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

Was it a serious breach of national security that could end up helping terrorists, or just no big deal? That was the range of opinion among experts following the revelation earlier this week that someone in the federal government had accidentally ...   read more

The Secretary of the Army is a civilian-led post responsible for overseeing all matters pertaining to the U.S. Army, including procurement of weapons systems and other equipment used by soldiers. Given this responsibility, the defense industry was...   read more

Ordinarily the U.S. government doesn’t give out a lot of information about spy satellites its puts into space, but it does at least reveal which agency or branch of the military is behind a scheduled launch. But so far military officials are being...   read more

A convicted drug offender who was forced to live in a religious-oriented facility is suing a county in Oregon, claiming his civil rights were violated. Jason Dwain Davies is arguing in his lawsuit against Lane County that officials violated the Co...   read more

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has set its sights on the world’s largest capitalist market: India. Teaming with Bharti Enterprises, the parent company of India’s biggest mobile firm, Bharti Airtel, Wal-Mart has created the joint venture: ...   read more

Despite the serious problems the U.S. ran into by relying on Blackwater to help provide security in Iraq, the Obama administration has decided to significantly increase the number of private contractors in both wars the U.S. is fighting. According...   read more

In a report by the Defense Department’s inspector general issued May 11, an audit of 133 of 1,106 task orders from a prominent Navy program showed that 39 contracts, valued at $469.3 million, were awarded without adequate competition. The program ...   read more

While the government spends billions to keep things secret, it also splurges a little on information that’s not so tightly locked away. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, home to the country’s top spook, has published a handbook ...   read more

Mitsubishi, the Japanese conglomerate best known for making automobiles and electronics, is being accused of helping wipe out the bluefin tuna through its efforts to corner the market on the endangered species. A subsidiary of Mitsubishi is the la...   read more

Ramesh G. Khilnani, a native of India who owned a pizza restaurant in Houston, tried to get out of paying nearly $50,000 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service by bribing an agent with pizza and other enticements. All told, Khilnani, 51, of...   read more

When the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, it not only killed 70,000 Japanese, but also a dozen captured American fliers. The names of the 12 airmen, who were imprisoned at the Chugoku Military Police He...   read more

What destroyed General Motors goes beyond specific business decisions made by the automakers’ former executives, argues Les Leopold, author of The Looting of America and director of the Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute. Excessive gr...   read more

Last month, New York legislators passed legislation to end the practice of shackling imprisoned women during labor and childbirth. If signed into law by Governor David Paterson, New York would join California and Illinois in being the only states ...   read more

As President Barack Obama prepares to visit Egypt and deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, there are three American citizens sitting in Egyptian prisons waiting to be tried…for trying to adopt Christian children.   There are tw...   read more

Keeping government secrets doesn’t come cheap. According to the latest report from the National Archives and Records Administration’s security office, it cost the U.S. government $9.85 billion in FY 2008 to maintain the volume of classified materi...   read more

Consumers in California who buy bottled water from Safeway thinking it’s a healthier alternative to tap water may have to reexamine this assumption. The source of the Safeway store brand “purified” water is none other than the city of Merced in th...   read more