President Obama says several legal experts believe his plan is constitutional.
America's first significant patent reform in six decades is close to becoming law: It passed Congress on Thursday and President Obama has declared that he will sign the bill.
In April 2009, A family spoke out after the suicide of a Marine husband and father.
A bipartisan group of senators is asking President Barack Obama to change the current "insensitive" policy of not sending condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide.
The father of an American student who disappeared in Syria said Saturday his son "is safe and well," but remains in the hands of Syrian authorities.
Security for members of Congress is tight in Washinton, but not in their home districts, as Brianna Keilar reports.
Sen. Patrick Leahy issued a stern warning Tuesday on toning down the rhetoric that many say led to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona.
Justice Elena Kagan made the most of her first day on the Supreme Court bench before reluctantly vanishing behind the burgundy curtains -- leaving behind her bench-mates.
Killing legislation that would enable the government to shut down websites accused of piracy was a top priority for many technology trade groups Wednesday.
Sen. Patrick Leahy fondly remembers Sen. Robert Byrd during Elana Kagan's confirmation hearings.
After decades of inaction, lawmakers are finally closing in on a sweeping overhaul of America's antiquated, underfunded and extremely broken patent process. The popular move could help spur much-needed innovation and job creation -- but first, it has to get through a Senate logjam.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on June 28, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, announced Wednesday.
As reaction mounted to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' announcement that he will retire from the high court this summer, members of both parties drew lines over the upcoming battle to replace him.
CNN's Mark Preston says Justice John Paul Stevens retirement gives the President to make his mark on the Supreme Court.
While many in Washington believe that bipartisanship is long gone, two seasoned senators say it's not -- at least not yet.
The release of a report that would free up more than $100 million in U.S. aid to Mexico to combat drug cartels has been delayed by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor Wednesday to blast Democrats for setting a start date on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court on July 13, the committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said Tuesday.
Sen. Patrick Leahy talks about meeting with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday promised to apply the law "ultimately and completely" regardless of circumstance, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.
The search for a Supreme Court nominee has been trimmed to about half a dozen candidates by top White House officials, and an announcement may come by month's end, two sources close to the selection process tell CNN.
An independent commission is needed to determine who authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists, a leading advocate of such a panel said Sunday.
A Senate report says former Secretay of State Condoleezza Rice was deeply involved in allowing waterboarding.
Human rights organizations reacted angrily Thursday to the Obama administration's announcement that CIA officials would not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman called Wednesday for the establishment of a nonpartisan "commission of inquiry" to investigate allegations of wrongdoing against former Bush administration officials in their prosecution of the war on terrorism.
CNN's Briana Keilar reports on the confirmation hearings and votes taking place on Capitol Hill.
The initial confirmation vote for Eric Holder, President Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, was postponed for a week Wednesday after a rancorous meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The chairman of the of Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday he does not believe that Dr. Bruce Ivins acted alone in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks
Federal agents hope two computers seized from a Frederick, Maryland, public library yield more clues regarding anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins, according to new case documents.
Tens of billions in taxpayer dollars have been lost, wasted or remain unaccounted for in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some of those funds -- and some missing weapons -- have landed in insurgents' hands, a U.S. senator alleged Wednesday.
The U.S. military will continue to use cluster bombs but will try to reduce the number of civilian casualties by redesigning them so there are fewer ordnances that detonate long after the weapon is fired, officials said Wednesday.
The Justice Department has declassified a 2003 legal memo that said U.S. criminal laws and international treaties did not apply in the military treatment and interrogations of "enemy combatants" taken from the battlefield and held outside the United States.
Does the government do a good job in protecting your personal data? CNN's Jeanne Meserve reports.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday ruled out declaring openly whether he believes the interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torture.
The Secretary of Homeland Security said Thursday that he is committed to ending a centuries-old practice that allows United States citizens to cross U.S. land borders simply by saying they are Americans.
Congress has delayed a requirement that people entering the United States from Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean show a passport when arriving by land or sea.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected White House claims of executive privilege and demanded Thursday that key White House aides testify in the case of the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys.
Sen. Patrick Leahy says he will vote no on President Bush's nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for Attorney General.
The confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general was all but assured Friday when two key Democratic senators said they will vote in favor of the nominee despite questions about his views on "waterboarding" and the president's power to order electronic surveillance.
A top GOP senator Wednesday warned that Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general is "at risk" because the retired federal judge refused to categorically declare that a controversial interrogation technique is torture.
Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey made it clear to senators Wednesday he would be independent from the White House and would make legal decisions based "on facts and law, not by interests and motives."
President Bush on Friday defended his administration's methods of interrogating terrorism suspects, insisting, "This government does not torture people."
President Bush defended the methods used to question terror suspects, denying that the U.S. uses torture.
A former Guantanamo Bay detainee says he would lie to interrogators just to escape torture. CNN's Paula Newton reports.
The White House and Justice Department on Thursday strongly denied a published report that a secret Justice Department opinion in 2005 allowed the torture of terror detainees, months after the government publicly renounced it.
The White House asked for more time to produce documents regarding the legality of the Bush administration's no-warrant surveillance program Monday, but the chairman of the Senate committee that demanded them said "time is up."
Though Congress is on vacation, majority Democrats are keeping alive various fights with the White House with one common thread: Congress' access to administration documents and testimony to which President Bush has claimed executive privilege.
With potential perjury accusations hanging over him, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sent a letter to Senate leaders Wednesday acknowledging he "may have created confusion" in his previous testimony.
The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said he's not satisfied with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' attempt to clarify his testimony about no-warrant surveillance.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Thursday he will subpoena White House political adviser Karl Rove to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.
The White House on Monday reiterated its claim of executive privilege in the firings of federal prosecutors, saying former aides would not comply with congressional subpoenas for their testimony.
President Bush on Thursday refused to comply with subpoenas sent by House and Senate committees requesting documents about the firing of several U.S. attorneys last year.
His own department's Inspector General is looking into a conversation between Gonzales and a key aide
The Justice Department on Wednesday told an angry Senate Judiciary Committee chairman it does not have documents described in a subpoena that demands all materials relating to Karl Rove's possible involvement in the U.S. attorney firings.
Senators may have mended fences on contentious immigration legislation that sputtered in Congress last year, and they will head into next week's debate with what one GOP senator called a "grand bargain."
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman issued a subpoena Wednesday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in an attempt to get e-mails that President Bush's top political adviser sent regarding last year's firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
The White House "screwed up" by not requiring e-mails from Republican Party and campaign accounts to be saved and is trying to recover any documents that may have been deleted, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
The decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys in December was "properly made but poorly explained," a former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will tell a Senate committee Thursday.
Key congressional committee chairmen sent letters Thursday formally rejecting a White House proposal specifying the conditions under which White House aides could be interviewed by Congress about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor bluntly accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of lying to the Senate about replacing federal prosecutors with interim appointees and joined calls for Gonzales' resignation Thursday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider a bill to get rid of Big Pharma's payoffs to generic drugmakers that keep their low-cost drugs off the market, according to the committee chairman.
The Senate by a single vote Tuesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban desecrating the American flag.
The Senate began debate Monday on a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit the desecration of the American flag, the latest in a series of election-year votes pushed by the chamber's Republican leaders.
Republican and Democratic senators Thursday morning took turns in front of television cameras congratulating themselves and their esteemed colleagues for reaching a compromise on illegal immigration reform.
Senators, considering a bill to restrict energy industry mergers and tax breaks, grilled oil executives again Tuesday as to why they are reaping record profits while consumers pay record prices at the pump.
Three Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday that they would vote against President Bush's Supreme Court nominee.
Senators voted late Wednesday night to extend some expiring and contentious provisions of the Patriot Act for six months after leaders announced minutes earlier that they had reached a bipartisan agreement.
Congressional leaders reached a deal Thursday to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act, the government's premier anti-terrorism law. However, prominent Democratic senators said they opposed the compromise, and one threatened a filibuster.
Judge John Roberts, President Bush's pick to succeed William Rehnquist as the nation's chief justice, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the third day of his confirmation hearings Wednesday. Read below for some of the questions posed to the nominee in the hearings so far and his responses on the legal issues of the day.
Civil liberties groups will release a report Monday that accuses the Justice Department of violating individual rights under material witness statutes.
Two civil liberties groups will release a report Monday claiming the Justice Department has abused its power under the material witness statute and violated many of the the detainees' rights.
Marla Ruzicka, an American activist killed in an Iraqi car bombing last month, was remembered Saturday for her "tenaciousness" when she counted civilian war casualties at a special memorial service in Washington.
ChoicePoint President Douglas Curling and LexisNexis CEO Kurt Sanford admitted that they did not immediately report security breaches to victims while they were being grilled during Senate hearings over personal identity theft.
Survivors of the great earthquake that struck off Sumatra have used their hands to dig through rubble while searching for loved ones on the hard-hit Indonesian island of Nias.
Recently, President Bush renominated 12 men and women whom he had previously nominated for federal appellate court judgeships. During Bush's first term, the Senate had refused to confirm any of the 12 -- and had filibustered the nominations of seven. Now, Bush has asked the Senate to think again.
Many of the nation's leading civil rights groups expressed "serious concern" Monday with President Bush's nomination of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general, calling for "close scrutiny" by the Senate.
President Bush is half way through the job of restocking his Cabinet, naming three new members to help him push through his second term agenda.
Phishing is a particularly pernicious type of Internet identity theft scam. So far, little has been done to stop it. But that will change if a promising new anti-phishing bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy becomes law.
Video of U.S. forces quelling disturbances at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility were shown to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy said.
Vice President Dick Cheney has said he didn't regret cursing at Sen. Patrick Leahy earlier this week, and said he felt better after the incident.
Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.
A Democratic senator Tuesday called for a congressional investigation into whether Vice President Dick Cheney had a role in awarding a no-bid contract in Iraq to his old company, the oil-services giant Halliburton.
The top federal prosecutor in New York will lead an investigation into whether computer files of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats were accessed improperly, the panel's leading Democrat said Monday.
Mary Beth Cahill used blunt talk and discipline to bring back John Kerry. No surprise from this working-class Catholic girl
Two leading Democratic senators asked Chief Justice William Rehnquist on Thursday about the propriety of a hunting trip Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took with Vice President Dick Cheney while Cheney has a case pending before the high court.
U.S. senators are powerful and egocentric enough to overlook most of their colleagues' indiscretions: alcoholism, philandering, and, of course, betrayal of principle to win reelection. One act is b...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THIS updated: Mon Mar 21 1994 00:01:00
PATRICK LEAHY, 53, U.S. Senator (D-Vermont), on the impact on local businesses when Wal-Mart moves in, as the retailer now wants to do in St. Albans: ''My preliminary conclusion is that the arrival...
''When consumers walk down the aisles of their supermarkets these days,'' says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, ''they encounter scores ...
Who is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate? The last time we asked this fateful question (June 19, 1989), the surprising answer was Claiborne Pell, the spaced-out aristocrat from Rhode Islan...
Fortune: NOW HEAR THIS updated: Mon Sep 24 1990 00:01:00
-- PATRICK LEAHY, 50, Democratic Senator from Vermont, in advocating a ''war tax'' to finance U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf: ''This would demonstrate to the world that we are in there for the...
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