(Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. senators will introduce a bill on Tuesday to abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a government reinsurer of mortgage securities that would backstop private capital in a crisis.

The U.S. government seized the mortgage firms in 2008 to rescue them from insolvency, spending a total of $187.5 billion to keep them afloat. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which charge lenders a fee in return for …

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Last month, a 19-year-old Native American high school student at J B Pennington High School in Blountsville, Alabama was told he couldn’t wear an eagle feather if he wanted to graduate. When Sky Walkingstick, of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, explained it was a demonstration of his beliefs protected under federal law, he was still told by Assistant Principal Steven Bryson, a former history teacher, and another instructor, William Smitherman, who teaches government, economics and …

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(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a lower court order requiring a South Carolina couple to turn over a young girl they had raised since birth to her biological father simply because he was an American Indian.

By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled in favor of Matt and Melanie Capobianco, who had been caring for the girl they named Veronica until a family court ordered them to turn her over to …

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.

“In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote …

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President Obama will deliver an address on climate change at Georgetown University on Tuesday, outlining, according to the White House, his “vision for a comprehensive plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it.”

Obama tipped his hand on the new plan in a video announcement on Saturday, noting that climate change “is a serious challenge, but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths.”

He …

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The Agriculture Department has approved a label for meat and liquid egg products that includes a claim about the absence of genetically engineered products.

It is the first time that the department, which regulates meat and poultry processing, has approved a non-G.M.O. label claim, which attests that meat certified by the Non-GMO Project came from animals that never ate feed containing genetically engineered ingredients like corn, soy and alfalfa.

The U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety Inspection Service “allows …

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When the Supreme Court starts handing down decisions just one hour from now, most Court watchers will be awaiting four high profile cases — the two race cases that will decide the fate of affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act, and the two marriage equality cases. A fifth case, however, could prove just as significant as these much better known cases — and could potentially leave thousands of workers virtually helpless in the face …

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It’s a cold snowy afternoon in mid-March and I really need to leave the warmth of my office at Vassar College. There’s a stack of student papers at home and research on Zora Neale Hurston waiting for me in the Special Collections and Rare Books section of the library. Like a lot of young people, I’m easily distracted by Facebook, and freezing March days make that distraction more palpable. Today, a ProPublica piece has gone …

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The 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq left countless devastating legacies, most of which are well known and relatively well recorded. The infinite death and destruction and rise in sectarianism and insecurity are all issues discussed regularly in the press. The impact of the war on the health of Iraqis, however, is something that could not be measured with such immediacy and, as such, has been almost entirely neglected by the mainstream media.

Despite the lack of …

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Given the chance to shoot down affirmative action, the Supreme Court, in a 7 to 1 decision, chose not to (PDF). But it did say that a lower court decision that had approved the University of Texas’ affirmative action program needed to be revisited, with the justices in the majority noting that this appeals court had not applied a stringent enough rule when reviewing the UT program. In short, the court said: affirmative action is …

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