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

Banks can no longer gamble with their own money in the stock market as a result of new rules imposed by Congress. But there’s nothing that says financial institutions can’t take the same risks with other peoples’ money.   Proprietary trading is ...   read more

The Department of Energy likes to play up the fact that it’s investing in new technologies to power America, from wind to solar to even nuclear reactors. But most of the money the Energy Department spends is defense-oriented.   In the next feder...   read more

In an attempt to prey on anti-immigration sentiments, Libya’s dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, has offered to stop illegal immigration from Africa to Europe—for $6.3 billion a year. In an address made in Rome, Italy, Qaddafi warned of Europe becoming to...   read more

Illegal logging and deforestation have compounded the flooding disaster in Pakistan, where heavier than normal rains during the monsoon have wreaked havoc on large areas of the country. Experts blame Pakistan’s “timber mafia” for stripping hillsid...   read more

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is expected to spend an additional $40 billion in the next ten years to provide health services to Vietnam veterans who became ill as a result of exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the...   read more

Homelessness has nearly doubled in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, even though only 80% of the city’s population has returned since the 2005 disaster. An investigation by the non-profit Unity of Greater New Orleans organization also discovere...   read more

OpenSecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, has made it possible to find out which members of Congress are cozy with the oil and gas industry, and which ones rake in the green from the environmental movement.   After comb...   read more

The fight over the release of Federal Reserve documents revealing which banks received emergency bailout funds from the Fed during the height of the 2008 financial crisis appears headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, now that the financial industry ha...   read more

As the United States downsizes its commitment in Iraq, it leaves behind billions of dollars in wasted reconstruction efforts, such as the $40 million spent to partially build a prison north of Baghdad that sits abandoned.   Work on the prison in...   read more

Banks by the hundreds have been closing in recent years during the recession and the weak economic recovery. The tough climate has made it difficult for new financial institutions to get off the ground—in fact, only one new federally-insured bank ...   read more

Law enforcement can enter the driveways of people suspected of criminal behavior and attach tracking devices to their cars, all without a warrant, says a panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision runs contrary to other le...   read more

With so many Americans struggling to get by, the United States has experienced a drop in births for the second year in a row, to the lowest level in the nation’s history. The U.S. birth rate fell in 2009 to 13.5 per 1,000 population—a marked decli...   read more

Drinking bottled water nowadays is about the same as consuming filtered tap water, according to a new report from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. Their assessment shows that from 2000 to 2009, the proportion of bottled water taken from muni...   read more

There are those in Washington who want to raise the standard retirement age from 65 to 70 in order to ease some of the burden on Social Security. But such a change could force millions of Americans to accept reduced benefits because of the nature ...   read more

No longer in need of recruits, the U.S. Army is discontinuing a test project in which the service helped high school students earn their equivalency certificates so they could qualify to become soldiers.   Nearly 3,000 high school dropouts went ...   read more

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers whether to impose new federal regulations on coal ash, a new report shows the waste is a bigger problem than previously reported.   The study, produced by the Environmental Integrity Proje...   read more