Jonathan Weisman

After more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records.

The longest, most sustained campaign of Internet activism in history appears to have been won by the little guys. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote to regulate the Internet as a public good.

The Senate gave overwhelming approval on Thursday to the training and arming of Syrian rebels, then fled the Capitol with the House for the fall campaign, sidestepping the debate over the extent of American military action until the lame-duck session of Congress later this year.

A research team has performed the first rigorous genetic analysis of three dozen hair samples that their collectors claimed came from Bigfoot, Yeti and other supposed living humanoids.

President Obama will get a short-term lift for his nominees, judicial and otherwise, but over the immediate horizon, the strong-arm move by Senate Democrats on Thursday to limit filibusters could usher in an era of rank partisan warfare beyond even what Americans have seen in the past five years.

Rep. Paul D. Ryan may have temporarily receded into the Capitol shadows after his stinging vice presidential defeat in November, but he remains a powerful presence among House Republicans, earning the respect of hard-line conservatives for his budget blueprint and the trust of anxious moderates for his pragmatism.

House Republicans, increasingly isolated from even some of their strongest supporters more than a week into a government shutdown, began Wednesday to consider a path out of their fiscal dead end that would raise the debt ceiling for a few weeks as they press for a broader deficit reduction deal.

With his troops anxious for a way forward, Speaker John A. Boehner began a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Friday morning with a recitation of letters from local schoolchildren on how they deal with stress.

Republican efforts to resolve the fiscal standoff that has closed much of the federal government heated up Thursday, the third day of the shutdown, with new talks over a broad budget deal and an effort by more moderate House members to break the logjam.

House Republican leaders -- bowing to the demands of their conservative wing -- will vote Friday on a stopgap spending measure that would strip all funding from President Barack Obama's signature health care law, increasing the likelihood that the government will shut down in two weeks.

Legislation that would force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes from their customers has put antitax and small-government activists like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the Heritage Foundation in an unusual position: They’re losing.

The reason for the disparity lies not just in the complicated, emotional politics of guns in the United States -- there was fierce lobbying in opposition to Colorado's new gun laws, and threats were even reported against some lawmakers who supported it -- but also in the way that the Senate's arcane rules make it so much harder to pass bills there than in the nation's statehouses.

Several Senate Republicans on Tuesday came out publicly against filibustering the first major gun control legislation since 1993 before it is even brought up for debate on the Senate floor, as advocates inched toward breaking a conservative blockade of the measure.

In the first week of March, a laid-off person living on $300 a week in unemployment benefits is liable to find a surprise in the mailbox: notification from Uncle Sam that come April the check will be $33 lighter.