected by American border agents, some of it dating from the late 19th century, will be opened to the public soon and permanently […]

An expert panel reported on Friday that two more diseases may be linked to exposure to Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the American military during the Vietnam War. People […]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that he preferred Rush Limbaugh's brand of conservatism to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's, saying Mr. Powell had abandoned the […]

Newspapers produced and sold by homeless people in dozens of American cities are flourishing even as the deepening recession endangers conventional newspapers. At many of them, circulation is growing, along […]

For those who want to keep tabs, here is how Tuesday's parade adds up: $364,000 Amount of money that a single band -- from Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale, […]

First someone tossed an envelope containing 500 dollar bills on the doorstep of the high school before scurrying away, a gift for the marching band. Then a woman on her […]

Apartment hunters have Craigslist. Singles have eHarmony. And now, Americans looking for a way to give back to their communities have an online matchmaking service of their own. The site, […]

An incendiary device ignited at a postal facility in Washington, D.C., on Friday, the police said. There were no reported injuries, and the brief fire went out by itself. The facility, at 3300 V Street N.E., about four miles from the Capitol, was evacuated after an envelope or package ignited at around 2:45 p.m., the Metropolitan Police said. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday approved the $858 billion tax plan negotiated by the White House and Republican leaders, and House Democrats said they expected to pass the bill on Thursday after a final, and seemingly futile, effort to change a provision that benefits wealthy estates. The Senate vote was 81 to 19 as Democrats yielded in their long push to end the Bush-era lowered tax rates for high-income taxpayers. Republicans agreed to back a huge economic stimulus package, including an extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and a one-year payroll-tax cut for most workers, with the entire cost added to the federal deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With his re-election virtually assured against a little-known Republican challenger, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York is using his campaign war chest to help other Democrats across the country running for the Senate get elected next month. Since August, Mr. Schumer, a prolific fund-raiser, has given $3 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to a campaign finance disclosure report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- When people in the nation's capital talked about an endless summer this week, they did not mean surfing or margaritas (though they surely craved them). Throughout the mid-Atlantic states, from New York to Georgia, and out through the Great Plains, the heat this spring and summer has been relentless, causing clothes, hair and spirits to wilt well before the dog days of August. Saturday, as one meteorologist had predicted with scientific precision, was ''one of those just downright awful summer days.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In much of the country, for much of the last decade, renting a home has usually been a better financial move than buying one. It's been true in Southern California, San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas and large parts of Florida, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. Renting required you to suffer the scorn of many real estate agents and the skepticism of friends and relatives who believed that owning a home was almost always superior. But renting also would have typically saved you thousands of dollars a year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the years passed after Sept. 11, 2001, without another major attack on American soil and with no sign of hidden terrorist cells, many counterterrorism specialists reached a comforting conclusion: Muslims in the United States were not very vulnerable to radicalization. American Muslims, the reasoning went, were well assimilated in diverse communities with room for advancement. They showed little of the alienation often on display among their European counterparts, let alone attraction to extremist violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As President Obama and Congress intensify the push to overhaul health care in the coming week, the political and economic force of that industry is well represented in the financial holdings of many lawmakers and others with a say on the legislation, according to new disclosure forms. The personal financial reports, due late last week from members of Congress, show that many lawmakers hold investments in insurance, pharmaceutical and prescription-benefit companies and in hospital interests, all of which would be affected by the administration's overhaul of health care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When a federal trial judge tossed out the ethics conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens last week, his lawyers promulgated the story of an innocent man victimized by unscrupulous prosecutors. But the five-week trial of Mr. Stevens offered a different version of him, and only a discrete part of that was directly affected by the discovery of repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Shaken by the attempted assassination of their colleague, Gabrielle Giffords, and the killing of one of her aides, House members reconvened at the Capitol on Wednesday to honor the dead and the wounded in the Arizona shooting rampage and to begin reviewing security concerns with law enforcement officials. At the same time, many Republican lawmakers quickly rejected any suggestion that gun control laws need to be tightened, even to limit access to expanded ammunition clips like the one that the police say Jared L. Loughner used outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday, killing six people and wounding 14, including Ms. Giffords, who was shot in the head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON --The $858 billion tax cut package negotiated by the White House and Republican leaders hit a procedural snag on Thursday, as liberal Democrats skirmished with party leaders over its estate-tax provisions. At issue was whether the House would vote on an amendment to tax a larger proportion of wealthy estates and to apply a higher rate than was provided for in the compromise package. An aide to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, described the setback as temporary, and said that it would probably delay an overall vote on the tax plan until Thursday evening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DURHAM, N.C. -- For nearly two weeks, many here on the Duke University campus had been aware of a certain senior ''thesis'' that a recent graduate wrote, apparently as a private joke, about her sexual exploits with 13 student-athletes. Then the Internet seized on it. The thesis, written as a 42-page Power Point presentation, went viral. And students here again found their school in the middle of a sex-related scandal and annoyed at the power of the murky, borderless world of the Internet to wreak havoc and tarnish images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane Earl pounded North Carolina late Thursday night with powerful but diminishing strength, pelting the eastern part of the state with bands of rain and severe blasts of wind as communities and seaside towns across the eastern seaboard braced for the storm's devastating force. The storm weakened as it approached the coast, shifting in strength from a Category 3 to a Category 2, but was still expected to sideswipe the Outer Banks in North Carolina overnight with winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. By 9 p.m., Earl was about 160 miles south of Cape Hatteras, and was steadily marching forward, unleashing severe rain squalls and gusts of wind along the Outer Banks [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the third-most senior member of the House and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, announced Wednesday that he was retiring after four decades in Congress, a decision that reflected both a generational shift and the difficult political environment for Democrats. ''I'm ready to turn the page,'' said Mr. Obey, 71. He told lawmakers and reporters crammed into the committee room where he has held sway for so long that he was ''bone tired,'' before adding, ''And frankly, I think that my district is ready for somebody new, to make a fresh start.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- In a rare bipartisan vote, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama on Wednesday a bill intended to spur employment by providing businesses with incentives to hire new workers -- an approach that Congressional Democrats hope to repeat. The legislation, approved 68 to 29, would give employers an exemption from payroll taxes through the end of 2010 on workers they hire who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. It also extends the federal highway construction program, shifts $20 billion to road and bridge building and takes other steps to bolster public improvement projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]