Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

The report said 78,000 active-duty soldiers were clinically obese based on having a body mass index of 30 or higher. “These soldiers also are less likely to be medically ready to deploy,” wrote Army Times. About 13% of male soldiers were classified as obese, compared to 8% of women. “The obese service members in the brigade in Afghanistan were 40% more likely to experience an injury than those with a healthy weight, and slower runners were 49% more likely to be injured.”   read more

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, writing that FHWA failed to explain the rationale behind its exemption while noting the term “predominately” in a 1997 memorandum about minimal-use exemptions. “The 2012 memorandum says nary a word about why 90 percent was chosen as the threshold value to mean ‘predominately,’” Mehta wrote. “Not a single word. And defendants’ post-hoc efforts to rationalize the choice of that number ring hollow.”   read more

Some states as well as privacy experts and civil liberty groups say the law’s requirements for secure identification would amount to something like a national identification card. “The federal government has quietly gone around and clubbed states into submission,” said Minnesota senator Warren Limmer. If DHS tells TSA to begin enforcing the law, it could mean passengers from some states would not be able to use their driver’s licenses at airport security checkpoints.   read more

Forty percent of the shootings involved black male victims — “a grossly disproportionate number with African-American males making up only 6 percent of the population,” Tom Boggioni wrote in Raw Story. Caucasians made up the majority of cases where police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone or brandished a weapon. But 60% of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic.   read more

A new law is forcing the IRS to employ private debt collectors, which will cost the agency money and make it easier for scammers to defraud Americans. The provision means that bill collectors will be using the same tactics to collect tax debt as they do for a late credit-card payment. That concerns IRS officials, who have long warned Americans to beware of calls from scam artists claiming to be from the IRS. Such scams have cost 3,000 victims a total of $14 million this year alone.   read more

Environmentalists fought the project and when it seemed inevitable, proposed road-building alternatives that would do less damage to the environment. But the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) signaled that it was prepared to approve the Greater Mooses Tooth as the oil company wanted. “BLM in Alaska is coming perilously close to acting as a leasing agent of the ConocoPhillips company,” Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who fought the project, said according to the reporting.   read more

U.S. foreign sales increased from $26.7 billion in 2013 to $36.2 billion last year, despite increased competition for a market that hasn’t gotten much bigger. The U.S. is the biggest provider of arms in the world, controlling a bit more than 50% of the global arms export market. Russia is the next biggest supplier, with $10.2 billion, off a little from its 2013 total of $10.3 billion. Sweden, which supplies fighter planes to such countries as Brazil, was third at $5.5 billion in arms exports.   read more

Just in time for New Year’s Eve, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have put a damper on your party with the news that alcohol-related deaths have climbed 37% since 2002. In 2014, according to the CDC, 30,700 people died from alcohol-related causes, or 9.6 deaths per 100,000 population. That doesn’t include those killed in traffic accidents or homicides in which alcohol was a factor.   read more

“There is an alarming and growing trend of schools quietly seeking the right to discriminate against LGBT students, and not disclosing that information publicly,” HRC President Chad Griffin said. “We believe that religious liberty is a bedrock principle of our nation, however faith should never be used as a guise for discrimination. Prospective students and their parents deserve greater transparency, and we urge the Department of Education to take action...”   read more

President Obama has said since he entered office that transparency was a priority for his administration. But his own bureaucratic “right hand” has failed to live up to the expectations set for other agencies. The White House Office of Budget and Management (OMB) is in charge of ensuring government agencies make their operations open to the public. OMB has been criticized, though, for not updating its own guidance on transparency. Its last update was in 2010.   read more

DaVita, the leading provider of dialysis services in the United States, agreed to pay two of the largest settlements: $450 million to resolve allegations that it knowingly generated unnecessary waste in administering the drugs Zemplar and Venofer to dialysis patients and billed the government for costs that could have been avoided; and $350 million for paying kickbacks to physicians to induce patient referrals to its clinics.   read more

Defendants are shown videos resembling game shows where court concepts such as a bailiff and juries are discussed. There are mock trials where patients can see how a trial works and quizzes on the process. When they’re deemed able to understand the process, defendants are returned to jail. There, they often lose access to the medication that made them lucid enough to appear in court. That can cause them to begin the process over for subsequent court appearances.   read more

McKesson, which made $6.2 billion providing healthcare services and information technology, paid the most in penalties: $2.05 billion for 24 instances of misconduct. Its biggest single penalty was in 2005, when it paid $960 million to members of a class action suit in connection with accounting improprieties in a company acquired by McKesson. It paid $150 million earlier this year because of reporting problems for controlled substances. The company has been led since 2001 by CEO John Hammergren.   read more

Blau conducted a year-long investigation into the financing of the settlements. He found 50 pro-Israeli settlement nonprofits aided by U.S. donors had funneled more than $220 million to Jewish communities in the West Bank from 2009 to 2013. The organizations spent the money, much of which was tax-deductible, on everything from air conditioners to supporting the families of convicted Jewish terrorists.   read more

“America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished,” Epstein wrote. “Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had."   read more

Until eight years ago, Missouri had one of the country’s toughest gun control laws. But in 2007, the state legislature repealed that law and has since adopted others making gun ownership less restricted. Federal data released last month showed that from 1999 to 2006, Missouri’s gun homicide rate was 13.8% higher than the national rate. After the background checks were repealed, from 2008 to 2014, it was 47% higher.   read more