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

In the wake of the resignation of career diplomat Cameron Munter, who was a casualty of Pakistani anger over civilian deaths and U.S. covert actions there, President Obama on July 17 nominated career diplomat Richard Olson, who served as Coordinat...   read more

On May 22, 2012, Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick became the 53rd U.S. Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Lieutenant General Bostick serves as the senior military officer overseeing most...   read more

The State Department does not have to release documents already published by WikiLeaks, said a federal judge in a case brought by civil libertarians.   The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the State Department to force the release of 2...   read more

President Barack Obama, opting for continuity as the U.S. prepares to draw down its military presence in the war torn nation of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, on July 17 nominated veteran diplomat James B. Cunningham, currently deputy Ambassador ...   read more

Lynne Halbrooks became the Acting Inspector General for the Department of Defense on December 25, 2011, succeeding Gordon Heddell. The DoDIG is supposed to operate independently to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse through audits and inve...   read more

Twenty years after it helped establish a United Nations arms embargo on war-torn Somalia, the United States is now violating this international effort by helping local militias fighting Al-Qaeda.   According to the UN’s Somalia Eritrea Monitorin...   read more

With much of its surface covered in ice, Greenland continues to demonstrate the effects of global warming. And that’s not all bad, as far as the enormous island’s tourism industry is concerned.   Scientists from the United States recently notice...   read more

Hoping to fare better at nurturing the development of solar energy without enraging environmentalists, antagonizing financial interests and otherwise giving solar a bad name, the Obama administration announced a change in strategy this week.   I...   read more

Can the critics call it the second coming of the Peripheral Canal if the conduit used to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for shipment to Central Valley farmers and thirsty Southern Californians . . . is a tunnel?   During th...   read more

With severe drought conditions threatening to drive up crop prices, many farmers want to expand operations onto questionable lands in the hope of making more money. To help farmers take on this risk, Congress is considering a new crop insurance pr...   read more

One of the biggest culprits of Internet spam has been shutdown by a coordinated international effort. But the victory may be fleeting, due to other troublemakers still in operation.   Grum, a botnet (a collection of security-compromised computer...   read more

The U.S. government is indirectly contributing to the nation’s obesity problem, according to one consumer advocacy group, by providing billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies that help produce junk food.   Apples to Twinkies 2012, a recent...   read more

Money laundering has been a routine part of global banking giant HSBC for years, according to a Senate investigation that zeroed in on the bank’s U.S. operations.   HSBC Bank USA, N.A., exposed the American financial system to money laundering, ...   read more

The U.S. Air Force has decided to lift its flying restrictions on the pricey F-22 Raptor after determining the oxygen problem pilots were experiencing was not related to the planes.   In May, the service limited the F-22 to low-altitude flights ...   read more

The Hamptons’ life of luxury has devolved into upper-class warfare replete with battles over helicopters and gargantuan mansions.   In what’s been billed as the (moneyed) fight of the century, as reported by Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones, bil...   read more

The Department of Defense is trying to fix what may be the biggest, ugliest accounting system ever.   So far, the Pentagon’s long-running effort to modernize its bookkeeping has incurred $8 billion in cost overruns, and is anywhere from two ye...   read more