Zachary Roth

For over a year before the IRS controversy broke, one well-connected Washington insider led the charge to stoke the story. And she has no intention of letting up. "There's a very good chance that it will lead to people who are very highly placed politically," Cleta Mitchell tells MSNBC. Read More

More than six months after declaring on election night that "we've got to fix" long lines at the polls, President Obama announced the members of his commission on election administration Tuesday. Read More

Oklahoma’s two senators, Republicans Tom Coburn and James Inhofe, both opposed Sandy relief and backed an amendment that would have cut the package. But officials estimate tornado recovery could cost billions. Read More

New details from press secretary Jay Carney are at odds with the impression the White House gave last week, raising questions about whether it’s being fully forthcoming in its public statements on the issue. Read More

Treasury Department officials were told last year about a probe of the IRS's handling of applications from political groups. But no evidence has yet emerged that key damning details about the targeting were known beyond the IRS itself. Read More

Some of the conservative groups complaining about intrusive questions from the IRS have close connections to Republican politics, suggesting the scrutiny, in some cases, may have been warranted. Read More

Steven Miller, who stepped down this week as acting commissioner of the IRS amid revelations that the agency targeted Tea Party groups for special scrutiny, apologized to Congress Friday, but said the effort wasn't deliberately partisan. Read More

A day before lawmakers plan to conduct their first hearing Friday on the targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service, President Obama again expressed anger over the episode, while rejecting calls for an independent counsel. Read More

The IRS says the same thing. Whether Treasury Department officials knew about the targeting is shaping up as a key issue as Congress gets set to probe the effort. Read More

Because of "ineffective management," IRS staffers improperly targeted Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny, a highly anticipated internal report has found. Hours earlier, the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the scandal. Read More

President Obama called the revelations about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups "outrageous" Monday morning. Republicans are planning a Congressional investigation. Here's what we know about the scandal. Read More

Looks like the effort to block African-Americans' path to the voting booth backfired. Read More

Last year, the GOP's top presidential contenders lined up to speak. This year, there's just one member of Congress, plus a heavy dose of has-beens and fringe figures, like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Read More

Under the Roberts Court, the Chamber of Commerce has won more than two thirds of the cases in which it has participated, according to a new report at which MSNBC got a first look. The result has been a legal shift in favor of big corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans. Read More

President Obama responded indignantly during a Tuesday morning press conference at the White House to a question about whether he had enough “juice” to advance his agenda. Read More

An AP analysis found that blacks voted at a higher rate than whites last fall, for the first time ever. But a demographer who helped conduct the AP's study wouldn't stand by that finding. Read More

For months, conservative opponents of immigration reform have been looking for ways to slow down the process—with little success. The Boston bombings might have given them a new angle. Read More

Conservative lawmakers and commentators are seizing on the Boston bombings—perpetrated by immigrant brothers from Central Asia—as another reason to go slow on immigration reform. But advocates of reform are pushing back. Read More

What might have motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to commit the Boston bombings? The answer could lie in ties between the Chechen separatist movement and other Islamic causes. Read More

Investigators should be able to use cellphone records to track down a possible suspect seen in a surveillance video, experts tell MSNBC. Read More