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

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has been using its sophisticated electronic systems to collect 220 million bits of metadata a day from satellites and Internet sources. Once it crosses the Atlantic, the NSA and CIA use it for their own spying and anti-terrorism activities. Some of the metadata may be utilized by American operatives to assassinate individuals, Zeit Online says, based on what former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden said last year: “We kill people based on metadata.”   read more

The FAA said U.S. efforts to regulate lunar activity might run afoul with international agreements on space development. Moon Express says it intends to bring moon dust or rocks back to Earth on its third mission to the satellite. “The company does not see anything, including the Outer Space Treaty, as being a barrier to our initial operations on the moon,” said Bob Richardss. That includes “the right to bring stuff off the moon and call it ours.”   read more

The CDC reported that secondhand smoke caused more than 40,000 fatalities annually from 2005 to 2009. Of these deaths, 34,000 were heart-related and 7,300 were from lung cancer. Exposure to secondhand smoke dropped overall, but children and minorities are disproportionally affected by it. In 1993, 43% of individuals reported banning smoking in their houses and apartments. That rate climbed to 83% by 2011.   read more

In Moscow, the country’s largest collection of humanities and social sciences caught fire Jan. 30 at the Academic Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION). INION contains millions of records, including 14.2 million texts in both ancient and modern European and Asian languages, some 400 years old. Authorities said the fire may have destroyed 15% of the library’s collection, or about 2 million documents.   read more

It’s good that peer pressure caused the firing range to come down, because Florida has a law that says municipalities can’t stop such a thing. “My first reaction to one of these cases was, ‘Heck no, that can’t be right. That has to be unlawful,’” said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. “After researching it, we realized, ‘Sheesh, it really is legal.’” Carannante said he couldn’t afford the $20 cost of going to a gun range to shoot. “My intentions were never to instill fear in my neighbors," he insisted.   read more

The IRS uses civil forfeiture to seize millions of dollars from Americans who haven’t been charged with a crime. A new report states that the IRS seized more than $242 million from 2,500 individuals and businesses from 2005 to 2012. The agency was able to do it because of “lax civil forfeiture standards” that allows them to “seize first and ask questions later.” As a result, people have had their bank accounts drained and are then forced into a legal battle to reclaim their money.   read more

While traffic death rates in general have declined, the car found to be the deadliest has actually gotten more dangerous over time. The Kia Rio, a very small four-door car, led the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) list of the deadliest cars through the 2012 model year with 149 deaths per million registered vehicle years. A similar IIHS report prepared in 2011 found the Rio to have “only” 89 deaths per million registered vehicle miles.   read more

The median income of millennials is about $2,000 less than it was for their baby boomer parents in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The agency also reported that more millennials are living in poverty and fewer are employed today than when boomers were becoming upwardly mobile yuppies. Michigan, Indiana and Ohio have the highest percentage of young people living in poverty, while highest rates of millennials living with their parents are in California, Florida and Nevada.   read more

Children of the wealthiest Americans were more than eight times more likely in 2013 to receive a bachelor’s degree than the poorest, according to the Pell Institute. Those in the upper strata saw 77% graduate from college, while only 9% accomplished the same feat at the bottom rung. The gap in college education has widened considerably since 1970, when 40% of students from high-income families earned a bachelor’s degree, compared to 6% of students from low-income families.   read more

Like many conservatives, Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, says there are too many regulations burdening American businesses and some of them have got to go. That includes eliminating the state and local laws, recommended by the Food and Drug Administration, mandating that food workers hit the sink before going back to the kitchen. Tillis’ plan would include a requirement that restaurants post signs telling customers that the staff don’t have to wash up.   read more

The 2016 plan includes $8.85 billion for replacing aging warheads with new ones, which represents an 8% bump over the current spending. But that's just the tip of what Obama has called for to retool the nuclear stockpile of weapons and delivery vehicles. The president has proposed spending $355 billion by 2024 on this endeavor. But one watchdog group wrote: "It’s time for...real downsizing and consolidation to occur, and for the security of the nuclear weapons complex to come first.”   read more

Animal testing could someday be replaced by advanced microchips currently under development. A German research group has created a “synthetic organism on a miniature chip” that can simulate a human body for the purposes of testing new medicines. If successful, it would eliminate the need to test new therapies on animals, which are currently used at the early stages of drug testing. Such a development “would be nothing short of a revolution to the pharmaceutical industry,” said SingularityHub.   read more

The change came about after outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered his agency to review its alcohol polices in an effort to reduce the number of rapes within the military. “They include a department-wide review of institutional alcohol policies...including the risk that alcohol is used as a weapon against victims in a predatory way,” Hagel said last May. The new policy was reflected in the Pentagon’s latest sexual assault prevention guide that describes alcohol as a weapon.   read more

“Our findings suggest that urban areas are experiencing a kind of double whammy — a combination of general climatic warming combined with the heat island effect...preventing cities from cooling down as fast as rural areas,” said study coauthor Dennis Lettenmaier. “Everything’s warming up, but the effect is amplified in urban areas.” The trend has been accelerated at night because all that concrete is holding in heat. Almost two-thirds of urban areas are experiencing hotter nights.   read more

There is only one state in the nation where socialism reigns in the electricity industry and private ownership of utilities is nowhere to be found. And it’s not California, New York or any other “blue” state. No, the distinction of having nothing but nonprofit utilities resides in the very red state of Nebraska, where conservatism runs throughout the government. The state has 121 publicly-owned utilities, 10 cooperatives and 30 public power districts that serve 1.8 million residents.   read more

Judge Rakoff has frequently criticized federal prosecutors for not being tougher on Wall Street defendants in the wake of last decade’s financial crisis. This time, however, the 71-year-old judge was miffed that the Justice Department (DOJ) said the commission was not permitted to recommend that case evidence be shared with criminal defendants. Accusing the DOJ of valuing “strategic advantage [for prosecutors] over a search for the truth,” Rakoff resigned to draw attention to the DOJ decision.   read more