When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

On April 2, 2009, President Obama nominated Dr. Robert M. Groves to be the next Director of the Census Bureau, where he will direct the 2010 Census. Groves is a generally uncontroversial professor of sociology  However, his nomination is contentio...   read more

While recent news of slight improvements in retail sales and unemployment figures offer modest signs of economic recovery, a new report released by the Federal Reserve offers a sobering reminder of just how harsh the recession has been for the cou...   read more

A retired U.S. ambassador, Johnnie Carson spent 37 years working for the Foreign Service, mostly on assignments throughout sub-Saharan Africa. On May 6, 2009, he was confirmed as the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs.   Born on April 7, 19...   read more

When Congress decided to bailout Wall Street’s largest financial institutions last year, they had more than just the nation’s interest in mind. They had their own as well. According to disclosure forms released on Wednesday by the House of Represe...   read more

Who doesn’t have a potential conflict of interest these days in Washington, DC? If it’s not economic advisors in the White House, it’s lawmakers on Capitol Hill—or even Joe the Civil Servant at the Pentagon. The Center for Public Integrity, a gove...   read more

From the tropical shores of Florida to the Neandertal Valley of Germany, a fisherman and a 40-year-old woman recently stumbled upon American-made munitions separated not only by great distances but also completely different eras of warfare.   Th...   read more

It may not be as sexy as Tom Cruise conducting aerial dogfights in his F-14 Tomcat while Kenny Loggins sings about the “Danger Zone” in the movie Top Gun, but graduates of the U.S. Air Force’s newest pilot program are hot commodities these days....   read more

Last year was a “record-breaking year” for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, after receiving a new high in the number housing discrimination complaints filed by renters from across the country. HUD’s FY 2008 annual report reveals th...   read more

After sacrificing thousands of Americans lives and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to supposedly bring democracy to Iraq, the U.S. government is seeking to suppress the Iraqi people’s right to vote on whether American troops should stay i...   read more

No one would ever expect to find a toy Ku Klux Klan figure in their Happy Meal in Mississippi, or for the McDonald’s in Tel Aviv to give out miniature Hitlers, so why would America’s legendary fast-food chain think it was good idea to give out toy...   read more

The good news for supporters of President Barack Obama is that he may not be nearly as responsible for the ballooning state of the national debt as Republicans like to claim. The bad news is that even if President Obama isn’t contributing signific...   read more

Fed up with the recruitment of teenagers by the military, residents of two Northern California cities overwhelmingly adopted a measure last November that prohibits such activity within their city limits. The federal government objected to the pass...   read more

The Harris County Jail in Houston, TX, is not a place to serve time, based on alarming findings uncovered by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ report, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, revealed accounts of inmates dying unnecessaril...   read more

The U.S. government has not put its money where its mouth is when it comes to fighting terrorism, at least not when compared to what’s been spent on the war in Iraq. According to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service, the United States...   read more

Tobacco may be frowned upon by insurance companies when it comes to insuring smokers, but it is a-okay as an investment. The New England Journal of Medicine is reporting that many of the biggest insurers in the world have billions of dollars inves...   read more

Following the revelations of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the U.S. government decided it could “PR” its way out of trouble with the Iraqi people and proceeded to launch a multi-million-dollar propaganda campaign to convince people that everythin...   read more