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

FWS scientists in Montana first suggested protecting the animals, saying the loss of spring snow from global warming could adversely impact the species that lives in underground dens. Climate change had been used as a justification for the listing of polar bears as a threatened species in 2008.   read more

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed 51% of respondents said the children coming to the U.S. from Central America should be permitted to remain in the country, at least temporarily. Only 32% said the children should be immediately deported, indicating Obama is bending to the will of the minority by ordering immigration courts to fast track the children’s hearings.   read more

Women’s business-ownership more than doubled following the passage of the Women’s Business Ownership Act in 1988, going from 4.1 million small businesses to 8.6 million by last year. Women now own 30% of all businesses. But “Only 4 percent of the total dollar value of all small business loans goes to women entrepreneurs,” the report states.   read more

The crisis in the Ukraine continues as American and European leaders lob more sanctions against Russia for its actions in the war-torn country. But in the oil world, it’s business as usual. Oil king ExxonMobil last week began drilling a new oil well off Russia’s Arctic frontier, in cooperation with OAO Rosneft, the country’s state-run oil company.   read more

The weed Palmer amaranth started showing up in cotton fields in the South, and before farmers knew it, it was everywhere. It can grow higher than six feet tall and spread a million seeds from each plant. Roundup was useless against it, leaving farmers the choice of pulling the weed by hand or using more powerful herbicides that could kill crops as well. Now, it’s showing up in the Midwest.   read more

The DEA forked over $854,460 over a 20-year period to a secretary-turned-snitch. The DEA was involved in a joint drug enforcement task force with Amtrak Police during the payoffs—and it could have easily gotten the information through this channel without paying a dime, the IG reported, leading to speculation that DEA officials didn’t trust their legitimate Amtrak partners.   read more

In a court filing produced two years ago for a lawsuit brought by 9/11 victims against the Saudi government, Graham said: “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.”   read more

The law bans same-day voter registration, cuts early voting days from 17 to 10, eliminates the use of provisional ballots if the voter votes in the wrong precinct, eliminates a program to allow 16- and 17-years-old to pre-register at public high schools, says that a disabled voter can only be helped by a near relative or legal guardian and mandates that candidates belonging to the same party as the governor have their names appear first on the ballot.   read more

Truck drivers’ salaries have declined since the Great Recession, from more than $42,500 a year in 2009 to $40,940 last year. The drop is even larger going back to 2003, when the average trucker salary was more than $43,000 annually. In addition, the industry is having trouble replacing retired drivers with younger workers who are reluctant to take a job that involves long hours and sometimes weeks at a time on the road.   read more

The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) issued a report Friday saying formaldehyde, a common chemical found in clothing, homes and furniture, causes head and neck cancer (nasopharyngeal), nose cancer (sinonasal) and bone cancer (myeloid leukemia). The NAS findings supported other reports by American and international experts who have said the chemical is a danger to human health.   read more

FICO announced last week that it would give less weight to medical debts when factoring credit scores—a significant move considering the debts account for about half of all unpaid collections on consumers’ credit reports. The company also said paid collections would no longer cause scores to be downgraded. . It might take a year or more for the changes to be adopted by lending institutions.   read more

The 10 states with the highest uninsured rates in the country, all run by Republican governors or legislatures or both, have all refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid and have declined to participate in the state exchanges. Those states are Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New Mexico.   read more

The controversy centers around policy changes made at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which issues reports on so-called “hospital acquired conditions (HACs),” such as when surgeons accidentally leave sponges inside a patient’s body or a nurse causes air bubbles inside a person’s bloodstream. CMS has decided it will no longer disclose eight types of HACs that patient-safety advocates and consumers used to access.   read more

A group of 47 inspectors general (IGs) informed Congress that the Department of Justice, the Peace Corps and the Chemical Safety Board have at different times stymied the audits by IGs by not turning over important internal documents. With the Peace Corps, the agency reportedly withheld records of sexual assaults against its volunteers.   read more

Medicare, which accounts for about a quarter of Acthar prescriptions, pays an average of $41,763 per prescription for the drug and spent $141.5 million on it in 2012. The 2013 bill may reach $220 million. Despite the growing use of Acthar, there are no scientific studies showing that the drug works any better than cheaper alternatives for the conditions for which it’s prescribed.   read more

Hartley and Schlosstein have been active in Democratic politics. In the 2012 campaign, Hartley is credited with bundling at least $500,000, and possibly up to $1.4 million, for Obama’s re-election effort. In 2011 she and Schlosstein hosted a $71,600-per-couple fundraiser for Obama. She has also contributed to the campaigns of numerous Democratic Congressional candidates.   read more