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Articles by Stephen Dinan

The stage is seen before a presidential debate at the University of Denver Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012, in Denver. President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will hold their first debate Wednesday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Debates not last word on presidential race

The presidential debates may be the biggest news events between now and Election Day, but with two monthly jobs reports, the final deficit tally and several other end-of-the-fiscal-year numbers due, the calendar is littered with other potential political land mines.

October 3, 2012
** FILE ** Trays of printed Social Security checks wait to be mailed from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Management Services facility in Philadelphia in 2005. (Associated Press)

Social Security deficit deepens

Social Security ran a 4 percent deficit last year, and that gap will only increase over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office report Tuesday that said the system is facing growing deficits for the foreseeable future.

October 2, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Romney won’t deport illegal immigrants with temporary legal status

Moving to soften his immigration stance ever so slightly, Mitt Romney said this week he will not immediately deport the illegal immigrants granted tentative legal status by President Obama — and the Republican nominee also set a soft deadline for getting a broader immigration bill done in 18 months.

October 2, 2012
President Obama speaks Sept. 30, 2012, during a campaign event at Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas. (Associated Press)

Obama widens lead, confidence against Romney

President Obama has opened a sizable lead over Mitt Romney in polling ahead of the election as both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly convinced that he is going to win re-election, according to The Washington Times/Zogby Poll released Sunday.

September 30, 2012
**FILE** Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano

DHS grants gay partners discretion in deportation cases

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said this week gay and lesbian partners will be considered as family members when immigration agents are trying to decide whether or not to try to deport someone from the U.S.

September 28, 2012
“It’s the most politically selfish speech I’ve ever heard a candidate make in that he never mentioned congressional Democrats. And it’s not just rhetoric. He doesn’t campaign with them,” Ralph Nader said of President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. (The Washington Times)

Nader: Obama running ‘selfish’ race

Ralph Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, says President Obama should be poised for a landslide victory that swings control of Congress dramatically back to Democrats, but instead he's running a "selfish" campaign that has done little to help his party on Capitol Hill.

September 27, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks Sept. 25, 2012, at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. (Associated Press)

Romney takes aim at foreign aid, ties future aid to trade

Seeking to carve out foreign-policy differences with President Obama, rival Mitt Romney on Tuesday said he wants to impose a bargain on countries seeking U.S. foreign aid: open economies to trade and investment in exchange for American taxpayers' generosity.

September 25, 2012
In this July 13, 2011 photo, Amish women shop at an Amish-owned country store in Centerville, N.Y. Centerville, a town south of Buffalo, has an established Amish community. Longstanding Amish population centers in Pennsylvania and Ohio have lost families while Amish numbers in New York have boomed in the past two years, according to a new study by Elizabethtown College researchers. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

Amish, N.Y. town reach settlement over building codes

A New York town has agreed to drop criminal charges against an Amish community that had balked at following modern building codes for their homes by adding such features as bigger windows and smoke detectors — something the traditional sect members argued violate its religious beliefs.

September 24, 2012
**FILE** Immigrants applying for driver's licenses wait at the doors of the Beltsville, Md., branch of Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration in 2006. (The Washington Times)

States make fake IDs quick and easy

Federal investigators were able to get fraudulent driver's licenses in all three states where they tried, according to a report released Friday that shows continued problems with states' ID programs more than 11 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks highlighted the problem.

September 23, 2012
Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican (Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times)

Confident conservative Jordan: Stand ground on taxes

Other Republicans may be worried about the campaign prospects of Mitt Romney but not Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the conservative caucus in the House, who said voters have made the decision to reject President Obama and replace him with the GOP nominee.

September 23, 2012
Rep. Lamar Smith (Associated Press)

Democrats block GOP rewrite of immigration priorities

House Democrats defeated the broadest immigration reform effort yet in this Congress, voting down a bill on Thursday that would have ended the random visa lottery and replaced it with a system rewarding high-tech foreign graduates from U.S. universities.

September 20, 2012
Coburn

Watchdogs headed for heavy budget cuts

The automatic spending cuts looming at the first of next year might end up eliminating some waste, but they also will take a giant bite out of the waste-watchers themselves — the auditors whom taxpayers count on to weed out fraud and keep tabs on government money.

September 19, 2012
“In a global economy, we cannot afford to educate these foreign graduates in the U.S. and then send them back home to work for our competitors. For America to be to the world’s economic leader, we must have access to the world’s best talent.” - House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican (Associated Press)

High-tech, science grads favored in visa proposals for immigrants

A big immigration deal is still elusive but Congress is suddenly rushing to take a smaller nibble at the issue, with the House slated to vote on a Republican proposal later this week that would open up tens of thousands of green cards to foreigners who promise to bring their science and technology skills to the U.S.

September 18, 2012
Libyans and Americans stand with wreaths, a poster and a photo of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on it as they gather on Monday in front of the U.S. consulate gate to pay their respect to Mr. Stevens and three other Americans killed in last week’s attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Associated Press)

Skeptics say Middle East attacks organized

Pressure is increasing for Congress to conduct its own independent investigation into last week's attacks on diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya as lawmakers and even Libya's president dispute the Obama administration's assertion that the attacks were merely mob violence spawned by an offensive film.

September 17, 2012
In this Sept. 14, 2012, photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns in the rain at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. President Obama and Romney are embarking on a week heavy with travel through battleground states and appeals key constituencies, with both campaigns wrangling over unrest in the Middle East and who is best equipped to rejuvenate the economy. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Obama’s convention bounce begins to fade

President Obama came out of his nominating convention surging in the polls, both nationally and in key states he will need to carry to win in the Electoral College — but the high already is beginning to fade, and pollsters said he didn't fundamentally alter what's still a neck-and-neck race.

September 16, 2012
**FILE** U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (center) speaks June 7, 2012, with Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Gen. John Allen (left center), the head of NATO coalition forces in Afghanistan, upon arriving at Kabul International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Associated Press)

White House details ‘destructive’ spending cuts

With excruciating detail, the White House's budget office on Friday laid out exactly where it will have to cut $109 billion from federal spending in January, including $11.1 billion from Medicare and $54.7 billion from defense spending.

September 14, 2012