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

Most of Robinson’s career has been spent in Latin America. In 2009, Robinson was sent to Guatemala as deputy chief of mission, serving there until 2011. He then returned to Washington as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, beginning in June 2011.   read more

The ABA’s National Task Force on Stand Your Ground laws found that when a white shooter kills a black victim, the shooting is 350% more likely to be ruled justified than when a white shooter kills a white victim. A Texas A&M study cited by the ABA reported that states with stand-your-ground laws saw an 8% increase in homicides.   read more

Neither Moskowitz nor Brothman testified in their own defense because they didn’t want their affair to become known. Nevertheless, she was convicted in 1950 and served two years in prison. Moskowitz also had to pay a $10,000 fine (equal to nearly $100,000 today), and, after being released, she struggled to put her life back together with such a black mark against her during the Cold War.   read more

ISIS controls or has a presence in much of northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, with its footprint there nearly matching that of al-Qaeda in Iraq during its zenith in 2006. ISIS has received financial backing from the Sunni-led governments in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Cockburn and others have written.   read more

Arab Bank “knowingly and willfully” financially helped Hamas and other “terrorists who have killed, injured and maimed civilians” and “aided and abetted and conspired to commit said acts of international terrorism,” according to the lawsuit filed by 297 Americans.   read more

On September 25, 2012, President Barack Obama made Dr. Rodney C. Ewing chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel on which Ewing has sat since July 2011. Obama reaffirmed Ewing’s position on June 13, 2014. The Review Board conducts scientific and technical assessments of the Department of Energy’s activities to dispose of the nation’s commercial spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste.   read more

It would be the first ambassadorial posting for Mustard and one of the few for diplomats from the USDA. In his testimony, he noted that U.S. relations with Turkmenistan have been “constrained by significant human-rights concerns because the government seeks to exert control over the lives of its citizens,” but he also pointed out that this hasn’t stopped Boeing and GE from experiencing “great success in the Turkmen market.”   read more

Until Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) ordered the state highway patrol to take charge of security in Ferguson, the police officers patrolling the city’s streets were carrying 5.56-mm rifles similar to the M4 carbine employed by the U.S. Army. They also had sidearms, body armor, multiple ammunition clips, and they rode around in armored vehicles reminiscent of the kind used to shuttle soldiers through Iraq.   read more

The one discordant note is that hiring has not risen at the same rate as job openings. Openings are up 17.6% in the past year, while hires have increased only 9.3%. Some economists say it’s because companies might not be offering high enough wages. Others say the disparity is because of a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills of job seekers. For example, a former factory worker wouldn’t necessarily be qualified to fill a nursing position.   read more

an official with the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which provides protection for American diplomats and works to maintain the integrity of U.S. travel documents, decided to test new facial recognition software created to detect passport fraud. The DSS official happened to use an FBI wanted poster containing Stammer’s image for his experiment and found that it matched the photo of an American in Nepal going by the name of Kevin Hodges.   read more

Following rules promoted by President Barack Obama in 2010 that barred lobbyists from being advisers on the boards, a group of lobbyists who had been dismissed from boards sued the government claiming the restrictions violated their rights. They won their case in federal court, forcing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue new guidelines that allow lobbyists to serve on the boards if they are representing clients.   read more

According to the report, “She advanced a theory integral to RedX product development, promoted a multi-step process the RedX product suite used to implement the theory, highlighted the results of field trials that used RedX products to demonstrate the efficacy of the theory and process, and featured a RedX sales slogan.” Dugan left her post in 2012 during the investigation and became an executive at Google.   read more

The passage of the amendment, which would have guaranteed that equal rights could not be denied on account of gender, was passed by 35 states by the 1982 deadline, leaving it three short of ratification. To get the effort going again, two measures have been introduced in Congress. One would erase the 1982 deadline but keep intact the ratification by 35 states, so backers would have to get only three more states to sign on.   read more

A Patent Office employee put a “mouse-mover” program on his computer so it would appear he was working. It was noticed by a manager, who reported it up the chain of command, but no action was taken. Many employees did little work until the end of each quarter, when they’d rush to complete their required tasks before their deadline. Meanwhile, the agency has fallen behind on processing patent applications, creating a backlog of more than 600,000 requests.   read more

Between 2009 and 2010, officials made eight bond offerings. But at no time did they inform bond investors that Kansas’ public-employee pension was the second-most underfunded in the United States. At one point, the gap between the fund’s liabilities and assets reached $8.3 billion.   read more

The billboard read: “Welcome to America, home to 5% of the world’s people [and] 25% of the world’s prisoners. . . . Let’s build a better America together,” But Philadelphia airport officials rejected the ad, claiming their policy allowed only advertisements with commercial appeal. However, the airport had already displayed ads by other non-profits, including the World Wildlife Federation and the National Parent-Teacher Association.   read more