Top Stories
With No Health Care Bill, ER Hospitals Remain Insurer of Last Resort
While Democrats in Washington grapple to revive their healthcare reform plans, the nation’s hospitals and emergency rooms face an even greater struggle helping the uninsured who regularly show up at their doors. Legally obligated to treat anyone w... read more
Disposing of Unused Medicines in Trash May Threaten Water Supply
There is no truly safe way for consumers to dispose of unwanted medications, according to officials in Maine, which has led to a push for legislation requiring the pharmaceutical industry to collect and destroy leftover drugs.
For years Americ... read more
Sen. Shelby Blocks 70 Obama Nominees to Bring Defense Contracts to Alabama
More than 70 political appointees to federal posts are being held up in the U.S. Senate by one man—Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL)—who wants approximately $40 billion in programs for his state, or else. Critics have accused Shelby of extortion in hi... read more
Senate Report Finds U.S. Banks Support Corrupt Regimes Through Offshore Accounts
American banks, real estate and law firms have been assisting foreign governments to hide or launder stolen money, according to an investigation by a U.S. Senate committee. Even though federal law requires financial institutions to reject so-calle... read more
Obama Administration Approves Killing Americans Abroad
Being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans. This policy was acknowledged by Directo... read more
Goodnight Moon: Obama NASA Budget Ends Return of Astronauts
There may be no giant leap for mankind in the coming years, now that President Barack Obama has effectively killed NASA’s five-year-old program to send astronauts back to the moon. Instead of funding the Constellation program, which was charged wi... read more
Is Afghanistan an Unexploited Gold (and Copper and Precious Stone) Mine?
What would a modern American war be without an economic exploitation angle? While Iraq has long been characterized as a war for oil, Afghanistan has been portrayed as a security-based conflict rooted in a mission to cripple al-Qaeda and its Taliba... read more
Defense Department Prepares for Climate Change as Security Issue
Military planners are taking global warming seriously, adding it to the list of destabilizing forces that must be accounted for when devising long-term strategies. In its latest Quadrennial Defense Review report submitted to Congress, the Departme... read more
TARP Report: System Unreformed, Economy Headed Towards Same Cliff “In a Faster Car”
The latest quarterly report from the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s (TARP) overseer offers at best a mixed review of the federal rescue that began in the fall of 2008, noting the fact that the program has helped stabilize an industry on the verge... read more
Swine Flu Stirred Profits, but Fewer Deaths than Predicted
From the U.S. government to the United Nations, the warnings last spring were that H1NI was going to infect billions of people and kill hundreds of thousands. But it turned out the panic produced only millions in profits for pharmaceutical compani... read more
Obama’s Open Government Not So Open Yet
With Year One of President Barack Obama’s first term complete, some government watchdogs are still waiting for the new era of openness to begin. Outside of the decision to release White House visitor logs and a few of the torture memos, the Obama ... read more
2010 Census Begins in Remote Alaska Village
The great count of 2010 began this week in the remote Alaskan village of Noorvik, with 89-year-old World War II veteran Clifton Jackson serving as the first officially recorded person of the census.
U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves fl... read more
State of the Union Speech: Obama Sounded a Lot Like Clinton
Instead of conducting the more common subjective analysis of State of the Union speeches, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight
decided to perform a word-choice comparison. After tallying up the key buzzwords used by President Barack Obama and comparing... read more
Treasury Dept. to Investigate Treasury Secretary Geithner about AIG Bailout
Special prosecutor Neil Barofsky, charged by the Department of the Treasury with investigating the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street in 2008, is now turning his attention to the rescue of AIG by the New York branch of the Federal Reserve... read more
Health Care Reform: Most Americans Like the Trees, but Confused by the Forest
If the various pieces of the healthcare reform legislation in Congress are taken apart and considered separately, Americans are in favor of most everything. But when they are asked about the complete package, reactions seem to range from disappoin... read more
Gap Between Male and Female Unemployment Reaches Record Level
In more than 60 years of data collecting, the unemployment gap between men and women has never been wider. As of the end of the third quarter in 2009, the jobless rate for men was 10.5% and 8.7% for women, according to the Economic Policy Institut... read more