WASHINGTON – First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator.

Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.

But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.

President Obama, responding to mounting criticism of his Justice Department's seizure of reporter records, said for the first time Thursday that the administration would be reviewing its guidelines in response to the controversy. Obama said he's "troubled" by the developments and that journalists should not be "at legal risk" for doing their jobs. 

Until now, administration officials have responded to the blowback by speaking generally about the importance of balancing national security -- and their ability to prosecute high-profile leaks -- with freedom of the press.

A hastily scrawled note by President Abraham Lincoln just two months before his assassination ordering a disabled 14-year-old boy released from the Army in response to a plea from the boy’s father went on sale Thursday in Philadelphia.

The message saying “Let this boy be discharged,” and signed A. Lincoln was written on a telegram from Col. Thomas W. Harris about his son, Perry. It had been in a private collection and was valued at $15,000 by Nathan Raab of the Raab Collection, which offered the previously unknown document for sale.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa declared Thursday that the embattled IRS official who refused to testify Wednesday had no right to do so, and is now looking to haul her back before his committee. 

The chairman of the House oversight committee made the call after consulting with attorneys about IRS official Lois Lerner's bizarre appearance before the panel on Wednesday. Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division which oversaw the controversial targeting of conservative groups, caused confusion Wednesday morning when she pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer questions -- but also delivered an opening statement in which she asserted her innocence.

The Justice Department did more than seize a Fox News reporter's emails while suggesting he was a criminal "co-conspirator" in a leak case -- it did so under one of the most serious wartime laws in America, the Espionage Act. 

It's the same law used by the Nixon administration to go after The New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg over the leak of the Pentagon Papers. It's the law used to charge the Rosenbergs, American communists, for allegedly passing secret information to the Soviet Union -- they were executed for the offense in 1953.

House Republicans are considering trying to haul back into the hearing room the embattled IRS official who refused to testify Wednesday, claiming she may have inadvertently waived her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent by delivering an opening statement. 

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division which oversaw the controversial targeting of conservative groups, caused confusion on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning when she -- according to some lawmakers -- tried to have it both ways. She pleaded the Fifth, saying she would refuse to answer questions from a House committee probing the IRS program.

The Justice Department did more than seize a Fox News reporter's emails while suggesting he was a criminal "co-conspirator" in a leak case -- it did so under one of the most serious wartime laws in America, the Espionage Act. 

It's the same law used by the Nixon administration to go after The New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg over the leak of the Pentagon Papers. It's the law used to charge the Rosenbergs, American communists, for allegedly passing secret information to the Soviet Union -- they were executed for the offense in 1953.

Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation -- even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter's parents. 

The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen's personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal "co-conspirator," citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.

Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation -- even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter's parents. 

The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen's personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal "co-conspirator," citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.

Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation -- even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter's parents. 

The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen's personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal "co-conspirator," citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.