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 U.S. drone program often foregoes waiting for on-the-ground confirmation from human sources before giving the order to take out a threat. Instead, it relies solely on the NSA to tell drone operators where someone is located based on data intercepted from their cell phone. This strategy fails to take into account that pinpointing the exact longitude and latitude of a SIM card doesn’t mean the person holding it is the al Qaeda or Taliban member wanted dead by the U.S.   read more

Despite having a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry, the U.S. has continued to struggle with a chronic shortage of important drugs that patients need. The result has been a tripling in the number of annual drug shortages over the past five years. The most common drugs in short supply are generic versions of sterile injectable drugs, while the most acute shortage involves basic IV fluids.   read more

“The targeted killing of an American being considered right now shows the inherent danger of a killing program based on vague and shifting legal standards, which has made it disturbingly easy for the government to operate outside the law. The fact that the government is relying so heavily on limited and apparently unreliable intelligence only heightens our concerns about a disastrous program in which people have been wrongly killed and injured."   read more

The U.S. military’s habit of not punishing rapists and others accused of sex crimes has been prevalent in Japan, home to multiple American naval and air installations. An investigation by AP discovered that most service members stationed in Japan and who were found guilty of sex crimes did not go to prison. Instead, these personnel were fined, demoted, sent a letter of reprimand, or received some other kind of punishment.   read more

Scanners used at airport security checkpoints can be infiltrated and manipulated to fool TSA screeners into seeing false images, according to security experts. The potential vulnerability in the machines could result in terrorists smuggling weapons through checkpoints and boarding planes with them. A hacker could trick agents into seeing, for example, a pair of socks instead of a handgun hidden inside a suitcase.   read more

If death row inmates can’t be executed using lethal injections, due to drug shortages, then why not go back to firing squads? That’s what some Republican politicians are proposing. The call for a return to shooting convicted murderers has surfaced in two states so far: Missouri and Wyoming. “One of the reasons I chose firing squad, as opposed to any other form of execution, is because frankly, it's one of the cheapest for the state,” Wyoming Senator Bruce Burns told the Associated Press.   read more

Defending the nation against cyberattacks has become a priority of the U.S. military. In addition to the Army devoting resources to defend against, and possibly initiate, cyber assault, the National Guard wants in on the action. The Army, in fact, welcomes the Guard’s participation, and has proposed funding 390 positions in 10 new “Cyber Protection Teams” within the Guard. The idea of the Guard turning into cyber warriors pleases some in the intelligence community.   read more

Private prison companies know exactly what kind of inmate they want to make their operations profitable: minorities. A study shows people of color—who make up the majority of the U.S. prison population—are even more overrepresented in private correctional facilities, compared to state-run prisons. This is not by accident. Companies want black and Hispanic prisoners because they tend to be younger than white inmates, and are cheaper to care for than older ones, due to medical costs.   read more

The U.S. Border Patrol has been criticized by immigrant advocates for showing children how to shoot humanlike targets with paintball guns. Photos taken last summer at a law enforcement expo in San Ysidro, California, located just north of the border with Mexico, showed Border Patrol agents demonstrating the use of non-lethal force against a “migrant effigy.” Pedro Ríos, chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, called the event insensitive and inappropriate.   read more

In signing a farm bill that restricts the public’s knowledge of which corporations will benefit from it, President Barack Obama has traded transparency—something he vowed to bring more of to Washington—for politics. Lawmakers listened to the agriculture industry since it gave nearly $42 million in campaign contributions and poured more than $62 million into lobbying Washington. Top recipients include Obama with $474,000 and Sen. Debbie Stabenow with $169,550.   read more

A Texas man who killed a law enforcement officer during a search of his home will not be charged with murder, a grand jury decided. The December raid began in the early morning hours without warning, which startled Henry Magee. Thinking someone was breaking into his home, Magee grabbed one of his guns and opened fire. “This was a terrible tragedy that a deputy sheriff was killed, but Hank Magee believed that he and his pregnant girlfriend were being robbed,” Magee's counsel told AP.   read more

There’s less than a 30% chance the federal government is tracking them…for now. The mining of phone call data was begun by the George W. Bush Administration in 2001 in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It came under the authority of the FISC in 2006. By that time, coverage was “closer to 100” percent, an unnamed official told The Washington Post.   read more

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which goes into effect this year, requires foreign financial institutions to report account information for U.S. citizens and permanent residents to the U.S. government. Some foreign banks, faced with having to file more documentation on their U.S. customers, have simply closed accounts held by Americans.   read more

Last year, the two top donors to super PACs hailed from the left: Former New York City Mayor and Republican-turned-independent Michael Bloomberg and California billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer, who’s big on the environment. Steyer gave out $11.1 million in donations, while Bloomberg contributed $8.7 million, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The biggest Republican sugar daddy, homebuilder Bob Perry, doled $3.1 million before he died last April.   read more

The Humane Society, which was the leading proponent of Proposition 2 in 2008, says the California demands amount to leaving the birds enough space to reduce the incidence of salmonella, and make it easier to keep the cages clean of excrement, flies, rats and disease. The lawsuit claims a dual threat to Missouri. Farmers can either “incur massive capital improvement costs to build larger habitats” or walk away from California.   read more

The manufacturer of a blood-thinning drug tried to hide results of an internal study that the manufacturer feared would hurt sales of the widely-advertised medication, according to recently-unsealed court documents. Boehringer Ingelheim, manufacturer of Pradaxa, is being sued by patients and their families, charging it failed to properly warn users about possible dangers of the drug. More than 1,000 of those using Pradaxa have died from bleeding.   read more