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

After the biggest toxic spill in U.S. history (100 times larger than the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill), the Tennessee Valley Authority has advised residents (inaccurately) that boiling their water would remove dangerous heavy metals and ma...   read more

Senator James Webb, decorated Marine, journalist, novelist, and Ronald Reagan’s one-time Navy Secretary, has announced his intention to tackle the politically delicate issue of prison reform. Unafraid of being perceived as “soft on crime” by his c...   read more

A series of Bush appointees have effectively hobbled Occupational Safety and Health Administration by halting progress on a number of workplace safety initiatives, and by siding with employers against employees. During George W. Bush’s presidency,...   read more

Ever since the financial hard times reached Wall Street in September, there have been a series of reports that, in one category or another, this is the worst since [fill in the blank]. The unemployment rate for November (6.7%) was the highest in 1...   read more

Bill Richardson’s 30-year career in politics has included several controversies, including “pay to play” allegations that are likely to become highly publicized during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Commerce.   Born William Blaine “B...   read more

Seventeen Chinese Muslims unlawfully held in Guantánamo are still awaiting news of their fate after U.S. Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina deemed them innocent and ordered their release and delivery into the continental United States in October. The me...   read more

Rev. Paul Raushenbush, Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University, reviews the ten worst religious stories of 2008. Coming in at number 9 is Sarah Palin’s Witchcraft video (Palin appears at about 5:00), in which visiting Kenyan pasto...   read more

If confirmed, Arne Duncan would become the first Cabinet member who has earned a living playing and coaching basketball. Duncan was born on November 4, 1964, to Starkey Duncan, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, and Susan Morton,...   read more

In nominating Nobel laureate Steven Chu for Secretary of Energy, Barack Obama may have selected the smartest man ever to run a cabinet department.   Chu was born on February 28, 1948, in St. Louis, MO. His father, Ju Chin Chu, and his mother, Ch...   read more

In our ongoing attempt to find something good about President Bush’s legacy (see In Praise of George Bush), we turn to his support for community health centers. Kevin Sack of The New York Times writes, “Although the number of uninsured and the cos...   read more

A coalition of environmental groups including Earthjustice and the Sierra Club have sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a new revision finalized on December 12, which will allow mining companies to dump waste in streams. Specifical...   read more

Aziz Huq, writing in The Nation, urges Barack Obama to immediately begin the process of reversing the centralization of power that characterized the Bush administration. The administration manipulated the judiciary by creating an atmosphere of fea...   read more

Do Jews Run Hollywood? In reaction to an Anti-Defamation league poll which showed last month that only 22% of people now believe that Jews run the movie and television industries, compared with 47% in 1964, Joel Stein (who is Jewish) protested in...   read more

Jason Deparle of The New York Times writes, “In his campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chip Saltsman, a Tennessee political operative [who was Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign manager], distributed a song to potential support...   read more

Janet Napolitano does not shy away from tough fights, having first risen to prominence as Anita Hill’s attorney during the Clarence Thomas controversy, and later as a Democratic governor of a very Republican state.   Napolitano was born on Novem...   read more

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993-1997, argues that Wall Street and Detroit have no intention of fundamentally altering their business strategies because they view the economic crisis as the low point in a cyclical downturn...   read more