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

The political crises of the Indian Ocean island nations of Sri Lanka, which is emerging from a 25-year long civil war that killed about 100,000 people, and Maldives, still reeling from a recent coup, will likely seem unhappily familiar to Presiden...   read more

Gauging from the partisan guests appearing on Sunday morning talk shows, it would seem the country has gone Republican—a political party with which less than 30% of Americans identify.   An eight-month study (June 2011 through February 2012) of ...   read more

President Barack Obama’s first-time homebuyers tax credit was supposed to help bolster the housing market and get the economy going again. It did have a positive impact, temporarily, during the recession, before things again went south for home pr...   read more

Seeking to bolster the government’s ability to enforce obscenity laws, the Obama administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) fine against CBS over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction...   read more

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 232-year-old society which routinely honors scientists, writers and scholars, has chosen to honor the banker who created the first “too big to fail” institution that helped cripple the U.S. economy less...   read more

In an attempt to show California voters he’s committed to cutting government waste, Governor Jerry Brown announced this week a plan to eliminate more than 700 bureaucratic reports.   Brown did not say how much money would be saved by cutting the...   read more

On Wednesday, the Obama administration dramatically scaled back its oversight of financial institutions that deal in the $700 trillion derivatives market.   Following the passage of the Dodd-Frank reform law, the Securities and Exchange Commissi...   read more

Florida’s much-publicized law requiring welfare recipients to undergo drug testing has not saved the state money. In fact, it has turned out to be just the opposite.   During four months of testing last year, 2.6% of the welfare applicants faile...   read more

In what has been described as a corporate milestone, shareholders of Citigroup rejected the new compensation package, valued at $15 million, for CEO Vikram S. Pandit.   The decision marked the first time stockowners voted against a multi-million...   read more

The Obama administration is resisting an effort to compensate victims of American medical experiments in Guatemala during the 1940s and 1950s.   For at least eight years, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted numerous experiments on Guatemala...   read more

Billionaire Harold Simmons has gained permission from Texas environmental regulators to receive low-level nuclear waste at his remote dumping ground near the New Mexico border.   The first shipments to Simmons’ Waste Control Specialists facility...   read more

Senate Republicans this week blocked the passage of President Barack Obama’s plan for raising taxes on the wealthy, even though polls show a majority of GOP respondents support such legislation.   The “Paying a Fair Share Act” (aka the Buffett R...   read more

President Barack Obama has assured environmentalists that his administration is serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But a new rule crafted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contains a loophole big enough to drive a dum...   read more

Housing advocates have filed complaints against two national banks for allegedly allowing foreclosed homes in black and Latino neighborhoods to fall into disrepair, while at the same time taking better care of bank-owned houses in predominantly wh...   read more

Labor leaders are outraged over a California worker-safety agency’s decision to fine Chevron only $350 for an accident that resulted in an employee being sucked underground and boiled to death.   Construction supervisor Robert David “Dave” Taylo...   read more

Three scientific journals have published articles over the past two years warning of the rise in retractions and misconduct by researchers who have fudged results.   The latest publication to do so was Infection and Immunity, which revealed it h...   read more