It has been more than 20 years since a majority of Americans said they were satisfied with the direction of their country, a period that covers the presidencies of two Republicans and two Democrats. The last time a majority of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic Party was in August 2009. The Republicans? Except for one poll in January 2020, no majority favorable since April 2005.   read more

Naval officer Michael Izbicki has twice been denied an honorable discharge because the U.S. Navy rejected his assertion that he is a conscientious objector. Hailing from a family with a history of military service, Izbicki came to conclude that ...   read more

Misrepresenting a campaign opponent’s position may be standard operating procedure in the United States, but in the United Kingdom it has cost a member of the British parliament his seat. Phil Woolas was removed from office by an election court ...   read more

PBS’s NewsHour, regarded by its supporters as a more thorough alternative to network and cable television news, has demonstrated a noticeable pro-war slant in its coverage of Afghanistan, according to a recent analysis by the media watchdog group,...   read more

Jonathan M. Young was appointed to the National Council on Disability as a board member and chairman by President Barack Obama in December 2009.   In 1986, Young broke his neck during a high school wrestling match and is partially paralyzed with...   read more

Perhaps no other U.S. Supreme Court decision has had as much impact on an election in modern times as the Citizens United ruling did this year. The court case, which threw out longstanding limits on contributions by corporations and unions, help...   read more

At the October 30, 2010, Sanity and Fear rally in Washington, D.C., organized by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, participants were urged to bring signs that expressed issues they considered important. Here is a sampling. (photos: Elijah...   read more

American diplomatic operations in Afghanistan are proving expensive and not necessarily all that efficient.   On the cost front, the U.S. embassy in Kabul is being expanded, at a price of more than half a billion dollars. The $511 million proj...   read more

In a first for Schuyler County, Missouri, the winner of Tuesday’s election for local prosecutor said he does not want the job. Defense attorney Ben Gray won the race by virtue of the fact that no candidate was on the November 2 ballot, but some ...   read more

John P. Salazar is the Chair of the Inter-American Foundation, a U.S. agency that funds foreign assistance programs in the Caribbean and Latin American. Salazar joined the Foundation’s board of directors in 2006 after being nominated by Presiden...   read more

For the first time ever, the federal government has filed suit in federal court to shut down a coal mine. The mine is owned by Massey Energy, which was responsible for the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 workers earlier this year.   The D...   read more

Lost amid the post-election news about Tea Party victories and Republicans taking back the U.S. House of Representatives was the fact that November 2010 also was good to homosexuals and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who ran for public office....   read more

Mina Corp., a little known American-owned enterprise that has been under investigation by Congress, has won another lucrative contract with the Department of Defense. Mina, and another firm, Red Star Enterprises, both of which are owned by Calif...   read more

Reprieve, a United Kingdom-based organization opposing capital punishment, has filed suit in British court to stop the government from exporting death penalty drugs to the United States, which is experiencing a shortage. The legal challenge was ...   read more

Consumer advocates at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) haven’t seen eye-to-eye with the anti-tax crusaders at the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) on many issues. But the two divergent organizations have come together on the mat...   read more

Having approved the Deepwater Horizon’s safety procedures before the offshore oil rig exploded and unleashed the worst spill in U.S. history, Det Norske Veritas (DNV) of Norway now has been hired by the federal government to inspect the vital pi...   read more

When President George W. Bush created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee all intelligence matters, he did not give this new centralized authority control over the government’s secret spy budget. But that’s abou...   read more