President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

Former members of Congress and aides to the president have been left wondering what happened to the arms-reduction version of Obama who took over the Oval Office. Former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, whose positions favoring nuclear disarmament reportedly meant something to Obama at one time, told the newspaper that the president’s new position is “hard to explain.”   read more

The U.S. averaged 16.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere for each individual—a rate that’s far ahead of all other nations. China, the second largest per-capita polluter, averages 7.2 metric tons. The U.S. emission rate had slowed because of increased use of natural gas in power generation, but coal has recently made a bit of a comeback in that role, causing more carbon to flow into the atmosphere.   read more

The Los Angeles Police Department received more than 1,600 M16 assault rifles even though the LAPD was under the supervision of a federal monitor until just last year following accusations of excessive force, false arrests and unreasonable searches. Warren, Ohio, reached a settlement in 2012 with the U.S. Department of Justice for excessive force and illegal searches, but is expected to receive 30 M16 rifles.   read more

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has decided to divest its investment portfolio of all hedge funds, a total of 24 plus six “funds of funds.” The total comes out to about $4 billion out of CalPERS’ total assets of $300 billion. The amount may not be that significant compared to the overall investing CalPERS does, but the pension fund’s sheer size makes any decision noticeable among investors.   read more

Officer Chris Poncia has 461 people in his case file, all the sex offenders in Providence. His beat includes 175 Level 2 and 3 offenders, who are classified this way because they’re considered likely to commit sex crimes again. Poncia is unique among his peers in Rhode Island, which has about 1,600 sex offenders. He is the only cop in the state who does nothing but patrol the sex offender beat.   read more

Lawmakers took five weeks off from Washington during their summer break. They came back this month to work…for eight days. Now, they’re jetting off again to their districts, where they’ll spend nearly the next eight weeks not doing any legislative work. Congress is scheduled to return on November 12. Its members will have just a few more lame-duck weeks to avoid setting a record for enacting the least number of laws of any Congress since such statistics began being kept in 1973.   read more

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was forced to throw out the conviction of a man caught distributing child pornography because the case was initiated by Naval investigators randomly searching computers in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military acting as a civilian police force. NCIS agent Steve Logan's excuse for searching all computers in Washington was that the state has a high percentage of military personnel.   read more

Last year, there were 449 prosecutions for environmental crimes. That’s less than half the 927 prosecutions initiated in 2007, toward the end of the Bush administration. And the trend line is falling; there were 271 prosecutions in the first nine months of this fiscal year. If cases are filed at the current rate, that would result in only 361 for 2014, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.   read more

Nonprofit groups that aren’t supposed to have politics as their primary purpose have reportedly put $63 million into ads and other efforts to influence the outcome of the 2014 midterm races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which tracks electoral spending. Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll pointed out that this amount nearly matches the $69 million in dark money that was spent during the entire 2008 presidential campaign.   read more

Botticelli ran afoul of Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) during a Congressional subcommittee hearing. Blumenauer, who is hoping to change marijuana’s status as a Schedule I narcotic, asked Botticelli which is more dangerous, marijuana or methamphetamine. Botticelli wouldn’t give a straight answer and Blumenauer chastised him, "If the deputy director of the office of drug policy can't answer that question how do you expect high school kids to take you seriously?”   read more

The majority of accidental shooting deaths of children are performed by other children. In 73% of the cases, the shooter was age 14 or under. The shooters and victims are also overwhelmingly men and boys: 82% of shooters and 77% of victims were male. The deaths also usually occurred in familiar surroundings. Sixty-one percent were in the victim’s home, with 10% in a relative’s home, 10% in a friend’s home and 3% in a relative’s car.   read more

Acting VA Inspector General Richard Griffin stood by the report, while saying its wording allowed for the possibility that care delays caused the deaths. “A careful reading would show that in some of those cases, we say that they might have lived longer,” Griffin said. The admission could make it a bit easier for those who have filed suit against the VA for the deaths, particularly for cases that don’t go to trial.   read more

Cisco sold a system called “Golden Shield” to the Chinese government, touting its ability to uniquely identify members of Falun Gong and as “the only product capable of recognizing over 90% of Falun Gong pictorial information,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Cisco’s presentation also included offering features to persecute “Falun Gong evil religion,” which should have been a tip-off that human rights violations were at issue.   read more

He returned to Iraq in 2008 as deputy commanding general for support of the 25th Infantry Division. Brown went to Germany in 2010 as chief of staff of the United States Army in Europe and deputy commander, U.S. Army NATO. After that, he was named commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning in Georgia. His most recent assignment was as commanding general of I Corps and aenior Army commander for Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.   read more

Much of Anthony’s career has been spent in Latin America. One posting had him serving as special forces and counter-narcotics advisor along the Ecuador-Colombia border. While there, he served as a liaison for an Air Force medical team performing plastic surgery on Ecuadorans with deformities such as cleft palate and burn scars. He was also Army section chief in Guatemala and his last assignment was as the commander of the U.S. Military Group in Nicaragua.   read more

A new study produced by the Guttmacher Institute says the rate of women receiving contraception through their private health insurance at no cost to them jumped from 15% in 2012 to 67% by the spring of this year. The Affordable Care Act included a provision that required companies to include contraception coverage in their health plans.   read more