Four key Hillary Clinton staffers from 2008 unlikely to sign on for 2016 bid

Jason Horowitz 

They still support her, but Wolfson, Tanden, Penn and Solis Doyle have forged their own career paths.

Banks slow to pay out mortgage relief funds

Danielle Douglas 

Less than half of the money due U.S. homeowners in settlements brokered by the government has been paid, delaying help to victims of the discrimination and shoddy lending that epitomized the crisis.

Rubio blames Obama for the latest scandals

Sen. Marco Rubio’s efforts to reform immigration may be drawing skepticism from many conservatives. But scandals facing the White House have allowed him to shift his message back to the one that made him a star in the first place: The threat to America posed by excessive government.

"What we’ve seen in the last seven or eight days have really shaken me," Rubio said. "History teaches us that when government is too large and too powerful, no matter who’s in charge, it will lead to abuses."

Barbra Streisand

Singer; Actress; Director; Composer; Activist

Sometimes in the face of national tragedy, politics should take a backseat. The hypocrisy of turning Benghazi into a deliberate cover-up scandal is preposterous at a time when the nation faces so many serious problems.

Remember Whitewater and the "travel office" non-scandals of the 1990s? The Republicans and certain media outlets wasted the nation's time and millions of dollars in pursuit of alleged wrongdoing by First Lady Hillary Clinton. It was all sound and fury signifying nothing. Two decades later, the same script is being revisited about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which the president and Secretary Clinton clearly labeled a "terrorist act."

The prospect of al-Qaeda getting chemical weapons is drawing closer

For all the agonising in Western capitals about whether to channel weapons to “moderate” rebel militias in Syria and the renewed attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the civil war, one issue above all others is dominating the thinking of military planners, intelligence agencies and their political masters: the increasing danger of the regime’s vast stock of chemical weapons getting into the hands of groups with links to al-Qaeda.

Mr Obama’s other red line—the passing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into the hands of jihadist terrorists—is, according to intelligence sources, in real and possibly imminent danger of being breached. According to these sources, the past few weeks has seen a flurry of nervous activity that could result in intervention of some kind but which is also giving new urgency to diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. However great Vladimir Putin’s distaste for doing anything to help the West over Syria, the Russian president should in theory be no keener on seeing chemical weapons in jihadist hands than Mr Obama.

Though the regime is believed to have tried desperately to consolidate its stocks of chemical weapons in areas it still controls, it has so much of the stuff—around 1,000 tonnes of mustard gas, sarin and the even more lethal VX held at about 12 sites—that in the chaos engulfing the country some will almost inevitably fall into rebel hands sooner rather than later unless something is done. Indeed, Jabhat al-Nusra, the most powerful rebel faction and the one with closest links to al-Qaeda, reportedly came very close to capturing a stockpile near Aleppo earlier this year. A senior NATO official argues that, whereas it is premature to talk about al-Qaeda getting hold of chemical weapons, conditions on the ground make it increasingly likely.

President faces a gulf between two Americas

Chris Cillizza 

 Have the past 10 days been the inevitable result of government run amok? Or much ado about nothing?

In one America, the events of the past 10 days have exposed the true colors of President Obama and his administration. From edited talking points about the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, to the secret seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters to the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, a single message has emerged: This is the inevitable result of government run amok.

Politicians who cross the NRA soon feel the wrath of gun-rights group

Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz

Even conservative lawmakers who go against the NRA are labeled as traitors and face negative ads.

White House aide: IRS scandal will not distract from policy agenda

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer defends administration's handling of recent controversies, says "partisan fishing expeditions" won't distract the White House from pushing President Obama's policy agenda.

US's escape from an economic mess

Larry Elliott

America's economic structure, its leaders' ability to make rapid political decisions and cultural memories of the Great Depression have been the engine of its recovery.

From a European perspective, the world's biggest economy looks in reasonable shape. It may not be firing on all cylinders but the economy is expanding and jobs are being created. That cannot be said of the eurozone, where unemployment has risen to a record one in eight of the workforce and the economy has contracted for the past 18 months.

McConnell Bashes 'Culture of Intimidation'

On Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' Senator Mitch McConnell didn't mince words when criticizing President Obama's administration for the IRS scandal. 'The president demonizes his opponents,' said McConnell. 'The nanny state is here to tell us all what to do, and if we start criticizing, you get targeted.'

McConnell predicts Obamacare will be 'biggest issue' of 2014 election

Sean Sullivan

The Senate's top Republican predicted Sunday morning that President Obama's health care law will be the biggest issue of the 2014 midterm elections.

“I don’t know what the issues will be next year. If I were predicting what’s likely to be the biggest issue in the 2014 election, I think it would be Obamacare,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.” “I think it’s coming back big-time.”

Jihadist groups seize Syrian oil wells

Obama faces a deficit in trust in government

Dan Balz

 The president said he would make government smarter, but current controversies say otherwise.

What has happened since Obama laid down that challenge for his administration? More Americans favor smaller government over bigger government than when he was first elected, according to exit polls from last November. Public confidence in the federal government is as low as it has ever been, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this spring.

Controversies show paradox of Obama’s style

Philip Rucker and Peter Wallsten

His sometimes-bold, sometimes-timid approach to executive clout was on display in recent controversies over IRS actions and the Justice Department’s surveillance of AP journalists.

Obama has been willing to push the bounds of executive power when it comes to making life-and-death decisions about drone strikes on suspected terrorists or instituting new greenhouse gas emission standards for cars. But at other times he has been skittish. When immigration activists first urged him to halt deportations of many illegal immigrants, for instance, Obama said he didn’t have the authority to do so. He eventually gave in after months of public protest and private pressure from immigrant and Hispanic advocates, granting relief to certain people who had been brought to the United States as children.

Some officials say the Associated Press scoop on a thwarted terrorist plot by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen harmed the effort to neutralize a master bomb-builder. Does that excuse the Obama administration's aggressive crackdown on national security leaks?