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 leak exposed at least 20 workers to radiation. Citing 37 violations of hazardous waste permits, the state has thus far levied $54 million in penalties against the DOE and its contractor. It is expected to take years to clean up the facility at an estimated cost of more than half a billion dollars. Fifty WIPP staff employees have been at work in the underground facility to make an assessment of the degree of contamination and to draft a cleanup plan.   read more

First Lady Michelle Obama’s signature policy achievement—improving the menus of school lunches—is coming under attack from Republicans who want to use complaints from school officials to derail the program.Some school districts have said the changes have proven costly to their budgets, leading GOP lawmakers to push for suspending the new rules for up to a year. Republicans slipped the legislation into a $1-trillion spending bill, making it more difficult to kill.   read more

At Robert Morris University, gamers now are on the same level as football players: both receive scholarships from the school’s athletic department. The numbers demonstrate just how big e-sports has become: The largest collegiate gaming league has 10,000 students. Diehard gamers can also win scholarship money through gaming competitions. Those funds are provided by game companies, which see it as a valuable public relations maneuver that serves to deepen their relationship with the players.   read more

An investigation uncovered “the unprecedented, secretive alliance” between numerous state attorneys general and “some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda.” Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt appears to be one of those having his strings pulled. His office copied a three-page letter from Devon Energy, which had backed Pruitt’s campaign, changed a few words, put it on official stationary and sent it to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.   read more

“There’s no accountability here. There’s no justice. There’s no respect,” resident Mike Gomez told AlterNet. “There’s no humanity here. There’s nothing. It’s so disgusting that they get away with it.” Gomez has reason to be angry at the police department. An off-duty officer shot and killed his son, Alan, who was holding nothing more than a spoon at the time. Alan Gomez is one of 27 people killed by Albuquerque police in just four years. Forty more have been wounded in that period.   read more

“If it was on the books that Jews couldn’t hold public office, or that African-Americans or women couldn’t vote, that would be a no-brainer,” Todd Stiefel, chairman of Openly Secular, told The New York Times. “You’d have politicians falling all over themselves to try to get it repealed. Even if it was still unenforceable, it would still be disgraceful and be removed. So why are we different?”   read more

“Many Americans—even policymakers—seem unaware of the shocking prevalence of child poverty in many of our nation’s most important and iconic cities,” Curtis Skinner, director of Family Economic Security at the NCCP, a research center based at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a press release. “Reducing child poverty is critical to the social and economic health of cities, now and in the future.”   read more

The chamber’s new dress code informs women appearing on the House floor to be “sensitive to skirt lengths and necklines.” Furthermore, they must only wear “business formal” attire, defined as “a suit or dress slacks, skirt, jacket, and dress blouse or suit-like dress and appropriate shoes (flip flops, tennis shoes, and open-toe sandals are not considered appropriate).” And forget about leggings because they “are not considered dress pants.”   read more

The House passed a government funding bill that included an amendment that would have ended the ability of the National Security Agency to conduct “backdoor” warrantless surveillance of the content of Americans’ electronic communications. The bipartisan amendment passed with a veto-proof 293 votes. However, it was stripped from the bill by House leadership before it was sent to the Senate.   read more

Joanna Schwartz, an assistant professor at UCLA law school, Schwartz reviewed data on police civil rights settlements from 44 large and 37 small or midsized police departments from 2006 to 2011. In 9,225 cases from large cities, officers paid only .02% of the settlements, or $171,300 out of $735 million. In the small or midsized cities, officers didn’t pay any of the $9.4 million awarded to victims.   read more

A study conducted by Japan’s National Institute of Public Health showed that at least one unnamed e-cigarette brand contains 10 times the level of carcinogens found in a regular cigarette. The substances found in e-cigarette vapor include formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. Two studies conducted in the United States came up with similar results. They focused on “tank” cigarettes, which contain batteries and are refillable.   read more

France will put $60 million into a fund to be administered by the United States that will go to survivors, their spouses and their estates who were transported via SNCF railway to German death camps. Between March 1942 and August 1944, SNCF transported about 76,000 Jews and others to the Nazi camps. Fewer than 3% survived.   read more

No one can accuse Brennan of taking the easy road to the top. She began with the Postal Service in 1986 as a letter carrier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She subsequently worked her way up the ladder as a delivery and collection supervisor, processing plant manager in Reading and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and a district manager in Springfield, Massachusetts.   read more

Senator Mark Begich (D-Alaska) is trying to give a goodbye gift to the American people. The senator, who was voted out of office in November, has introduced a bill that would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to add calls from Super PACs and other dark money groups to the list of those to whom the “Do-Not-Call Registry” would apply. Also subject to Begich’s ban would be robocalls and push-polls, which instead of measuring public sentiment are actually attempts to influence voters.   read more

The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife is now the proud owner of 16 M-14 automatic rifles, supplied by the Department of Defense’s 1033 program. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese told the Newark Star-Ledger, "we will not engage in a public dialogue in the media to detail our operational procedures.”   read more

Even the state of Alaska, normally sympathetic to oil interests, has taken notice of the problem. A 2013 report called the problem “unprecedented…due to the distance that sulfolane has traveled in groundwater, and the number of properties affected with private drinking water wells.”   read more