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

A total of 2,800 employees who were disciplined for all types of misconduct collectively received $2.8 million in bonuses, extra paid time off or raises between October 2010 and December 2012, the inspector general found. The IRS doesn’t take into account if a worker has paid his or her taxes, or whether they have gotten into trouble, when administering bonuses and other awards.   read more

Recidivism among prisoners is still quite common in the United States, with 67.8% winding up back behind bars within three years of being released. A new study from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the first such federal survey in nearly 20 years, revealed an even higher recidivism rate within five years of inmates being let out: 76.9%.   read more

Thomas Cushman, a sociology professor at Wellesley College, told Reuters he was concerned that the financial advantages of having Chinese students at a U.S. university could lead to pulling of punches and self-censorship when it comes to discussing topics deemed sensitive to China.   read more

The Obama administration has been ordered by a panel of federal judges to release its legal justification for assassinating Americans suspected of terrorist ties. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer called the decision “a resounding rejection of the government’s effort to use secrecy, and selective disclosure, as a means of manipulating public opinion about the targeted killing program.”   read more

Utility companies fear the growth of mom-and-pop solar operations will eventually eat into their profits. So lawmakers in Oklahoma have decided to help utility companies charge higher rates to those who generate electricity through wind and solar power. Legislation—which passed in spite of opposition from solar advocates and environmental groups—represents a reversal in state law that’s been on the books since 1977, when legislators prohibited utilities from charging extra to solar users.   read more

Only two nations in the world use dolphins for military purposes—the U.S. and Russia—and this summer the two sides may wind up nose. Twenty U.S. dolphins will spend up to two weeks participating in NATO military exercises scheduled for the Black Sea. They will reportedly be testing a new anti-radar system designed to disrupt enemy sonar, and may even try out a new kind of armor. But they may also encounter Russia’s new military dolphins, recently acquired during its annexation of Ukraine.   read more

The U.S. Postal Service has been selling off many of its post office buildings to help reduce its budgetary problems. But USPS officials failed to abide by federal regulations governing the preservation of historic public property while carrying out sales of important structures and art. The Postal Service “did not know how many historic properties it owned or what it cost to preserve them,” and failed to make notification when sales include art dating back to the New Deal.   read more

Six states share a border with Colorado, which legalized recreational marijuana use, and one of those states, Nebraska, wants Colorado to help cover the costs of prosecuting Nebraskans caught bringing pot home, where it is not legal. “I don't know what it will take to get someone to stand up and do something to try to get some of our money back,” said sheriff Adam Hayward. But Nebraska’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, has been non-committal about suing Colorado to recover costs.   read more

The class-action lawsuit, with 64,613 plaintiffs, targets Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe for secretly agreeing not to poach each other’s engineers and to share salary information in an effort to control salaries. The collusion reportedly began in 2005, when Apple’s Steve Jobs approached Google’s top executive, Eric Schmidt, about working together to hold down salaries. After getting Google on board, Jobs “strong-armed” Adobe into joining the secret pact, according to court documents.   read more

The Highway Trust Fund’s Highway Account, which finances maintenance and construction projects at the state level, currently has about $8.4 billion in it. But the U.S. Department of Transportation warns that demand for this funding is outpacing money available. As a result, the fund may go bankrupt by August. Without a new funding plan, the Transportation Department would have to stop reimbursing states for highway projects.   read more

The new opportunities have existed only since December, when Mexico’s Congress approved a landmark bill that relaxed the 75-year-old grip over oil and gas development by Pemex, the state oil monopoly. The legislation paves the way for foreign companies to cut deals with the Mexican government to develop new oil fields. One such field is the Eagle Ford Shale Play, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border, running for hundreds of miles deep beneath the earth.   read more

The FDA wants to classify companies that distribute spent grain to farms as animal feed manufacturers. Breweries regularly sell or give their spent grain, which is left over from the beer-making process, to dairy farms, which feed it to cows. Breweries would have two choices: Pass this cost onto consumers in the form of higher beer prices, or stop selling the spent grain to farms and just dump it in landfills, which would be less environmentally friendly.   read more

The Onondaga Nation spent eight years trying to get a U.S. federal court to side with its arguments that the state of New York illegally took possession of 4,000 square miles of tribal land in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.The tribe’s complaints go beyond land ownership. It also says state and federal agencies allowed American factories to pollute Lake Onondaga, which once was part of tribal lands.   read more

According to statistics compiled by Mark Knoller of CBS News, Obama has attended 373 fundraisers during the 1,900+ days since he’s been in office, which averages to almost one every five days. An investigation last year by The Guardian showed that Obama had attended 30 fundraisers in the seven-month period between April and November, even though he is not personally up for reelection.   read more

About 17 local governments, including Miami, San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York City, have backed off on cooperating with ICE in recent years. This month nine counties in Oregon added themselves to the list. But Philadelphia's move was different in that it also applies to prison departments, so the city will not inform ICE of a prisoner’s release unless the person was convicted of a violent felony.   read more

A company whose product reportedly caused an infant’s death may soon have its identity revealed following a long-running legal battle involving the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). A complaint was filed in 2011 by an unidentified local government agency. The company responded by filing suit in federal court, claiming it had done nothing wrong, while demanding its name and details of the case be sealed and kept off a publicly accessible database.   read more