Authorities in hazardous materials suits searched a downtown Spokane apartment Saturday, investigating the recent discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin.

Inmates at jails in Indianapolis, Baltimore, St. Louis and Philadelphia face the nation's highest levels of sexual abuse at the hands of guards, according to a new federal report based on surveys of inmates at U.S. jails and prisons.

The growing use of unmanned surveillance "eyes in the sky" aircraft raises a thicket of privacy concerns, but Congress is getting mixed advice on what, if anything, to do about it.

Seeking to keep pace with changing technology, Illinois toughened penalties Saturday for those who use social media and text messaging to organize violent "flash mobs" like those that have occurred on Chicago's Michigan Avenue and in other tourist areas.

A recent-cost study on the Senate immigration-reform bill has sparked debate in Washington about whether the United States would be better off economically by allowing its roughly 11 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country under their non-legal status instead of giving them the opportunity to become citizens.

State Sen. Mark Obenshain has won the Republican nomination for attorney general in Virginia 35 years after his father won the party's U.S. Senate nomination.

The first revelation that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups came in a planted question during a lawyers’ conference earlier this month, the attorney who asked the question confirmed Saturday with Fox News.

Two top-tier Democratic prospects recently bypassed running for Senate seats in Georgia and South Dakota -- showing that Republicans aren't the only ones with internal jostling and recruiting hiccups ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Authorities in hazardous materials suits searched a downtown Spokane apartment Saturday, investigating the recent discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin.

The IRS targeting Tea Party groups and other conservative-leaning political organizations has reignited calls for reform and the argument among Capitol Hill Republicans that the federal government has become too big and out of control.

Virginia's activist conservative attorney general has won the Republican Party's gubernatorial nomination by acclamation.

Sunbathers flocking to Southern California beaches are used to feeding the meter or paying a parking attendant. Not so along the less developed north coast where it's customary to ditch cars on the shoulder of Highway 1 to surf, swim or picnic.

A group that supports gun control filed suit Thursday against a north Georgia town that recently passed a law requiring gun ownership that it said is mostly symbolic.

Colorado sheriffs upset with gun restrictions adopted in the aftermath of last year's mass shootings filed a federal lawsuit Friday, challenging the regulations as unconstitutional.

Jay Devereaux hadn’t paid much attention to the daily drumbeat of partisan politics in D.C. He wasn’t a Washington nerd, didn’t know who said what during congressional hearings nor did he care. But when news broke that the government was using taxpayer money to bail out big Wall Street banks, he started paying attention and didn’t like what he was hearing.

Americans were in danger. That was the chief argument Attorney General Eric Holder tried to make this week for why Justice Department officials seized two months' worth of phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press. But the AP has strongly refuted from the start claims that it put the country in danger

Questioning during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing revealed that a pro-life group applying for a 501(c)(3) may have been asked by the Internal Revenue Service to detail the content of their prayers.

Senate Republicans joined their House colleagues in calling on a government watchdog agency to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius soliciting donations from companies her agency might regulate -- part of an effort to sign up uninsured Americans for ObamaCare.

An Internal Revenue Service watchdog on Friday said he informed Obama administration officials last June, in the heat of the 2012 election season, that a probe was under way over the agency's targeting of conservative groups. 

President Barack Obama's budget would trim projected federal deficits by $1.1 trillion over the coming decade, using nearly $6 in higher revenues for every $1 in reduced spending to achieve it, Congress' nonpartisan budget analyst said Friday.