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

Rose Gottemoeller was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation on April 6, 2009. A longtime expert in nuclear weapons proliferation and arms control, Gottemoeller will be personally responsible ...   read more

John Q. Easton has Education Secretary Arne Duncan to thank for his new job in Washington as head of the Institute of Education Sciences. A longtime specialist in education research from Chicago, Easton has known Duncan for nearly 20 years as a re...   read more

Eating fish from America’s streams is becoming increasingly dangerous, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. After examining almost 300 streams from across the country, scientists concluded that 25% of fish contained dangerous le...   read more

For thousands of homeowners struggling to keep up on mortgage payments, there is the added difficulty of falling behind on property taxes and having to deal with opportunistic companies that have taken over tax collecting for local governments. Nu...   read more

It just doesn’t pay to make money these days. This is especially true for officials running the U.S. Mint, producer of America’s coined currency. Due to price increases in raw materials like copper and nickel, it costs more to manufacture a penny ...   read more

The United States’ military spending, which currently costs almost as much as that of all the other nations of the world combined, is unnecessarily large, according to Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Compared to World War II an...   read more

The producers of Fiji Water like to tell their customers that drinking their bottled water saves them from having to go all the way to the Pacific island nation just to enjoy it. Not making the trek is good for others reasons too—like avoiding the...   read more

If the nation is unwilling to support a government-run health care option, then Dr. Paul Toffel has an alternative reform plan. A clinical professor of medicine at the University of Southern California’s medical school, Toffel offers what he calls...   read more

Although she came in at No. 2 in the world for the second year in a row, Sheila Bair was the highest rated American on Forbes’s most recent ranking of The 100 Most Powerful Women. The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was outpaced ...   read more

Credit card companies now must give consumers 45 days notice before raising interest rates, based on provisions in the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 that went into effect on Thursday. Under the new law, car...   read more

Neda Soltan, the young woman whose murder symbolized the crackdown of Iranian protesters following the June elections, was killed by a pro-government militiaman (Basiji) named Abbas Kargar Javid, according to an Iranian doctor studying at Oxford B...   read more

Struggling from political repression and failed economic policies, Zimbabwe has the distinction of not only experiencing the first case of hyperinflation in the 21st century, but the second highest ever in recorded history. According to two econom...   read more

Trading in the business of torturing or executing human beings may soon require an export license from the federal government, if the Department of Commerce adopts new rules under consideration. The department’s Bureau of Industry and Security wan...   read more

The fundamental perception of private versus public employment in America has undergone a transformation in the last decade. For the first time since the Great Depression, there has been almost no growth in the private sector. Although the capital...   read more

Efforts to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq are being adjusted to handle a growing security problem in the northern part of the country where civil war between Arabs and Kurds is at risk of breaking out. U.S. ArmyGeneral Ray Odierno an...   read more

Figuring out which foreign governments or corporations are lobbying Congress, and how much they’re spending, has been difficult to do using data published by the Department of Justice. But now, thanks to the Sunlight Foundation and ProPublica, rec...   read more