McClatchy Election News

A funny thing happened on the way to a predicted disaster: The Pentagon is learning to live with the automatic budget cuts its leaders had warned would threaten national security if they took effect.

President Barack Obama on Thursday defended his administration’s use of drone strikes to kill terrorists as effective, lawful and “heavily constrained,” but he also appeared to be laying groundwork for an expansion of the controversial targeted killings.

First, there was the news that the Justice Department had secretly seized telephone records of reporters at the Associated Press. A week later, reports that the department had investigated a Fox News reporter as a potential criminal for doing his job.

When a key House of Representatives panel took up a bill this week that would require annual lease sales and streamline permitting in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, home state Rep. Don Young missed the session.

The blossoming IRS scandal over the targeting of conservative groups is provoking new scrutiny and terse questions about the agency’s role in shaping and implementing the controversial new national health care law, with the biggest changes set to begin next year.

The president and chief executive officer of a medical equipment company invoked the Fifth Amendment at Senate hearing Wednesday, declining to answer questions about aggressive marketing tactics used to sell scooters, sleep apnea machines and other home medical supplies to Medicare recipients who may not need or want them.

Anthony Foxx avoided the controversy of other Capitol Hill hearings Wednesday, receiving a mostly warm reception from senators who considered his nomination to become transportation secretary.

Internal Revenue Service officials are not fully cooperating with efforts to learn who is responsible for targeting conservative groups, lawmakers learned Wednesday during the third and most tense, dramatic hearing on the scandal.

The Obama administration’s timeline for who knew what and when about the Internal Revenue Service scandal changed again Tuesday with revelations that the Treasury Department and White House officials had discussed how to stage-manage the release of the explosive information. The latest revelation came as acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told Congress that he’s responsible for the secretly planted question answered by subordinate Lois Lerner that triggered the scandal that’s now gripping the nation’s capital.

The U.S. Senate this week has started to fine-tune the huge, new five-year farm bill, working through votes on a series of amendments that will include a proposal to eliminate federal subsidies for tobacco insurance.

The White House acknowledged Monday that senior aides to President Barack Obama knew a month ago that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups, expanding on previous administration statements about who in the White House knew about the inquiry and when they knew about it.

Walk the aisles of any neighborhood grocery store today and you’re as likely to find tomatoes picked in Sinaloa, Mexico, as Central California or oranges from Sao Paulo, Brazil, as Bradenton, Fla.