Christine Pelisek

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer Halliburton has made off with more U.S. government contracts in Iraq than previously disclosed, including a second deal worth over $425 million. So says Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who last week sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers blasting the agency for......

On May 28, the L.A. Times ran a two-paragraph brief on Page B4 about 14 suspected SARS cases in L.A. County. The lack of a single confirmed case suggested that the county had been all but spared by the virus. Was it luck, or the good efforts of health officials......

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft wants to scrap an 18th-century law that allows victims of human-rights violations to seek compensatory relief. In early May, Ashcroft’s Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to take another look at the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 214-year-old law that allows noncitizens the right......

A neighborhood-action group has blocked a needle-exchange program’s latest effort to open up shop in Hollywood, this time at the L.A. Free Clinic. “They put a lot of energy into defaming needle exchange,” said Terry Hair, executive director of Clean Needles Now, a city-funded program to halt the spread of......

When it comes to public appearances, the Bush administration leaves little to chance. Last week, President Bush swooped down on Indianapolis to tout his tax-cut plan. To make it seem that the plan will help ordinary people, VIPs sitting behind Bush were told to look like average Joes and Jills......

Donald Rumsfeld is an outspoken adversary of North Korea. But he’s not saying much about his involvement with a company that provided nuclear reactors to North Korea. Not even in his quaintly open, uninformative way. Last month, Fortune magazine reported that Rumsfeld may have helped North Korea develop its nuclear......

Another alumnus of the U.S. private sector is trying his hand at rebuilding Iraq. And like his peers, the newest hire is being given carte blanche by the Bush administration in advancing U.S. commercial interests. Dan Amstutz, a former U.S. agricultural employee, will be the new senior ministry adviser in......

The principle that people are innocent until proven guilty is being threatened — again. President Bush wants to start requiring DNA samples from adults who are arrested for felonies; current law applies only to those convicted of crimes. Bush also wants to add juvenile offenders to the genetic catalog. The......

President Bush’s post-9/11 pledge to “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims has hit another sour note with his nomination of Middle East hawk Daniel Pipes to a taxpayer-funded federal think tank. The core mission of the United States Institute of Peace is supposed to be, as its name implies,......

If Attorney General John Ashcroft’s USA PATRIOT Act didn’t take a good chunk of our liberties, brace yourself for the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. If enacted, it promises to strip your shriveling rights away even further. For six months, the Justice Department has been drafting rules to expand......