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

Had Benjamin Franklin ever served as Secretary of Defense, he might well have added “cost overruns” to his now famous adage about “nothing is certain but death and taxes,” given how predictable the Pentagon has become in going over budget with wea...   read more

From Iraq to outer space, America’s soldiers and astronauts are having a tough time co-existing with their British and Russian counterparts. In Basra, where U.S. troops have been slowly taking over fro withdrawing British units, American GIs have ...   read more

No wonder General Motors went belly up. Nate Silver, in his political blog FiveThirty Eight, reviewed the operating margins of the legendary automaker from the 1950s to now. He found that GM has been headed for the junkyard for the past 50 years. ...   read more

It appears the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for making sure workers are treated fairly by their employers, spent its time during the Bush administration telling businesses, “Do as I say, not as I d...   read more

A tussle has already begun within the Obama administration over its environmental policy regarding coal mining. Throughout the Appalachian states of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, mountaintop mining—a controversial method of extracting coal by...   read more

If the AIG bonuses produced angry street protests over $165 million, then what’s going to be the response to the latest revelation that Merrill Lynch doled out $3.6 billion to executives after the federal government propped up the teetering firm w...   read more

Ayman Saeed Batarfi, an orthopedic surgeon from Yemen, is set to become the second prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay by a Justice Department task force. The government agreed last Friday to let Batarfi go after holding him for seven years. The...   read more

Ever since scientists first split the hydrogen atom in the 1950s as part of the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons research program, experts have dreamed of developing a new, seemingly limitless energy supply through the process of fusion. This Jun...   read more

A stranded young Atlantic Harbour Seal was sent from Bermuda to Newark, New Jersey, via FedEx last week. The young male seal, starving and suffering from a laceration in his neck, was found washed up on a beach in Bermuda on February 15. He was on...   read more

What happened to Robert Levinson? That’s what his family and former colleagues at the FBI would like to know. Levinson, a 28-year retired veteran of the bureau, disappeared two years ago off the coast of Iran, last seen on Kish Island, where consu...   read more

When Barack Obama selected Inés R. Triay for the position of Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management (OEM), he decided that her qualifications as a 24-year veteran of the Energy Department, including her oversight of a key nuclear waste d...   read more

Limiting executives’ pay isn’t just good political fodder for liberals—it’s also a matter of survival for the stock market and capitalism, insists Los Angeles Times business columnist Kathy M. Kristoff. What Wall Street and its defenders need to r...   read more

Most national parks are green in color to begin with, but now the National Park Service (NPS) in the state of Washington is instituting new programs that will reduce the heavy carbon footprint that is being left behind by visitors and staff member...   read more

President Barack Obama arrives in Great Britain today, bringing with him the customary—and gargantuan—entourage that recent U.S. presidents have been known to tow along on overseas junkets. No less than 500 officials and staff are accompanying Oba...   read more

An investigation by the Baltimore Sun has discovered that the U.S. Army rushed the use of experimental medical treatments for troops injured in Iraq, only to recall many of the risky therapies after results showed them to be ineffective or dangero...   read more

The fate of a little known lake in Alaska, and potentially the practices of the mining industry in the United States, may be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming weeks. The case involves a tiny body of water known as Lower Slate Lake, i...   read more