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

That $5-a-month debit card fee was a great idea by Bank of America…for credit unions.   From the date BofA announced the controversial idea until this week, credit unions across the U.S. gained 650,000 new customers. To put this number in perspe...   read more

Created to thwart such crimes, a Social Security Administration database is being used by criminals to file fraudulent income tax returns involving the names of deceased children.   The government established the Death Master File in 1980 to hel...   read more

The number of Americans living in extremely poor neighborhoods increased in recent years, following a period in the 1990s when this problem was declining. Such areas are defined as having 40% of individuals living below the poverty line.   From ...   read more

Having been publicly exposed for teaching that all Muslims are dangerous, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has asked for help from the U.S. Army’s premier educational source.   The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC) will soo...   read more

The Nordic nation of Finland, where more than 60% of the population speaks at least some English, has sent its first female ambassador to the United States. Ritva Koukku-Ronde, a former journalist with experience in global development issues, took...   read more

A pharmaceutical giant has broken yet another record for legal settlements stemming from claims of illegally marketing drugs and defrauding federal healthcare programs.   GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said this week that it would pay $3 billion to resol...   read more

Even if found not guilty of the bombing of an American warship more than a decade ago, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri won’t be going free.   Al-Nashiri is accused of masterminding the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sai...   read more

Since creating the We the People website in September, the White House has posted more than 130 petitions from Americans urging changes in government policy. Initially, officials promised to respond to petitions that received more than 5,000 signa...   read more

President Barack Obama nominated veteran diplomat Mary Beth Leonard to become the U.S. Ambassador to Mali on June 21, 2011, and she was confirmed by the Senate on October 18. Leonard had previously served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. emb...   read more

According to the U.S. tax code, corporations pay a 35% tax rate on their earnings. But at least 30 of them paid zero federal income over the last three years, while hundreds of other companies paid half the official corporate rate.   The finding...   read more

The violent crackdown last week by police in Oakland, California, against Occupy protesters was nothing new to local residents who have witnessed the city’s law enforcement behave brutally, and sometimes illegally.   In 2003, several Oakland pol...   read more

The Department of Defense has not shortchanged itself since 9/11. Over the last 10 years, the military spent about $1 trillion on new weapons and war-fighting equipment, according to a think tank’s report. Of the total spent, 22% came not from the...   read more

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has again lost its case against CBS over the airing of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004 during the Super Bowl halftime show.   The FCC, then headed by Republican Michael K. Powel...   read more

Twice now the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has failed to meet a deadline mandated by Congress to inspect 100% of all cargo on international U.S.-bound passenger planes. Following recommendations made by the commission that investig...   read more

In the late 1990s, experts insisted it was highly unlikely the U.S. would rely on new x-ray body scanners at airports and other security checkpoints. But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, reversed that thinking and today there are hundr...   read more

The rich in Congress have continued to get richer, according to a new analysis of lawmakers’ net worth by Roll Call.   Three years ago, the collective net worth all representatives and senators was $1.65 billion. By 2010, this amount had increas...   read more