According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

Now that the banks and large corporations are already receiving their bailout money, attention is turning to the Obama/Democratic proposal for stimulating the economy. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats have submitted an $825 billion p...   read more

On the day he took office in 2001, President George W. Bush reversed twelve executive orders issued by Bill Clinton in his final weeks as president. Now, eight years later, Barack Obama is using the same tactic against Bush’s late regulatory chang...   read more

Four prisoners at the U.S. detention center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan are asking to be given the same right to a fair trial as the prisoners at Guantánamo. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees have a constitution...   read more

The Chinese Communist Party, accustomed to unqualified support from the administration of George W. Bush, was unnerved by parts of Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address and censored it for domestic consumption. When Obama spoke the line, “Recall that e...   read more

In one of his first acts as President of the United States, Barack Obama asked military prosecutors at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay to delay for 120 days all legal proceedings against Guantánamo prisoners in order to give his administration ti...   read more

A longtime friend of Barack Obama, venture capitalist Julius Genachowski is expected to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a direct line to the White House, something the agency has not had in many years. It is also expected that Gen...   read more

Leon E. Panetta has been many things during his long career. Congressman. President’s right-hand man. Think tank founder. Professor. But none of his roles has ever taken him deep into the realm of intelligence work, which is why many inside and ou...   read more

In 1964, my father, Irving Wallace, wrote a novel, The Man, about the first black president. For this, my father received both accolades and death threats. On the final page of The Man one of the characters, addressing his friend the president, Do...   read more

As Barack Obama takes the oath of office during a time of economic crisis, it is worth looking back at what Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American people on the day he took over the presidency 76 years ago at a time of even greater economic peril...   read more

Like billions of people around the world, I was prepared for the emotional moment in which the United States, after 220 years, inaugurated its first African-American president. But there was one powerful event two days before that caught me by sur...   read more

Joe Biden is a prime example of perseverance. Having endured personal tragedy, survived a near-death episode, and overcome more than a few political mistakes, Biden’s four-decade career as a US senator has now brought him to the White House as vic...   read more

Despite previous assurances that the only prisoners left at Guantánamo were hardcore terrorists, the Bush administration, in its last three months, released 24 of the 269 Guantánamo detainees. One, a 29-year-old Afghani named Haji Bismullah, was f...   read more

In honor of the conclusion of the Bush 43 presidency, ThinkProgress.org compiled their list of the 43 worst Bush appointees. The usual suspects dominate the top of the list: Dick Cheney (#1), Karl Rove (#2). Alberto Gonzalez (#3), Donald Rumsfeld ...   read more

The vast majority of Americans who go to work at the Department of Labor do so because they want to protect the rights and safety of workers. So it was a bitter blow for Labor Department employees to have to spend eight years taking orders from El...   read more

The federal programs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee 58% of all single family home loans in the United States. In November the government announced that the two institutions would be used to modify loans for hundreds of thousands of bo...   read more

Dawn E. Johnsen is an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s use of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)—a key part of the Department of Justice that she once led on an interim basis during the Clinton presidency and has been asked to lead aga...   read more