President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

Is the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under attack since the moment of its conception, already in danger of becoming a paper tiger? Congress created CFPB in 2010 as part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect...   read more

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC), charged with overseeing federal election standards, has no appointed leaders in the year of a presidential election.   Four commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, are supposed to head the EA...   read more

Having caused drinking water contamination and outbreaks of earthquakes in rural regions in Montana, Oklahoma, Ohio, Arkansas and Pennsylvania, the controversial practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has gone Hollywood. Resident...   read more

Every spring, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) gives critics of the Defense Department (DoD) a present, courtesy of Congress, in the form of a report on the state of the Pentagon’s major weapons programs. GAO’s report for 2011, released ...   read more

A special program created by the Obama administration to help homeowners hit hardest by the mortgage crisis has aided only a small fraction of those eligible.   The two-year-old Hardest Hit Fund, managed by the Department of the Treasury t...   read more

What do Raymond Knaeble, Ayman Latif, Abe Mashal and Steven Washburn have in common, aside from being veterans of the U.S. armed forces? They all have no idea why they are on the government’s secret “No-Fly List”—and they’re suing the government o...   read more

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for overseeing the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, pays private contractors tens of millions of dollars to run day-to-...   read more

The cry of “women and children first” during ship disasters turns out to be more of a myth than reality.   In honor of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University studied 18 passeng...   read more

One of the worst dictatorships in Africa, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, will soon receive a U.S. ambassador with prior African experience in Sudan and prior dictator experience in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Sudan. Mark L. Asquino was nominated by Pr...   read more

The smallest country on mainland Africa will soon have a new ambassador from the United States. President Barack Obama on March 5 nominated Edward M. “Ned” Alford to be next ambassador to The Gambia. He replaces Pamela White who had served as amba...   read more

American Special Forces provided training during the George W. Bush administration to a terrorist group bent on the overthrow of the Iranian government, according to the New Yorker.   According to a story by investigative journalist Seymour He...   read more

It is unclear whether the Department of Defense is really saving money by freezing the size of its civilian workforce.   Pentagon leaders insist their Defense Efficiencies Initiative will reduce the amount of tax dollars consumed by the departme...   read more

The Obama administration has reached a settlement with more than 40 Indian tribes to resolve claims of mismanaged funds by the Department of the Interior.   After 22 months of negotiation, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed with tribal repres...   read more

The leaders of Iraq, on a rocky road to stability since the final departure of U.S. combat troops last year, will soon be welcoming a familiar face as the next ambassador from the United States. On March 26, 2012, President Obama announced his i...   read more

An experienced diplomat who has served there before and speaks the Portuguese language was nominated by President Obama on March 29, 2012, to be the next ambassador to the southern African nation of Mozambique. Born circa 1964, Douglas M. Griffith...   read more

Today Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that will radically redefine when life begins for an unborn child.   A State Senate amendment to the bill, H.B. 2036, states that a fetus’ life starts not at conception, but up to two week...   read more