Just as the first casualty of war is said to be the truth, the first casualty of the new Cold War is irony. Our most prominent journalists seem to have missed the Orwellian irony of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asking Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper at Friday’s Senate hearings if Julian Assange …

Just when you thought it couldn’t go any lower, the approval rating for Congress among Americans has hit an all time low, according to a new Gallup poll. The number of Americans who now have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress as an institution stands at …

HSBC whistleblower and political hopeful Everett Stern. A bank whistle-blower is seeking a more powerful position from which to hold too-big-to-fail companies accountable. Everett Stern, a former HSBC employee who last summer called for fresh investigations into the company’s money-laundering controls, has launched a bid for Congress. Stern is campaigning …

Less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market. Many high ranking government employees were given a heads-up about the impending market crash in secret meetings with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Then they used …

Silicon Valley’s Mozilla Corporation has tasked themselves with extinguishing a fire, and no, it’s not what you have in mind. Mozilla, the Mountain View, California-based developers responsible for creating the hugely successful Firefox Web browser, has issued a statement publically condemning the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. …

Let the president be duly warned. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C., has introduced a resolution declaring that should the president use offensive military force without authorization of an act of Congress, “it is the sense of Congress” that such an act would be “an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor.” …

Americans have been shamed many times by their elected representatives who cravenly bow to vested interests and betray the American people. But no previous disgraceful behavior can match the public shame brought to Americans by the behavior of the Senate Republicans in the confirmation hearing of Senator Chuck Hagel as …

Only days after a national health care act was expanded to provide coverage to September 11 first responders that have been diagnosed with cancer in the wake of the terrorist attacks, the future of the federal plan is now up in the air. When US President Barack Obama signed his …

  As of late Friday the ceasfire in Gaza seems to be holding, if tentatively. While we should be pleased that this round of fighting appears temporarily on hold, we must realize that without changes in U.S. foreign policy it is only a matter of time before the killing begins …

In an interesting spot, journalist Alice Ollstein today noted that, while Reprieve clients the Rehman family were testifying at Congress about the day a drone strike killed their grandmother in North-West Pakistan, President Obama was meeting the CEOs of arms companies including Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Both firms are involved in the manufacture of drones …

It’s called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and it’s a secret trade pact being negotiated completely outside of law, with no congressional authority but with the aim of forcing nations around the world to ban GMO labeling, embrace Monsanto’s GMO crops and keep pharmaceutical prices artificially high to enrich the …

The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week – including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks. The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by …

[youtube height=”400″ width=”550″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q03cWio-zjk[/youtube]   Ron Paul: This may well be the last time I speak on the House Floor.  At the end of the year I’ll leave Congress after 23 years in office over a 36 year period.  My goals in 1976 were the same as they are today:  promote peace …

[youtube height=”400″ width=”550″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raKl5lO82js[/youtube]   The victims of a drone strike alleged to be launched last year by the United States spoke to members of Congress on Tuesday and urged the US government to stop killing civilians with weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles. Rafiq ur Rehman, a primary school teacher from North …

Unable to reach a deal with Congress, President Obama plans to use his power to exert executive actions against the will of lawmakers. The president will issue orders addressing controversial topics including cybersecurity. Although President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president in over 100 years, he is …

CIA Director David Petraeus revealed his affair almost immediately after the election, even though the FBI may have discovered it months ago. The timing has caused Congress to wonder if it was a political cover-up to help Obama’s campaign. The FBI began a criminal investigation in February after discovering that …

Thousands of Spaniards have returned to Madrid’s Plaza de Neptune to protest the latest, highly contentious wave of austerity measures, following a violent police crackdown on Tuesday. For the second day running, thousands of demonstrators led by the so-called indignados, or outraged, descended on the square – some 100 meters …

High-ranking Pentagon officials told members of Congress this week that the United States is in dire need of billions of dollars’ worth of upgrades to the country’s arsenal of antiquated atomic warheads. Before a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, United States Department of Defense officials said …

As Election Day nears, Americans certainly have some sobering choices to make. Whoever wins the White House has a monumental fiscal crisis to deal with – one that makes losses incurred during the Great Recession of 2008 look like pocket change. Either way you cut it, the country has been, …

BERNANKE SLAMS AUDIT THE FED Reports Reuters: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday rebutted Republican lawmakers pushing a bill that would give Congress the ability to review monetary policy decisions, saying it could compromise central bank independence. Bernanke said it would be a “nightmare scenario” if politicians decided to second-guess …