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

In advance of the upcoming Guantánamo trial of six 9/11 conspirators, military judge Stephen R. Henley issued a protective order on December 19th which will allow classification of any information, including that already in the public domain, that...   read more

The controversy surrounding embattled Governor Rod Blagojevich is nothing new for Illinois politics.  Five of the last 10 Illinois governors, including Blagojevich, faced criminal charges, but the tradition of paying for a Senate seat actually str...   read more

Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to be elected to Congress and will be the first First Lady to serve in a cabinet position.   Born Hillary Diane Rodham on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, IL, Clinton was raised by her parents, Hugh Ellswort...   read more

While running for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Most Americans answered: No, and Reagan was elected one week later. As the era of George W. Bush draws to a close, the answer to a sim...   read more

Mary L. Schapiro is Barack Obama’s choice to take over the Securities and Exchange Commission—a demoralized agency that failed repeatedly to head off financial disasters involving Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Bernard Madoff. Some observers co...   read more

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-born U.S. legal permanent resident, won $120,000 in a court settlement with JetBlue and employees of the Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) after being forced to cover up his T-shirt which said in both English a...   read more

In response to conservative economists’ claims that FDR’s New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression, two-time New York Times bestselling political commentator David Sirota reviewed detailed unemployment data (PDF) from the U.S. census to di...   read more

In a going away present to some of his most trusted aides, President Bush has appointed 45 individuals to positions that will expire in the midst of Barack Obama’s term, or afterwards. He has appointed 12 individuals to 5-year terms on the United ...   read more

After years of watching industry-friendly appointees of the Bush administration run roughshod over environmental concerns, conservationists had hoped Barack Obama’s election would bring a new day at the Department of the Interior. But the selectio...   read more

Eleven years after scientists determined that carmine and cochineal extracts from the female cochineal bug can cause severe allergic reactions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a rule (PDF) requiring food companies to list the ext...   read more

When Barack Obama takes office on January 20th, he will be the fifth youngest president, and he will be working with the oldest Congress ever. The average age of 57 in the House and 63 in the Senate both represent historical highs. The age increas...   read more

A new report (PDF) issued by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ed Towns (D-NY), and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) of the House Oversight Committee, has found that the Bush administration has squandered $26 billion by ignoring 13,800 recommend...   read more

Struggling to meet its recruitment goals, the U.S. Army began a program in 2007 to admit enlistees whose lifestyle has previously prohibited them from joining the military. The controversial lifestyle? Eating toom much.  Obesity is the number one ...   read more

In selecting James L. Jones to be his national security advisor, Barack Obama has chosen a former Marine Corps general who, at the time of his nomination, sat on the board of directors of a leading oil company (Chevron), a leading weapons manufact...   read more

The Department of Energy and the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) have both proposed new rules to obstruct the public’s access to information guaranteed by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In the midst of financial collapse and ra...   read more

In a January 5 press release, the American Small Business League (ASBL) announced its fear that, “the Obama stimulus plan may change the long-standing federal definition of a small business as being ‘independently owned,’ to include firms that are...   read more