Stephen Dinan
Articles by Stephen Dinan
Republican senators join court case against Obama’s recess picks
Senate Republicans on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to hear the case involving President Obama's recess appointments, saying the administration is trying "to confuse and mislead" the justices by downplaying the weighty constitutional issues at stake Published May 28, 2013
GOP lawmakers want Obama to hear out head of ICE union
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a top Republican senator on Thursday told President Obama that he and his aides must meet with immigration law enforcement "whistleblowers" who can expose the flaws in the Senate immigration bill. Published May 24, 2013
Senate OKs judge for D.C. circuit on 97-0 vote
Senators voted 97-0 Thursday to confirm Srikanth Srinivasan to a judgeship on the vitally important U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after Republicans relented and allowed the vote to go forward this week. Published May 23, 2013
Top Senate investigators: Lerner misled Congress
Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain, who together run the Senate's permanent investigative subcommittee, sent a letter to the IRS on Thursday calling for Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the agency's conservative-targeting scandal, to be suspended for dereliction of duty. Published May 23, 2013
Boehner: House won’t pass Senate immigration bill
House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday flatly ruled out chances of the House passing the Senate's immigration bill, saying his chamber will debate its own bill instead. Published May 23, 2013
Reid: Immigration comes before Perez nomination
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he won't start to pick any big fights with Republicans because he's afraid of upsetting the momentum to pass an immigration bill — and that includes delaying President Obama's Labor Department nominee. Published May 23, 2013
Obama defends drone strikes, reignites Gitmo debate in crucial speech
U.S. drone strikes have killed four Americans, including one who was "specifically targeted" and three others who were not targets, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter to Congress on Wednesday, publicly confirming the strikes for the first time. Published May 22, 2013
Reid: D.C. court needs Obama nominees for ideological balance
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he will push to confirm more judges to the federal appeals court in Washington after that court ruled this year that President Obama's broad use of recess appointment powers was unconstitutional. Published May 22, 2013
House Republicans find holes in immigration bill
Less than 24 hours after senators powered their immigration bill through committee, the legislation came under fire in the House, where the former head of immigration enforcement testified that it has too many loopholes that could delay enforcement, let dangerous people in, and hamstring agents from fighting illegal immigration in the future. Published May 22, 2013
Immigration reform bill clears committee hurdles, heads to full Senate
The Senate immigration bill cleared the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote Tuesday night, ducking — for now — big fights on guns, gay rights and how broadly the legalization is drawn, and leaving the 867-page overhaul mostly unscathed by conservative attacks. Published May 21, 2013
Group sues over IRS, demands agency approve application
True the Vote — one of the conservative groups the IRS subjected to special scrutiny in its application for tax-exempt status — sued the federal government on Tuesday, demanding the tax agency approve its application that has now been pending for three years. Published May 21, 2013
Immigration bill backers say not all back-taxes will be paid
The Senate immigration bill's authors acknowledged Tuesday that their legislation does not require illegal immigrants to pay all back taxes, saying it would be too difficult to make them ante up everything they might owe. Published May 21, 2013
Senate panel OKs tax-welfare benefits for newly legal immigrants
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Monday to allow illegal immigrants who get legal status to begin collecting tax-welfare payments, as the panel spent a fourth day working through amendments to the massive immigration bill and party-line splits began to emerge. Published May 20, 2013
Group fighting voter fraud among those waiting on IRS; reams of documents still not enough
A Texas group dedicated to combatting voter fraud applied for tax-exempt status in 2010 and has suffered three years of delays, been through four different IRS agents, undergone six FBI inquiries and submitted thousands of pages of documentation — and it still hasn't been approved. Published May 20, 2013
Labor union chief calls immigration bill dangerous, sees agency as ‘approval machine’
The Senate's immigration bill will raise national security risks and the Obama administration will do little more than "rubber-stamp" illegal immigrants into the program, endangering Americans, says the labor union representing the 12,000 employees who will have to approve the applications. Published May 20, 2013
Rethinking immigration rules for asylum after Boston
The Boston Marathon bombing hasn't derailed the immigration debate, but it has sent lawmakers back to the drawing board on some key provisions, including changes to the asylum system that the two suspects in the bombing used to come to the U.S. Published May 19, 2013
Non-deportation rate drops — to 99.2 percent
The Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama's new non-deportation policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday. Published May 18, 2013
House GOP issues subpoena in Benghazi investigation
The chairman of the House oversight committee on Friday subpoenaed the senior diplomat who ran the State Department's investigation into the Benghazi attack, saying lawmakers deserve to be able to depose him before he testifies publicly. Published May 17, 2013
2nd court invalidates Obama’s recess pick for NLRB
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he made a recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, marking the second panel to rebuke the administration and making the issue even more likely to draw Supreme Court scrutiny. Published May 16, 2013
Feds gave witness protection to terrorists
The federal government gave witness protection to known and suspected terrorists and the U.S. Marshals Service even lost track of two of those people, according to a report Thursday from the Justice Department's auditor that exposes the previously hidden side of the witness program. Published May 16, 2013
