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Iran has reached an agreement with world powers over its nuclear activities. In a televised address, the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, welcomed the deal, saying the country had the right to continue its uranium enrichment programme.

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

The editors have it just right on the CLASS Act. The administration’s latest Friday night bombshell was really no surprise at all. (The massive deficit announcement tonight surely couldn’t have surprised anyone either, though I certainly have to admit that getting involved in a war in Uganda is one I didn’t see coming.) Just about every conservative critic of Obamacare pointed to the irrational design of the CLASS Act before the legislation’s enactment. In fact, the administration’s own CMS actuary said it would never work. He was ignored by his employers not because they disagreed with him, but because they...

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability...

The Obama administration will not implement a controversial piece of the healthcare reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday. Sebelius said the department will not continue trying to implement the CLASS program, which was intended to provide insurance for long-term care. Republicans charged that the program’s financial structure was unsustainable, and Sebelius conceded as much Friday. “We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” she wrote on the Huffington Post's website. Sebelius said HHS will “suspend” implementation of the program. The department recently reassigned the people it had placed in the...

President Obama has deployed combat troops to central Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army. In a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Obama says 12 troops with "appropriate combat equipment" were deployed on October 12 and approximately 100 in total will be deployed including a second combat team and headquarters, communications and logistics personnel. The forces will provide information and advise and assist "select partner nation forces," Obama explains. The troops will not fight except in self-defense. The full letter is after the jump.

Gov. John Kasich has a special round of golf coming up. Kasich will join President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner as the fourth member in a golf foursome that will take to the links June 18. Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols confirmed Kasich's place in the foursome, and the Cincinnati-area Republican Boehner said as much on his Twitter account. Obama and Boehner, both avid golfers, scheduled the golf outing to smooth over some of their differences as they seek a compromise over raising the national debt limit and cutting spending.

Republicans are warning President Obama not to issue an executive order that would require government contractors to disclose their political donations. Obama drafted the proposal last month, which is reminiscent of a provision in a Democratic bill called the Disclose Act that died in the Congress last year. But in a letter to the president, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the No. 3 Republican in the House, said Obama's proposed order "seems like a blatant attempt to intimidate, and potentially silence, certain speakers who are engaged in their constitutionally protected right to free speech." Twenty other Republicans signed the letter, which...

Gun Control: Under a program run by the Justice Department, weapons were knowingly sold to criminals suspected of links to Mexican drug cartels, with two guns ending up at the murder scene of a border patrol agent. Considering how this administration has made a cause celebre out of gun control, the revelation of a program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), in which weapons were transferred on purpose to Mexican drug cartels and criminals and then lost track of, is at best embarrassing and at worst an unconscionable dereliction of duty. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...

An Obama administration official, speaking anonymously to the Washington Post, said the administration is open to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood being in the government of Egypt that will likely replace the rule of Hosni Mubarak:The official said that while the administration was concerned about "some elements" of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and other non-secular groups participating in the demonstrations, it was "not ruling out their legitimacy" and place in a future government. Obama was aware that the Muslim Brotherhood and others were in the audience when he spoke of "a new beginning" in a 2009 speech in Cairo that was...

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama addressed one of the biggest threats to the free world in the 21st century in just one sentence: "Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before." However, the president failed to mention that his policies toward Iran, in the two years he's been in office have proven to have been a complete failure. .... We would do well to remember the words of President Reagan to the nation on the night of our bombing of...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that the Tea Party needs to commit to being problem-solvers in the new Congress. On "Face the Nation," Graham was asked about the prospects for bipartisanship come January. "The House is in revolt," he said of the difficulty of extending the Bush-era tax cuts. "People are pissed off in the House at the estate tax. That's going to carry over a bit." Graham said that big government and spending is on the "run and retreat," but that the coming months will test the grass-roots movement that helped turn the tide in the midterm election. "The...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Saturday that the failed Democratic effort to pass the DREAM Act in the lame duck session dealt a blow to future talks on a wider immigration bill. “It was an exercise to try and taint Republicans with Hispanic voters, knowing that the DREAM Act under these circumstances could never pass,” Graham told reporters in the Capitol after the bill sputtered on the floor. “What they have done on the DREAM Act is hurt overall comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. The DREAM Act, which would give legal status to illegal immigrants who came to the country...

Thursday, September 16, 2010 Report: Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government WASHINGTON — The Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government as part of the movement's drive to promote holy war against the West, a report said. So far, the government was said to have done nothing to stop the Brotherhood infiltration. The report by the Center for Security Policy cited the success of one Brotherhood operative in gaining access to the White House under both Democratic and Republican administrations. "Relying on Brotherhood operatives for 'outreach to the Muslim community,' let alone appointing them to influential government jobs, is...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Coming two weeks after Election Day, a book from President Barack Obama for some of the nation's nonvoters: inspirational stories for children about American pioneers. "Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters" is a tribute to 13 groundbreaking Americans, from the first president, George Washington, to baseball great Jackie Robinson to artist Georgia O'Keeffe. It will be released Nov. 16 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, which will officially announce the new work Tuesday. Knopf declined to identify the other 10 subjects.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama appealed to an unsettled nation Saturday to honor the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks by hewing to the values of diversity and tolerance. "We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust," the president declared. Speaking at the Pentagon, where nine years ago a hijacked plane smashed into the west side of the building and killed 184 people, Obama conjured a solemn remembrance of that horrible day but also spoke strongly in defense of religious freedom. "As Americans we are not — and never will be...

United States President Barack Obama pleaded with Americans at a White House news conference on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, to not allow themselves to be divided by religion following a backlash sparked by a Florida preacher who had planned a Koran burning ceremony on Saturday, 11 September 2010 to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Obama reminded his people who their “true enemies were, naming Al-Qaeda and terrorists”, in a bid to protect American Muslims. Pastor Terry Jones from Gainesville in Florida says he wants clarity on whether a planned New York mosque will be moved from...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A federal judge in Southern California has declared the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips on Thursday granted a request for an injunction halting the government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military. Phillips says the policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a "direct and deleterious effect" on the armed services. The lawsuit was the biggest legal test of the law in recent years and came amid promises by President Barack Obama that he will work to repeal the policy.

Is there any doubt about Osama bin Laden’s position on the not-at-ground-zero mosque? Osama abhors the vision of interfaith harmony that the proposed Islamic center represents. He fears Muslim clerics who can cite the Koran to denounce terrorism. It’s striking that many American Republicans share with Al Qaeda the view that the West and the Islamic world are caught inevitably in a “clash of civilizations.” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who recruits jihadis from his lair in Yemen, tells the world’s English-speaking Muslims that America is at war against Islam. You can bet that Mr. Awlaki will use the opposition...

Some of the imam’s American critics said they fear he is using the taxpayer-funded trip to raise money and rally support in the Muslim world for the mosque. “I think there is no place for this,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and opposes the Islamic center and mosque. “Can you imagine if the State Department paid to send me on a trip anywhere? The separation of church and state — the critics would have been howling.”