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Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) launched an effort on Thursday to remain in the top tiers of Democratic leadership next year, announcing his bid to be the fourth-ranking Democrat in the next Congress. In a letter to fellow lawmakers, Clyburn, who has been the No. 3 House Democrat since 2006, touted his long experience in the leadership ranks, saying it would be an asset to the party as a younger generation of incoming leaders — expected to be Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (Calif.) — gets its footing. “As we Democrats set about the work of...

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago has announced a bid to bring the Democratic National Convention that will choose the party’s presidential nominee to the city in 2024. The announcement Tuesday morning was accompanied by endorsements from top Illinois Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker on down.

President Joe Biden wants Congress to send him $10 billion to help Ukraine fight Russia, according to a letter from his administration seen Thursday. “[W]e are requesting $10 billion to deliver additional humanitarian, security, and economic assistance in Ukraine and the neighboring region in the coming days and weeks,” Biden’s acting budget director Shalanda Young wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend U.S. assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leahy, a Democrat and senior member of the U.S. Senate, wants assistance withheld from the Israel Navy's Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force's Shaldag unit. (Snip) According to a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, Leahy began promoting the legislation in recent months after he was approached by voters in his home state of Vermont.

Six Republican Senators will sign a letter this afternoon asking President Obama if he intends to comply with War Powers Act regarding Libya. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Tenn., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Jim DeMint, R-S.C., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, all signed the letter which identifies this Friday, May 20th, as “the final day of the statutory sixty-day period for you to terminate the use of the United States Armed Forces in Libya under the War Powers Resolution.” In testimony before the Senate last week, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg promised Obama would comply with the...

The state of Kansas recently asked to join the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care plan filed by 20 state governments and the National Federation of Independent Business. Ohio, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are also seeking to join the multistate lawsuit, while Virginia and Oklahoma have filed separate challenges to the law. That brings the total number of state governments litigating against the plan to twenty-six. We now have a historically unprecedented situation where a majority of state governments are challenging the constitutionality of a major recently passed federal law. In our two hundred year history of constitutional...

Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that he hopes the Comedy Central host can persuade enough Republican senators to vote for a 9/11 health bill so it can head to the president’s desk. Stewart has dedicated lengthy segments on “The Daily Show” to the legislation that would help the first responders on Sept. 11.

Indonesian prosecutors on Tuesday sought a seven-month prison sentence for a US retiree accused of blasphemy after he allegedly pulled the plug on a mosque loudspeaker during a prayer reading. The August 22 incident in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan resulted in retired Californian engineer Gregory Luke, 64, needing a police escort from his home on Lombok island as a mob tore it to pieces around him. (Snip) Mr Luke has previously denied pulling the plug on the loudspeakers used to broadcast the call to prayer – a feature on most mosques in Indonesia.

When President George W. Bush called for a kind of line-item veto four years ago, the top Senate Democrat said it was like getting a "bad sore throat," and the No. 2 House Democrat called it "a sham." On Monday, President Obama asked them to reconsider and pass something very like it, for his sake.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is seeking "clarification" on Israel's plans to build 20 new apartments in east Jerusalem, the largely Arab section of the disputed holy city. The White House said it stands by its long-held assertion that Israeli building in Jerusalem is destructive to the Mideast peace process. Israel's announcement of the new building project came as President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two unusually low-profile meetings at the White House late Tuesday.

The meta-message of Cass Sunstein's new book delivers a warning to those who would spread Internet "rumors" about Barack Obama. The Regulatory Czar's latest book is entitled Rumors. It purports to be about how rumors spread. To that end, it's full of remarkable insights such as "Many of us accept false rumors because of either our fears or our hopes." (p. 6) "Your willingness to believe a rumor will inevitably depend on the information with which you start." (p. 19) "Sometimes people believe rumors because other people believe them." (p. 28) Plus the shocking revelation that "Many rumors spread conspiracy...

Republicans are likening Rep. Alan Grayson's remark to Rep. Joe Wilson's widely criticized shout of "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress earlier this month. Taking a page from Democrats who disciplined Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson earlier this month, Republicans are seeking their own pound of flesh from a Democratic congressman who said Tuesday that the GOP wants Americans to "die quickly"

(IsraelNN.com) Many American Jewish organizations have publicly offered words of support for U.S. President Barack Obama's He told the religious leaders, "I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth." healthcare nationalization plans. However, some expressed serious reservations over certain aspects of the likely reforms. On Wednesday, Obama devoted a single conference call to non-Orthodox Jewish religious leaders before addressing over 140,000 other American religious leaders to promote his ideas on healthcare. In his first conference call of the day, President Obama spoke with over 1,000 rabbis and lay leaders from the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements

US Mideast envoy George Mitchell's first endeavor upon landing in Israel Monday night was to try and lower the volume in the US dispute with Israel over settlement construction. Mitchell emphatically denied he had said, as was reported Sunday in the Hebrew press, that the days of Israel lying to the US over settlements were over.

BOSTON -- Climate czar Carol Browner said she wants Congress to establish a broad U.S. greenhouse-gas policy before global climate-change talks near the end of the year. Speaking at a conference Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ms. Browner said she is confident Congress can move forward on a climate-change policy, citing hearings scheduled for next week on sweeping legislation proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass). Ms. Browner didn't provide a timetable for when she would like to see congressional action, but said advancing climate-change legislation is "absolutely essential" to what the...

The cluster of special federal tax benefits and subsidies for homeowners has long seemed politically untouchable. Those include deductions for mortgage interest, local property taxes and capital gains exclusions on up to $500,000 in sale profits. Is the Obama administration serious about beginning to limit at least some of these subsidies?

PHOENIX - Sen. John McCain is finding out what the Republican presidential nomination is worth this week. Then he plans to buff his foreign policy credentials, remind the nation of his long military history and try to frame the issues for the November election — in three separate tours while his two Democratic opponents continue to struggle for their party's nomination. "Whenever you're the nominee of your party, I think people will want to re-examine the candidate," the senator said before leaving Arizona following a weekend at home. "I'd like to believe that all 300 million Americans know me, but...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Jim McDermott said Friday he will ask the Supreme Court to decide whether he had a right to disclose contents of an illegally taped telephone call involving House Republican leaders a decade ago. A federal appeals court ruled in May that the Washington state Democrat should not have given reporters access to the tape-recorded telephone call of Republican leaders discussing the House ethics case against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. McDermott's offense was especially egregious since he was a senior member of the House ethics committee, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of...

LONDON - The United States argued Thursday for the extradition of a radical Islamic cleric imprisoned in Britain, accusing him of involvement in a global conspiracy to wage terrorist attacks on the U.S. and other Western countries. Abu Hamza al-Masri has been charged in the United States with trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, conspiring to take hostages in Yemen and facilitating terrorist training in Afghanistan. He is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for fomenting racial hatred and urging his followers to kill non-Muslims. "He advocated the defense of Islam through unlawful, violent and armed aggression,"...

MIAMI - The former head of a national organization of black Baptist churches spent four years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from the group. Now he wants one of his old jobs back: leader of the organization's Florida chapter. The Rev. Henry Lyons, 65, was wildly popular before his conviction and is still highly regarded by many church members. He was vying with two other ministers Wednesday to lead the Florida General Baptist Convention, a chapter of the National Baptist Convention USA, which claims to represent some 7.5 million members of black churches nationwide. Representatives of member churches...