In addition to touching off a political firestorm by admitting some conservative groups with the names “tea party” or “patriots” were singled out by her agency, she also admitted that she’s not a math whiz.

“That would be a quarter of the 300 then, so we’re talking 75 or so?” asked Tom Costello of NBC news, in an attempt to clarify how many groups had been affected.

“That’s correct. Is that a quarter?” Lerner asked hesitantly. “I’m not good at math.”

“You’re with the IRS,” Costello noted.

“But I’m a lawyer, not an accountant, sorry!” said Lerner, who is the director of the tax-exempt division of the IRS.

Her mea culpa conference call today became a feeding ground for dozens of political reporters from ABC News to the New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico who peppered Lerner with questions about who knew about the problems and when.

Lerner, who falls somewhere near the bottom of the IRS’s leadership organizational chart, made an effort to field the questions. But the entire event seemed to indicate that the depth of this potentially explosive political story hadn’t fully sunk in.

When asked why she waited so long to apologize, Lerner said she just hadn’t been asked.

“You know, somebody asked me a question today, so I answered it,” she said. “I don’t believe anybody ever asked me that question before.”

Asked why her superiors weren’t notified sooner, the answer was similarly unsatisfactory.

“Because I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I was seeing the same things in the press that you were,” she said.

After initially saying that no one had been disciplined in connection to the kerfuffle, Lerner then said that she couldn’t talk about it with the media.

But with Congressional Republicans already asking for further investigation, it’s doubtful that not talking about it will remain an option.

Image credit: Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images

“The Maverick” is back. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)  has introduced a bill in the Senate that would let you get HBO without paying for the DFH Network, defying a powerful telecom industry that is vociferously opposed to allowing pay per channel options.

The “Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013″ would let consumers buy cable channels “a la carte,” something the Netflix and Hulu generation has been clamoring for to the trepidation of telecom giants.

“You want to watch one television program, you can watch it. If you don’t, you don’t have to. The situation today is obviously far different from that,” McCain said introducing the bill in the Senate Thursday.  “That’s unfair and wrong, especially when you consider how the regulatory deck is stacked in favor of industry against the consumer.”

For avid fans of “Girls,” “Homeland,” or “Game of Thrones,” McCain is speaking to their deepest desires. The ability to subscribe to HBO Go, without paying Comcast, Verizon, or the Dish Network nearly $100 a month has for a long time seemed like a fantasy.

And it may yet be.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which spent $200,000 on lobbying the federal government in 2013, is strongly opposed to the bill.

“In a thriving marketplace that is constantly providing consumers with new services and features, a government-mandated a la carte system is a lose – lose proposition,” they said in a statement. As countless studies have demonstrated, subscription bundles offer a wider array of viewing options, increased programming diversity and better value than per channel options. In today’s video marketplace, consumers enjoy more choice than ever before.”

And the NCTA’s lobbying pales in comparison to the $14.86 million that Comcast spent on lobbying in 2012.

McCain says that the cost of cable has spiraled out of control, which is only possible if large cable and satellite companies have a monopoly.

“People are on fixed incomes, people are hurting. Why on earth should they have a 100 percent price increase?” McCain said. “And the only way that could be done is through monopolies.”

McCain’s bill would tie the availability of copyright licenses that allow providers to protect their content to the voluntary offering of a la carte channels.

On the other side of the issue are smaller cable companies, represented by the American Cable Association, who support McCain’s efforts which may help open some room in the telecom marketplace for smaller carriers.

“Sen. McCain’s new bill highlights a point that many, including ACA, have been making for a long time, which is that programmers use their formidable market power to impose tying-and-bundling requirements on unwilling distributors.  The result is that consumers must subscribe to large pay-TV packages that are populated with dozens of unwanted channels.

McCain’s bill also deals with another vexing issue for television watchers: sports blackouts.

His bill would also prevent sports blackout for games broadcast from publicly funded stadium—which is to say a lot of stadiums.

According to Deadspin which compiled data on stadium construction, tax dollars financed more than 60 percent of the cost of building or renovating the 186 sports stadiums constructed between 2009 and 2012.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., left, accompanied by House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, speaks during a House Republican Leadership news conference, April 16, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

Just in time for Mother’s Day, House Republicans today successfully pushed through a bill aimed at mending the party’s ailing standing with women voters.

The Working Families Flexibility Act, a bill that allowed employees to take time off instead of overtime pay, passed in the House of Representatives Wednesday night and was billed as a “straight-up answer to the problems that working moms and dads are facing,” according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

Led by the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., a mother of two, the legislation aims to give private-sector employers the same ability that government workers have to take either comp time or overtime pay.

“This is about choice. This is about flexibility,” Roby said at a news conference Tuesday. “I guess my question would be, if it’s good enough for government employees, why isn’t it good enough for the private sector?”

Coming on the heels of a presidential election in which Republicans suffered the worst loss of women voters in the 60-year history of the Gallup survey, it’s clear why the Republican Party would see this as a chance to appeal to women voters and shore up their base.

And it comes at a time when there is more public debate, and little clarity, about what working women want and need: more money or time.

While Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has exhorted women to “lean in,” negotiate for higher salaries and push for fair pay, she has also called on employers to make workplace policies fairer for women who are also mothers by allowing flexible work options.

The problem, say labor and some family advocate groups like the National Partnership for Women and Families, is that this bill allows businesses to pay women less under the guise of giving them more flexible work options.

“What employers are trying to do here, and it’s not a great secret, is they want to get out of paying overtime for employees and work them more than 40 hours a week and then tell them you can take comp time that’s available to you,” Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., said during a conference call Monday. “Only the fact is that that comp time, that compensatory time, won’t be available to them at their leisure.”

Proponents of the legislation, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management, which represents employers, say it gives workers, especially parents, the ability to take time off to be at parent-teacher conferences or doctor’s appointments.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: A person who works more than 40 hours a week can arrange with their employer to take that time in the form of compensatory (comp) time, instead of overtime pay. Each hour of extra work is worth an hour and a half of time off.

According to the bill, agreeing to time off instead of overtime pay can’t be a condition of employment, and the employee can also choose to take the money instead of time at any point.

Employers can deny requests for time off at any time, as long as they can show that it might “unduly disrupt the operations of the employer,” according to the bill.

And just as it is for the government, the bill would undoubtedly be a cost-saving measure for businesses as well.

Today’s came down along partisan lines with only three Democrats joining 220 Republicans in approving the measure, mirroring the fate of similar pieces of legislation that were taken up in the 199′s but failed to become law.

What’s next for the bill? Most likely nothing, if Democrats have anything to say about it.

The White House has said it would potentially veto the bill if it ever got to President Obama’s desk.

And there is no indication that it ever will, as long as Democrats remain in control of the Senate.

“This week we gave mothers not a very good gift: more work, less pay. Happy Mother’s Day? I don’t think so,”  said House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a press conference today. “The bill that gives less flexibility to working people, more discretion to their bosses.”

ABC News’ John Parkinson contributed to this report.

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA — President Obama tonight said he does not foresee any scenario that would require U.S. boots on the ground in Syria, as he vowed to “apply every pressure point” to the Assad regime.

“As a general rule, I don’t rule things out as commander in chief because circumstances change and you want to make sure that I always have the full power of the United States at our disposal to meet American national security interests,” Obama said at a joint press conference with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla.

PHOTOS: Syrian War

“Having said that, I do not foresee a scenario in which boots on the ground in Syria, American boots on the ground in Syria, would not only be good for America, but also would be good for Syria,” he said.

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The U.S. is continuing to investigate whether the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people.

“We will stay on this,” Obama said. “If in fact, there is a kind of systematic use of chemical weapons inside of Syria, we expect that we’re going to get additional further evidence and at that point absolutely, we will present that to the international community.”

RELATED: Defense Secretary Hagel Says Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons

Obama reiterated that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be a “game-changer” and said that any additional steps will be taken based on information on the ground and in the best interest of U.S. security.

“When we leap before we look then, not only do we pay a price, but we often see unintended consequences on the ground,” he said. “It’s important for us to do it right.”

                                                                                          (Image Credit: NRANews/YouTube)

The NRA has a new president, Birmingham, Ala., attorney Jim Porter, and he has a knack for firing up a crowd if his old stump speeches are any indication.

Porter, who until this week was first vice president at the NRA and chairman of the group’s Legal Affairs Committee, will officially take over for David Keene at the group’s annual convention this weekend in Houston. The NRA’s executive vice president and CEO, Wayne LaPierre, has headed the organization since 1991, and has become a somewhat controversial but public face of the organization in recent months.

It’s no surprise that Porter, whose father was an NRA president in the late 1950s, is well-versed in NRA doctrine, namely protecting 2nd Amendment rights at all costs.

And anyone expecting the NRA to soften on assault weapons would be, well, deeply disappointed.

Indeed, Porter, 64, has put it in crystal-clear terms: He believes the NRA was founded to teach civilians how to use military-style weapons in the Civil War era.

“That was the very reason they started the national rifle association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm,” Porter said at the New York Rifle & Pistol Association’s Annual Meeting in 2012. “And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is our greatest charges that we could have today is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so when they have to fight for their country, they’re ready to do it.

“Also when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it,” Porter added.

The video of the meeting was first unearthed by the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence.

Speaking of a fight, Porter also noted that the Civil War is commonly mislabeled in the North.

“Y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it ‘the war of northern aggression’ down South,” Porter said.

In that same speech, Porter also made it clear that there’s no love lost between the NRA and President Obama, whom he called a “fake president.”

“His entire administration is anti-gun, anti-freedom anti-second amendment,” Porter said.

And that was before Obama backed a new background checks bill and pushed for an assault weapons ban in Congress.

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Torrey Smith is a man of many hats, or maybe helmets. Not only is he a star wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens and a new Super Bowl champion, he is also an intern for Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

That’s right, an intern.

Smith is interning for Cummings in the Baltimore office of Maryland’s Seventh Congressional District. Smith, who is a graduate of the University of Maryland, is interning for a constituency that spans more than half the city and most of Howard County, as well as some of Baltimore County.

Smith, 24, dedicated his 2013 off-season to politics when he began his month-long unpaid internship in early March. He could not be reached for comment.

The Super Bowl winner is not getting any special treatment in the district office.

Smith, a native Virginian whom the Ravens drafted in 2011,  went from catching passes to filing papers, according to the Baltimore Ravens website.

“I was handling files, reading letters, relaying them, typing up what sponsors say, printing stuff,” Smith said. “I was the office guy.”

Although such grunt work seems tedious, the pro athlete said that he enjoyed it and learned a lot.

“I learned that there are really politicians that do a lot for their community – [Cummings] being one of them,” Smith said. “You can literally call your congressman and any issue you have, they can basically point you in the right direction if they can’t help you. I never really knew that.

“Being on that side and seeing how they work, it’s pretty cool. Their staff, they actually care. That says a lot when it comes to a city like Baltimore. You need people who are leaders and taking care of your area who really care.”

The Ravens will pay Smith upwards of $700,000 next season, according to Spotrac.com.

(Jim Mone/AP Photo)

ANALYSIS
By RICK KLEIN @rickklein

In the fast-moving politics of gay marriage, the nation’s political class is trailing the public — and it’s getting hard to keep up.

Karl Rove is just the latest major political figure to recognize that fact. On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” today, Rove said he could see a Republican candidate coming out in favor of gay marriage in the next presidential election.

Read more of what Rove said on ‘This Week.’

That’s not the same as saying the GOP nominee will definitely support gay marriage. But the fact that this would be a plausible position inside the Republican Party in time for 2016 is a stunning turnabout. Barely eight years ago, Rove engineered a reelection campaign that took advantage of a wave of state efforts to move in the other direction, by banning gay marriage.

President Obama and his major rivals, of course, all opposed gay marriage back in 2008. The president’s public disavowal of that position is less than a year old, and Hillary Rodham Clinton — a very early 2016 Democratic frontrunner — only officially backed gay marriage last week.

Politicians in both parties are following a tectonic shift in public opinion surrounding gay marriage. In 2004, only 32 percent of voters thought gay marriage should be legal, in ABC News/Washington Post polling.

This month, the same poll had support jumping to 58 percent — a clear majority, powered by growing support across demographic groups. It’s not yet the mainstream position inside the Republican Party, but that’s the trend line Rove and others are reading.

Read more of the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Watch my take on ABC’s “World News”:

Dan MacMedan/WireImage/Getty Images | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Actress Ashley Judd is “seriously considering” running for Senate, according to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.

Beshear, a Democrat, spoke with Judd on the phone last week about her potential Senate bid which would pit her again Republican rival and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“I talked to her again the other day, she called me and we had a good conversation,” Beshear said at a press conference with local reporters on Tuesday.

Though the governor did not go into specifics about their chat, he did say that Judd is “seriously considering a race for the United States Senate and the Democratic primary.”

Beshear told local reporters that the actress would be an “effective and formidable opponent” against McConnell in a general election.

Beshear is not the only Kentuckian convinced that Judd might take a stab at politics.  Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, a big supporter of Judd, told ABC News, “I would be surprised if she doesn’t run at this point.”

SLIDESHOW: Ashley Judd reveals molestation in memoir

“My impression is this is something she wants to do, and she is now taking the time to make the contacts she needs to make throughout the state to try and generate commitments of support and in some cases fundraising,” Yarmuth said. “She is certainly acting like a candidate, a potential candidate.

Though Judd has neither confirmed nor denied a run in the 2014 Senate cycle, the actress has already received criticism from Republican opponents. Just last month, she was subject of an attack video posted online by a conservative super PAC, American Crossroads who called her an “Obama-following, radical Hollywood liberal.”

The Hollywood starlet has captured the attention of young Kentuckians but it seems as if now Senator McConnell is trying to do the same. Today, McConnell’s campaign team released a “Harlem Shake” video on YouTube.

Though McConnell does not appear in the video himself, a giant McConnell head is dancing aside a slew of patriotically dressed Harlem Shakers at Churchill Downs, the thoroughbred racetrack known as the Home of the Kentucky Derby.

Credit: Department of Agriculture

David Kerley, Jennifer Abbey, and Betsy Klein contributed to this report:

Long before cameras were invented, our founding fathers kept their images alive with painted portraits. Paintings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are part of American history.

But what began as official documentation of early leaders is now a formality, a tradition, a sign of prestige — and, some say, a burden on taxpayers.

Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense argues that it’s time for a change. “You really have to really wonder, is it worth the cost?” Ellis said. “It certainly strokes their ego but at a cost to taxpayers, and we can’t afford just ego strokes when we’ve got a trillion-dollar deficit and $16 trillion in debt.”

Ellis and other watchdogs haven’t been able to stop government spending on portraits of cabinet secretaries and generals. As the Washington Times first reported, the latest portrait for outgoing EPA administrator Lisa Jackson cost $38,350. Air Force Secretary Michael Donnelly’s portrait cost $41,200.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson’s portrait cost $22,500, the paper said. He served President Obama for eight months.

In the past two years alone, the Obama administration has spent almost $400,000 on oil portraits. The administration turned down ABC News’ request to enter a building to see some of the portraits hanging. But the White House told ABC News it is spending less than previous administrations did.

Some of the oil portraits are commissioned while secretaries are still serving.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had a $22,500 portrait made, but when asked if we should stop doing oil portraits of former secretaries, he avoided the question.

“Honestly, you know, there are so many questions I’d be happy to answer about our budget, I just think that is a really small ball kind of question,” he told ABC News.

Ellis disagreed.

“It just shows how Washington has become immune to the cost of things and the actual price,” he said. “Twenty thousand dollars on a portrait, that’s real money and that’s real waste.”

(Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s budget gamble has only gotten bigger, even as Washington’s response to the self-inflicted crisis has gotten smaller.

Now that the sequester has gone into effect — bringing on the spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never happen — the president is in the awkward place of rooting for it be felt as he and his administration has predicted.

At stake is the president’s credibility in the latest round of the seemingly endless budget wars, which seem poised to dominate if not subsume his second term. Even before the cuts began, the president and his top aides were caught stretching the truth of their impact a few times, feeding his critics’ argument that the nation can afford budget trims.

Beyond that, the president’s vision for governance is being put to an extraordinary test. With the two sides drained and declaring something of a weary truce, the president’s entire strategy for restoring the latest cuts depends on the public rising up and rejecting cuts to government services.

“The question is, can the American people help persuade their members of Congress to do the right thing?” Obama said Friday, in announcing that the once-unthinkable sequester cuts had become unavoidable.

Politicians Settle in for Sequestration Long Haul

If pressure forces the GOP-led House to capitulate, the president may yet win the war with tea party forces that have irrevocably altered the course of his time in office. Get the public engaged in this fight enough to convince Republicans who’ve worked with the president on virtually nothing, and that’s a bright spot in a beleaguered Washington.

If he loses this battle, though, he’ll find himself locked in perpetual spending crises at least through next year’s congressional elections. The president may ultimately have to cater to Republican demands for even deeper spending cuts, with new tax revenues all but off the table.

That’s where the president’s awkward position comes in. As leader of the federal government, he of course wants to mitigate the real-world impact of budget cuts, to make sure people feel as little disruption as possible in their day-to-day lives.

Sequester: What Will Happen

But the $85 billion in cuts that are now coursing their way through the federal bureaucracy will have real impact. The fact is the president needs that to be the case, to exert the kind of political pressure on Republicans over spending cuts that hasn’t been there to date.

“My belief is that as this pain starts to gradually spread to communities affected by military spending, to children who need mental health services, to people who care about our border security, I believe that more Republican colleagues who are concerned about this harm to their constituents will choose bipartisan compromise on revenue raising tax reform with serious entitlement reform,” White House economic adviser Gene Sperling said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Republicans have their own problems when it comes to the sequester, both on the substance and in messaging. House Speaker John Boehner has raised alarms about the sequester’s impact on Defense spending, and in an interview that aired today said he wasn’t sure whether it would “hurt the economy or not.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte Keeps Door Open for ‘Big Agreement’ on Budget

Other Republicans, meanwhile — including many aligned with the tea party — see the sequester as an important step toward what they say is fiscal sanity. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., last week called the sequester “a big victory” for the GOP.

The one thing Republicans aren’t budging on is taxes. That would seem to close out avenues of compromise; any plan to replace the sequester, the president is saying, must include ridding the tax code of loopholes that primarily benefit the wealthy.

The president’s Friday news conference included an extraordinary admission: that he lacks the direct powers to do much about the current state of affairs in Washington.

“What more do you think I should do?” he asked reporters, not entirely rhetorically.

There are no easy answers to that question. So, with a policy in effect that was designed to be so awful as to force an alternative, all he and his critics can do is wait.