Trump ordered that the term Homo sapiens be changed to Hetero sapiens. In history books and on websites, the airplane from which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima will no longer be identified as the Enola Gay, but rather the Enola Straight. Trump also ordered billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, to change his name to Mark American. If he does not do so, he will be charged with terrorism.   read more

In the world of partisan politics, even bathroom breaks are exploited in order to seize power. That’s what happened in North Carolina on Monday when Republicans on the Wake County Board of Commissioners took advantage of Democrat Betty Lou Ward’s ...   read more

Ending one of the longest and most complicated lawsuits ever brought against the U.S. government, attorneys representing American Indians have won a $3.4 billion settlement from the Department of the Interior. The suit was brought because of alleg...   read more

Police in Brazil’s two largest cities, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, have functioned as judge, jury and executioner in recent years by summarily executing suspects and then covering up the killings with false reports. According to a new report b...   read more

Taxi drivers can be a source of valuable information, from how to get to an important meeting on time to where to stay when in town. But relying on them for military intelligence that helped start the decade’s most controversial war?   According...   read more

Between uncertainty over what to change and an unwillingness to impose serious reforms, Congress is expected to leave the credit ratings industry largely untouched, even though its role in the economic collapse was paramount. At the heart of the p...   read more

On June 10, 2006, three Saudi prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were found hanging in their separate cells—hands and feet tied, gags in their mouths—but the U.S. military ruled the deaths a well-coordinated group suicide intended to make the United Stat...   read more

Estimates of the number of cars in the United States today vary from 140 million to 250 million. But in order for the U.S. to spew as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it does from coal-burning power plants, the nation would have to run n...   read more

On May 1, 2009, Adam E. Namm took over as acting director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), a State Department agency responsible for the buildings that house America’s overseas embassies, consulates and missions, including mor...   read more

When it comes to collecting back taxes, nothing is too sacred for the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS last week auctioned off more than 7,000 acres of land in Central South Dakota belonging to the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, which owed $3.1 million ...   read more

Arguing that it is cheaper to buy new equipment instead of shipping the old, the U.S. military has decided to donate tens of millions of dollars in vehicles and other materials to the Iraqi government rather than send it to Afghanistan. The decisi...   read more

Proving to cynics that “government openness” is an oxymoron, the Department of Justice decided to prevent the public from attending a workshop on Monday dedicated to the subject of accessing federal information. Employees from various government a...   read more

Reflecting what critics have called a paranoid attitude, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has fired its top expert on Afghanistan after he published an Op-Ed critical of the Obama administration’s plans for trying Guantánamo detainees in c...   read more

At nearly $76 a barrel, the price of petroleum has reached a “perfect” state, according to Saudi Arabia’s top oil official. “Inventories are coming down, the price is perfect and investors, consumers, producers are all very happy,” Ali al-Naimi, t...   read more

Democrats and Republicans spent part of last week trading places when it came to being tough on crime and defending the meek. After liberal Senator Al Franken (D-MN) pushed forward an amendment that left Republicans reeling from accusations of bei...   read more

From pastoral lyricism to unlikely metaphors, Slate received a wide range of entries for its “Write Like Sarah Palin” contest, held in honor of the popular Republican’s memoir, Going Rogue, which included this real excerpt about her husband: "That...   read more

As the nation heads into the final stretch of 2009, it’s Georgia in the lead, followed by Illinois, for the top (inglorious) honor of most bank failures this year. So far, 24 financial institutions have collapsed in the Peach State, compared to th...   read more