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

Among the attacks by non-Muslims mentioned in the SPLC report are the April 2012 killings of three African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by racists Jake England and Alvin Watts; the August 2012 killing of six Sikhs by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page in Oak Creek, Wisconsin: and the June 2014 shooting deaths of two police officers and a third man who tried to intervene by anti-government extremists Jerad and Amanda Miller in Las Vegas.   read more

The latest World Press Freedom Index shows the U.S. ranked 49th in the world, according to Reporters without Borders, which created the index. It hasn’t been this low since 2006, when it dropped to 53rd. The U.S. ranking is usually between the twenties and forties on the index.   read more

“Georgia’s ineptitude in making errors and delay in discovering them is confounding, but does not justify permitting the federal government to keep the $90 million in credits to the detriment of Georgia’s 1.89 million Medicaid recipients,” U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote. Kessler explained that Georgia’s poor shouldn’t suffer because of a mistake of state employees.   read more

Tyheem Henry received 13,680 days—37.5 years—in disciplinary detention and lost 27,360 days (74 years) worth of telephone, visitation, and canteen privileges, and 69 days of “good time” for making 38 Facebook posts. The punishments are so long that the state has run out of room in its solitary confinement areas to hold all the offenders.   read more

To honor the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, the government of third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un issued a collection of more than 300 new slogans. Here are some of the most noteworthy: 1. Let this socialist country resound with the Song of Big Fish Haul and be permeated with the fragrant smell of fish and other seafoods! 5. Let the wives of officers become dependable assistants to their husbands! 15. Fertilizer means rice and socialism.   read more

Oklahoma rocketed to the top of the earthquake charts in 2014, tripling the number of 3.0 shakers in California, the one-time undisputed champion of the United States. But like the steroid scandal that tarnished baseball and ruined the statistical landscape in the 1990s, many scientists are pointing to the introduction of performance-enhancing chemicals to explain the recent 40-fold-plus increase in quakes—in Oklahoma’s case, hydraulic fracturing (fracking).   read more

Brown’s sexual orientation has been known to Oregon voters for years, as she has worked her way from the state house of representatives to the state senate and was first elected as secretary of state in 2008. Her orientation appears to be a non-issue for Oregonians. In fact, the most controversial thing about Brown is actually a letter she submitted endorsing the Comcast merger with Time Warner Cable. The letter was partly written by a Comcast lobbyist.   read more

In its most recent effort to enforce the use of “authentic names” on its site, Facebook blocked the accounts of Native Americans such as Dana Lone Hill, Parmelee Kills The Enemy and Shane Creepingbear. Creepingbear’s profile was removed, ironically enough, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, also known as Columbus Day.   read more

Young couples had to be on their toes on Saturday. Merely expressing their love in public could have led to them being married off, with right-wing Hindu groups vowing to force marriage on couples found celebrating an indecent “Western festival.” “If you are in love, you should get married,” said Ashok Sharma, vice president of Hindu Mahasabha, a conservative Hindu religious organization with branches across India.   read more

Those who spend a lot—more than $20,000—on the ceremony get divorced 60% more often than couples with cheaper weddings. And here’s good news for the grooms—the same holds true for spending on engagement rings. Men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on rings got divorced 30% more often than those who spent between $500 and $2,000.   read more

Pharmaceutical giant Merck is being accused falsifying data so it could sell a vaccine that wasn’t as effective as advertised and didn’t work for thousands of individuals. Merck is being sued by two virologists who say Merck knowingly faked data about the effectiveness of the vaccine and still put it on the market. Two former Merck employees said in 2010 that the company infused a blood sample with animal antibodies to make it look like the vaccine had elicited increased antibody production.   read more

Tyler Harber was charged with using his role as the campaign manager for Chris Perkins, a Virginia Republican running for Congress, to steer help from the super PAC National Republican Victory Fund. Harber first solicited a large political contribution from New York real estate developer Cary Fields, but instead of having Fields give the money to Perkins, Harber told Fields to give it to the super PAC.   read more

The researchers offered some reasons why the benches tend to be populated with conservatives. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Federalist Society—a right-wing legal organization—started setting up on the campuses of American law schools. That effort, Joanna Penn wrote at the Journalist’s Resource, “may be paying off: Graduates of elite law schools who went on to become judges are far more likely to be conservative than their peers.”   read more

The crisis drew calls for Haarde’s resignation and he left office in January 2009, ostensibly for treatment for esophageal cancer. He was subsequently indicted for being negligent in his handling of the banking crisis. In April 2012, he was found not guilty of all but one charge—failing to keep his cabinet informed of developments—for which no penalty was levied. Haarde has appealed that conviction.   read more

Pham Quang Vinh, a longtime member of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), took over as his nation’s ambassador to the United States on November 11, 2014. It’s the first ambassadorial posting for Pham. In 2008 Pham was made an assistant minister for foreign affairs and in 2011 was made deputy minister for South Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. He was also Vietnam’s senior representative to ASEAN.   read more

In 78 published papers on clinical trials with which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found objectionable conditions or practices significant enough to warrant regulatory action, only three mentioned problems with the trials. The violations included researchers falsifying data and occurrences where clinical trial participants should have been ruled ineligible.   read more