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

Voting for politicians in India can come down to choosing between a crook and a criminal, due to the preponderance of candidates who have broken the law.   Of the 2,000 candidates who ran for office on Tuesday in the northern state of Uttar Prad...   read more

After making a statistical study of 105 versions of the Supreme Court since its inception, law professor Benjamin H. Barton has concluded that the current Roberts Court is unusual in ways that go beyond the obvious, such as the fact that it is the...   read more

Times are good for the six largest oil companies, with profits easily surpassing the figures from before the 2008 financial meltdown. In 2011 ExxonMobil led the way with profits of $41.1 billion. Shell was in second place at $28.6 billion, followe...   read more

With no available insurance to defray the cost of going to the dentist, many Americans have been forced to visit hospital emergency rooms for critical dental care.   According to a new report by the Pew Center on the States, there were 830,590 E...   read more

 The U.S. Navy’s preferred way of disposing of old vessels is to use them for target practice, resulting in more than a hundred ships now resting at the bottom of the ocean where they contribute to environmental problems.   An investigation by t...   read more

President Obama nominated career diplomat William E. Todd as the next ambassador to Cambodia on December 1, 2011, and the Senate is expected to act on the nomination in the coming months.   Born circa 1962, Todd earned a B.S. at Longwood College...   read more

Despite a growing consensus that speculators are behind recent price increases, the government’s almost year-old oil speculation task force has done little more than talk about the problem. From the beginning of January to the end of February, the...   read more

Admitting the issue deserved his attention much sooner, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told Congress this week that prescription drug abuse is “a national crisis” that must be addressed.   Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of Nation...   read more

If not getting enough attention in your life is a problem, there’s one surefire way to get the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to notice you: Use any of its proscribed watch words on social media sites.   According to a DHS document, the a...   read more

Did the CIA plan that located Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last May endanger the lives of foreign aid workers and Pakistani children? The answer is yes, according to InterAction, a coalition of American non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which ...   read more

In a rare demonstration of judicial independence from the national security state, a federal judge last Wednesday ordered the federal government to release a document it says is classified. The case is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit file...   read more

Diesel exhaust is hazardous to your health…but the diesel industry does not want you to know that. That is the basic message underlying two papers just published in the prestigious Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The papers are based on ...   read more

If you’ve been making out like a bandit playing Farmville or Second Life or any other online game that awards prizes in the form of virtual currency, the IRS may want to talk to you.   Although the idea of taxing virtual currency may seem to mak...   read more

Two of the top three tax avoiders in California are actually the same person. In 2007, despite cries of privacy invasion, the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB), in charge of income tax, and the Board of Equalization (BOE), in charge of sales an...   read more

The nation of Iraq, which said goodbye to the last American combat troops only last December, has sent an ambassador to the United States who is a former academic who studied in the West. Dr. Jabir Habib Jabir was appointed ambassador in August 20...   read more

The West African nation of Niger has sent a former government journalist who earned his graduate degrees in the U.S. to serve as its ambassador to Washington. Maman Sambo Sidikou presented his credentials to the President Barack Obama on January 1...   read more