With controversies growing over a Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press phone records and the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups, Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing to face the House Judiciary Committee in an oversight hearing Wednesday.

The hearing comes a day after Holder told reporters that he’d ordered an investigation to see if there were criminal violations in the IRS examination of conservative advocacy groups that had sought nonprofit status.  An inspector general’s report released Tuesday blamed poor management at the IRS for the scrutiny of Tea Party and other conservative groups and said the agency has been slow to correct the problems.

The attorney general also said he’d recused himself last year from any involvement in the Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks. Holder said he took the step to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Holder will certainly field questions on both the phone records seizures and the IRS investigation but there are no mentions of either in prepared opening remarks he’s expected to deliver to the committee. 

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appears at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, May 14, 2013.

The Associated Press reported Monday that phone records of its reporters and editors had been subpoenaed and seized in that probe.

Holder said in a press conference Tuesday that decisions in the leak investigation were being made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole and “the deputy attorney general would have been the one who ultimately had to authorize the subpoena that went to the AP.”

Cole wrote to the AP on Tuesday that seeking phone records from media organizations “is undertaken only after all other reasonable alternative investigative steps have been taken.” He said that the Justice Department sought the AP phone records only after a comprehensive investigation which included conducting over 550 interviews and reviewing tens of thousands of documents.

Holder said Tuesday that it “certainly not the policy of this administration” to target reporters. What has been done in the leaks investigation was, he said, “not as a result of a policy to get the press.”

Previewing Wednesday’s hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., indicated that the panel will question Holder on a wide range of topics, including the subpoena of AP phone records and the IRS vetting of conservative groups.

“Any abridgement of the First Amendment is very concerning, especially reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups for unwarranted scrutiny during an election year,” Goodlatte said. “Members of the committee will also ask pointed questions about the Justice Department’s decision to obtain two months’ worth of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press. Congress and the American people expect answers and accountability.”

The Virginia Republican also said that in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, the committee will want Holder to address how the Obama administration can better share information among federal agencies “so that we can better detect and deter future homegrown terrorist attacks.”

But the leaks investigation seems likely to be a dominant topic of the hearing.

Holder told reporters Tuesday, “This was a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 – and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, in the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk – and that is not hyperbole.”

The leaks probe was undertaken at a time of deep congressional concern that Obama administration officials, including CIA chief John Brennan when he served as President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor at the White House, were providing news organizations with selective bits of secret information.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, voted against confirming Brennan as CIA chief in March because he said Brennan had not been candid in discussing his own role in leaking.

Chambliss said he was “deeply disturbed” by Brennan's responses to the Senate committee regarding leaks of classified information, especially the disclosure relating to the al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula underwear bomb plot in May of 2012.

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 9:22 AM EDT

With between a 5 percent and 8 percent cut in non-entitlement federal spending in effect since March 1, Americans might wonder whether the spending limits, known as the sequester, are jeopardizing their safety when it comes to the risks of nuclear power plants, federal inmates, and other dangers that the federal government is responsible for warding off.

One month in, it appears to be a mixed picture – in some agencies, there doesn’t appear to be any increase in risk right now. But in others – such as the federal courts – there may be.

Here is a look at the spending cuts’ effects on just a few federal departments and agencies that deal with issues of public safety.

Trucks and buses
Let’s start with the safety of the highways on which you drive to work or visit your family. An unsafe big rig or bus could prematurely end your journey. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which has 1,100 employees and is part of the Department of Transportation, has the job of making sure that large trucks and buses operate safely.

Just last week, for example, the FMCSA ordered Boston-based Fung Wah Bus Transportation, to cease all passenger operations. According to the agency, Fung Wah failed to repair its vehicles, falsified inspection records and failed to ensure its drivers were qualified and complied with hours-of-service regulations.

Department of Transportation spokesman Justin Nisly said that FMCSA is primarily funded by the Highway Trust Fund, which collects its money from taxes on gasoline and other fuels, so only about $1 million of the agency’s $570 million budget is subject to sequestration. 

The FMCSA, he said, is “confident that normal workflow of services, functions and daily activities will not be disrupted. FMCSA continues to work aggressively to keep unsafe companies, vehicles and drivers off the road.”

No FMCSA employees will be furloughed because of the sequester and the FMCSA has not implemented a hiring freeze.

The lesson here is that agencies such as FMCSA which are not funded by annual congressional appropriations but have other sources of funding will carry on despite the sequester. Another example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is funded through the earnings of the Federal Reserve and not subject to congressional appropriations.

Nuclear power plants
The 3,800 employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are the ones who inspect America’s nuclear power plants and ensure they pose no threat to the surrounding communities. The nuclear regulator is managing to keep doing its job and will even be hiring new employees, despite the spending cuts. There are 103 licensed nuclear power reactors at 64 sites in the United States.

“NRC safety and security inspections of licensed facilities are not impacted by the FY 2013 planned budget reductions,” said Holly Harrington, a senior adviser at the NRC’s Office of Public Affairs. “The NRC will continue to accomplish its core safety and security mission for all existing licensees as its highest priority. This includes reactors, materials users, fuel facilities, uranium recovery operations and waste facility licensees.”

NRC Executive Director for Operations Bill Borchardt told the NRC’s March 13 Regulatory Information Conference that a 5 percent spending cut had gone into effect on March 1, resulting in a reduction of $52 million in the NRC’s funding for the rest of FY 2013. He said the effects of the cuts will include elimination of an NRC program that gives grants to universities and minority-serving institutions, reductions in several NRC long-term research activities, and delays in staff training. 

But the agency will “be able to continue its safety and security mission for existing licensees, including new reactor and fuel-cycle facility construction activities.”

He said, “We do not plan on initiating any employee furlough actions due to the sequestration.” NRC staffing peaked in 2011 with just over 4,000 employees, he said, and the agency began this year with about 3,800. “Even with the tight fiscal constraints, just to make up for attrition, we expect to hire approximately 2,200 new employees,” Borchardt said. 

Harrington said that as part of its strategy for mitigating the impacts of the reduced budget, the NRC will ask Congress if it can “reprogram” funds, allowing it to use $38 million in unobligated prior-year funds for FY 2013 purposes.  The $38 million in funds “were recovered from completed contracts issued in previous years.”

Another lesson here for sequester budgeting: some agencies have unexpended money in their accounts and can better weather the sequester than agencies which don’t.

Courts and prisoners
In a March 22 letter to Justice Department employees, which was obtained by NBC News, Attorney General Eric Holder said that despite the $1.6 billion spending cut imposed on the bureau, “our actions must not threaten the life and safety-related operations of the department.”

Holder said he was using his authority to transfer funds so he could provide $150 million to the Bureau of Prisons to avoid furloughs of workers at the 119 federal prison facilities around the country. If he had not done this, Holder said, “We faced the need to furlough 3,570 staff each day from the federal prisons around the country.”

Meanwhile in the federal courts, federal appeals court Judge Julia Gibbons, chair of the budget committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, told a House subcommittee on March 20 that “sequestration will impact public safety because there will be fewer probation officers to supervise criminal offenders released in our communities, and funding for drug testing and mental health treatment will be cut 20 percent.”

She said there will be a 30 percent cut in funding for court security equipment and security officers will be required to work reduced hours “thus creating security vulnerabilities throughout the federal court system.”

Around the country federal trial courts have begun not scheduling criminal trials and hearings on Fridays.

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 2, 2013 3:31 PM EDT

Central parts of an election law dating back to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act, appeared to be in jeopardy Wednesday after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a challenge to them.

NBC’s Pete Williams reported after the oral argument that key provisions of the 1965 law “are in big trouble. The question is how far will the Supreme Court go” in striking down parts of the law?

The justices were weighing an appeal from Shelby County, Ala., asking the court to find that Congress exceeded its power when it renewed the two key sections of the law in 2006. A decision is expected before the court ends its current term this coming June or July.

Under Section 5 of the law, nine states, mostly in the South, but also including Alaska and Arizona, as well as dozens of counties, townships, cities, and elected boards in other states, must get permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington for any change in voting procedures, no matter how small, that they seek to make.

The formula used to determine which states and other jurisdictions are covered by the preclearance requirement is set forth in section 4 of the law.

“It’s pretty safe to say that there at least five votes to strike down” either section 4 or section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, “either the coverage formula or preclearance totally,” Williams reported.

Williams added what seemed to concern a majority of the justices was “the fact that the law is too backward looking.”

Shelby County’s lawyer Bert Rein argued that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – which Congress renewed for another 25 years in 2006 – is unconstitutional because the formula used to determine which states are covered is outdated – based on voter turnout and registration data from 1972.

The blatant racial intimidation and discrimination in voting procedures that prevailed in states such as Alabama when the law was written in 1965 and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982, no longer exist, the county says.

Overshadowing Wednesday’s argument was the Supreme Court’s decision in a 2009 Texas case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One vs. Holder. In that decision, the court expressed doubts about the continued need for Section 5, noting that “voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity” between whites and blacks in the states covered by section 5.

Evan Vucci / AP

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif.,speaks during a rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, before arguments in the Shelby County, Ala., v. Holder voting rights case. The justices are hearing arguments in a challenge to the part of the Voting Rights Act that forces places with a history of discrimination, mainly in the Deep South, to get approval before they make any change in the way elections are held. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said the justices should defer to the judgment that Congress made in 2006 that the coverage formula was “rational and effective.” To that Justice Anthony Kennedy replied, “Well, the (1947) Marshall Plan was very good, too, the (1862) Morrill Act, the (1787) Northwest Ordinance, but times change.”

Kennedy suggested that the law had the effect of denying some states of their right to self-government -- in effect putting them “under the trusteeship of the United States Government.”

Related: Landmark civil rights law faces critical Supreme Court test

Addressing the question of why Congress had extended Section 5 in 2006 with no opposition at all in the Senate, Justice Antonin Scalia said it was “very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.”

He said for most members of Congress there’s little to be gained by voting against continuation of the key sections of the law. “I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution.”

But the liberal justices were quick to defend the sections of the law which Shelby County is challenging.

The court’s newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010, said Alabama still deserved to be singled out for coverage under section 5.

She said section 5 “seems to work pretty well” in targeting the places where there are the most successful lawsuits under a separate section of the Voting Rights Act, section 2.

That part of the law, which isn’t being challenged in the Shelby County case, bans all voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Unlike Sections 4 and 5 of the law, Section 2 covers all 50 states.

“If Congress were to write a formula that looked to the number of successful Section 2 suits per million residents, Alabama would be the number one state on the list,” Kagan told Rein.

Kagan said that “under any formula that Congress could devise” Alabama would still be a targeted state.

Another liberal justice who defended section 5, Justice Stephen Breyer compared racially discriminatory voting procedures to a disease. “It's an old disease, it's gotten a lot better, a lot better, but it's still there,” he said. “So if you had a remedy that really helped it work, but it (discrimination) wasn't totally over, wouldn't you keep that remedy?”

But Rein argued that the high court ought to “remove the stigma” of preclearance from the states “and the unequal application based on data that has no better history than 1972.”

Justice Samuel Alito suggested to Verrilli that “maybe the whole country should be covered” by section 5 or “maybe certain parts of the country should be covered based on a formula that is grounded in up-to-date statistics.”

When Verrilli defended the section 5 of the law, Chief Justice John Roberts asked him, “Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African American voter turnout?”

Verrilli said he did not, to which Roberts replied: “Massachusetts. Do you know what has the best, where African American turnout actually exceeds white turnout? Mississippi.”

Roberts then asked Verrilli which state has the greatest disparity in registration between whites and African Americans, and again Verrilli did not know.

Again Roberts answered Massachusetts. He added that in Mississippi, “the African American registration rate is higher than the white registration rate.”

Verrilli argued Wednesday that “changes in the polling places at the last minute before an election can be a source of great mischief. Closing polling places, moving them to inconvenient locations, et cetera.” He explained that Section 5 requires “those kinds of changes to be pre-cleared and on a 60-day calendar which effectively prevents that kind of mischief. And there is no way in the world you could use Section 2 to effectively police that kind of mischief.”

He argued in the Justice Department brief that Section 2 isn’t an adequate barrier against discrimination in voting partly because it places the burden of proof on plaintiffs who challenge allegedly discriminatory procedures, while Section 5 places the burden of proof on the states or counties to show that their procedures aren’t discriminatory.

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 12:12 PM EST

As the 40^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision takes place on Tuesday, a majority of Americans – for the first time – believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

What’s more, seven in 10 respondents oppose Roe v. Wade being overturned, which is the highest percentage on this question since 1989.

“These are profound changes,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart and his colleagues.

Related: Poll shows public lowers expectations heading into Obama's 2nd term

McInturff adds that the abortion-related events and rhetoric over the past year – which included controversial remarks on abortion and rape by two Republican Senate candidates, as well as a highly charged debate over contraception – helped shaped these changing poll numbers.

“The dialogue we have had in the last year has contributed … to inform and shift attitudes.”

View the poll results here

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy.

According to the poll, 54 percent of adults say that abortion should be legal either always or most of the time, while a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal – either with or without exceptions. 

Recommended: Obama takes ceremonial oath, tells nation 'our journey is not complete'

That’s the first time since this poll question was first asked in 2003 that a majority maintained that abortion should be legal. Previously (with just one exception in 2008), majorities said abortion should be illegal.

In addition, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose the Roe v. Wade decision being overturned, including 57 percent who feel strongly about this.

That’s up from the 58 percent who said the decision shouldn’t be overturned in 1989; the 60 percent who said this in 2002; and the 66 percent who said this in 2005.

By comparison, just 24 percent now want the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, including 21 percent who feel strongly about this position.

Much of this change, the NBC/WSJ pollsters say, is coming from African Americans, Latinos and women without college degrees -- all of whom increasingly oppose the Supreme Court decision being overturned.

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Jan. 12-15 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cellphone-only respondents), and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. 

Related: 40 years after landmark decision, restrictions on abortion grow

Updated 2:56 p.m. -- President Barack Obama unveiled sweeping new policies Wednesday aimed at limiting gun violence, teeing up a political showdown that will pit the broad public popularity for many gun control measures against Congress’s tepid appetite for approving the most stringent restrictions on gun ownership.  

"While there is no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil," Obama said at a mid-day announcement at the White House, "if there's even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there's even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try it."

Acknowledging the difficulty of the Congressional fight ahead, Obama appealed for public support, slamming - as he did in a press conference earlier this week - conservative commentators and the most vocal pro-gun activists for "ginning up" opposition to gun reforms for political reasons. 

"I will put everything I've got into this and so will Joe [Biden], but I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it," he said. 

Some of the main legislative proposals backed by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are:

• requiring criminal background checks on all gun sales, including private sales    
• banning "military-style" assault weapons    
• limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds      
• strengthening penalties for gun trafficking 

"The most important changes we can make depend on Congressional action," Obama said. "They need to bring these proposals up for a vote and the American people need to make sure that they do."

Related Information: Gun Violence Fact Sheet | Gun Violence Executive Summary | Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions 

The president also signed a series of 23 executive actions - free from a Congressional blockade -- intended to strengthen existing laws, augment mental health measures and promote federal research on gun crime through the Centers for Disease Control. 

The executive actions announced included stricter prosecution of would-be gun buyers who fail background checks as well as new requirements for federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations. 
 

The president's recommendations also direct administration officials to "clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes" and to "release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities." 

Obama and Biden were joined at the White House event by families of the Newtown school shooting victims as well as by four children who wrote the president after the tragedy that left 20 young students dead. 

"This is our first task as a society: keeping our children safe," Obama said at the beginning of his remarks. "This is how we will be judged, and their voices should compel us to change."

Biden, who led the presidential task-force on gun safety in the wake of the Newtown shootings, praised the activists who met with his staff over the last week to help build the list of recommendations. 

"The world has changed and it's demanding action," Biden said. 

While some of Obama's long-expected proposals - like universal background checks - garner overwhelming public support, the outlawing of certain types of weapons may be less of a slam dunk for lawmakers eager to appease constituents. 

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that a majority of Americans -- 55 percent -- back a ban on "assault-style weapons," with 40 percent saying they don't approve of a ban. But a partisan breakdown shows that only about four in ten Republicans support such restrictions, compared to a broad majority of Democrats. 

Democrats in Congress have already voiced doubts about the feasibility of the president's most ambitious proposals. 

"We're not going to get an outright ban" on assault weapons, Democrat Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York bluntly said yesterday.

 "[Senate Majority Leader] Reid has said he doesn't know whether he has the votes (for an assault weapons ban)," she added. "There's heavy lifting, so are we going to waste time on heavy lifting? Or are we going to try to work on doing something that could actually get passed?"

Related: Obama's gun plans spark little enthusiasm with key lawmakers

Supporters are more optimistic about background checks and magazine restrictions. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy announced Wednesday that his panel will hold its first hearing on issues relating to gun violence on Jan. 30.

In his remarks Wednesday, Obama anticipated opponents' reactions to his proposals. 

"This will be difficult," he said. "There will be pundits and politicians and special interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty. Not because that's true, but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves, and behind the scenes they will do everything they can to block any commonsense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever."

The National Rifle Association, the country's most powerful gun lobby, released a statement Wednesday afternoon in response to the president's remarks.

"We look forward to working with Congress on a bi-partisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America's most valuable asset - our children. Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation," the NRA wrote. "Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy."

That statement was relatively muted in comparison to the group's controversial ad released Tuesday night, which criticized Obama's dismissal of the gun lobby's proposal to increase armed security in schools. 

"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" a narrator asks in the short ad. "Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he's just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security."

Related: White House calls NRA 'repugnant,' 'cowardly' for invoking president's children in ad

The ad prompted outcry from observers who said the First Family should be off limits for such advertisements, while NRA backers say their focus is on school safety rather than on the president's daughters themselves. 

"Whoever thinks the ad is about President Obama's daughters are missing the point completely or they're trying to change the subject," said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. "This ad is about keeping our children safe. And the president said he was skeptical about the NRA proposal to put policemen in all schools in this country. Yet he and his family are beneficiaries of multiple law enforcement officers surrounding them 24 hours a day." 

White House spokesman Jay Carney shot back that the ad is "cowardly." 

"Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight," he said. "But to go so far as to make the safety of the President's children the subject of an attack ad  is repugnant and cowardly."

NBC's Mark Murray, Frank Thorp, Ali Weinberg and Kelly O'Donnell contributed to this report.

Updated 1:05 pm -- President Barack Obama will publicly announce his gun-safety proposals on Wednesday, with new recommendations, including some executive actions in addition to legislative proposals like a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. 

"Tomorrow, the president and the vice president will hold an event here at the White House to unveil a package of concrete proposals to reduce gun violence and prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown, Connecticut," White House spokesman Jay Carney said during a briefing Tuesday afternoon. 

Carney said that the president will be joined at the 11:45 a.m. event by children from around the country who wrote the White House with concerns about gun violence in the wake of the Newtown school shootings that left 20 children dead. 

He added that the president has previously backed a "comprehensive approach" including an assault weapons ban and a measure to ban high-capacity clips, but he stressed that both items will require congressional action. 

"The president will take a comprehensive approach, but it is a simple fact that there are limits on what can be done within existing law and Congress has to act on the kinds of measures that we've already mentioned, because the power to do that is reserved by Congress," Carney said of the need for "significant" action on gun control measures.

The president met with Vice President Joe Biden Monday - a day ahead of schedule - to discuss the Biden-led task force's recommendations after the group's series of meetings with stakeholders in the gun violence debate. 

Congressional officials familiar with the task force meetings said late Monday that Biden and his staff have developed 19 areas where Obama could use executive orders to institute new gun control policy.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a press conference in the East Room of the White House on January 14, 2013 in Washington.

The possible executive actions were not listed to the members of Congress who attended a Monday White House meeting, but officials said Biden mentioned new avenues for gun violence research as well as the strengthening of existing gun laws. Options pertaining to mental health were also mentioned.

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The measures potentially implemented by executive action would be different than legislation regarding a possible assault weapons ban or a large magazine ban that may be introduced in Congress, officials said.

Conservatives have raised strong objections to the idea of any executive actions on the part of the White House, saying that the president's efforts constitute a violation of the Second Amendment. 

Freshman Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, has even threatened to introduce articles of impeachment. 

"Any proposal to abuse executive power and infringe upon gun rights must be repelled with the stiffest legislative force possible,” he said in a statement. “Under no circumstances whatsoever may the government take any action that disarms any peaceable person — much less without due process through an executive declaration without a vote of Congress or a ruling of a court.”

But Democrats have pushed back at the notion that any executive action would affect gun ownership or rights, saying that unilateral action from the White House will merely reinforce current laws rather than creating new ones.  

"There are many (options), but they all are directing federal agencies to increase or to activate more aggressively on items that already exist in the law," Rep Chaka Fattah, D-Penn., told NBC News. "The notion that he's circumventing Congress is not accurate at all."

Fattah was not at the meeting with Biden, but he said his staff was in attendance.

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged that full implementation of his expected gun control proposals may be stonewalled in Congress but pledged to "vigorously pursue" recommendations from an administration task force, including a "meaningful" assault weapons ban. 

"What you can count on is that the things that I've said in the past - the belief that we have to have stronger background checks, that we can do a much better job in terms of keeping these magazine clips with high capacity out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them, an assault weapons ban that's meaningful - those are things I continue to believe make sense," Obama said during the final press conference of his first term. 

"Will all of them get through this Congress? I don't know," he added. "But what's uppermost in my mind is making sure that I'm honest with the American people and with members of Congress about what I think will work."  

Obama said that some measures, like the lifting of restrictions on how the federal government can collect data about guns, can be accomplished by executive order, while others will require legislation. 

"Members of Congress are going to, I think, have a debate and examine their own conscience because if in fact - and I believe this is true - everybody across party lines was as moved and saddened as I was by what happened in Newtown, then we're going to have to vote based on what we think is best." 

The president is expected to review recommendations from the task force led by Vice President Joe Biden today in a private meeting. Obama charged Biden with leading the reform effort after a mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., left 20 children dead.

"My starting point is not to worry about the politics," Obama said of the expected resistance from gun groups and many in Congress who are skeptical of an assault weapons ban. "My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works. What should we be doing to make sure that our children are safe and that we're reducing the incidence of gun violence?  And I think we can do that in a sensible way that comports with the Second Amendment." 

Addressing a question about recent spikes in gun sales, Obama blamed pro-gun groups for "ginning up fear" among firearm owners.

"Those of us who look at this problem have repeatedly said that responsible gun owners -- people who have a gun for protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship - they don't have anything to worry about," he said. "The issue here is not whether or not we believe in the Second Amendment. The issue is are there some sensible steps that we can take to make sure that somebody like the individual in Newtown can't walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion."

The U.S. Supreme Court term that begins Monday promises to be one of the most important for civil rights in decades, with the potential for blockbuster decisions on issues from race in classrooms and the voting booth to legal recognition for same-sex marriage.

Related: Conservatives warily ponder prospect of an 'Obama court'

Less than a decade after ruling that the nation's colleges and universities can consider the race of student applicants to achieve more racially diverse campuses, a practice now widely used by the nation's selective schools, the court has agreed to take a fresh look.

The new challenge comes from Abigail Fisher, a white student denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin. The school admits the top 10 percent of academic performers from all Texas high schools, then considers the race of applicants as one factor in admitting the remainder of an incoming freshman class.

Evan Vucci / AP

People who waited in line overnight to hear the Supreme Court on a landmark case on health care hold their belongings as they make their way into the court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012.

Fisher did not finish in the top 10 percent at her high school and claims that the consideration of race in reviewing applications cost her a spot at the university. 

"There were people in my class with lower grades, who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were accepted into UT. And the only difference between us was the color of our skin," she said. 

The university, backed by civil rights groups, contends that while the top 10 percent plan achieves some campus diversity, many of its classes would have only a few, if any, black and Hispanic students without additional considerations of race. 

Making it harder to achieve the diversity colleges need, argues Gregory Garre, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing the University of Texas, "would jeopardize the nation's paramount interest in educating its future leaders in an environment that best prepares them for the society and workforce they will encounter." 

The Supreme Court that will hear the case Oct. 10 is different from the one that upheld a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Michigan law school in 2003. 

"Sandra Day O'Connor was on the court then, and she's been replaced by Samuel Alito, who has much less tolerance for affirmative action," says Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court cases. 

O'Connor, who wrote the decision in the Michigan case, retired from the court in 2006. 

As a result, says Pamela Harris, a former Obama administration official in the Justice Department, "I don't think anyone thinks affirmative action is long for this world." 

Justice Elena Kagan, considered one of the court's liberals, will sit this one out. She was the Obama administration's solicitor general when the Justice Department became involved in the case in the lower courts. 

The Supreme Court will take up another racially charged issue this term if, as seems likely, it agrees to consider efforts to scale back the landmark Voting Rights Act. 

Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to election procedures -- from redrawing congressional district boundaries to changing the locations of polling places. 

Three years ago, the Supreme Court brushed off a challenge to that requirement but strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. 

"Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare." 

Pending cases ask the court to strike down the pre-clearance requirement entirely or throw out the list of areas, consisting of nine entire states, and of 12 cities and 57 counties elsewhere, that must get permission to modify their election procedures. 

The current map, says Bert Rein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing Shelby County, Ala., includes some localities that have made substantial reforms while missing other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls. 

As a result, Rein says, the system is unfair. "Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all." 

But Debo Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern. 

"Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the 50 states. But it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," he says. 

The court is almost certain to take up a host of challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. 

It defines marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." As a result, same-sex couples who get married in the states where such marriages are legal are accorded state and local benefits but miss out on more than 1,100 federal ones. 

After at first defending the law, the Obama administration notified federal courts early last year that it concluded the law was unconstitutional. House Republicans then took up the law's defense. 

A Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA as discriminatory would not force states to permit same-sex marriage. But it would require the federal government to recognize those marriages where they are legal. 

The court could address the issue of same-sex marriage more directly if it takes up the legal challenge to California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.  

Legal experts differ on whether the court is prepared to go that far, rather than deciding the DOMA issue now and coming back to the constitutionality of gay marriage in a later term. 

"We're not at the point where the Supreme Court will require the state of Mississippi to allow same-sex marriage," says Louis Michael Seidman of the Georgetown University Law Center. 

Among other questions the justices will confront: 

- Must police get a search warrant before taking a blood sample from a suspected drunk driver? 

- How far can police go in using drug-sniffing dogs outside someone's house? 

- Can a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, be used to bring lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law that occur in other countries? 

- And, in an issue of growing interest to U.S. businesses, should more limits be placed on the ability to bring class-action lawsuits?

The Justice Department has approved Virginia's new voter ID law, expanding the kinds of identification that will be honored at the polls while restricting the ability to vote without showing any ID.

Unlike states with the strictest photo ID requirement, Virginia will allow voters to cast a ballot if they present a student ID card issued by a state college or university as well as documents that carry no photo, including a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, or paycheck showing the voter's name and address. 

Click here to read the Justice Department's letter to Virginia (.pdf)

The state already honors Virginia voter registration cards that have no photo, as well as more traditional forms of identification, including a driver's license or other government ID as well as an employee photo identification card.

The new law also ends the current practice of allowing a voter to cast a regular ballot simply by signing a sworn declaration of identity.  Under the new law, someone showing up at the polls without any form of identification will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.  It will be counted only if the voter submits an approved form of identification within three days. 

But that action does not need to be carried out in person.  The confirmation can also be sent by e-mail, regular mail, or fax.  Many states with strict photo ID requirements also permit casting a provisional ballot but require submission of proof in person for the ballot to be counted.

Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has ordered the state board of elections to send every registered voter a voter card, one of the forms of identification the law honors.

"This significant step ensures that every Virginia voter is guaranteed to have at least one of the many different valid forms of ID required to be presented at the polls.

"The legislation I signed into law is a practical and reasonable step to make our elections more secure while also ensuring access to the ballot box for all qualified voters," McDonnell said.

Virginia is one of 16 states covered by the Voting Rights Act, which requires them to get federal approval before changing election procedures.  The Justice Department notified the state Monday night that it posed no objection to the new law.

Updated at 4:15 pm ET The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a federal law called the Stolen Valor Act which prohibits a person from falsely claiming that he has been awarded a military honor.

The case involved Xavier Alvarez who was an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board in Pomona, California.

In 2007 Alvarez said at a public water district board meeting that he was a retired Marine, had been “wounded many times,” and had been “awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor” in 1987.

In fact, he never served in the United States armed forces.

Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act, but claimed that his false statements were protected by the First Amendment right of free speech.

The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society.”

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Kennedy quoted from the famous dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Abrams decision: “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Kennedy said, "Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee."

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Writing a dissent for himself, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito said a long line of prior court decisions recognized “that the right to free speech does not protect false factual statements that inflict real harm and serve no legitimate interest.”

Alito said, “Legitimate award recipients and their families have expressed the harm they endure when an imposter takes credit for heroic actions that he never performed. One Medal of Honor recipient described the feeling as a ‘slap in the face of veterans who have paid the price and earned their medals.’”

Alito said diluting the effect of military awards “harms the military by hampering its efforts to foster morale and esprit de corps.”

Updated at 2:25 pm ET The Supreme Court Monday struck down mandatory sentences of life imprisonment without parole for convicted murderers who were only 14 years old when they committed their crimes.

There are approximately 80 people nationwide who are serving such sentences for murders they committed when they were fourteen years old or younger.

The justices ruled that imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a fourteen-year old convicted of homicide violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

The decision arose out of two cases, one from Arkansas and one from Alabama.

In each case, a 14-year-old offender was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

“State law mandated that each juvenile die in prison even if a judge or jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser sentence (for example, life with the possibility of parole) more appropriate,” noted Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the majority opinion for the court.

Kagan said that “a judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty for juveniles.”

Requiring all children convicted of homicide to receive life in prison without possibility of parole, “regardless of their age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes,” violates the principle of proportionality, and conflicts with the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Kagan said.

Monday’s ruling was not a surprise since the high court had already decided in cases in 2005 and 2010 that that the Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment for children and that it also prohibits a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for a child who committed a non-homicide offense.

In the Alabama case Evan Miller, 14 years old, killed an adult neighbor, Cole Cannon, while Miller, Cannon and another boy Colby Smith, were smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. Miller beat Cannon with a baseball bat and said “I am God, I’ve come to take your life.”

Miller and Smith then set Cannon’s trailer on fire to cover up their crime. After Cannon died from his injuries and smoke inhalation, Alabama charged Miller as an adult with murder in the course of arson.

Smith pleaded to a lesser offense and provided testimony that helped convict Miller.

“No one can doubt that he and Smith committed a vicious murder,” Kagan said. “But they did it when high on drugs and alcohol consumed with the adult victim. And if ever a pathological background might have contributed to a 14-year-old’s commission of a crime, it is here.”

She said Miller’s stepfather had abused him and “his alcoholic and drug-addicted mother neglected him; he had been in and out of foster care as a result” and had tried to kill himself four times.

In the accompanying case from Arkansas, a boy named Kuntrell Jackson, 14 years old, along with two other boys decided to rob a video store. In the course of that robbery, one of the other boys shot and killed the store clerk. Jackson was unarmed when the murder took place but was charged as an accessory.

Kagan’s opinion was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

In his dissent, Roberts wrote that “the only stopping point for the Court’s analysis would be never permitting juvenile offenders to be tried as adults.”

He also said that in recent years more and more states had moved toward requiring that “the murderer, his age notwithstanding, be imprisoned for the remainder of his life. Members of this Court may disagree with that choice.  Perhaps science and policy suggest society should show greater mercy to young killers, giving them a greater chance to reform themselves at the risk that they will kill again. But that is not our decision to make.”