Zelenskyy explained, “I told him that if he gave us the weapons we need and stopped supporting Putin, we would let him build Trump-branded hotels and other Trump-branded buildings in Ukraine’s ten largest cities, as well as Trump golf courses in the countryside. He was quite excited.”   read more

President Obama nominated a longtime protégée of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Capricia Penavic Marshall, to be Chief of Protocol, a State Department position holding ambassadorial rank. Although the chief of protocol customarily travels wit...   read more

Uncle Sam’s checkbook is seriously out of whack. With still three months to go in the current fiscal year, the federal government has already hit the trillion-dollar deficit mark for the first time ever in a yearly budget. According to figures rel...   read more

When buying a home, it might not be a bad idea to ask, in addition to how the plumbing and foundation are, whether anyone ever cooked methamphetamine inside it. Living inside a former meth house can cause serious and debilitating health problems, ...   read more

Electric cars by the thousands could be traveling America’s roads within the next 20 years, assuming industry and car buyers embrace an important new facet of the vehicles: switchable batteries. Economist Thomas Becker at the University of Califor...   read more

It was one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet over the past year, with nearly 40 million visitors. But the million-dollar plan to use webcams and “virtual deputies” to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border has proved to be a bust.   W...   read more

Congressman John Murtha’s (D-PA) airport to nowhere isn’t the only small, little-used airport receiving millions in federal tax dollars. Of the more than $1 billion in stimulus funds given to the Federal Aviation Administration, $100 million has g...   read more

Political alliances with anti-Taliban forces kept the Bush administration from investigating allegations of mass slaughter in November 2001 by Afghanistan soldiers under the command of warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was on the CIA payroll and la...   read more

In a move labeled “utter idiocy,” Wells Fargo has found itself serving as both plaintiff and defendant in a Florida civil matter over the foreclosure of a condominium. The bank is holder of both the first and second mortgages on the condo, and as ...   read more

Who says President Barack Obama isn’t a traditionalist? The man who promised change in Washington has decided to continue the long-held habit of presidents reserving the post of ambassador to France for, well, anyone but career diplomats. Only one...   read more

To understand the real Washington, DC, is to witness what goes on beyond the public hearings or prefabricated press conferences, write Bill Moyers and Michael Winship. Case in point: the debacle of Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth’s at...   read more

Many giants of Wall Street are still struggling to rebound from the collapse last year. Morgan Stanley is expected to report a loss for its second quarter of 2009, while Citigroup and Bank of America are barely getting by with the help of the fede...   read more

For almost three decades officials in Texas had a single approach to convicted criminals: lock ‘em up. But after watching its prison population explode by more than 500%, and facing a shrinking state budget, conservative lawmakers embraced alterna...   read more

President George W. Bush’s insistence on continuing the warrantless wiretapping program in 2004 almost forced the resignations of some of top law enforcement officials in the administration, according to federal inspectors of the government’s top ...   read more

Jim Hightower is still waiting for his “thank you” card from the bailed-out banks. He argues that every taxing-paying citizen deserves a big “thanks” from the financial industry for the trillion-dollar bailout that kept it from going belly up from...   read more

Tim Roemer is an example of ambassadorial appointment grounded not in six- or seven-figure bundles of cash, like some of those chosen by President Barack Obama, but in priceless political support that came at a crucial time. As a former congressma...   read more

Army Reservist David Hutchinson barely got himself assimilated in Afghanistan last May before his superiors started calling him a hero for his actions in an intense firefight with Taliban guerrillas.   A convoy of the Army Reserve’s 420th Engine...   read more