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

Hungry to take advantage of an unfulfilled market, the pharmaceutical industry is hoping the latest diet pill to gain federal approval will open the way for other drugs in development that are designed to cut pounds off of millions of obese Americ...   read more

Act of Valor, which opened nationwide this past weekend as the top-selling movie in the U.S., is perhaps the closest yet that Hollywood has come to producing a pure propaganda film for the “Military-Entertainment Complex.”   For the past 25 year...   read more

According to the oil industry’s top lobbying group, President Barack Obama’s corporate tax reform plan is discriminating against petroleum producers.   Apparently with a straight face, Jack Gerard, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum...   read more

The U.S. government has agreed with its negotiating partners to keep details of a new international trade agreement involving Pacific Rim nations a secret until negotiations are completed.   The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the...   read more

Environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) last week sued the State Department for access to communications between it and lobbyists promoting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, two of whom were prominent fundraisers for the 2008 presidential...   read more

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.   A government watchdog ...   read more

The vast majority of “small businesses” that won the largest share of federal contracts last year turned out to be large companies, according to the American Small Business League.   Businesses qualify as “small” based on their annual revenue an...   read more

Giant chemical corporation Monsanto has agreed to a tentative settlement requiring it to pay nearly $100 million to settle claims that its factory in Nitro, West Virginia, contaminated the small town and its residents with the toxic chemical dioxi...   read more

Bowing to industry lobbying, the Obama administration has proposed eliminating a program that tests fresh produce for food-borne diseases like the listeria outbreak in cantaloupe that killed 36 people in 2011. The USDA microbiological data program...   read more

The responsibility of major corporations for human rights abuses abroad will be argued on Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court. In the case, Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell is accused of assisting the Nigerian government in torturin...   read more

It seems that the 1% have some pretty enthusiastic fans in the Kansas legislature. Last week, the state House Committee on Taxation approved a bill to raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich. Specifically, those making less than $25,000 ...   read more

Even with the advantage of modern technology, replicating the building of Egypt’s great pyramids would prove costly and time-consuming. Back in the days of the pharaohs, it took about 20 years and thousands of slaves to construct the Great Pyramid...   read more

Unlike last year, this year’s set of live action shorts nominees is dominated by comedies, which was good news for me since I am a fan of short comedies.   Tuba Atlantic (Norway) Oskar, a misanthropic farmer who is obsessed with killing seagull...   read more

 With this year’s nominees clocking in at an average of 34 minutes, the Academy might want to rename this category Documentary Mediums rather than Documentary Shorts. Perhaps because of their length, they are a solid bunch.   The Tsunami and the...   read more

A key piece of the federal government’s mortgage-relief strategy is set to expire this year, leaving thousands of Americans at risk of getting hit with a large tax bill.   The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 protected homeowners who...   read more

El Salvador’s former defense minister has become the first foreign military leader ordered to leave the United States for human rights violations.   General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who ran the military during El Salvador’s turbulent civil...   read more