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

John Kiriakou was the man who made waterboarding okay for Americans to accept. Back in December 2007, just as the use of the controversial interrogation technique was first becoming known by the public, the former CIA officer appeared on numerous ...   read more

When the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was created in 2003, its purpose was to provide immigration and counter-terrorism enforcement to prevent future attacks on the U.S. Six years later, the efficacy of the CBP along the U.S. border ...   read more

Not only are women in Saudi Arabia banned from driving and have to cover their entire bodies in public, but now they can’t even work up a good sweat at a women-only gym. Government officials recently began to shut down “unlicensed” sports clubs an...   read more

When it comes to hosting the latest in bioterror defense, don’t mess with Texas. A coalition of nonprofit and business groups calling itself the Texas Biological and Agro-Defense Consortium has filed a lawsuit to stop the Department of Homeland Se...   read more

The current decade has not been a good one when it comes to the government cracking down on a wide range of illegal activities. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, prosecutions by the Justice Department are down since Janu...   read more

A physician and professor who has dedicated her career to combating diabetes, Yvette Roudideaux is the first Native American woman to head the Indian Health Service since it was founded in 1955.   Born in 1963, Roubideaux is a member of her fath...   read more

Lost amid the panic over the growing swine flu epidemic is a key question: How did it start? According to sources in the United States and Mexico, the culprit may be Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest owner of hog farms, which operates hog-rais...   read more

Almost $400 million has been spent since the late 1990s by the Defense Department to develop new technologies for soldiers to control urban populations without resorting to lethal force. But the return on this pricey investment has been exactly no...   read more

Relations between Washington and Baghdad have become strained following the public demands of Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the United States to turn over the American soldiers involved in a weekend raid that left two Iraqis dead and six...   read more

When Portugal decided in 2001 to become the first nation in Europe to eliminate criminal penalties for possession of all drugs, from marijuana to heroin, critics warned that the decision would result in “drug tourists” flocking to the conservative...   read more

When the federal government approved billions of dollars for infrastructure projects as part of the stimulus plan, the intention was to invest in such things as bridges, roads and highways. But officials in Arizona have decided to spend a million ...   read more

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented students can legally attend K-12 public schools. However, the decision did not address public education beyond high school. And in today’s labor market, those with a college degree usually earn a ...   read more

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials have insisted that the use of torture techniques yielded valuable information that helped the government thwart terrorist attacks in the United States. But the CIA’s own ins...   read more

For some politicians, the inclusion of inmates in local populations as part of the U.S. Census means everything. State Senator Elizabeth O’C. Little’s (R-NY) district in upstate New York is known as “Little Siberia” because of its vast physical si...   read more

Despite improving conditions in the stock market and President Barack Obama’s own pronouncements of signs of economic progress, banks are continuing to fail—at a rate much worse than last year. In 2008, 25 banks failed. So far in 2009, with only f...   read more

Reuters’ recent review of U.S. aid programs in the Palestinian territories uncovered two USAID contracts made with the sons of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that are involved with the agency’s attempts to promote a better public image of the...   read more