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 Thursday, CIA Director Leon Panetta sent an e-mail to CIA employees reassuring them that no one who engaged in torture would be held accountable as long as they were following orders. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Clinton sig...   read more

In an interview with Le Monde, Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, defends his government’s U.S.-supported war against drug cartels, which took the lives of more than 6,000 people last year. However, Calderón also believes that Americans, and Pre...   read more

The current unemployment rate of 8.1% is the highest since December 1983. The Reagan Recession unemployment rate remained above 8.1% for 26 consecutive months and peaked at 10.8% in November and December 1982. Before Ronald Reagan left office, it ...   read more

One would think that with all the trillions of dollars the U.S. government spends, the least it could do is protect Americans’ food supplies. But the regulatory agencies in charge of inspecting food manufacturers has been so weakened over the past...   read more

The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, have joined the campaign against America’s coal industry by producing a television advertisement mocking the notion of clean coal.   The filmmaking brothers, popular for such films as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, a...   read more

Veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of their money, as tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims are being stashed away, tampered with, or destroyed by employees of the Veterans Affairs Department, according t...   read more

Taking over the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), one of the most historically ridiculed federal operations in the United States, is W. Craig Fugate, whom some have called “Mr. Hurricane.” Fugate brings a long resume of tackling disaster...   read more

Last week, in a speech to a roomful of Marines at Camp Lejeune, President Obama announced that by August 31, 2010, the United States combat presence in Iraq will end. However, conflicting statements from the White House and the Pentagon have cast ...   read more

Gay rights activists were delighted by the news that President Barack Obama had chosen M. John Berry to lead the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). As head of the federal government’s central Human Resources operation, Berry is expected to adva...   read more

A prominent Saudi scholar warned youths studying abroad that they could be committing a sin by using ethanol or other automobile fuel that contains alcohol, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported.   Sheikh Mohamed al-Najimi, a member of the Saudi Is...   read more

If John Morton is confirmed as the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he will be a marked contrast to the last person to hold the post, President Bush’s appointee, Julie Myers. Myers was well-connected, but had little experience. Mo...   read more

The Justice Department publicly released nine highly controversial legal opinions, kept secret until now, which gave George W. Bush unchecked powers during his “war on terror.” The contents reveal that the Bush administration took the position bes...   read more

Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a political moderate who works well with Republicans and possesses wonkish understanding of health policy. But she did little during her time ...   read more

As Americans face an economic crisis that is worsening by the day, it is time to ask whether U.S. taxpayers can afford to maintain the estimated 1,000 overseas military bases that the nation continues to operate.   The Pentagon officially report...   read more

President Obama’s lawyers announced last month that he will be upholding Bush administration policy that forbids detainees imprisoned at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan from challenging their imprisonment in U.S. courts. This action raises the poss...   read more

The Salt Lake Tribune shines a light on a small but growing trend: refugees from Iraq who came to the United States to seek safety and a better life, but find so few opportunities in the U.S. that they are risking danger by returning to Iraq. The ...   read more