I am Sam Adams

A contentious battle between Catholic groups and the Obama administration has flared in recent days, fueled by the new health-care law and ongoing divisions over access to abortion and birth control.

The latest dispute centers on a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services in late September to end funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help victims of human trafficking, or modern-day slavery. The church group had overseen nationwide services to victims since 2006 but was denied a new grant in favor of three other groups.

Acting once again without Congress, President Obama on Monday was directing the Food and Drug Administration to take steps to reduce drug shortages that administration officials say have placed patients at risk and led to price gouging. 

Most all presidents have one memorable statement that — rightly or wrongly — seems to encapsulate what we remember of their tenure.

FDR had “the only thing we have to fear,” while Truman had “the buck stops” and Eisenhower had the “military-industrial complex.”

Kennedy, on day one, had “ask not what your country,” while Johnson had “I shall not seek, nor I will not accept, the nomination... ”

President Obama will sign an executive order Monday instructing the Food and Drug Administration to address a growing shortage of prescription drugs that are used to treat cancer and other diseases, a White House official said.

The order is the latest in a series of actions that the Obama administration has announced over the past week that do not require congressional approval. The White House began taking the smaller-scale initiatives after the Senate blocked the president’s $447 billion American Jobs Act.

Federal agencies are buying more hybrid vehicles, installing energy-efficient light bulbs and using rainwater to hydrate outdoor landscaping as part of the Obama administration’s goals of reducing the government’s carbon footprint.

Dozens of federal agencies — from the Pentagon to the Smithsonian — plan to release progress reports Monday on what they’re doing to reduce the government’s carbon footprint after President Obama ordered them to do so back in 2009. Since then, the White House has said that the government is aiming to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020.

In the spring of 2001, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, at age 33, bought a $6.5 million house in the fashionable Los Angeles enclave of Bel Air.

About the same time, Nguema, the son of Equatorial Guinea dictator Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mbasogo, twice went to a Beverly Hills dealership and purchased two Bentley automobiles.

The Obama administration is cooperating with Congress in the investigation of a half-billion dollar Energy Department loan guarantee to a now-bankrupt alternative energy company, but a response to potential subpoenas is premature, a top adviser to President Obama said Sunday.

President Obama's top political adviser said Sunday that "no panacea" will fix the economy, and that's why the president is using a series of executive orders to get past a Congress focused on "obstruction and delay."

As the war in Iraq ends, the number of people indicted and convicted by the U.S. for bribery, theft and other reconstruction-related crimes is rapidly rising, according to two government reports released Sunday.