Lois Lerner, who headed the Internal Revenue Service office at the center of controversy for
targeting conservative groups, was placed on administrative leave Thursday, the second IRS official to face disciplinary action.

          Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was asked to resign last week by President Barack Obama.

         Lerner is being replaced by Ken Corbin, who will become acting director, exempt organizations,
tax exempt/government entities division.

        A veteran IRS official, Corbin was touted by Danny Werfel, the new acting IRS commissioner,
for a “track record of leading large work groups.” Those skills, said Werfel, “make
him an ideal choice to help lead the Exempt Organizations area through this
difficult period.”

       Lerner appeared Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said she had done nothing wrong, and then took the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions. Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.,may recall her, as some thought she had waived
her right not to testify.

       Her actions infuriated many Republicans.  “She had an opportunity to disclose the targeting to Congress days before her disclosure at a legal conference and didn’t do it,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “She gave the impression that the issue came up independently at the conference,
when it really was a plant that she arranged.  The IRS owes it to taxpayers to resolve her situation quickly.”

       Grassley said Werfel asked Lerner to resign and she refused.

President Barack Obama praised the Senate for confirming Sri Srinivasan, principal deputy solicitor general, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Srinivasan, the first circuit judget of South Asian descent, is the first D.C. Circuit nominee confirmed since 2006. He has worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

"Sri is a trailblazer who personifies the best of America," he said. "Now he will serve with distinction on the federal bench. Sri will in fact be the first South Asian American to serve as a circuit court judge in our history. While I applaud the Senate’s action, it’s important to remember that this confirmation is the first one to this important court in seven years."

President Barack Obama, under fire for his administration's crackdown on journalists, announced Thursday that he has directed Attorney General Eric Holder to review the Justice Department's guidelines for investigations that involve reporters.

"Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," Obama said in a major counterterrorism speech Thursday. "Our focus must be on those who break the law."

Obama said Holder will report back to him by July 12. Holder's actions are part of an unprecedented crackdown on classified national security leaks.

"As commander-in-chief, I believe we must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field," he said. "To do so, we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information. But a free press is also essential for our democracy. That's who we are. And I'm troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable."

If Republicans are going to target President Barack Obama for not knowing more about the Internal Revenue Service controversy, says House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, consider this:

"Well," she told a news conference Thursday, "The president doesn't know about everything that is going on in every agency of government.  Should Mr. Boehner have known because this is his neighboring district, and since -- Cincinnati, where the IRS office is?

"I don't think you can hold him accountable for what happened in that IRS office."

Asked if Democrats will be hurt politically, Pelosi, D-Calif, noted, "It happened under the appointment of the head of the IRS, who was appointed by President Bush; his length of stay extended into President Obama's stay." She referred to former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.

"But," she said, "I think that that points to the fact that why is this, you know, a politicized issue because the -- we all are concerned about how the IRS does what it's supposed to do, supports the law but does not do it in a selective way.  I've said before what they did was wrong.  The inspector general has said over and over it is not illegal."

The Internal Revenue Service and the 2010 health law? Look out, says Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

"Here’s another thing we shouldn’t be doing: handing over the administration of Obamacare to these folks. I mean, think about it. A deeply unpopular law being administered by an agency that’s so betrayed the public trust," he said in Senate floor remarks Thursday. 

“Even the IRS’ staunchest defenders in this scandal describe their actions as a case of ‘horrible customer service.’   That’s the best they can say: ‘Horrible customer service.’ And now they’re going to be put in charge of a new trillion-dollar program?  One that will give them access to all sorts of sensitive, deeply personal information?"

McConnell, R-Ky., warned "that’s just what the Administration and congressional Democrats are about to let happen."

He noted "The IRS is in charge of administering some of the most important elements of Obamacare. And, for many Americans, that’s going to mean submitting to probing questions about their health insurance."

Then he posed some questions. Here's some of the rest of his speech:

Did President Barack Obama ask the Senate to kill an amendment that would allow same-sex couples to apply for legal status for their foreign-born partners as part of a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws?

That was the word Tuesday just before the provision was rejected and the bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans who support the bill had expressed concerns about the amendment. 

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Wednesday would not confirm or deny the reports.

"I'm not aware of that conversation. What I can tell you is the president supports the amendment," he said.

House Republicans came up with a student loan reform plan they said was along the lines of what President Barack Obama proposed _ let the loan rate change with the market (background story). But it turns out it wasn’t similar enough.

Today the White House put out a statement criticizing it and saying the president would veto if it Congress sends it to him. (Statement of administration policy here.)

The House student loan plan, HR 1911, is scheduled to be considered on the floor of the House this week.

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, the rate on subsidized federal student loans will go up from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.

President Barack Obama will travel to Oklahoma City on Sunday, where a massive tornado killed nearly two dozen people.

Obama will visit with affected families and first responders, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Obama's FEMA director and  secretary of homeland security are in Oklahoma helping oversee the recocovery. 

The Republican National Committee Wednesday formally requested a series of documents related to the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.

The request, filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act, seeks a host of data, including "any and all documents and correspondence"  between Treasury officials and the White House from January 1, 2010 and Monday. The documents would include terms like tea party and patriot.

The RNC also wants documents related to "be on the lookout criteria" the IRS used.

"As each day passes, Americans find ourselves with more questions about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups and donors—and what the White House and Treasury Department knew and when,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “Because the administration refuses to be forthright with the American people, I instructed the RNC counsel’s office to file a FOIA request with the IRS to make the facts available for the public.

Priebus noted that Lois Lerner, the head of the tax exempt organizations division of the IRS, is expected to take the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee Wednesday.

"There’s clearly something serious the American people are not being told,'' Priebus said.

Vice President Joe Biden opened a Jewish American Heritage Month celebration with a poke at his boss -- and himself -- as he asked for a teleprompter to be removed.

"You can't tell Barack that the teleprompter's down," Biden said. "The standing joke in the office is Barack's learning to speak without a teleprompter; I'm learning to speak with one."

Biden is widely considered to be pondering a third presidential run and the speech was at least the third he's made in the past month to a key Democratic constituency. In his remarks, he credited Judaism with inspiring the U.S.

"The core, core, core basic values that make us distinguished from almost every nation is the heritage that you're celebrating in Jewish Heritage Month," he said. "The truth is that Jewish heritage, Jewish culture, Jewish values are such an essential part of who we are that's it's fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage."

His remarks at the reception at the American Institute of Architects building on New York Avenue were delayed as he called Oklahoma Thunder forward Kevin Durant for giving $1 million for tornado relief.

Introduced by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who sponsored the heritage legislation, Biden credited her work during the 2012 campaign, saying she was "one of the reasons why Barack and I were reelected."