WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Al Gore made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to support the man who's become the new face of climate action in Washington.

"Sheldon Whitehouse has become the leading United States Senate advocate for solving the climate crisis, and you ought to be...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the story of the National Security Agency’s phone records surveillance, "doesn't have a clue" about how the program actually works.

George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "The Week" had asked...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday suggested that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has lost his credibility in fighting global terrorism.

McCain argued on CNN's "State of the Union" that the government's vast surveillance program is not "necessarily wrong" because it operates under court oversight. Paul, who appeared on...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Sunday promised to release the full transcripts of interviews between committee staff and Internal Revenue Service employees if Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) doesn't.

Last week Issa released excerpts of the interviews with...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Sunday expressed skepticism over whether the government's vast intelligence-gathering program is entirely necessary to thwart terrorist plots.

"It's unclear to me that we've developed any intelligence through the [phone call] metadata program that's led to the...

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the board of a leading environmental advocacy group is also a hedge fund manager, and his firm is heavily invested in the oil giant BP, according to financial documents.

League of Conservation Voters Chairman Scott Nathan is chief risk officer at The...

WASHINGTON -- Chalk it up as a dubious distinction. A new analysis has found that the District of Columbia leads the states in arrests for marijuana possession. D.C. police made 846 such arrests per 100,000 residents in 2010. Nationally that number was 256 per 100,000.

More disturbing, blacks nationally were...

Winston, the skateboarding dog from D.C.'s Columbia Heights neighborhood, has captured the fancy of local bloggers. "He's not Tony Hawk, but to me you can't go wrong with a bulldog doing awesome stuff like this," wrote one blogger. "Winston is obsessive about his favorite sport," observed...

WASHINGTON -- With its mismatched curtains and ivy-covered front yard, D.C.'s real Alpha House is not very alpha looking.

But the dreary exterior of the Capitol Hill row house belies its status as the high-profile crashpad of a handful of Democratic members of Congress. "Of course it’s famous,” Rep. George...

WASHINGTON -- From the annals of PR disasters, a new winner. After being cited for rodent droppings and 16 other health violations, the Cosi at Metro Center has forbidden WUSA9's Russ Ptacek from looking under its tables, calling the inquiry "unwarranted" and accusing the investigative reporter of causing...

The Sierra Club has joined with Organizing For Action, an Obama-allied nonprofit group, to organize constituents of Rep. Ann Wagner to protest on Wednesday afternoon outside the congresswoman's Ballwin, Mo., office in an effort to get her to acknowledge the reality of manmade climate change.

The protestors claim the Missouri...

Mora County, a conservative ranching community in New Mexico, is the first U.S. county to ban the practice of fracking, according to reports from the Los Angeles Times. Wells are the only source of water in Mora, which is why last month officials announced a countywide ban on...

The United States' global rank in infrastructure has dropped off considerably from where it was four years ago, both in absolute and relative terms, according to a recent report.

U.S. infrastructure ranked 14th in the world this year, a full seven slots lower than it was in 2008,

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans objected to an attempt Thursday to repeal a controversial provision, informally dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act," that could allow seeds deemed unsafe to be planted regardless of judicial order.

The provision was quietly slipped into law earlier this year and generated a firestorm once its substance...

House Democrats on Wednesday will challenge the constitutionality of Republican legislation allowing Congress to unilaterally approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Northern Route Approval Act would eliminate the need for TransCanada Corp., the company constructing the pipeline, to get a cross-border permit from President Barack Obama. The pipeline would carry...

Mark Cuban's AXS TV has announced it will air the controversial "pro-fracking" documentary FrackNation the night after HBO premieres Gasland 2, Josh Fox's sequel to the Oscar-nominated anti-fracking documentary Gasland.

FrackNation explores the implications of hydraulic fracturing -- a process that involves the high-pressure injection of undisclosed chemicals into rocks...

Talking points being circulated by Organizing for Action, President Barack Obama's former campaign arm that now operates as a nonprofit organization supporting the president's agenda, are warning volunteers over activists working in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, according to a copy of the talking points provided to HuffPost.

The...

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz as U.S. secretary of energy. The vote was 97-0.

Moniz, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had previously served as energy undersecretary in the Clinton administration.

His nomination had been held up for weeks by...

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, sending the Obama administration's pick for consideration before the full Senate. The vote was 10 to 8, with members voting along party lines.

The committee approval comes...

WASHINGTON -- Top officials from President Barack Obama's campaign arm, which was recently rechristened as Organizing for Action, are working to dampen the passionate grassroots opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, just as the organization launches its campaign against climate change, according to donors and OFA members.

Leaders of the...