How our community colleges are falling behind

Pop quiz: What's the biggest category of college or university in the United States? Is it big public research universities like UC Berkeley or the University of Texas at Austin? Or is it their private equivalents, like Boston University and Brigham Young? Maybe all the small liberal arts colleges, like the University of Mary Washington or St. John's in Annapolis have, between them, the most stu

Everything you need to know about Obama's war on leakers in one FAQ

There's been a blizzard of news about the Obama administration's crackdown on government officials who leak classified information to the media. Last week we learned that the government seized the phone records of more than 100 Associated Press journalists. This week we learned that the government had accused (though not charged) journalist James Rosen with a crime for accepting classified infor

Poverty is now growing twice as fast in the suburbs as in cities

At some point during the 2000s, America reached an unexpected milestone: There are now more poor people living in the suburbs than in the inner cities.That stat comes from a big new Brookings Institution book by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube, _Confronting Suburban Poverty in America_. They find that between 2000 and 2011, the number of suburban poor in the United States grew by 64 percen

Mortgage rates are trending upward

Mortgage rates moved higher for the third week in a row, according to the latest data released by Freddie Mac.The 30-year fixed-rate average jumped to 3.59 percent with an average 0.7 point. It was up from 3.51 percent last week but down from 3.78 percent a year ago. Until last week, the 30-year fixed rate had remained below 3.5 percent for more than a month. Read full article >>

Yikes! The Japanese stock market cratered overnight

Well that was fast.Japanese financial markets have experienced a stunning rise over the past six months, as a new government led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced policies of aggressive Keynesian stimulus paired with equally aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan. The surest, steadiest bet on global financial markets in that time has been on rising Japanese stocks and a falling

Meet Farzad Mostashari, the bow-tie bureaucrat convincing doctors to go digital

The United States hit a health care milestone Wednesday: Most doctors now use electronic health care records. The new data, released by the Department of Health and Human Services, shows that more than 50 percent of doctors and 80 percent of hospitals have received enhanced federal funding for achieving "meaningful use" of digital records. That means they've gone beyond purchasing the software a

Wonkbook: Bernanke lashes Congress

_Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer. To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog._ Read full article >>

IMF chief called to testify in French court about role in arbitration case

PARIS — Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was summoned to testify Thursday about her role in the settlement of a multimillion-dollar business dispute when she was France’s finance minister in 2008. Read full article >>

Bank of America praised, criticized for homeowner relief

It is rare for a megabank to get praised these days, especially by prosecutors. Bank of America, however, received plaudits from Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller for providing $27.9 billion in consumer relief under the national mortgage settlement, more than any of the other four banks signed on to the agreement. Read full article >>

Some business owners resist providing employees with contraceptive coverage

CHICAGO — Religiously devout business owners are waging a broad rebellion against providing their employees with contraceptive coverage, bringing dozens of lawsuits that seem certain to land the issue before the Supreme Court. Read full article >>

Bipartisan group proposes chemical safety overhaul

The current U.S. law on chemical safety is 37 years old, riddled with exceptions and widely considered ineffective — so much so that the government hasn’t even tried to restrict an unsafe chemical since courts overturned its asbestos ban in 1991. Read full article >>

Amazon to create 500 tech-related jobs in Fairfax County

Amazon.com plans to add 500 employees to its Fairfax County Web Services business, further cementing the Dulles Corridor as a major center for information technology and big data storage.Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) made the announcement, highlighting the Seattle-based online retail giant’s growing role as a computer storage provider through its Amazon Web Services division, which th

Fed’s mixed message takes stocks on a wild ride

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke spoke Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill, his words seemed to hint that the central bank’s stimulus wouldn’t be pulled back anytime soon. The Dow Jones industrial average surged. Read full article >>

The best sentences we read today

-- "The secret of many charter schools' success isn't a mystery."-- "I'm Charles Murray, I'm sure that Jason wanted to work with me. I mean, come on."-- "Asked about it later, Kraig Naasz, Mr. Chandler's spokesman said, 'I can't explain it.'" Read full article >>

Push on corporate tax rules goes global

A global effort to tighten corporate tax rules is gaining momentum as politicians in Europe and the United States take aim at American tech giants whose savvy use of international tax laws has provoked a public backlash. Read full article >>

Sides staring each other down as deadline nears in SAC insider-trading case

All sides are playing hardball as the deadline to bring criminal charges against Steven A. Cohen nears, with only two months left for the government to snag the hedge-fund industry guru in what it describes as the most lucrative insider-trading scheme it has pursued. Read full article >>

Obama nominee Penny Pritzker’s $80 million mistake

Hey, these things happen: Penny Pritzker, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, understated her income by some $80 million and had to file a correction to her government-filed disclosures, Bloomberg is reporting. Read full article >>

Stop celebrating our falling deficits

It's time to stop celebrating last week's Congressional Budget Office report. Our deficits aren't dropping because we're doing something right. They're dropping because we're doing everything wrong.Myinitial piece on the CBO report led with the surprising news that the agency had knocked more than $600 billion off its projections for the deficit over the next decade. But as I wrote then, the

Fluoridation fails in Portland by 20-point margin

For any avid readers who have read our coverage of thefluoride wars, we now have results on the latest battle: Portland has rejectedfluoridated water by a 20-point margin, with 60 percent of voters against and 40 percent in favor. Read full article >>

After 37 years, U.S. chemical-safety laws may finally get an overhaul

The current U.S. law on chemical safety is 37 years old, riddled with exceptions, and widely seen as ineffective — so much so that the federal government hasn't even tried to restrict an unsafe chemical since an asbestos ban was overturned in courts in 1991. Read full article >>

You ask, we answer! Can employed people get Obamacare subsidies?

_Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff's regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it. You can reach Sarah with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition, and read previous columns here._ Read full article >>

Jena McGregor: Abercrombie & Fitch's big, bad brand mistake

On the Internet, words never die. Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO Mike Jeffries learned that the hard way in recent weeks as the company's brand has been battered online and on television for comments he made seven years ago. Read full article >>

Everything you could possibly need to know about student loan budgets (with gifs!)

On Monday, we wrote a post explaining that "No, the federal government does not profit off student loans" (as the original headline put it). A number of people have pushed back at that conclusion, pointing out that it depends on how you do the arithmetic. Read full article >>

Robert Kaiser on Dodd-Frank: 'This example of Congress working also illuminated why it works so rarely.'

_Almost three years ago, the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted, a sweeping piece of legislation aimed at overhauling regulation of the financial system. And now our colleague Robert G. Kaiser is out with a book reporting the inside story of how the law came to be. Kaiser's "Act of Congress: How America's Essential Institution Works, and How it Doesn't" uses the long battle over Dodd-Frank--and the uni

Silicon Valley scores another immigration victory in Washington

A broad immigration reform package moved one step closer to passing through Congress on Tuesday, and the high-tech community took another step forward in solidifying its lobbying influence in Washington. Read full article >>

Amazon Web Services to add 500 jobs in Fairfax

Amazon Web Services plans to add 500 I.T.-focused jobs in Fairfax County and open a new office in Herndon, economic development officials there announced Wednesday.In return, the Virginia Department of Business Assistance will offer the company money and services to help recruit and train workers. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) approved a $500,000 grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund to help ma

Bad news for patent trolls, in one chart

Why has the software industry seen an explosion of litigation lately? The courts played a big role, by making it easier to get patents in the 1980s and 1990s. But as this chart shows, the pendulum started to swing back in the opposite direction a few years ago: Read full article >>

Bernanke to Congress: Seriously, guys, what are you doing?

Ben Bernanke testifies before Congress today for the first time in three months, and the Federal Reserve chairman has a message for lawmakers: You're the reason the economy isn't taking off more.Of course, Bernanke is too polite to phrase things quite so bluntly. But to anyone versed in Fedspeak, that's the gist of his message. Even as state and local governments are becoming less of a drag o

Yes, heads should roll at the IRS

The big IRS news today is that Lois Lerner, the IRS director who oversaw the Cincinnati unit charged with discriminating against the tea party, intends to plead the fifth when she appears before Congress later today. Read full article >>

Millions of Americans don't have bank accounts. That could be a problem for Obamacare.

Americans shopping for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act next year might hit an unexpected obstacle: the lack of a bank account.Millions of Americans are expected to qualify for tax subsidies under the health overhaul, which they can use to purchase coverage on new marketplaces. One quarter of those people are effectively "unbanked" and without a checking account, according toa n