Obama picks Stein and Piwowar for SEC

President Obama late Thursday nominated two top Senate staffers to fill vacancies expected later this year on the Securities and Exchange Commission.Kara M. Stein, a legal counsel and senior policy adviser to Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), would fill a Democratic slot left open by commissioner Elisse B. Walter. Walter can serve until the end of the year or until a replacement is confirmed. Read fu

Fairfax County online standards tests hampered by Internet problems

Widespread technical glitches interrupted thousands of Fairfax County schools students taking Virginia’s standards of learning tests online Thursday.In a letter to parents, the district acknowledged “significant problems” while administering the online tests due to an outage with the school system’s Internet service provider. Read full article >>

I hate to say it, but what this country needs is another financial crisis

Almost a century ago, Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, got tired of listening to senators blather on about the nation’s needs and uttered the words that made him immortal: “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.” Today, with 24/7 blathering as our national political pastime, let me adapt Marshall’s 1917 remark: What this country needs to get its act together is a goo

Federal worker has 61 years of federal service and no plans to retire

It takes a special kind of person to really appreciate the Consumer Price Index.The CPI measures inflation, and lots of folks pay attention to it when the number (a 0.4 percent decrease in April) is released each month. Read full article >>

Teacher's resignation video: 'Everything I loved about teaching is extinct'

In the video below, veteran teacher Ellie Rubenstein of Highland Park, Ill., resigns after eloquently explaining how teaching has changed over the past 15 years of school reform and why she believes public education is being misdirected. Read full article >>

Obama: U.S. at ‘crossroads’ in fight against terrorism

President Obama said Thursday that the United States has reached a “crossroads” in its fight against terrorism and that it is time to redefine and recalibrate a war that eventually will end.Far from repudiating the controversial use of drones against terrorist targets, Obama defended the tactic as effective, legal and life-saving. But he acknowledged that threat levels have fallen to levels n

Obama picks Victoria Nuland for assistant state secretary, Douglas Lute for NATO

President Obama said Thursday that he plans to nominate Victoria Nuland as assistant secretary of state for Europe and retired Gen. Douglas E. Lute as ambassador to NATO.Nuland, the former State Department spokeswoman, has been accused by Republicans of helping mislead Congress and the public about last year’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Chr

Obama nominates former campaign aide to head OPM

President Obama has nominated Katherine Archuleta, a top official in his 2012 campaign, to head the Office of Personnel Management.Archuleta, the second Hispanic nominee for a political appointment during Obama’s second term, served as national political director on his reelection team and helped organize the blockbuster Democratic National Convention in Denver during his 2008 run. Her work i

Analysis: Obama expresses regrets but seeks to retain anti-terror powers

President Obama declared an end to a fearful chapter in American history on Thursday and demanded more from the country and himself as it enters the next.Obama’sspeech at the National Defense Universityreflected an unusual ambivalence from a commander in chief over the morality of his administration’s counterterrorism policies. Read full article >>

Chrysler, Tesla over federal loan repayment

DETROIT — Chrysler Group and Tesla Motors, both led by media-savvy executives, are trading public jabs over the definition of payback.Tesla wired $452 million Wednesday to repay the remaining portion of its U.S. Department of Energy loan, with interest. The company described itself as “the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.” Read full article >>

Three big federal agencies to close Friday

Three of the largest federal agencies will close to the public on Friday, the first time since the government shutdowns of the 1990s that large corners of the government have ceased operations on a weekday. Read full article >>

Institutional Shareholder Services settles civil charges on leaked data

Institutional Shareholder Services, the Rockville-based company that recommends to institutional investors how they should vote in corporate elections, agreed to pay $300,000 to settle civil charges involving an employee who leaked private client data. Read full article >>

What is it about Penny Pritzker?

And here we thought Senate Republicans were sharpening their knives for Penny Pritzker , the billionaire hotel and real estate magnate nominated by President Obama to be commerce secretary. But during her first Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, the GOP seemed to have donned kid gloves just for the occasion. Read full article >>

Digest

A band of thunderstorms battered the Oklahoma City area Thursday, slowing cleanup operations in the suburb where a tornado killed 24 people and destroyed thousands of homes this week.The first of the funerals, for a 9-year-old girl killed at a Moore elementary school that took a direct hit in Monday’s storm, took place Thursday morning. Relatives and friends of Antonia Candelaria huddled unde

Lillian Cunningham: A lesson from Cameroon in letting go of fear

For this installment of our "Micro Management Stories" video series, we interviewed Kah Walla about leadership. Walla ran for president in Cameroon's 2011 elections, and she shared with me her story of being kidnapped before the election and the lesson she drew from it about letting go of your fears. Read full article >>

IRS names replacement for Lerner

The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday announced that it had replaced Lois Lerner, a top official who oversaw the agency's "determinations" division during the scandal that involved targeting of conservative groups. Read full article >>

Gallup poll: 42 percent say the IRS is doing a poor job

EARLIER ON THE FIX: Gun control vs. gun rights, in one interactive graphic Generic ballot tilts toward Democrats Why hasn't Lois Lerner been fired? Read full article >>

Sri Srinivasan confirmed to serve on influential U.S. appeals court for D.C. Circuit

The Senate unanimously confirmed Sri Srinivasan on Thursday to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of the nation’s most influential courts.The 97 to zero vote in favor of Srinivasan, the principal deputy solicitor general, marks the first time since 2006 that the Senate has confirmed a nominee to the D.C. Circuit. President Obama has been hoping to shi

Jena McGregor: The Boy Scouts' leadership loss

On Thursday, the 1,400 voting members of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America voted to approve a resolution that would remove the restriction denying membership to youth based on their sexual orientation. "While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting," the organization said in a statement. "Going forward,

The best sentences we read today

-- "Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing has revealed he was once jumped on by a panda when he dared himself to enter its cage."-- "You'd think that a fourteenth-century allegorical poem on sin and redemption, written in a medieval Italian vernacular and in accord with the Scholastic theology of that period, would have been turned over, long ago, to the scholars in the back carrel

California’s likely health insurance rates under new law are lower than expected

California health officials on Thursday unveiled the likely rates that insurers will charge under President Obama’s health-care law — and they are lower than expected, rebutting warnings by critics that many people will experience “rate shock” once the law is fully implemented. Read full article >>

Roundup of business news from around the world

U.S. sales of new homes rose in April and nearly matched the fastest pace in five years, driving the median price to a record high. The gains suggest the housing recovery is strengthening.New-home sales increased 2.3 percent from March to April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 454,000, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That’s only slightly below January’s pace of 458,000, which wa

'Lucky Guy,' and lucky newspaper readers

On the front row in the Broadhurst Theatre for the Wednesday matinee of 'Lucky Guy,' we were so close to the action up on stage that my husband forgot for a minute he wasn't actually in a newsroom as a bunch of fellow reporters gathered around to hear a particularly moving Pulitzer speech. Read full article >>

Obama calls for review of rules on subpoenas to the media

President Obama instructed Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday to review Justice Department guidelines for leak investigations, meet with media organizations and report back to him by mid-July. Read full article >>

Obama interrupted repeatedly by antiwar activist during speech on drone policy

President Obama had a run-in with a heckler Thursday, when a founder of the antiwar group Code Pink interrupted a speech on drone policy and other national security issues.Near the end of Obama’s address at the National Defense University, a woman identified as longtime activist Medea Benjamin implored the president to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. Through three separate episodes, the pres

Boy Scouts vote to allow openly gay scouts, maintain ban on gay adult leaders

The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its ban on openly gay youth but maintained one on adult leaders, a decision framed as a compromise but one experts said may eventually lead to litigation and thousands of defections from one of America’s largest youth organizations. Read full article >>

IRS official Lois Lerner placed on leave amid scandal

The Internal Revenue Service official responsible for the office that targeted certain organizations seeking tax-exempt status was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday, making her the second senior official to be disciplined in the wake of the scandal. Read full article >>

Boy Scouts vote to allow openly gay youths, maintain ban on gay adult leaders

The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its ban on openly gay youths but maintained a prohibition on gay adult leaders, a decision framed as a compromise but one that could lead to litigation and thousands of defections from one of America’s largest youth organizations. Read full article >>

What you and the Senate need to know about Canada

Senators should be aware of a critical fact, as they debate immigration reform: If we don't want foreign-born talent in the United States, other countries are more than happy to take the talent, and the innovation potential that goes with it, off of our hands. Read full article >>

Fairfax County online state SOL tests disrupted by technical glitches

Widespread technical glitches interrupted thousands of Fairfax County schools students taking Virginia’s standards of learning tests online Thursday.In a letter to parents, the district acknowledged “significant problems” while administering the online tests due to an outage with the school system’s Internet service provider. Read full article >>