President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed outrage to aides because there have been no violent mass street demonstrations against his statements and policies. He believes he needs violent demonstrations against him in order to declare a national state of emergency that would allow him to do anything he wants.   read more

Using a new law intended to end racial discrimination in sentencing, a judge in North Carolina threw out the death sentence of an African-American man convicted of murder 18 years ago.   Judge Greg Weeks of Cumberland County Superior Court concl...   read more

Washington’s effort to help protect the American farmer has proven to be a billion-dollar bonanza for insurance companies and agents.   According to a report from the Environmental Working Group, the federal government’s crop insurance program h...   read more

For the first time in its history, the United Nations is scrutinizing the plight of Native Americans in the United States.   UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya, a human rights professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Law, will spend th...   read more

The Obama administration should cancel an experimental Medicare program that is wasting $8 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).   As part of the 2010 health care law, Congress eliminated Medicare payments to managed ...   read more

Police in Scotland have arrested a 63-year-old woman for entering a mannequin as a city council candidate in Aberdeen.   Renee Slater was charged under a 1983 law, the Representation of the People Act, for trying to pass off the dummy, named Hel...   read more

Doug Welborn, state district court clerk of Baton Rouge, and Jeff L. Thigpen, register of deeds in Guilford County, North Carolina, are doing what millions of recession-weary Americans wish they could do: they are suing large banks and mortgage co...   read more

Partisanship between Republicans and Democrats isn’t the only source of divide these days in Washington, DC. Members of the intelligence community and the military are also on opposite sides, in this case regarding the future of American spy satel...   read more

Dormant for four years, a federal watchdog charged with preventing anti-terrorism-related abuses of power may finally come back to life.   The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), created in 2004 at the urging of the 9/11 Commiss...   read more

The Pentagon’s top spy agency, like the rest of the intelligence community, was roundly criticized for key intelligence failures in the run-up to the war in Iraq, including finding that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and had clos...   read more

Are the police using unmanned drones, like those used against terrorists in places like Pakistan and Yemen, to conduct surveillance of your community from the sky? Since 2006, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued about 700 to 750 “...   read more

Despite a stated mission “to satisfy curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives,” the science-oriented Discovery Channel decided not to satisfy the curiosity of viewers of its latest documentary series, Frozen Planet. The BBC series on life...   read more

There is a saying in Burma that one must be wary of five evils:  fire, water (storms and floods), thieves, mean people and…government. The military junta that has ruled Burma (which it renamed as “Myanmar”) since 1962, has been one of the most rep...   read more

If she could turn back time, Cher might have decided not to allow the sale of a “Key to the City,” presented to her in November 1990 by the lord mayor of Adelaide, Australia, a city of 1.2 million. As it is, the appearance of the key on the websit...   read more

Film industry executives lost their first major international court case involving piracy and copyright infringement, when Australia’s highest court unanimously ruled against them.   The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), rep...   read more

Newt Gingrich has no chance of catching Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and his campaign is deeply in debt. But that hasn’t stopped the former House Speaker from carrying on his political travels, which are being...   read more

The West African nation of Ghana will soon have a new ambassador from the United States who has no experience in the region, but plenty with countries that, like Ghana, have large oil reserves. President Barack Obama on April 11, 2012, nominated c...   read more