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

The General Services Administration says it’s willing to pay $90,000 for solutions to bringing down Washington’s annual travel cost of $9 billion. Anyone with ideas can go to a new GSA website, Travel Data Challenge, which is operated by the agency’s Office of Governmentwide Policy. The person(s) with the best idea will receive $35,000, while the runner up will get $30,000 and the honorable mention $25,000.   read more

“It's using these small devices...to get up in the air and get a perspective on a news event," said Matt Waite. "You can think of floods, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, anything with a large spatial extent.” “They’re starting to see them being used around the world at large protests in Thailand, at the super-typhoon, even in sporting events in Australia. [But] there are a large number of...questions that need to be answered before you will see this being done in a widespread fashion.”   read more

Officials in Lithuania have decided to investigate whether the Baltic nation participated in the CIA secret rendition program of harboring terrorism suspects at “black site” prisons. The decision marks a turnaround for Lithuania, which previously refused to probe its government’s involvement in the counterterrorism scheme. Lithuanian prosecutors are trying to learn if detainee Mustafa al-Hawsawi was imprisoned at a secret CIA location between 2004 and 2006.   read more

Imperial farmers are growing vast amounts of the hay for export to China and other countries. In doing so, the state is indirectly exporting billions of gallons of water overseas, due to alfalfa’s water-hungry biology. “It’s a huge amount. It’s enough for a year’s supply for a million families — it’s a lot of water, particularly when you’re looking at the dreadful drought throughout the South-west,” said University of Arizona's Robert Glennon.   read more

Donna Busche was the head of nuclear safety for cleaning up the former nuclear weapons site at Hanford, Washington. Her termination came after she repeatedly warned company executives that the radioactive-waste solution being used was flawed and posed safety problems. “The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” she said.   read more

Police argued Miranda was subject to the anti-terror law because he was “likely to be involved in espionage activity” and was “knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives” and was promoting a “political or ideological cause.” “The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way,” countered Parliament's Tom Watson. “It’s almost impossible...to conclude that [he] was a terrorist suspect.”   read more

Top officials at the IRS have taken tax deductions on travel-related expenses they were not entitled to under the law, according to the IRS’s watchdog agency. Many IRS executives had improperly classified their travel as something other than “long-term taxable travel” (LTTT). The audit discovered that nine out of 31 IRS senior executives did not use LTTT to avoid paying taxes in 2011 and 2012. Three other employees were faulted for not submitting their records on time.   read more

Police in two northeast states will now have to obtain a warrant before tracking a suspect’s cellphone location to monitor their movements. Massachusetts’ Supreme Court ruled this week that individuals enjoy the right to privacy when it comes to their cell phones and for the government to not follow their whereabouts through such technology—unless a court approves this kind of surveillance. The ruling was very similar to one by New Jersey’s highest court.   read more

The Keystone XL pipeline has hit a major snag in Nebraska, where a local judge threw out the governor’s approval for the project to cut through the state and kick landowners off their property. Environmentalists have opposed Keystone, arguing it would transport “dirty oil” that would contribute to global warming, harm wildlife, ruin underground water supplies, and risk the danger of oil spills on U.S. lands.   read more

Anyone who has visited the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.org may have had their online activity secretly monitored by the NSA and its British intelligence counterpart, GCHQ. This campaign included collecting the IP addresses of any individual who visited the WikiLeaks website “in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google,” according to a report drawn from classified materials exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.   read more

The plan sparked objections from privacy advocates who feared the program would track the movements of ordinary citizens not suspected of criminal activity. “‘Build it first and worry about privacy and purpose later’—it is the same disease that has infected the NSA and so much of our government," said law professor Fred Cate. "This type of dragnet search is the modern equivalent of the general search that [the Constitution’s] framers were so anxious to guard against.”   read more

A fracking well owned by Chevron blew up last week near a rural Pennsylvania community, terrifying many local residents. For their terror the people of Bobtown got a letter of apology from the billion-dollar oil giant—and a coupon for a free pizza. But Chevron’s generosity did not stop there. The coupon also entitled recipients to a 2-liter bottle of soda.   read more

A dozen different industrial chemicals may each cause brain damage in children, according to new medical research. That research shows exposure to many toxic chemicals can create neurodevelopmental disabilities in kids, including autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. “Large numbers of children...are affected by toxic damage to brain development,” said Philippe Grandjean. “They suffer reduced attention span, delayed development and poor school performance."   read more

The bill would allow educators and parents to strike a child up to 10 times on their covered rear end, using hands only. It also permits “reasonable physical force” to restrain a child during the spanking. Bruises that result from this would be allowable under proposed the law. Additionally, the legislation would allow parents to give permission to others to spank their children. In addition to school officials, such people could include caregivers and high school students who are over 18.   read more

A classified document revealed that a U.S. law firm was monitored while representing the government of Indonesia in trade disputes with the U.S. The monitoring was performed by the Australian Signals Directorate, which works closely with the NSA to share intelligence on global threats. A lawyer involved in the trade talks said, “I always wonder if someone is listening, because you would have to be an idiot not to wonder in this day and age."   read more

The Obama administration has been moving aggressively to shift federal agencies closer to a paperless state by embracing new technology options. But this move has angered the companies that produce paper products, which are now fighting to stymie the administration’s plans. Under the cover of a group calling itself Consumers for Paper Options, the paper industry has lobbied members of Congress to roll back some changes implemented in recent years.   read more