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

Shirley Graham, one of the election judges working on the still disputed Minnesota senatorial contest between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman, was surprised to learn that her own absentee ballot had been rejected. The Coleman camp ...   read more

Tom Daschle, a 26-year veteran of Capitol Hill, is not only Barack Obama’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, but also the man to run the president’s new White House Office of Health Reform. In this capacity, Daschle is expected to...   read more

After the biggest toxic spill in U.S. history (100 times larger than the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill), the Tennessee Valley Authority has advised residents (inaccurately) that boiling their water would remove dangerous heavy metals and ma...   read more

Senator James Webb, decorated Marine, journalist, novelist, and Ronald Reagan’s one-time Navy Secretary, has announced his intention to tackle the politically delicate issue of prison reform. Unafraid of being perceived as “soft on crime” by his c...   read more

A series of Bush appointees have effectively hobbled Occupational Safety and Health Administration by halting progress on a number of workplace safety initiatives, and by siding with employers against employees. During George W. Bush’s presidency,...   read more

Ever since the financial hard times reached Wall Street in September, there have been a series of reports that, in one category or another, this is the worst since [fill in the blank]. The unemployment rate for November (6.7%) was the highest in 1...   read more

Bill Richardson’s 30-year career in politics has included several controversies, including “pay to play” allegations that are likely to become highly publicized during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Commerce.   Born William Blaine “B...   read more

Seventeen Chinese Muslims unlawfully held in Guantánamo are still awaiting news of their fate after U.S. Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina deemed them innocent and ordered their release and delivery into the continental United States in October. The me...   read more

Rev. Paul Raushenbush, Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University, reviews the ten worst religious stories of 2008. Coming in at number 9 is Sarah Palin’s Witchcraft video (Palin appears at about 5:00), in which visiting Kenyan pasto...   read more

If confirmed, Arne Duncan would become the first Cabinet member who has earned a living playing and coaching basketball. Duncan was born on November 4, 1964, to Starkey Duncan, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, and Susan Morton,...   read more

In nominating Nobel laureate Steven Chu for Secretary of Energy, Barack Obama may have selected the smartest man ever to run a cabinet department.   Chu was born on February 28, 1948, in St. Louis, MO. His father, Ju Chin Chu, and his mother, Ch...   read more

In our ongoing attempt to find something good about President Bush’s legacy (see In Praise of George Bush), we turn to his support for community health centers. Kevin Sack of The New York Times writes, “Although the number of uninsured and the cos...   read more

A coalition of environmental groups including Earthjustice and the Sierra Club have sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a new revision finalized on December 12, which will allow mining companies to dump waste in streams. Specifical...   read more

Aziz Huq, writing in The Nation, urges Barack Obama to immediately begin the process of reversing the centralization of power that characterized the Bush administration. The administration manipulated the judiciary by creating an atmosphere of fea...   read more

Do Jews Run Hollywood? In reaction to an Anti-Defamation league poll which showed last month that only 22% of people now believe that Jews run the movie and television industries, compared with 47% in 1964, Joel Stein (who is Jewish) protested in...   read more

Jason Deparle of The New York Times writes, “In his campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chip Saltsman, a Tennessee political operative [who was Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign manager], distributed a song to potential support...   read more