Washington As the Gulf of Mexico focuses on cleaning up the mess left by the BP oil spill, the question facing the nation's capital is: Will Washington clean up its act, too?

Congress is considering stricter regulation of oil exploration, and the Obama administration has pledged to overhaul the disgraced federal agency that oversees oil drilling.

Already, however, some of the toughest proposals are facing stiff opposition from Republicans and some Gulf Coast Democrats whose constituents rely on the oil industry for jobs.

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Washington - More than three years into the housing crisis that helped trigger a worldwide recession, the torrid pace of home foreclosures continues to tear at the core of the American dream.

New figures Thursday from Realty-Trac showed that foreclosure activity declined over the first six months of the year in nine of the 10 large metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates.

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The Obama administration is considering ways to act on immigration reform without Congressional approval, reported ProPublica, including giving green cards or permanent residence status to many people living in the country with documents. Accord to a memo to Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of the U.S.

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More than 60 organizations that represent more than 30 million Americans are banding together to deliver a straightforward message to politicians this fall: Don't mess with Social Security.

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Athens - Every working day, more than a hundred people crowd around the entrance of the merchant and passenger boats' reconstruction industry, well known as 'The Zone', in the southern suburb of Attiki.

Most of them are unemployed steel workers and torch welders, who wait desperately from the early hours of the morning for an announcement of jobs offered on a daily basis on the ships that dock at the port.

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When Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke announced that the Fed was not prepared to fund additional economic stimulus at this time, the market fell, suggesting strongly that Wall Street disagrees with Republican calls to cut expenditures because deficits have gotten too large. Only when record corporate earnings were announced did the market rise.

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BP's headache continues to get worse. In a July 29 letter to BP America's President Lamar McKay, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-California) and Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) have demanded BP's executive appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by August 6. Unlike then-CEO Tony Hayward's testimony which focused on the April 20 explosion, this time Waxman and Markey are looking into a less-visible component of the BP disaster

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The Afghan war is coming under renewed scrutiny as web surfers across the world browse through the bloody battle scenes and military follies described in the thousands of classified military reports released by WikiLeaks, and now top Democrats are finally expressing concerns over the longevity of a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.

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Allen Ruff, host of the listener-supported radio program "A Public Affair," WORT, 89.9FM, Madison, Wisconsin, interviews Henry Giroux to discuss his new book, "Youth in a Suspect Society."

Press play to Listen:

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A sea mine may have been responsible for denting a 160,000-ton Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz this week, investigators in the United Arab Emirates said Thursday, although the boat's owner maintains it was likely attacked.

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