The majority of voters did not vote for Donald Trump for president; the majority of voters did not vote for Republican candidates for the Senate; and fewer than 51% of voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The Republican Party now controls the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, no matter how that came to be. I believe it is worth bearing in mind that a majority of U.S. citizens did not support the Republican winners.   read more

The American South is a region of many traditions, among the most durable of which is hostility to government programs to protect the environment and public health. The consequences of that tradition are laid bare in a report released Thursday by ...   read more

Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs: Who Is Kevin Washburn?   On August 2, 2012, President Barack Obama nominated a law professor with experience in American Indian law and gambling law to succeed Larry EchoHawk as Assistant S...   read more

More than 50 years after it first sprayed Agent Orange in Vietnam, the U.S. government has started a program to help clean up a small portion of the contamination it caused during the war.   The Obama administration plans to spend $43 million ov...   read more

In the wake of the dismissal of Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly as head of the Missile Defense Agency for outrageously abusive conduct toward his staff, President Barack Obama has nominated Rear Admiral James D. Syring to be promoted to Vice A...   read more

Millionaires seeking to avoid France’s new income tax bracket can either relocate across the channel to England, or all the way across the Atlantic to Mississippi.   After French President Francois Hollande proposed a 75% tax on all income in ex...   read more

After years of warnings by environmentalists to do something about the radioactive waste piling up at nuclear power plants around the country, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stopped issuing any licenses for new and existing reactors w...   read more

As if farmers weren’t having enough troubles from the severe drought affecting much of the United States, agricultural-biotechnology giant Monsanto has added to the suffering through one its genetically engineered creations.   Corn modified with...   read more

The private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, which is now on its third corporate name, has agreed to pay the U.S. government $7.5 million to avoid going to trial on weapons-related and other charges.   The company, which went from Bla...   read more

Foreign subsidiaries of Pfizer spent years bribing foreign doctors and healthcare officials to expand sales of the company’s pharmaceuticals, according to a $60 million settlement reached with the U.S. government.   The deal, brokered by the Sec...   read more

A federal appeals court this week threw out an Islamic foundation’s million-dollar judgment against the federal government for illegally spying on it.   The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation was awarded $2.5 million in 2010 by Judge Vaughn Walker, ...   read more

Segregation is back in the United States, thanks to the growing problem of income inequality.   Increasingly, neighborhoods in American cities are becoming segregated from one another by differences in household earnings, according to a new stud...   read more

After decades of covering up the identities and accounts of pedophiles in their organization, the Boy Scouts of America is being forced to disclose thousands of older files detailing abuses of young boys by scoutmasters.   The organization insis...   read more

Morgan Stanley got off easy, according to consumer advocates, when a federal judge reluctantly approved a $4.8 million settlement involving price fixing in the electricity market.   The agreement resolved accusations that Morgan Stanley had gott...   read more

AccountNow, a California-based debit card company, is being sued by a deaf man who claims the company insisted he communicate with their customer service representatives by phone.   Richard Halavais, who cannot hear because of a stroke, tried nu...   read more

The mother of shooting victim Trayvon Martin is being sued by an insurance company seeking to avoid paying any damages related to the controversial “stand your ground” killing that took place in Florida earlier this year.   Martin was killed by ...   read more

Tax cheats have been collecting billions of dollars from Medicaid as a result of the federal government’s failure to cut off contracts with medical providers owing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).   The Government Accountability Office (GAO) ...   read more