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Facing a rapidly changing global arena and operating with a nebulous mission, the CIA is suffering a crippling identity crisis. Will it survive into the next century. If only the [...]

The economics of sports entertainment have transformed many star athletes into multimillionaire prima donnas with little in common with -- or use for -- even their fans. Often waiting in [...]

They had worked hard to turn their small-business dream into a reality. Then they accepted government loans, and unwittingly set off down a grim road to catastrophe. American dreams can [...]

60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt and other industry critics decry the proliferation of TV newsmagazines that dramatize without edification. Baiting the trap for an ambush interview with legendary 60 Minutes [...]

Welcome to the Florida Keys, where a tidal wave of rules and regulations is leaving local landowners in the lurch. Are ecologists and bureaucrats in league? All roads to the [...]

Five years ago Al Gore pledged to save Americans from the gaping jaws of big government, and his National Performance Review was born. What happened? If the making of the [...]

Political talk radio came of age in the nineties, and conservatives have proved to be the most adept at harnessing the medium's power for issue advocacy. In the beginning there [...]

Insight reviews the top stories of the year in pictures. Here is our selection of the best and worst stories of 1 997. Insight readers get the real news first. [...]

For generations, Navajo elders have told and retold the Legend of the Great Gambler who, after losing everything in a high-stakes wager with the people, vows someday to return and [...]

`Every time we open one door, it seems like it's four or five places we have to look,' says Dan Burton, chairman of the House Oversight hearings. He emphasizes that [...]

Americans are outraged about abuses and eager to replace the IRS. Now Speaker Gingrich has begun the national dialogue about how to replace the tax code. Talk about being in [...]

After years of being a senator and vice president, Al Gore has built a trusted circle of advisers who are just as determined as he is to gain control of [...]

In the absence of a Reaganesque candidate who can unite the GOP, an array of diverse Republican presidential hopefuls is volunteering to run in 2000. Call it the curse of [...]

Government labs that once toiled secretly to support the Cold War effort are taking their high-tech know-how public. But are their goods really a boon or boondoggle? Venturing out on […]

Saddled with cutbacks and deluged with ever more visitors, the National Park Service has been told by Congress to figure out how to pull its own weight. Anxiety tempers anticipation [...]

Environmentalists and bureaucrats say the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is essential to prevent overdevelopment. Locals say it is a blatant land and water grab. First came the pirates, then [...]

Waste and inefficiency characterize management of the Tennessee Valley Authority, but staunch TVA support in Me White House is making privatization a very difficult prospect. Government is moving toward deregulating [...]

Many Americans are stoked about the coming release of the now and improved VW Beetle. But regulatory waves have hit the auto industry hard, jacking up sticker prices and bringing […]

U.S. cities begin training the first responders -- police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel -- to function together in case of chemical/biological attack. Think of it: an emergency broadcast alert. [...]

Acts of God spark most forest fires, but the actions of men and their governments share responsibility for the fact that fires have in recent years reached 'biblical' proportions. In [...]

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, national-security concerns suddenly seemed to eclipse more ephemeral issues as a shocked and shaken America underwent a seismic shift in its outlook and priorities. [...]

Members of Congress are being asked by a taxpayers' group to forgo an automatic pay raise scheduled to take effect in January 2002. It would come, after all, in the [...]

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs recently put government agencies on notice that all major new rules/regulations will be held to a higher standard than they were [...]

Sept. 29 was National Public Lands Day in the United States, but nobody broke out the pointy hats and noisemakers. A muted celebration is understandable though, given deepening doubts about [...]

It's bad enough that federal farm subsidies have spiraled ever-upward and out of control. They currently make up a larger portion of the average farmer's income (nearly one-half) than they [...]

What do you do when you've got an adversary who is ahead on points but suddenly out of wind and on the ropes? If you're Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano, [...]

Overzealous regulation may soon render commercial fishermen a dying breed "We've got water coming in!" the captain announced abruptly as he poked a flashlight through a torso-wide hatch to where […]

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first redistrict. Average taxpayers and antiwaste warriors should be flying their flags half-mast this week, mourning the recently announced retirement of Rep. Steve [...]

Congress in recent years frequently has threatened to eliminate one federal agency or another, justly claiming that some were redundant, anachronistic or had proved maddeningly ineffective and unredeemable. But these [...]

Modesty is believed by many to be a virtue well worth cultivating. But nowhere is that truer than in regard to efforts to overhaul the ship of state, which inevitably [...]

While Western states burn, leading to firefighter fatalities, mobilization of the military and the waste of public resources on a vast scale, the federal government still is fiddling around with [...]

Reeling under a two-front assault from radical environmentalists and not-in-my-backyard malcontents whose lawsuits and penny-ante complaints are making live-fire mining at many U.S. military facilities all but impossible, the Pentagon [...]

Crack a politician's skull and sometimes a nugget of candor inadvertently drops out, offering a revealing, if not always flattering, glimpse into the mind-set behind the public mask. Such a [...]

Federal beach-replenishment funding: Now here was one issue over which the Bush administration -- whose hallmark thus far has been the politically cautious half-measure -- actually seemed willing to draw [...]

It was a mantra of former vice president Al Gore's reinventing-government effort that the problem with the federal government wasn't its workers. They were good people trapped in bad jobs, [...]

While the greatest danger most run-of-the-mill federal bureaucrats face is getting lost in a blizzard of paperwork, crushed by a falling watercooler or sleeping through the next round of government [...]

As the government's premier internal watchdog agency, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has cultivated a reputation for thoroughness and accuracy so sterling that its findings only rarely are challenged [...]

First the bad news: A recent survey of students at one university found that only 34 percent of graduates with public-policy degrees actually took jobs in the public sector last [...]

Few organizations or individuals on the receiving end of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) regulatory wrath would argue that the agency is a tiger without teeth. Yet Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, [...]

Three years ago the dreaded IRS took what some saw as a well-deserved drubbing for its sometimes-abysmal treatment of taxpayers. This summer -- following revelations of hundreds of missing firearms [...]

A witch-hunt is under way in Washington state for the negligent weenie roasters believed responsible for sparking a modest forest fire that suddenly turned deadly in early July. It killed [...]

Dark warnings of Big Brother's imminent arrival have been made, heard and blithely ignored since the 1949 publication of George Orwell's 1984, a novel that offered a chilling vision of [...]

Bring on more blackouts and budget-busting energy prices! Americans apparently will not stir from their full-bellied slumbers and there will be no credible national energy policy until things get worse [...]

For an agency run with all the professionalism and decorum of Disney's Country Bear Jamboree, it's probably altogether fitting that visitors to the Washington headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service [...]

Those who accused the Clinton White House of being in bed with Green groups undoubtedly will find confirmation in the administration's aftermath. Several ex-officials quickly have found comfortable perches in [...]

The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) proposed something theretofore unknown in the annals of modern American governance -- namely, that federal agencies should formulate mission statements, establish strategic [...]

In 1999, following allegations of nuclear espionage and slipshod security at Department of Energy research labs, Congress created a new office, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), with a mandate [...]

Cannibalizing Rampant in Uncle Sam's Flying Circus What does your friendly neighborhood Air Force base have in common with an Appalachian Mountain hillbilly hovel? Aesthetics, for one thing. Hillbillies have [...]

Alternative fuel follies When a friend phoned last year to say that the state of Arizona was about to buy him a brand new pickup truck loaded with all the […]