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

Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration law wasn’t just the product of state Senator Russell Pearce’s effort to undo the “lawless” condition that illegal immigration has imposed on the nation. It was also driven by the private prison industry’s...   read more

State and local officials in Pennsylvania, as well as a law firm representing coal mining interests, are being sued for allegedly conspiring to move residents off their property for the sake of a land grab.   People living in the Borough of Ce...   read more

Bruce E. Kasold was named Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims on August 6, 2010. He had been a Judge of the Court since his appointment by President George W. Bush in December 2003.   Kasold was born on April 26, 1951, i...   read more

Provo, Utah, has the distinction of being the most Republican city in the United States based on election results. In the 2008 presidential election, 78% of Provo voters chose Republican John McCain while only 19% went with Democrat Barack Obama. ...   read more

Millionaires now comprise more than 50% of the U.S. Senate, up from 44% last year. According to analyses of financial disclosure forms by Roll Call, 54 senators reported a minimum net worth of more than $1 million. The total came close to reachi...   read more

For a change, intelligence experts outside the U.S. government don’t have to guess how much Washington spent last year on civilian and military spying. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper agreed for the first time to publicly release...   read more

Opponents of biotechnology companies receiving human gene patents got a huge lift this week when the U.S. Department of Justice quietly filed a legal brief that reversed the government’s longstanding support of patenting the human genome.   Fe...   read more

David M. Rubenstein was appointed Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in May 2010. He is the sixth chairman of the arts organization, having been a member of its board since 2004. The federal government generally provi...   read more

The U.S. Department of Defense consumes more oil per day than 170 nations, including Pakistan, a country with 166 million people. Although the amount of fuel consumed by the military is not published, the quantity is estimated to be between 400,...   read more

As far as Justice Paul Wooten of New York City is concerned, Juliet Breitman and Jacob Kohn can be sued, even if they were four years old at the time of their vehicular recklessness. Both children were racing their bicycles, complete with traini...   read more

Washaway Beach in Washington State has lived up to its name, and then some. The most rapidly eroding stretch of coast in the Western United States has been losing 100 feet of sand and turf a year for the past century. The erosion recently cost t...   read more

David S. Ferriero became the tenth Archivist of the United States in November 2009. The first librarian to hold that position, Ferriero heads up the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that maintains and preserves ni...   read more

Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones has run the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the State Department since August 20, 2009.   Jones graduated in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Barnard College at Colu...   read more

The U.S. Department of Justice has requested that a federal judge seal the courtroom of a trial involving computer code theft in order to protect trade secrets of Goldman Sachs.   Sergey Aleynikov was arrested by the FBI on charges of stealing...   read more

In Afghanistan, the American military is using handheld high-tech devices to scan the irises and record the fingerprints of Afghans to store in a database that allows soldiers to identify and capture insurgents.   The U.S. Army reportedly has ...   read more

The national homicide rate among women murdered by men in 2008 was 1.26 per 100,000, according to a study by the Violence Policy Center. Those states that exceeded the national average were led by Nevada whose 2.96 rate was more than double the ...   read more