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

Google has come out against a new plan by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to authorize remote searches of computers by federal authorities, calling the effort legalized hacking. Google stated that the plan would raise “monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide.”   read more

The “guns everywhere” law was enacted at the urging of the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights activists even though 70% of Georgia residents were against the legislation. It was also opposed by the state’s police chiefs association, the restaurant association, the Episcopal and Catholic churches, and the Transportation Security Administration.   read more

Researchers gathered information from 58 California cities and found more than 500 anti-homeless laws between them. Ninety percent ban begging and panhandling and 20% ban food sharing. All but one of the 58 cities ban at least one nighttime activity, “like sleeping, camping, or lodging in public places, including in vehicles.”   read more

Obama administration officials said Comey wasn’t invited because they didn’t want the conference to focus on law enforcement. However law enforcement officials from other countries, including Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the offspring of the KGB, did attend the meeting in Washington.   read more

The Obama administration has sent incorrect tax information to 800,000 customers of Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance exchange, and is asking those people to wait to file their taxes until they get corrected information. About 50,000 of those who received the erroneous forms are estimated to have already filed their 2014 taxes.   read more

A law enacted during the George W. Bush administration that calls protests against animal treatment “terrorism” is being used to prosecute two men who released about 2,000 minks from an Illinois breeding operation. Kevin Johnson, 27, and Tyler Lang, 25, face up to 10 years in prison for charges brought under the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), which prohibits engaging in conduct “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise.”   read more

Mahlangu was elected to South Africa’s parliament in 1994. He was appointed deputy chairman of the National Council of Provinces, the upper house in South Africa’s legislature and became chairman in 2005. In his official biographies, Mahlangu has claimed that he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Fairfax in 1995, but this was actually an unaccredited diploma mill.   read more

Washington agreed to pay $1.9 million for work to mitigate the damage caused to the coral reef. But an environmental group claims it will cost between $17 million and $27 million. "The said financial compensation is not enough to...absolve the U.S. Navy for the crime [it committed] in Tubbataha. The U.S. Navy not only incurred considerable damage to our world heritage site, they also clearly violated our Philippine sovereignty and laws,” said Clemente Bautista.   read more

The study showed that from 1987 to 2014, students in their senior year of high school who said they partied six hours or more per week declined from 34.5% to 8.6%. The report says 2014 incoming students’ self-rated emotional health dropped to 50.7%, its lowest level ever, a drop of 2.3% from the freshmen class of 2013. The number of students admitting to “frequently” feeling depressed also went up by 9.5%, which was 3.4% higher than in 2009.   read more

Using federal documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, TRAC discovered that immigration courts under the Obama administration adopted rules last year that pushed cases involving women with children to the head of the line. TRAC’s analysis of 26,342 adults-with-children cases found that fewer than 30% of the families were able to find a lawyer to help them, and those immigrants were allowed to stay in the United States only 26.3% of the time.   read more

Pérez took elective office himself in 2002 as a senator from the Dominican Republic’s national district, serving in that office for four years. In 2007 he was made director of his country’s Civil Aviation Institute and was later caught up in a controversy for overspending on a headquarters building for his agency. Pérez twice sought the PLD nomination for president, in 2008 and 2012, but failed to get it both times.   read more

“Hicks was the first prisoner to be convicted by a Guantánamo military commission, by virtue of his guilty plea, and he’s now the first to have his conviction vacated,” said McClatchy. “I was subjected to five and a half years of physical and psychological torture that I will now live with always,” said Hicks. He claims to have been subjected to waterboarding, beatings, and forced drugging. Threatened with being sent to Egypt to be tortured, he agreed to the condition for release—plead guilty.   read more

The apples will now be sold in stores—without any labeling informing consumers that the apples’ DNA has been altered. The USDA decided to commercialize them despite receiving 73,000 comments in opposition. Apple industry officials and food-safety advocates criticized the decision. Some believe it could hurt the “wholesome image of the fruit that reputedly ‘keeps the doctor away,’” as well as damage exporting of apples to countries that reject genetically modified foods.   read more

L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck has called on toy-gun makers to stop producing weapons that closely resemble deadly firearms that an officer can easily mistake for a threat. Slate's Peters says that in some cases the police officers involved in the shootings may be responsible for the deaths: “Jamar Nicholson was shot in the back. He wasn’t even holding the fake gun. Tamir Rice wasn’t pointing a gun at Officer Timothy Loehmann when Loehmann shot and killed him."   read more

State Attorney Alvarez said that “terrifying” threats and false evidence were fabricated by Protess’s students at his direction. Private investigator Ciolino has admitted that a videotape was made featuring an actor posing as a witness who claimed to have seen Simon commit the murders. Additionally, Simon’s estranged wife was persuaded to falsely testify that she witnessed the killings. All of this was used against Simon to coerce him into confessing to the crime, he claims.   read more

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who often is mentioned as a potential Republican candidate for president, frequently discusses his evangelical faith in public and has gone so far as to imply that he talks to God. But when asked to show proof of that, his office said it could not provide it. “While it's on the record that the governor is communicating with higher powers like billionaire and political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, that's where the paper trail ends,” wrote the Foundation.   read more