It has been more than 20 years since a majority of Americans said they were satisfied with the direction of their country, a period that covers the presidencies of two Republicans and two Democrats. The last time a majority of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic Party was in August 2009. The Republicans? Except for one poll in January 2020, no majority favorable since April 2005.   read more

The U.S. military wants to build a series of firing ranges on the Pacific island of Guam overlooking the remnants of an ancient settlement. Fearing the move will adversely affect the historically significant site, the National Trust for Historic...   read more

Officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, have been doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to businesses operated by convicted felons for them to run summer camps for foster kids and the homeless.   An investigation by the Palm Beach Post ...   read more

Mercedes Márquez has served as assistant secretary for community planning and development in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since June 2009. The Office of Community Planning and Development is responsible for distributing ...   read more

The CIA is being forced to produce specific information regarding secret tests conducted on thousands of soldiers over a 25-year period.   In response to a lawsuit filed by three veterans groups and six individual veterans, a federal judge, Ja...   read more

Extending unemployment benefits for America’s long-term jobless can only help the economy, say experts on Wall Street and in Washington. But Republicans in Congress are determined not to appropriate any more money for unemployment assistance, ci...   read more

The warning signs were there, they just weren’t heeded. That is the conclusion of experts from the National Academy of Engineering who studied the possible causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico.   The academy says ther...   read more

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has decided to end a Bush-era policy of allowing federal prosecutors to get criminal defendants to waive their rights to future DNA testing as part of pleading guilty in exchange for lighter prison sentences.   ...   read more

The White House insists the news is good for the government’s efforts to stem wasteful spending, even though the numbers would indicate otherwise.   During fiscal year 2010, the rate of improper payments—checks sent in error, disbursed to the ...   read more

Medicare beneficiaries who enter a hospital stand a 1-in-7 chance of receiving medical care that causes them harm, based on data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general.   After reviewing the cases of one mi...   read more

Thanks to this year’s Republican wave, the number of small-business owners in Congress will triple in size in January. Thirty-three new lawmakers, all Republican and including two women, make their living running small enterprises. The last Cong...   read more

The town of Hinkley, California, is reliving a nightmare it thought had ended a decade ago. Made famous by Erin Brockovich’s battle against Pacific Gas & Electric and the subsequent film starring Julia Roberts, Hinkley residents are again facing...   read more

Target, a female shepherd-mix dog, survived suicide bombings in Afghanistan, but couldn’t avoid death at an animal shelter in Arizona, where she was mistakenly euthanized.   Only last month Target was honored at the eighth annual Hero Awards b...   read more

Businesses do not create jobs, says Dave Johnson at Campaign for America’s Future who sees companies as an enemy of employment.   “Businesses have more incentives to eliminate jobs than to create them,” argues Johnson. “Businesses in our economy...   read more

Demonstrating do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do is still alive and well in Washington, two Republican lawmakers have publicly bashed programs that they regard differently when it comes to their own benefit.   In the Senate, John Ensign of Nevada voted ...   read more

Huh? That about sums up the reaction to the latest labor news out of Washington, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported that more people are quitting their jobs than are being laid off.   In September, there were two million q...   read more

Journalist Fahd al-Jukhaidib is facing a punishment of 50 lashes and two months in prison for writing about protests over electricity cuts in Saudi Arabia. Al-Jazira, a daily national newspaper, published a story by al-Jukhaidib in September 200...   read more