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

These days the Department of Homeland Security is tackling a whole lot more than terrorist plots. Agents are investigating movie piracy, counterfeit merchandise, and small-time pickpockets. They’re even spending time at schools and senior centers telling kids and the elderly to beware of crooks and perverts on the Internet. This has government watchdogs and civil libertarians questioning DHS’s direction. “They’ve kind of lost their way,” said former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge.   read more

A move to force the Obama administration into reporting the number of casualties caused by drone attacks has been scuttled in the U.S. Senate. The plan was quashed after intelligence director James Clapper warned the Senate it could compromise the effectiveness of the drone program. “How many people have to die for Congress to take even a small step toward transparency? It's stunning...we still don't know how many...[have been] killed with [our] drones,” said Amnesty International.   read more

A liberal protestant church is suing to overturn North Carolina’s anti-gay marriage law, claiming it infringes on the church’s right to bless such unions. The million-member United Church of Christ is the first national church to sue in order to throw out a same-sex marriage ban. “We didn’t bring this lawsuit to make others conform to our beliefs, but to vindicate the right of all faiths to freely exercise their religious practices,” said the church's Donald Clark Jr.   read more

An American citizen held prisoner in Iraq for 10 years has disappeared following the closure, on April 15, of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Shawki Omar was first captured by the U.S. military in 2004, along with his wife, Sandra, for alleged terrorism ties. Both claimed they were tortured during their imprisonment. Sandra was released and returned to the U.S.. No one knows if Omar is alive or dead, and his family has been unable to get any information from Iraqi or U.S. officials.   read more

A remote stretch of the Grand Canyon has been declared a historic landmark to commemorate a fatal plane crash that proved instrumental in the development of U.S. aviation. But Americans won’t be able to visit because the National Park Service wants to keep the location secret to preserve the area. Efforts were made to retrieve human remains after the accident, but no bodies were found intact.. To this day the area reportedly still contains some remnants of aircraft wreckage.   read more

About 3.6 million jobs were lost in higher-wage industries during the downturn. Since then, however, the recovery has seen only 2.6 million of these positions return. Meanwhile, lower-wage sectors lost 2 million jobs, but have gained back nearly twice as many, 3.8 million. As for mid-wage industries, they accounted for 37% of job losses, but only 26% of recent employment growth. This has resulted in 958,000 fewer jobs in mid-wage industries than at the start of the recession.   read more

This controversy involves a pipeline that has long delivered oil from Portland, Maine, to Montréal, Canada. With Canada looking for multiple ways to export its bounty of tar sands oil, officials want to use the Portland-Montréal Pipeline as another avenue for getting its crude to market. This would mean reversing the pipeline’s flow (Canada to the U.S., instead of U.S. to Canada) and carrying the higher polluting tar sands oil instead of the lighter crude currently moving through it.   read more

the large majority of campaign contributions (64%) over the past year were provided by 0.16% of all American adults (or 1 out of 600). This conclusion was based on campaign checks of $200 or more given to federal candidates, PACs, and party committees. When the contribution level of $2,600 or more was used instead of $200 (the federal limit for each individual per election is $2,600), the overall adult percentage financing races got even tinier: .02%--one out of 5,000 adult Americans.   read more

Police in the Sunshine State and in Arizona have invested in Harris’ tracking equipment. But the equipment is technically on loan from Harris, so agencies must sign nondisclosure agreements that state they can use the spy technology only as long as they keep it a secret from outside parties, including the judicial system.   read more

ATF realized there was something wrong with the business in 2005, when agents conducted an audit and reported 2,396 guns, including assault rifles and handguns, were unaccounted for. Furthermore, agents suspected that Kesserling was involved in gun trafficking, as it sold 10 or more guns a year in two different years that wound up being used in crimes within three years of their sale.   read more

Some are suspicious that Wheeler, a former telecommunications executive and Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association lobbyist, will not do his utmost to protect consumers as the new rules are fashioned. The answer will come May 15, when the proposed new rules will be released.   read more

Bob and Lisa Parr of Decatur won a $3 million award in a Dallas County court after a six-person jury agreed that the plaintiffs were harmed by the fracking operations of Aruba Petroleum. The Parrs said the company’s drilling near their 40-acre ranch caused illnesses that afflicted them and their daughter, as well as pets and livestock, including asthma, nausea, nose bleeds, ear ringing and depression. They even had to abandon their home at times because of the troubles.   read more

The worst of the proposals from a human rights standpoint is one put forward by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the FISA Improvements Act. Her plan would codify the use of current bulk collection programs, would allow intelligence gatherers to query information without prior approval by the FISA Court and would permit the use of intelligence by law enforcement agencies.   read more

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says that of the $4 billion allotted by the State Department from 2002 to 2013, 69.3% went to DynCorp. In terms of actual dollars, DynCorp took in $2.8 billion. Giving so much to one company might not have been a good idea, given DynCorp’s record. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) notes the contractor’s “colorful history” includes instances of labor smuggling, overpayments, and botched construction.   read more

In 1999, California Governor Gray Davis (D) appointed Contreras-Sweet secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing. In that role, she managed 44,000 employees and a $14 billion budget. When Arnold Schwarzenegger took over the governor’s office in 2003 after the recall of Davis, Contreras-Sweet left public service and founded Fortius Holdings, a private equity and venture fund aimed at the Latino community.   read more

This comes even though the United States is still the world’s richest country. However, increasing income inequality in the U.S. has caused median incomes to drop even as average incomes increase because of huge gains at the high end of the scale. Poor people in the United States fare even worse, as they are far behind the median incomes of those living in Canada and much of Europe.   read more