How did Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, come to cross swords with Fox News’s Glenn Beck? This week, the congressman released a report on one of Beck’s advertisers, Goldline International, alleging that the company “grossly overcharges consumers for their coins.”
At CIA headquarters last week, spy chief Leon Panetta was presiding over a quiet ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Security Protective Service, the agency’s police force, when things went, er, to the dogs. “For our agency, you form the first line of defense,” the director told the assembled crowd in remarks that...
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a delegation to China this week for a series of economic and diplomatic meetings in Beijing. For Clinton, the agenda includes trying to forge consensus on issues from North Korea and Iran to the improvement of intellectual property rights. Boosting U.S. exports to...
Even before the sour economy forced many households to cut back on superfluous expenses, only a tiny fraction of Americans gave money to political candidates. But the impact on the political process of those who do give is, simply put, enormous. It’s part of a trend that looks to continue and even exacerbate the...
One of biggest surprises of the past year has been the trajectory of the Iraq War and the fact that, from Washington’s perspective, things have gone largely according to plan. U.S. forces continue to pack up and ship home the men and materiel of war, while Iraqi leaders are busy forming a coalition government...
Florida’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center is the largest solar plant in the nation and was a showpiece of President Obama’s clean energy initiative. More than 90,000 solar panels combine to generate enough power to run some 3,000 homes in the Sunshine State. At an opening ceremony for the plant in October, Obama...
Buried inside hundreds of pages of heavily redacted court documents from the case of a man accused of being one of al Qaeda’s chief recruiters, is evidence that the terrorist group has launched successful cyberattacks, including one against government computers in Israel. This was the first public confirmation that the terrorist group has mounted...
A child of the early Cold War, Robert Muthnow says he’s always had an interest in how society copes with the fear of its own extinction. His new book, Be Very Afraid: the Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and Other Threats, offers some surprising insights into how humans think about...
Hans Kristensen heads the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a group founded by some of the scientists who built the first atomic bomb in 1945. FAS keeps a running public tally of the world’s nuclear arsenals. All told, nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22,000 nuclear...
Several years ago, the National Academy of Engineering set about ranking the 20th century’s greatest technological achievements. A group of scientists and engineers, led by the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, weighed in and came to a startling conclusion: The greatest achievement wasn’t the Apollo program, the automobile, or the...