Tareq and Michaele Salahi were hoping for reality TV stardom when they strolled uninvited into a Nov. 24 White House state dinner. Legal experts say the party-crashing duo may have to settle for the reality of a courtroom fight instead — and possibly a prison cell. "There's no question the Secret Service is likely to push very hard for a criminal charge," says George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. "They are famous for lacking a sense of ...

In 2005, Penguin paid $100,000 for the English-language rights to Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, a coming-of-age tale set in Inner Mongolia. It was a record sum for a Chinese novel. In 2008, the same publishing house issued, amid much brouhaha, Zhu Wen's I Love Dollars, a lively look at the dark side of China's boom. And it has just announced plans to bring more Chinese writers to the attention of international readers by expanding its Beijing operations. Clearly, Penguin ...

Whatever Leon Panetta lacked in formal intel experience he would make up for with his political smarts. That was one of the chief points made in his favor when the Obama Administration named the former California congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff as its first CIA Director. So many CIA veterans were particularly not happy over the summer when they felt that Panetta had failed to protect the Agency from the political backlash over its Bush-era detention ...

It's hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Mideast peace process. The Israeli leader's refusal to abide by Washington's demand for a complete freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — and the Palestinian refusal to enter talks without one — has ...

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was adamant Sunday, when asked if President Obama was considering a so-called "second stimulus" to deal with the rising unemployment rate. "I think it's too soon, it's premature to say is a second stimulus needed," she told David Gregory, the host of NBC's Meet the Press. But a moment later she said the White House was already looking at tax credits and other measures ...

President Obama huddled with top military, foreign policy and national security advisers Wednesday as part of an ongoing review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The meeting, the fifth such gathering in recent weeks, came as the administration continued to weigh a call for as many as 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in that country. McChrystal has said the extra manpower is necessary to implement an effective counterinsurgency strategy. ...

A national campaign to inoculate tens of millions of Americans against H1N1 influenza began Monday, with health care workers in Indiana and Tennessee targeted as the first recipients, federal health authorities said. Obama will be joined by, among others, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the heads of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees in the House and Senate, the officials said. The meeting comes ...

President Obama is under increasing pressure to decide whether the United States will commit more troops and resources to the conflict in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, the head of NATO met with the president and endorsed Obama's plan to fine-tune the strategy for Afghanistan before deciding on whether to deploy more troops. "I agree with President Obama in his approach: strategy first, then resources," Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after meeting with Obama at the White House. The ...