Stephen Dinan
Articles by Stephen Dinan
Out of debate ideas, Congress turns to God
With a government shutdown looming and all sides digging in, the men of the cloth are weighing in, with the Senate chaplain delivering a stinging rebuke Friday morning of the shutdown showdown playing out in Congress. Published September 27, 2013
Congress takes action against NSA phone snooping; security argument fails
Congress took the first steps Thursday to restrain the NSA's phone-snooping program, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein laying out details of a bill that require phone data be deleted more quickly and agents to let a secret court know immediately every time they want to dig through the data. Published September 26, 2013
Obama energy nominee Ron Binz becomes climate change battleground
President Obama's nominee to head an obscure but powerful energy panel is in deep trouble on Capitol Hill, but the White House said Thursday it's still standing by Ron Binz in what is shaping up to be a major battle over Mr. Obama's climate agenda. Published September 26, 2013
Republican infighting over health care flares in Senate as shutdown looms
The Republican rift over Obamacare spilled onto the Senate floor Thursday during an ugly debate in which Sen. Ted Cruz questioned a colleague's knowledge of Senate rules and Sen. Bob Corker retorted that Mr. Cruz was putting his political ambitions ahead of his party and the country. Published September 26, 2013
Boehner rejects Senate stopgap spending bill
House Speaker John A. Boehner flatly ruled out a "clean" stopgap spending measure on Thursday, signaling that the House is not likely to accept the bill Senate Democrats are pushing through their chamber, and that both sides could be headed for shutdown. Published September 26, 2013
Video may record border agents’ actions as complaints rise
The federal agency that oversees the U.S. borders said Wednesday it will begin testing the use of video cameras, possibly on agents' and officers' uniforms, as the Obama administration tries to get a handle on complaints about excessive use of force. Published September 25, 2013
House committee demands unredacted security clearance report on Navy Yard gunman
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has begun to look into Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis and on Wednesday asked the Obama administration to turn over the unredacted 2007 background investigation report that approved his secret security clearance. Published September 25, 2013
State Department security still lacking a year after Benghazi: OIG report
A year after the Benghazi attack, the State Department still doesn't have a good handle on managing security risks at foreign diplomatic missions, the department's internal auditor said in a report being released Wednesday. Published September 25, 2013
As Sen. Ted Cruz gives a long speech, Treasury gets short on funding
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that it has less than a month's worth of room to maneuver before it hits the debt limit, dropping yet another major fiscal deadline in the lap of a Congress already stymied over the annual spending bills. Published September 25, 2013
Internal Senate email warns lawmakers not to sign up for Obamacare yet
The Senate this week warned lawmakers and their staff not to sign up for Obamacare's health exchanges, saying that the administration hasn't yet finalized the rules for how to keep paying for their premiums. Published September 25, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz’s talkathon mostly a spectacle
Republican leaders said Tuesday that a filibuster attempt to prevent a spending bill from reaching the Senate floor was a losing tactic in the fight against Obamacare, and instead began to ramp up pressure on a handful of Democrats, saying the real battle will be an end-of-week vote specifically on whether to keep funding the health care law. Published September 24, 2013
Harry Reid: There is no filibuster
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that despite an expected talk-a-thon by Sen. Ted Cruz and his allies in the fight to defund Obamacare, that does not mean the GOP is succeeding in filibustering. Published September 24, 2013
Top senator calls for scrapping key snooping Patriot Act section
The Senate's senior lawmaker said Tuesday that it is time to repeal provisions of the Patriot Act that the intelligence community has relied on to collect all Americans' phone records, saying they are not making the country safer. Published September 24, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz fights for his own victory with threat of government shutdown
Sen. Ted Cruz has become a marked man in Washington, where his insistence that Republicans hold fast to defunding Obamacare — even if it means flirting with a government shutdown — has been derided from across the GOP political spectrum. Published September 23, 2013
Lois Lerner, IRS official in tea party scandal, forced out for ‘neglect of duties’
Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS tea party targeting scandal, retired from the agency Monday morning after an internal investigation found she was guilty of "neglect of duties" and was going to call for her ouster, according to congressional staff. Published September 23, 2013
Illegal immigration on the upswing, up to 11.7 million: report
The U.S. illegal immigrant population has begun to tick back up with the improving economy, rising to 11.7 million last year, according to the latest estimates Monday from the Pew Hispanic Center. Published September 23, 2013
In a shutdown, Obama picks what’s essential
A government shutdown would leave wide latitude to President Obama to decide exactly which federal agencies stop working and which ones are deemed "essential services" that have to keep going even through a shutdown. Published September 22, 2013
Energy nominee Ron Binz loses voltage with contradictions, Obama coal rules
President Obama's nominee to a top energy post is hanging on by a thread after a poor performance last week at a confirmation hearing where he failed to win over key supporters and even appeared to have misled a Senate committee about his record of support for a coal-fired energy plant. Published September 22, 2013
House passes spending bill to defund Obamacare
House Republicans passed their stopgap funding bill Friday to keep government open while terminating the new health care law, setting up a final showdown next week with Senate Democrats and President Obama who have firmly rejected that. Published September 20, 2013
Benghazi investigators gave Hillary Clinton heads-up on findings
The leaders of the State Department's Benghazi probe defended their inquiry into the 2012 attack, but they acknowledged to Congress on Thursday that their mission was limited in scope and faced questions over why they gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton an advance look at their findings. Published September 19, 2013
