Jay Carney

WASHINGTON - Facing questions about President Obama's experience with firearms, the White House has released a photo of the chief executive in the act of firing one. Obama, in an interview published by the New Republic, claimed that had used a gun at the Camp David presidential retreat. "We do skeet shooting all the time," the president said. "Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. " That prompted snickering from some of the president's conservative critics and questions for the president's press secretary.

  More than once, Hadiya Pendleton and President Obama walked the same streets. Last week, the high school sophomore performed as a majorette at his inauguration in Washington. On Tuesday, she was gunned down in a park  a mile from Obama's home on Chicago's South Side. By Wednesday, as word of Hadiya's death rippled around the country, an official petition cropped up asking that Obama and his family return to their hometown to attend the girl's funeral. “The president and first lady's thoughts and prayers are with the family of Hadiya Pendleton,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - Saying his second inauguration should be an "affirmation that we're all in this together," President Obama spent Saturday volunteering at a local school on a National Day of Service meant to honor slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As the capital hummed with final preparations for the quadrennial spectacle of a presidential inaugural, Obama and the first lady helped stain a bookshelf at Burrville Elementary School...

WASHINGTON - Wednesday's "photo of the day" on the White House website showed an unusual sight in Oval Office history - the president surrounded by top advisors, only half of whom are white men. The picture seemed calculated to counter criticism that President Obama's new set of Cabinet appointees so far all are white and male. Obama is expected to name his chief of staff, Jacob Lew, to lead the Treasury Department. Further compounding the diversity problem, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to leave the administration soon, and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis announced Wednesday that she was resigning.

WASHINGTON -- The White House is again coming to the defense of a possible Cabinet nominee, even before President Obama makes up his mind on the post. White House spokesman Jay Carney backed up former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel on Thursday, saying the possible pick for secretary of Defense has been a "remarkable servant to this country. " "What I can tell you is that Sen. Hagel fought and bled for his country. He served his country well. He was an excellent senator," Carney told reporters.

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner has launched "Plan B" in budget talks, announcing Tuesday that he will bring for a vote his proposal to extend expiring tax breaks for all but the wealthiest Americans who earn more than $1 million a year. The Ohio Republican's decision, shared behind closed doors during a morning meeting of rank-and-file lawmakers, is an abrupt shift after he and Obama substantially narrowed their differences in the latest round of talks. The prospects in Congress for Boehner's proposal are unclear.

WASHINGTON -- The day after President Obama made an emotional and direct vow to use all the power of his office to try to prevent gun violence, the White House offered no indication how he planned to fulfill that promise and said only that steps would be taken “in the coming weeks.” “I don't have a series of proposals to present to you,” a grim-faced Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said at a contentious press briefing Monday during...

WASHINGTON - In summer 2011, negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner over raising the debt ceiling featured plenty of drama. There were private grumbles, a very public round of golf, a phone call from the White House that went unreturned and, overall, a lost opportunity to secure a "grand bargain" on spending and taxes. Now, as high-stakes talks between Obama and Boehner rev up again, the lessons of that summer appear to be producing a new steadiness and comfort level between the two men. After weeks of private phone calls and public posturing, the Ohio Republican quietly ducked into the White House on Sunday for his first one-on-one meeting with the president since mid-2011.

WASHINGTON -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was in the nation's capital Thursday to lobby for billions in federal aid for his and other states affected by Superstorm Sandy, amid uncertainty over the fate of a supplemental appropriations bill that will be considered during the "fiscal cliff" debate over spending and taxes. Christie met with senior Obama administration officials, and briefly with the president himself, before heading to Capitol Hill for a scheduled appearance with Garden State lawmakers who are pushing for relief beyond the $50 billion that the White House was expected to request.

WASHINGTON - The White House on Monday dismissed a Republican counteroffer to avert the so-called fiscal cliff as failing to “meet the test of balance” by resisting higher tax rates for the wealthy, a point that remains a key hurdle in the impasse over spending and revenues. Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in a statement that what congressional Republicans had billed as a “good-faith effort” to move toward compromise contained “nothing new” and offered no specifics on how they'd achieve revenue targets included in the plan.