White House

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama's economic advisers and outside experts say the nation's much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind , including young people looking to buy their first homes and...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will discuss the legality of his administration's secret drone program and other counterterrorism practices during a speech Thursday, a White House official said. Obama's speech will be an attempt to fulfill his State of the Union pledge to be more "transparent" with the public about the controversial drone program that has become the centerpiece of the White House's efforts to combat terrorism. The official said Obama would also use Thursday's...

Activist Adam Kokesh has asked 1,000 people to march across the Potomac on July 4 carrying loaded rifles. He calls it a protest against "tyranny. " Suppose the D.C. police, as they have promised, block the marchers from crossing into Washington? How should they respond? "With Satyagraha, " Kokesh, 31, texted The Washington Post. That is a term used by Mahatma Gandhi to describe his strategy of nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. Invoking Gandhi while advocating the carrying of...

WASHINGTON — A top White House adviser insisted Sunday that President Barack Obama learned the Internal Revenue Service had targeted tea party groups only "when it came out in the news" while Republicans continued to press the administration for more answers. Trying to move past a challenging week that put the White House on the defensive, senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer was scheduled to appear on five Sunday news shows to repeat the administration's position that no senior officials were involved in the...

From the start, the Obama administration's account of what happened in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 last year didn't quite square for Sharyl Attkisson. So the veteran CBS News reporter dug in, and kept digging. The result: Attkisson has been a persistent voice of news-media skepticism about the government's story. On the air and online, Attkisson has questioned the administration's timeline and its response. She has hunted down important eyewitnesses and pressed for release of documents that...

To the world beyond the Beltway, it might not mean much that Bob Woodward of the famed Watergate duo went public with his recent White House run-in. This would be an oversight. It also may not mean much that the White House press corps got teed off when they weren't allowed access to President Obama as he played golf with Tiger Woods. This, too, would be an oversight. Though not comparable — one appeared to be a veiled threat aimed at one of the nation's most respected journalists and the other a minor blip in...

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride. President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him. He saw eight presidential...

After two years of feverishly chasing any hint or suggestion of wrongdoing by the Obama administration, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) may finally be having his moment. Issa, the chief congressional watchdog over the White House, has the administration squarely on the defensive on two of the most politically explosive events of the moment: last year's deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt...

The sputtering end of the Obama administration's plans to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court came one day late last month in a conversation between the president and one of his top Cabinet members. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had called President Obama to inform him that he would be returning the case to the Defense Department , a decision that would mark the effective abandonment of the president's promise to close the military detention center at...

The little girl in the painting titled "The Problem We All Live With" is walking to school in a white dress, white socks and white shoes. Her hair is parted in neat plaits and she is carrying a book and a ruler. The girl appears confident and proud, even as she is overshadowed by U.S. marshals in muted gray suits. She does not seem to notice the tomato splashed on the painted wall behind her or the racial epithet scrawled above her. The Norman Rockwell painting,...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has taken two Cabinet secretaries out for a round of golf — in the rain. The White House said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (seh-BEEL'-yuhs) and outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood joined the president Saturday at Andrews Air Force Base. LaHood is running the Transportation Department until the Senate confirms Obama's choice of Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx as successor. Reporters saw Sebelius climb into the...

WASHINGTON — Myanmar President Thein Sein's historic White House visit next week is the culmination of U.S. outreach to a former pariah regime. That's been based on a principle of taking "action for action" by deepening ties in response to democratic reforms. But in the six months since Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Myanmar, the Southeast Asian nation has been buffeted by communal and ethnic violence, and security forces are still accused of...

WASHINGTON — Despite Democratic fears, predictions of the demise of President Barack Obama's agenda appear exaggerated after a week of cascading controversies, political triage by the administration and party leaders in Congress and lack of evidence to date of wrongdoing close to the Oval Office. "Absolutely not," Steven Miller, the recently resigned acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, responded Friday when asked if he had any contact with the White House...

President Obama's most recent budget request would reduce borrowing by $1.1 trillion over the next decade compared with current law — almost entirely through higher taxes on the rich, large estates and smokers, congressional budget analysts said Friday. In addition to raising nearly $1 trillion in new taxes, the president's blueprint would also cut spending modestly, according to the analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. However, those savings include money the government...

WASHINGTON — Legislation cleared the House on Friday that would place stricter requirements on the federal agency overseeing Wall Street to assess the costs and benefits of its regulations before they are issued. The bill passed on a 235-161 vote mostly on party lines. It was the latest salvo against the Securities and Exchange Commission by House Republicans, who opposed the 2010 financial overhaul legislation expanding the SEC's powers and have resisted increasing...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is putting on a show at the White House next week for singer-songwriter Carole King. She's the first woman to receive the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress. The White House says Obama will present the award to King during a concert Wednesday. The program will include performances by King, Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sande, James Taylor and Trisha Yearwood. King's hits...

President Obama tapped Daniel Werfel on Thursday to serve as the new acting administrator of the scandal-plagued Internal Revenue Service, succeeding Steven T. Miller, who resigned under pressure Wednesday. "Throughout his career working in both Democratic and Republican administrations, Danny has proven an effective leader who serves with professionalism, integrity and skill," Obama said in a statement. "The American people deserve to have the utmost confidence and trust in their government, and as we work to get to the bottom of...

For five days, reporters at the Associated Press had been sitting on a big scoop about a foiled al-Qaeda plot at the request of CIA officials. Then, in a hastily scheduled Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by agency officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day. The CIA officials, who had initially cited national security concerns in an attempt to delay publication, no longer had those worries, according to individuals familiar with the...

Matthew Dallek is an associate academic director at the University of California Washington Center and the author of "The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics. " When a reporter asked Jay Carney this past week how his boss felt about the comparisons he was drawing to one Richard M. Nixon, the White House press secretary shot back : "I don't have a reaction from President Obama. I can tell you that the people who make those kind of comparisons need to check...

RANGOON, BURMA — T-shirts bearing images of President Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, hang side by side in the shops just off the busy Kabar Aye Pagoda Road in Rangoon. It's a reminder of the history made last November when Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in Burma. A return trip to this former pariah state doesn't appear to be on Obama's immediate itinerary. But corporate America is on its way. Google chairman Eric Schmidt visited in...