The Department of Homeland Security’s physical footprint in Washington is as sprawling as its mandate. DHS doesn’t have a single headquarters. Rather, it has dozens of offices for the agencies that fall under its control. Read the rest of this entry »

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham perhaps best summed up the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, noting on the first day of the proceedings that barring a “meltdown” by the nominee, she was all but assured of confirmation to the nation’s highest court. But Graham and others in the GOP were clearly not enamored of President Obama’s pick. “You have said some things that just bug the hell out of me,” Graham confessed, pointing to several of her past speeches. Read the rest of this entry »

During one of the most high-profile spy cases in U.S. history, onetime State Department official and accused Communist spy Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury based in part on several rolls of film found inside a pumpkin on a Maryland farm. In 1975, when the film was declassified, one roll was revealed to be completely blank; another contained such mundane information as manuals for military parachutes and fire extinguishers. Hiss claimed until his death in 1996 that the evidence known as the Pumpkin Papers vindicated him, but his claims often fell on deaf ears. Read the rest of this entry »

It may be the case, as GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham told Sonia Sotomayor on the opening day of her confirmation hearings, that her ascension to the country’s highest court is a lock, baring a “meltdown” by the nominee. But that doesn’t mean that the minority party won’t have tough questions for President Obama’s first Supreme Court pick. Read the rest of this entry »