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

Scientists say the level of CO2 has averaged 400 parts per million (ppm) for the past three months at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. That last happened, climatologists say, between 800,000 and 15 million years ago, long before modern humans roamed the earth. The 400 ppm level contrasts with a level of about 280 ppm before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution less than two centuries ago.   read more

Nationwide, one in four U.S. residents lived in “poverty areas.” That’s up from about 18% in 2000. The bureau refers to any census tract with a poverty rate of 20% or more as a poverty area. Mississippi, consistently one of the nation’s poorest states, had by far the largest share of Americans living in poor areas at 48.5%. New Mexico was next at 43%. The state with the fewest residents in poverty areas was New Hampshire at 6.8%.   read more

An investigation by Kulick revealed that on the night of Kumra’s death, Anderson had been treated by paramedics after passing out from drinking too much. During his treatment, Anderson had an oxygen-monitoring probe placed on his finger. That same piece of equipment was used later that evening on Kumra when first responders showed up at his home.   read more

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the dissenting opinion, warned that the ruling was a “decision of startling breadth” which could lead to employees losing out on other rights, such as vaccinations and certain medications if their employers object. “Suppose an employer’s sincerely held religious belief is offended by health coverage of…paying the minimum wage or according women equal pay for substantially similar work?” she asked.   read more

Writing in the Iowa Law Review, Yung discovered that nearly 70% of all police departments in 2012 relied on dispatchers—many of whom lack proper training—“to do the initial coding of sexual assault crimes.” He also determined that police officers sometimes fail to write reports after interviewing rape victims. Yung estimates that from 1995 to 2012, between 796,213 and 1,145,309 sexual assaults were wrongly categorized by local police.   read more

As of July 1, every broadcast TV station in the U.S. must post copies of contracts for commercial time purchased to air campaign spots, both positive and negative ones. More than 2,000 stations will be impacted by the FCC order, which follows a pilot project that was launched by the agency two years ago which involved only 230 TV outlets.   read more

Opponents of hydraulic fracturing have won a key legal ruling (pdf) in New York State, where the state’s highest court has said local governments can ban the controversial drilling practice regardless of state law. The decision comes in the wake of several ordinances adopted by towns seeking to prevent fracking operators from drilling within their jurisdictions.   read more

While re-affirming an established rule that government immunity prevents the Border Patrol from being sued, the judges ruled that the agent was legally liable for the killing because his actions exceeded his authority. “No reasonable officer would have understood Agent Mesa’s alleged conduct to be lawful,” they wrote in their decision.   read more

Richter added in his memo, “I took Mr. Carroll’s threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract.” Surprisingly, U.S. diplomats in the Baghdad embassy sided with Blackwater and told Richter he should go home and stop disrupting the embassy’s relationship with the company   read more

Hundreds of millions of phone records were vacuumed up by the spy agency in 2013. But out of this enormous volume of personal information, the NSA wound up probing the data belonging to only 248 individuals in the U.S., according to a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report also showed that the agency asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 178 times for phone record data in 2013.   read more

Subprime mortgages, the financial equivalent of a dark destructive force, have returned to the American home industry, which was devastated last decade by this type of loan. These home loans, intended for people with poor credit, are once again taking their place in the market, only this time under more regulatory control and occupying (so far) a much smaller share of outstanding mortgages.   read more

Judge Lynn Rosenthal made a spectacle of herself last month after driving drunk in a courthouse parking lot, hitting a police car and repeatedly driving into a gate. Rosenthal was the third Broward County judge in six months to be arrested for driving under the influence. Another was Judge Gisele Pollack, who was already in trouble for showing up for work drunk, twice, and was later arrested for being under the influence.   read more

The company is able to sell potentially faulty, even dangerous vehicles, because of a loophole in federal safety law. Car dealerships cannot sell new autos under recall, but they can sell used ones subject to recall. California lawmakers have tried to pass a bill that would put used cars on the same level as new ones when recalls are in play, but the bill died in a state Assembly committee.   read more

In Massachusetts, many SWAT teams are run by law enforcement councils (LEC). Some of these LECs hide behind corporate identities when public records requests are made. Those LECs have incorporated under the 501(c)(3) section of the tax code and claim that they’re exempt from public records requests.   read more

The zone in front of the Supreme Court is about 252 feet long. Just a year ago, the Supreme Court issued a new regulation that banned “picketing, speech making, marching, holding vigils or religious services and all other like forms of conduct that involve the communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers.”   read more

The panel, which included former members of Democratic and Republican administrations, also criticized the administration for not conducting an analysis of whether the use of drones for secret killings is worth the price. “A serious counterterrorism strategy needs to consider carefully, and constantly reassess, the balance between kinetic action [use of force] and other counterterrorism tools, and the potential unintended consequences of increased reliance on lethal UAVs,” the report said.   read more