Frederick L. Webber, a longtime denizen of Washington's lobbying corridor, showed up at work one day last week and found on his desk a dozen fundraising requests from members of Congress.

He threw them all in the trash.

by John Nichols
Monday, September 12, 2005
Common Dreams

With the wheels rolling for the purchase of his own $2.9 million home on the east coast, the Cheney was more or less ready to commiserate with the folks who had lost their homes on the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, not all of the locals were prepared to thank the vice president for finally showing up.

By Michael Grunwald
September 8, 2005
Washington Post

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

A consortium of western oil companies, led by ExxonMobil, has drawn up legal agreements with African governments that potentially override the human rights of the local populations, according to a report published today by Amnesty International.

By Dan Balz
September 3, 2005
Washington Post

SYRACUSE, N.Y., Sept. 2 -- Pressed by constituents alarmed by skyrocketing gasoline prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) accused oil companies of manipulating energy markets to enhance profits and decried a lack of national leadership for a plan to free the country from dependence on foreign oil.

By Griff Witte
August 29, 2005
Washington Post

A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

By Carrie Johnson
August 30, 2005
Washington Post

Federal prosecutors yesterday unsealed conspiracy charges against eight former KPMG LLP officials and a lawyer accused of helping wealthy clients evade billions of dollars in taxes in what authorities called the largest criminal tax fraud case in history.

WAL-MART. Speak this hyphenated word, and you'll get an instant response.

To some, the name of the world's largest retailer stands for everything that's wrong with corporate capitalism. Declining wages, suburban sprawl, cheap foreign goods' destroying American jobs, reckless corporate welfare, disappearing unions... You name the malady, and there's surely a way to implicate Wal-Mart.

For others, the behemoth's "always low prices" are the gateway to consumer bliss. Where else can you get a $38.76 DVD player or a $42.44 microwave oven? Wal-Mart may be widely reviled, but there's also a reason why it rakes in almost $300 billion a year.

By Marc Kaufman
August 20, 2005
Washington Post

After less than 11 hours of deliberation, a Texas jury yesterday found Merck & Co. responsible for the death of a 59-year-old triathlete who was taking the company's once-popular painkiller, Vioxx.

By Michael Barbaro and Anjali Athavaley
August 17, 2005
Washington Post

The nation's retailers are growing increasingly worried that as consumers pour more money into their gas tanks, they will devote less to filling up their shopping carts, with industry bellwether Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday blaming higher prices at the pump for its weakest quarterly performance in four years.