The majority of voters did not vote for Donald Trump for president; the majority of voters did not vote for Republican candidates for the Senate; and fewer than 51% of voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The Republican Party now controls the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, no matter how that came to be. I believe it is worth bearing in mind that a majority of U.S. citizens did not support the Republican winners.   read more

The National Institute on Drug Abuse acknowledged in an April report that “recent animal studies have shown that marijuana can kill certain cancer cells and reduce the size of others. Evidence from one animal study suggests that extracts from whole-plant marijuana can shrink one of the most serious types of brain tumors." The medical marijuana study follows other British research that showed a combination of six purified cannabinoids can kill cancerous cells found in leukemia patients.   read more

Gov. Brown’s order to cut water consumption by 25% will prove to be the proverbial drop in the bucket as 80% of the water in the state goes toward agricultural uses. “It is striking that his executive order refines restrictions to the urban sector that consumes only 20 percent of California’s water and leaves the agricultural sector, which consumes 80 percent of the water, untouched at least for the moment,” said Mark Hertsgaard. “You can’t leave 80 percent of the problem off the table.”   read more

The U.S. Postal Service just unveiled a stamp intended to honor poet Maya Angelou. It ended up quoting another writer’s work. The stamp features the quote: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” The line was written, not by Angelou, but by Joan Walsh Anglund. USPS officials didn’t discover their mistake until the stamp was already printed and The Washington Post informed them of the error.   read more

From 2008 to 2009, Hale was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. After Obama took office, Hale was named deputy to Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell and took over as acting envoy in June 2011 when Mitchell stepped down. Hale in 2013 was named ambassador to Lebanon and took over in Beirut on August 1 just as internal fighting in neighboring Syria was going on and the United States considered using military action in the country.   read more

The funding cuts have been pushed by Congressional conservatives who don’t like the idea of the IRS. “We deliberately lowered the IRS’ funding to a level to make you think twice about what you are doing and why,” Rep. Ander Crenshaw told the agency. “You don’t have a single dime to spare on anything frivolous... The IRS should focus on its core mission of...processing returns [and] providing customer service.” Those functions Crenshaw described are exactly those hurt by budget cuts.   read more

The lead plaintiff in the case, Carlo Licata, says Facebook has “secretly amassed the world’s largest privately held database of consumer biometrics data.” She's not the only person worried about the tagging feature. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has criticized the practice, saying “your face is a conduit to an incredible amount of information about you.” He added that unlike a password, a face cannot be replaced or changed. “Unless you turn it off, it’s already been used on you."   read more

In the past week, four newspapers in the western U.S. published opinion pieces by the Environmental Policy Alliance, described as a front group for the PR firm of Richard Berman, that called for federal public lands to be turned over to states, which in turn are likely to sell them off to oil, gas, and timber interests. Berman is “known as ‘Dr. Evil’ for his aggressive fights against animal rights groups, labor unions, and environmental organizations,"said Claire Moser.   read more

In one corner is Delta Air Lines, which wants the bank to die, or at least cut its ability to make loan guarantees. Delta has support from conservative free-market advocates like Heritage Action and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners, which see the Ex-Im Bank as a form of “crony capitalism” and “corporate welfare.” On the other side is airplane manufacturer Boeing, which has benefited for years from the bank’s loan guarantees.   read more

The $25 limit came as an amendment offered by Republican Sen. Caryn Tyson to HB 2258, which originally set the limit at $60 a day. Democratic Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau called the amendment ludicrous, saying a limit could create significant problems for beneficiaries. HB 2258 would impose other restrictions, like kicking people off welfare altogether after a lifetime limit of 36 months. It also would ban repeat drug offenders for life from receiving food assistance.   read more

Egypt has imprisoned journalists, prosecuted gays and lesbians, and carried out mass executions of protesters. Obama had imposed the arms freeze after Egypt’s military overthrew the country’s democratically elected government in 2013. Sisi helped lead the coup, and more than 40,000 people were arrested in its immediate aftermath. Obama’s concerns over the ongoing human rights situation were finally trumped by national security matters,   read more

In Tewksbury, Mass., police agreed to pay $500 in bitcoin to a hacker who infected the department’s electronic files with the CryptoLocker ransomware virus. The infiltration left the files, including backup copies, locked up and useless. “It basically rendered us in-operational, with respect to the software we use to run the police department,” said Police Chief Timothy Sheehan. “It made you feel that you lost control of everything.”   read more

The federal government abolished the civil service exam in 1981 following multiple discrimination lawsuits that claimed the test was biased against minorities. But with so many people applying to become federal employees, some agencies decided to bring back the civil service exam, albeit in a much newer and modern format that tries to avoid being unfair to blacks and Hispanics. About 10% of would-be bureaucrats at three dozen government agencies will take the USA Hire test.   read more

Sixty-two police vehicles and more than 100 officers--37% of the police force--joined the pursuit. Once the suspects were cornered, more than a dozen officers opened fire and unloaded 137 shots at the vehicle. Forty-nine of the bullets fired came from the gun of Brelo, who climbed on top of the suspects’ Chevrolet Malibu and fired pointblank at the windshield. Russell and Williams were hit more than 20 times each and died inside their car. It was determined that neither of them had been armed.   read more

The problem, critics say, is the face. It features jagged teeth and a crazed expression, prompting comparisons to everything from zombies and Yoda to Joseph Stalin, and actor Steve Buscemi. “If he’s the artist and the sculptor, you would think he would take some pride in his work and say, ‘Yeah, that’s probably not up to par and I should make it right,’” said Mayor Schrecengost. “But his last statement to me was, ‘If nobody likes it...just take it down and put it in storage.’”   read more

LegiStorm, a non-partisan watchdog group, analyzed the number of Senate and House of Representatives legislative assistants and other staffers who are assigned to the issue of abortion. On the Democratic side, 173 women and 60 men deal with abortion. But among Republicans the gender breakdown is the opposite: 139 women and 153 men.   read more

Private companies and some law enforcement agencies have readers in stationary locations and mounted in vehicles all over the country. By collecting information on all the places a license plate has been spotted, a person’s movements can be tracked. The largest commercial database is owned by Vigilant Solutions and as of last fall, the company had more than 2.5 billion records and its database was growing by 2.7 million records a day.   read more