Obama Administration

A popular government program enabling underwater borrowers who are current on their mortgages to refinance at lower rates will be extended for two more years.  The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year. HARP now will run through 2015, regulators announced Thursday . More than 2.2 million borrowers with little or no home equity have refinanced using the 4-year-old HARP, and consumer advocates and lenders welcomed the news of the extension.

WASHINGTON - Three years ago, the Obama administration brought criminal charges under the Espionage Act against Thomas Drake, an Air Force veteran and intelligence expert at the National Security Agency in Maryland. He was not accused of aiding the enemy or of revealing national secrets. He had, however, helped a Baltimore Sun reporter reveal a billion-dollar boondoggle at the NSA - a computerized data-scanning system that never worked as planned. The case against Drake collapsed on the eve of his trial when it was revealed that the information was not classified.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

TUCSON - Young people granted immigration relief and work permits under a new Obama administration program still won't be able to obtain driver's licenses in Arizona, a federal judge has ruled. Although the decision is a win for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who issued the executive order denying driver's licenses to this particular group, it's just the first battle in a case that will probably be argued on constitutional grounds. U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell on Thursday turned down a request for a preliminary injunction blocking Brewer's order but stated that the plaintiffs - a contingent of immigrant rights groups - would probably prevail on their claim that the governor's order violates guarantees of equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program is at last helping legions of American homeowners with upside-down mortgages. Nearly 1.1 million homeowners with little or no equity were able to refinance last year under HARP, which assists borrowers who are current on their monthly payments. That's nearly as many as in the three previous years combined, and the latest figures show that early this year, the pace of these refis abated only slightly. The program has become a success story after a stumbling start with slack lender participation.

WASHINGTON - Illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens will have an easier path to permanent residency under a new Obama administration rule that could affect as many as 1 million of the estimated 11 million people unlawfully in the United States. The rule issued Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security aims to reduce the time illegal immigrants are separated from their U.S. families while seeking legal status, officials said. Beginning March 4, illegal immigrants who can demonstrate that time apart from an American spouse, child or parent would create "extreme hardship" can apply for a visa without leaving the United States.

The number of homeowners refinancing their loans through a popular federal program that allows underwater homeowners to get new rates surged to more than 2 million in November. In November, almost 130,000 homeowners refinanced their loan through the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which allows underwater borrowers with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans to get lower rates, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The Obama administration instituted a streamlined version of the plan last year.

As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts. The reports specifically criticize the government's growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years.

Republicans are livid about the way the Obama administration handled the apprehension and arrest of an accused Somali terrorist. But — with one exception — the treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was a creditable balancing of national security concerns and due process. President Obama should resist pressure in Congress to make such an approach impossible. Warsame was arrested April 19 and interrogated on a U.S. Navy ship before being flown to New York. He is accused in a nine-count federal indictment of supplying material support to Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Somali group Shabab.

I recently returned from a week in Iraq, where I trained an elite security force unit on human rights and the law of combat operations. Discussions regarding the responsibility of commanders for the acts of their forces migrated to the issue of the United Nations' International Criminal Court. One Iraqi officer asked me, "If the United States believes in accountability over impunity, why are you not a party to the International Criminal Court?" I did not have a satisfactory answer. The answer for public consumption is that U.S. accession to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, is not an imminent issue because U.S. processes for achieving accountability function well: The military and civilian courts are open, the government already is bringing cases to court where the evidence warrants, and convictions are occurring on a sufficiently regular basis.

When the government obstructs the ability of a news organization to do its job, the most important victims are not journalists but readers. That's why long-standing guidelines set clear limits on how Justice Department prosecutors are expected to behave when interacting with the news media. "In recognition of the importance of freedom of the press to a free and democratic society," the government's own rules say, subpoenas for reporter's records or notes must be personally authorized by the attorney general, may be issued only after other sources are exhausted and are expected to be limited in scope to avoid gratuitous invasion into news gathering.

The use of unmanned aircraft to kill suspected terrorists, a practice that has dramatically escalated during the Obama administration, is receiving fresh and welcome scrutiny in Congress and elsewhere even as the number of drone strikes seems to be on the decline. Last week, Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry (R-Texas), the chairman of a House armed services subcommittee, introduced legislation to require the Pentagon to promptly inform Congress about every drone strike outside Afghanistan as well as about operations to kill or capture terrorists away from declared war zones.

The Obama administration overstepped its legal authority - and injected politics into what should have been a scientific decision - when it ordered the FDA to limit the availability of a common morning-after contraceptive without prescription to girls and women 17 and older. The FDA had already evaluated the drug and determined that it was safe for females of all ages and should be available to all. That's why U.S. District Court Judge Edward R. Korman last month overruled the administration's decision and ordered that the drug be made available without prescription to females regardless of age. The judge was absolutely right.

Here are three things the Obama administration has done that you probably didn't know about: Ever struggle with those accordion-style rubber sleeves on nozzles at the gas station? The sleeve -- technically a "vapor recovery nozzle" -- was required by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep gasoline vapors from leaking into the air. But most cars and trucks now have technology that does the job better, so last year the EPA abolished the nozzle requirement. Because each sleeve-equipped nozzle can cost as much as $300, the change will save gas stations thousands of dollars.

The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program is at last helping legions of American homeowners with upside-down mortgages. Nearly 1.1 million homeowners with little or no equity were able to refinance last year under HARP, which assists borrowers who are current on their monthly payments. That's nearly as many as in the three previous years combined, and the latest figures show that early this year, the pace of these refis abated only slightly. The program has become a success story after a stumbling start with slack lender participation.

JERUSALEM -- Not long ago, Chuck Hagel's past comments about Israel nearly torpedoed his nomination as Defense secretary. In his first visit here since winning confirmation, he's sticking to one word in particular: “Friend. " “I look forward to renewing some old friendships,” Hagel told reporters on the flight from Washington. Aides noted he had visited Israel six times as a U.S. senator from Nebraska and as a private citizen. After touring Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Hagel addressed a message in the guest book Sunday to “my friends of Israel.” He praised the museum and archive for its “beautiful and important tribute” and signed it, “your friend, Chuck Hagel.” Hagel has appeared a veteran statesman in his first two days of meetingS here, touting not only the close relationship between the United States and Israel but also his own fidelity to the Jewish people.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration tried anew Friday to defuse controversy over a requirement in the healthcare law designed to broaden access to contraception, proposing new regulations to protect some religious organizations from having to cover these services in their health plans. The proposal, which comes after more than a year of heated debate, expands an exemption from the contraceptive mandate for churches and other houses of worship. That was a nod to intense criticism from many religious groups that have been enraged by the provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires most employers to provide women contraceptive coverage with no co-pays or other cost-sharing.

The Times' Politics Now blog reports that the Obama administration has rejected a permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project. The decision was due by Feb. 21, under provisions voted in by Congress as part of the payroll tax cut extension in December, but the president and his appointees are expected to announce a decision as early as Wednesday. This does not mean, however, that the project is dead. The pipeline's parent company TransCanada will need to propose an alternative route to avoid putting the pipe over a large aquifer in Nebraska, and then it can resubmit its permits.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry told Congress on Wednesday that any chance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a separate Palestinian state may be lost in two years. The unusually specific prediction was intended to highlight Kerry's urgency in trying to encourage peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. "The window for the two-state solution is shutting," he said. "I think we have some period of time, a year and a half or two years, or it's over.