Israeli media carried Ambassador Michael Oren's remarks and reported that the U.S. is pressing the Jewish nation to scrap the contentious east Jerusalem building project.

White House strategist David Axelrod said Democrats will persuade enough lawmakers to vote "yes."

This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes ? nearly $29 billion more.

Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is backing off giving a single regulator the power to oversee all banks, say people familiar with Monday's announcement.

The White House and Democratic leaders, who express certainty that the House will approve a Senate-passed health care bill, insist the widely-reviled bill won't become law even though President Obama must sign it into law before changes demanded by House lawmakers can be made.

President Obama was correct on both policy and decorum when he stated his views on a controversial Supreme Court ruling during his State of the Union speech attended by six Supreme Court justices, senior White House officials said Sunday. 

Expressing an increasing confidence that a massive health care overhaul will pass Congress -- despite dire warnings from Republicans about its impact on Democrats in November -- White House officials on Sunday dared the GOP to bring it on during this fall's 2010 midterm election.

The White House issued a statement Sunday pledging support for Mexico's government to break drug trafficking in the country after recent violence took the lives of three people associated with the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Jaurez.

Guns that were previously used in prosecutions by police were traded to licensed gun dealers but somehow ended up in the hands of individuals not legally permitted to carry one.

The White House is raising the stakes with Israel, calling it an "insult" and an "affront" that the Jewish nation would continue plans to build 1,600 new apartments during a construction freeze aimed at re-igniting peace talks with Palestinians.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs expressed confidence Sunday that the House will pass a Senate version of health insurance reform that is tied up by lawmakers doubtful that the Senate bill can be fixed after it's signed into law.

Political pressure is being applied from all angles in Washington, as Democratic leaders scramble to close the deal on health care reform, and Republicans are being tapped to argue against -- and even in favor of -- the legislation

If a yearlong struggle to pass sweeping health care reform that will affect every American wasn't enough for Democrats, they have now decided to add a sweeping overhaul of student aid to the bill.

The chief executive of the Catholic Health Association, Carol Keehan, wrote on the group's Web site that although the legislation isn't perfect, it represents a "major first step" toward covering all Americans and would make "great improvements" for millions of people. 

Utah's House majority leader resigned from the Legislature Saturday, two days after his confession about sitting nude in a hot tub with a teenage girl 25 years ago stunned this conservative state.

Mari Carmen Aponte, who was nominated by Obama in December for ambassador to El Salvador, withdrew her nomination to another diplomatic post in the Clinton era following questions about her past relationship with someone who had apparently caught the attention of the FBI.

A hospital official says Kissinger's condition was 'not serious' while he was being treated at Seoul's Severance Hospital and he had recovered after a day of medical treatment, spokesman Han Jin-ho said.

A GOP lawmaker says that the White House committed a "crime" if it offered Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak a federal job in exchange for dropping his primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.

Georgia lawmakers are poised to take up a controversial bill that would outlaw abortions prompted by the baby's race or gender, an issue that has inspired a billboard campaign claiming a racial conspiracy is behind the termination of pregnancies.

The president said in his weekly radio and Internet address he would send Congress his proposed overhaul of the 2001 education law that focused on accountability in the classroom but has fallen short of its original goals.

AP - Still seeking votes for his proposed health care overhaul, President Barack Obama appears ready to reverse his position and allow unpopular deal-sweetening measures in the hopes of finding Democratic support for legislation whose future will be decided in coming days.

AP - Combining Obama administration and Republican priorities, the leading Senate author of a sweeping rewrite of the nation's financial regulations is looking for consensus with a proposal that neither side of the political spectrum is ready to embrace.

AP - Let the count begin.

AP - Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn.

AP - China is once again the country Congress loves to hate.

AP - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's wife has been released from a Virginia hospital, where she was taken after being seriously injured in a traffic accident.

AP - The White House on Sunday defended President Barack Obama's scathing criticism of a Supreme Court decision that allows unions and corporations to funnel unlimited dollars to political campaigns.

AP - President Barack Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries.

AP - It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation's demand for truth. From Ireland to Germany, Europe's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy to face its demons.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — The looming vote for final passage of the historic health-care bill is the stiffest challenge House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has faced in his three-plus years as the lawmaker responsible for counting heads and ensuring passage of major legislation.