Rumors are spreading that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote 5-4 to rule that a U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for anything he does while he is president. Some Democrats are suggesting that Joe Biden bring a gun to his first debate with Donald Trump. If he shoots Trump, he would be immune, but if Trump shoots Biden he would be prosecuted because he is not a sitting president.   read more

America’s most powerful woman believes even the most powerful financial institutions should be allowed to collapse. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, reiterated her earlier assertions at an international conference la...   read more

There’s more to good living than just money, according to the United Nations Development Programme. The authors of Human Development Reports seek each year to show which countries are better, or worse, at providing a state of well-being for their ...   read more

Are there really only two options to choose from with health care systems—government run vs. free market? No, says Aaron Carroll, associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. An examination of health care systems...   read more

A self-described unlikely civil rights activist, Mikey Weinstein is suing a Texas-based evangelical church with ties to the Department of Defense for praying for his demise. Weinstein, a Jewish Republican and former military lawyer who served unde...   read more

Many experts expected the disparity between rich and poor to have shrunk last year, as income levels for all Americans declined because of the Great Recession. But that didn’t happen, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Although ear...   read more

Photographic evidence has led some Western experts to wonder if Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been using his vitriolic hatred for Israel to cover up his own Jewish roots. A photograph of Ahmadinejad holding up his ID card during the p...   read more

The organic food movement is becoming a victim of its own success. On the one hand, demand for organic products continues to grow, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A new study produced by the USDA’s Economic Resear...   read more

Eating hamburger meat is not unlike playing Russian roulette. Despite a federal regulation adopted in 1994 banning slaughterhouses from selling meat containing a particularly virulent strain of E. coli (O157:H7), hamburger sold by Cargill in 2007 ...   read more

In some areas of the United States, driving down a country road comes with the increased risk of colliding with a deer. According to data collected by auto insurance provider State Farm, the number of auto-deer collisions from 2007-2009 increased ...   read more

Having already denied funds to close down the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, House lawmakers on Thursday adopted an amendment that bans the transfer of detainees to maximum-security prisons in the United States. Republicans managed to pull ...   read more

The Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded to those whose achievements make people laugh first, and think second, were given out recently for what is typically an odd assortment of accomplishments.   Katherine K. Whitcome, Daniel E. Lieberman and Liza J. Shap...   read more

Journalists became incensed this week after the White House changed course on legislation designed to protect reporters from going to jail for protecting confidential sources. Previously, President Barack Obama expressed support for a “media shiel...   read more

For the third year in a row, officials in the Treasury Department have extended an exemption that allows savings and loan employees convicted of financial crimes to hold onto their jobs. The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) filed a rule that wen...   read more

One third of all U.S. Attorneys currently in office were appointed by President George W. Bush, demonstrating that President Barack Obama is moving far slower than his predecessor in making over the composition of federal prosecutors. An analysis ...   read more

When the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, called for more troops, the response should have been: Okay, from where?   To put it simply, the U.S. Army is maxed out. An assessment performed by the RAND Arroyo Center, a...   read more

The Obama administration’s efforts to conceal all of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s testimony in the Valerie Plame investigation failed on Thursday, as a federal judge ordered the release of some records. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan fo...   read more