Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

On October 17, 2011, President Barack Obama chose a political appointee who strongly supported his 2008 rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to serve as the ambassador to the South American nation o...   read more

In this time of global economic crisis, the impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso has sent a new ambassador to the United States who has no formal diplomatic experience, but has specialized in development economics since the mid-1980s. ...   read more

Shortly after 10 a.m. this morning at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch an Atlas V rocket on a nine-month journey to Mars. On board will be the $2.5-billion Mars Scien...   read more

Current and former members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) this week commemorated the 10th anniversary of Johnny Micheal Spann’s death in Afghanistan. Spann was the first American casualty of the United States’ war-on-terror campaign that...   read more

Being a cop may seem like dangerous work, but it’s not nearly as fatal as those who catch fish. The profession with the highest rate of fatalities last year was fishermen, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. After that it was loggers; air...   read more

President Barack Obama has turned to an experienced Latin America hand, Adam E. Namm, to serve as the new ambassador to Ecuador, replacing former ambassador Heather Hodges, who in April 2011 was expelled by the Ecuadorian government after the rele...   read more

The Marshall Islands , a chain of 24 atolls and coral islands in the South Pacific containing only 66 square miles of land, sent a new ambassador to the United States who was educated in the U.S. and has worked at the embassy since 2007. On Septem...   read more

The criticism over UC Davis’ police dousing non-violent protesters with pepper spray has extended to the man who invented the crowd-control device.   Kamran Loghman helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material while working with the...   read more

A federal court in California has admonished the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for misleading it about the existence of records pertaining to spying on Muslims in the U.S.   The judicial criticism rose out of the case Islamic Shura Counc...   read more

Religious groups have increasingly spent money over the past four decades on lobbying in Washington, DC, according to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.   In 1970, fewer than 40 secular groups lobbied Congress and the Executive Branch. Now...   read more

To hear some commentators, you would think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, was the most dangerous man in the world. In reality, he has almost no power whatsoever. He does not control Iran’s nuclear program. He does not control Ira...   read more

Donald Berwick, the Obama administration’s top official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, is resigning his post.   He didn’t have much choice.   Nominated by President Barack Obama in April 2010, Berwick never received Senate confirmation as...   read more

Apparently the spirit of old the Wild West still exists in the present-day southwestern United States.   The U.S. Department of Justice keeps track of arrest-related deaths (ARDs). Of the five states with the highest per-capita rate of ARDs, fou...   read more

Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck continues to pay a steep price for its former money-making drug Vioxx, a painkiller that once earned the company more than $2 billion a year.   The latest settlement for Merck originated with the U.S. Department...   read more

Eugenia Jennings of Illinois has become the first person to receive a commutation of sentence from President Barack Obama. Jennings was convicted in 2001 of selling 13.9 grams of crack cocaine to a police informant and was sentenced to 22 years in...   read more

In the midst of an ongoing economic crisis many economists blame on reckless behavior by banks and other Wall Street financial players, President Barack Obama on July 2, 2011, named an experienced state-level bank regulator to serve as the new C...   read more