The dramatic and at times deadly post-election fallout in Iran dominated the Sunday conversation. And as we watched more demonstrations on the streets of Tehran, the debate among key policy-makers in the United States centered on whether the Iranian regime was potentially near a tipping point and whether President Obama has been too cautious his handling of this major challenge. (CNN) -- The dramatic and at times deadly post-election fallout in Iran dominated the Sunday conversation. And as we ...

The Senate Wednesday passed by unanimous consent a bill that would prevent the release of controversial photos of alleged U.S. abuse of prisoners and detainees. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, had originally been part of the war funding supplemental bill passed Tuesday by the House. But House Democrats stripped that part of the measure from the bill, and the senators proposed it as stand-alone legislation. Earlier Wednesday, Graham said at a Judiciary ...

New York officials want to know how a jail inmate threw a lavish bar mitzvah for his son inside a detention facility, complete with live music and catered kosher food. From the outside, Hazelton's home doesn't seem much different from the rest of the neighborhood. But there's one big difference. Her house is made from cargo shipping containers. Using containers to build homes has increasingly become a trend in the past several years because it can be cheaper and faster ...

Magoline Hazelton is used to people driving by her home just to take a look. She's also known as the "house lady" by her fellow residents in North Charleston, South Carolina. From the outside, Hazelton's home doesn't seem much different from the rest of the neighborhood. But there's one big difference. Her house is made from cargo shipping containers. Using containers to build homes has increasingly become a trend in the past several years because it can be cheaper and ...

There's no such thing as a good day for a prisoner at the highest level of security within the Ohio State Penitentiary, a 504-bed supermax prison in Youngstown, Ohio. Every inmate lives alone in a 7-ft. by 14-ft. cell that resembles nothing so much as a large, concrete closet, equipped with a sink, a toilet, a desk and a molded stool and sleep platform covered by a thin mattress. The solid metal door is outfitted with strips around the ...

Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps suffered his first defeat in a championship race in a year when he lost the 100-meter backstroke to world-record holder Aaron Peirsol at the Charlotte UltraSwim in North Carolina. On Saturday Peirsol led at the turn and pulled away to win the 100-meter backstroke in 53.32 seconds. Phelps came in second, at 53.79. The last time Phelps lost was on May 17, 2008 -- also to Peirsol -- in the 200-meter backstroke at Santa Clara, ...

The U.S. military in Afghanistan is investigating a group of military contractors who shot and wounded two Afghan civilians in Kabul earlier this month, according to the military. The battle ended for Hutchison on Sunday. He died in Basra, Iraq, of wounds from a roadside bomb in Al Farr. He is the oldest U.S. service member to die in Iraq or Afghanistan. Hutchison joined the Army in 1966 and served two one-year tours in Vietnam, according to a news release ...

Michael Phelps -- the Olympic gold-medal swimmer who jumped into hot water over a photo of him holding a bong -- has returned to competition for the first time since the Beijing Olympics. Suspended for three months from organized competitive swimming after a photo of him holding a bong -- a device commonly used to smoke marijuana -- surfaced in February, Phelps dived back into the public eye at the Charlotte UltraSwim in North Carolina, a meet that runs from ...

These days, Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species. They lost Congress, then the White House; more recently, they lost a slam-dunk House election in a conservative New York district, then Senator Arlen Specter. Polls suggest that only one-fourth of the electorate considers itself Republican, that independents are trending Democratic and that as few as five states have solid Republican pluralities. And the electorate is getting less white, less rural, less Christian — in short, less demographically Republican. ...

A wind-whipped fire expanded to 450 acres early Wednesday in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, causing residents of 1,000 homes to flee and putting 2,000 other homes in peril, emergency officials said The flames were burning within a mile of several homes, said Pat Wheatley with the Santa Barbara County Emergency Operations Center. Ten businesses also were under an evacuation advisory. There have been no injuries or homes or businesses damaged and only sporadic power outages, Wheatley said. Sixty-five ...