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

Whereas many see 17-year-olds as lazy, apathetic or disengaged, Nancy Lublin sees them as individuals who deserve the right to vote. The CEO of the youth-oriented non-profit DoSomething.org argues the negative labels placed on this age group are u...   read more

Last month’s announcement by the Armenian Tashnaq party in Lebanon of its intention to support Hezbollah in the upcoming parliamentary elections could provide the crucial votes needed for Hezbollah’s coalition to inch ahead of the current pro-West...   read more

The Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, who live in the oil-rich region of eastern Saudi Arabia and along the southern Saudi-Yemeni border, are calling for an end to decades of discrimination. Saudi Arabia is one of the United States’ major sources of ...   read more

Just how dangerous is the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border? In recent months numerous media outlets have run stories warning of growing violence in American communities in the Southwest, a result of the so-called “spillover” from Mexico’s ba...   read more

For all the talk about increased spending by the Obama administration and its consequences on the national debt, it needs to be pointed out that a hefty chunk of debt got dumped on the country just last year. According to an analysis by USA Today,...   read more

A new study by political scientists has confirmed the idea that in a Supreme Court case, the party that gets the most questions is most likely to lose. The idea was first introduced by Sarah Levien Shullman when she was a second-year law student a...   read more

Threats against the nation’s judges and prosecutors have sharply increased and forced them to become much more security-conscious. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, which takes the lead role in protecting the judges, annual threats and other...   read more

Nine of the fourteen members of the board of directors for the financially troubled Connecticut Student Loan Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that administers, guarantees, finances and serves student loans within the federal loan program, resig...   read more

Once General Motors files for bankruptcy on Monday, the U.S. government will step in and become the largest shareholder of the once-vaunted auto manufacturer. The Department of the Treasury will purchase a 72.5% stake in GM, and federal officials ...   read more

After spending billions of dollars to create the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, the government’s top scientific minds apparently forgot one very important task: Write down the instructions for how to make a nuclear weapon explode. Such is ...   read more

Long after its military wreaked havoc on the Vietnam countryside with Agent Orange and other defoliants, the U.S. government has decided to contribute a larger share to help clean up the damage from the Vietnam War. President Barack Obama recently...   read more

The television network Alhurra, created by the U.S. government to compete with the popular Arab-language Al Jazeera network in the Middle East, has turned into a money pit that’s getting killed in the ratings. This according to the largest public ...   read more

President Barack Obama’s top economic advisor has been accused of taking kickbacks from some of the nation’s biggest banks. Writing on AlterNet, Mark Ames reports that a little-known startup company, Revolution Money, received a $42 million invest...   read more

While time will tell just how much “change” Barack Obama brings to the ways of Washington, one money-driven tradition is still very much staying the course under the new president. Just as his predecessors have done, Obama is rewarding big-time fu...   read more

Mona Lisa would be right at home in the DMV these days. In an effort to combat identity theft, some motor vehicle departments are banning smiles from driver license photos. It’s all part of new technology being employed that allows officials to co...   read more

An investigation by the advocacy group Common Cause has determined that members of a key House defense subcommittee in 2008 allocated more than $350 million in military contracts to companies that had contributed handsomely to congressional repres...   read more