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 group of 300 writers isn’t just pressuring Amazon’s board. It’s also pushing the Department of Justice to investigate it for alleged monopoly tactics. “We’re talking about...deliberately making a book hard or impossible to get, ‘disappearing’ an author,” said Ursula K. Le Guin. “Amazon is using censorship to gain total market control so they can dictate to publishers what they can publish, to authors what they can write, to readers what they can buy."   read more

Every day, hundreds of millions of phone calls and texts are routed throughout North America by an obscure federal office operated by a private telecommunications company. This operation has gone largely unnoticed but a potential change in contractor has set off a debate in Washington. Michael Chertoff, a former Secretary of Homeland Security, has been brought in as a hired gun by Neustar to lobby for it to keep the job as “air traffic controller for the nation’s phone system.”   read more

“The message today is clear. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small-time con artist or a multi-billion dollar Wall Street bank. If you try to rip off or defraud Virginia consumers or Virginia taxpayers, you will be caught and you will be held responsible,” said state Attorney General Mark Herring. “Every Virginian was harmed by the financial crisis. Homes were lost, retirement accounts were devastated, small businesses saw their credit dry up almost overnight."   read more

On the night of the shooting, supervisors immediately concluded there was no threat, even though agents on guard heard the shots and prepared to respond. They were told to “stand down” after their superiors wrongly assumed that a car had backfired near the White House. Then, Secret Service supervisors concluded there had been gunfire, but that it was the result of local gangs shooting at one another — “an unlikely scenario in a relatively quiet, touristy part of the nation’s capital."   read more

Before this year is up, the Navajo Nation will receive more than half a billion dollars from the federal government to settle the government’s historical mismanagement of tribal resources. The $554 million wraps up an eight-year-old lawsuit that Navajo leaders filed claiming the federal government spent decades, going back to 1946, managing leases to oil, gas, timber and other natural resource companies without getting a fair return for the tribe.   read more

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivers mail despite snow, rain, heat and gloom of night. Soon we’ll see if the same goes for a can of green beans. In a bid to bring in revenue to help it trim red ink, the USPS has been running a test, delivering groceries to homes in the early morning. So far the project has been attempted only in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it has averaged 160 food deliveries a day between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. in conjunction with Amazon.com.   read more

Six companies have won permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use drones in the filming of movies in the United States. It’s the first time drones have been approved for use outside wilderness areas in Alaska.The Motion Picture Association of American led the lobbying effort.   read more

At least one Mississippi jurisdiction, Scott County, routinely keeps prisoners for months and sometimes more than a year at time without indicting them or providing legal counsel. That’s why the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center are suing the county alleging inmates’ constitutional rights are being violated by being “indefinitely detained” and “indefinitely denied counsel.”   read more

The Washington D.C. city council voted last Tuesday to establish a permitting process for carrying concealed firearms. It came as a result of a federal judge declaring the District’s laws forbidding civilians to carry weapons unconstitutional because of a 2008 Supreme Court ruling on the subject.   read more

Women have left their mark already in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The extremist group executed Samira al-Nuaimy, a female civil rights lawyer. But Major Mariam al-Mansouri, the UAE’s first female fighter pilot, reportedly led her country’s missions as part of a U.S.-led coalition to destroy the ISIS threat in the Middle East.   read more

In 2005, Barks-Ruggles was named deputy assistant Secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. While in that post, she focused on Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel and Palestinian affairs, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. In 2008, Barks-Ruggles was asked by her superiors to tone down a report on human rights in North Korea, removing words such as “repressive” and “regime.”   read more

In 2010 he was made director for European Security and Political Affairs and in 2012 Hartley was named deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibility for Nordic, Baltic and Central European countries. Some of his duties there have entailed testifying to Congress on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hungarian anti-Semitism and anti-Romani trends.   read more

Zumwalt went back to Tokyo in 2008 as deputy chief of mission, serving as chargé d’affaires for a time during 2009. While there, he wrote a blog for the embassy website focusing on Japanese culture and other issues. In 2012, Zumwalt was back in Washington as deputy assistant secretary of state for Japan and Korea, a post he held until his nomination to be ambassador.   read more

People around the world were surveyed on what they thought the gap between worker and CEO pay was, and what they thought the gap should be. Americans responded in 2012 that they thought bosses made 30 times what the average worker made, and that the ratio should ideally be 7 to 1. The actual ratio of CEO to worker pay was 354 to 1. Those of other nationalities had similar gaps between their ideal ratio and the ratio they thought existed.   read more

Emily Ruiz was 4 years old in 2011 when she went to Guatemala with her grandfather. Their flight home to New York was diverted to Washington. Emily cleared immigration, but officers found irregularities in her grandfather’s papers.Eventually the two were deported to Guatemala. In a suit Emily's father filed, the government is accused of claims of claims of false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.   read more

Seattle’s city council unanimously passed an ordinance last week that mandates fines for those who throw food in the general garbage can instead of in a compost bin. Trash collectors will be empowered to inspect residential cans and if they contain more than 10% food or other compostable items, the owner will find a $1 fine on his or her next utility bill. Apartment owners will get two warnings for their dumpsters, but $50 fines for subsequent offenses.   read more