President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Members of Congress,enjoyed plenty of free trips last year, even though new rules were put into place to prevent special interests from providing this kind of perk. Lawmakers took 1,887 all-expense-paid journeys worth about $6 million, the highest recorded since Congress adopted restrictions in 2007. Lobbyists and their clients cannot finance congressional travel overseas, so those expenses are often paid for by private interests with close connections to lobbyists.   read more

Nearly a dozen shipments of oil coming out of North Dakota were mislabeled by oil producers, potentially creating hazardous risks, federal regulators have found. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees the transportation of petroleum, said samples taken from 11 out of 18 truck shipments en route to rail loading stations were misclassified. The companies responsible for the errors were Hess Corp., Whiting Oil and Gas Corp., and Marathon Oil Co.   read more

Physicians for Integrity in Medical Research has sued the FDA over the heart medication roflumilast, claiming it should be pulled off the market. Intended to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the Forest Laboratories product does more harm than good, according to the plaintiff. The group says roflumilast (trade name Daliresp) “does not work as stated.” Side effects of roflumilast include an increase in suicide, cancer and acute pancreatitis, the doctors say.   read more

Police cannot punish drivers for flashing their headlights to warn others of speed traps, a federal judge has ruled in a case involving the First Amendment. The ruling arose after police in Ellisville, Missouri, ticketed Michael Elli for using his headlights to inform motorists that officers were lying in wait to ticket those exceeding the speed limit. The ACLU, which sued on behalf of Elli and other drivers, argued that the plaintiffs’ actions constituted a form of free speech.   read more

U.S. Representative Robert E. Andrews (D-New Jersey) is resigning from Congress, and who can blame him. It’s not like he was getting anything done. Literally. During the 23 years he’s served in the House, Andrews authored 646 bills, more than any other lawmaker who arrived at the same time as him. And not a single one became law. The Washington Post described Andrews as “America’s least successful lawmaker of the past two decades.”   read more

SIGAR chief John Sopko has upset the U.S. military by reporting on million-dollar programs that failed to account for missing tax dollars. When informed of the Pentagon's anti-SIGAR campaign, he said: “It’s disappointing to see that funds appropriated by Congress are being used...to misrepresent the work of an independent inspector general. American(s)...would be better served if [they] spent less time writing misleading press releases and more time fixing the problems we’ve identified.”   read more

The latest news on suicides in the U.S. Army was both promising and discouraging, as the number of suicides among active-duty personnel went down, but those involving National Guard and Army Reserves went up. Overall, the total number of Army suicides declined from 325 in 2012 to 301 in 2013, representing the first reduction in more than a decade. But the good news was diminished by the fact that the number of suicides in the Guard and Reserves increased from 140 in 2012 to 151 in 2013.   read more

The Postal Service continues to lose money by the billions, and no one in Washington has figured out a solution to the problem. But a new—or rather old—idea has surfaced that could receive consideration by policymakers: Turn the Postal Service back into a bank. The Post Office once operated as a bank by offering low-interest savings accounts. This service lasted from 1911 to 1967, and the Inspector General for the Postal Service thinks it might be time to offer financial services again.   read more

The release of this information “creates some good headlines for tech companies on the defense in the wake of the NSA leaks,” wrote the Post's Andrea Peterson. “But that's all transparency reports produced by tech companies are about: good PR. They don't represent a meaningful way to measure the true scope of governments' access to private data.” “Congress should require the government to publish basic information about the full extent of its surveillance,” said ACLU's Alex Abdo.   read more

The Republican Party is raising money for congressional races by putting up websites that pretend to represent Democratic candidates and that accept contributions that will go toward defeating the very same Democrats. In Florida, the National Republican Congressional Committee created a website that gave the appearance of backing Democrat Alex Sink for Congress. But a closer examination revealed contributions made through the site would “help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her.”   read more

A record number of wrongly convicted people were set free last year in the United States, according to a new report by a group that tracks exonerations. The National Registry of Exonerations said 87 prisoners were exonerated in 2013, the highest ever totaled. About two-thirds of the 87 exonerations involved rape and/or murder convictions. Many of the overturned convictions were a result of false confessions coming to light or the discovery that no crime was actually committed.   read more

The death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has elevated the issue of heroin addiction and its fatal consequences in the United States, where use of the narcotic has increased significantly in recent years. Nationally, almost 670,000 Americans over the age of 12 used heroin in 2012—an increase of nearly 300,000 people, compared to the number of users in 2007.   read more

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has again demonstrated that a military partnership with the United States beyond this year may not continue. After stalling for months on a new security agreement, and falsely blaming American forces for recent civilian deaths, Karzai has now been exposed for conducting secret talks with the Taliban without any involvement from Washington. The latest move by Karzai has only further eroded a strained relationship with the U.S.   read more

Dissatisfied with President Barack Obama’s reforms for the NSA and Congress’ lack of progress on the same front, state lawmakers across the country are introducing legislation to limit the spy agency’s snooping on Americans. To date, a dozen states ranging from Alaska to Mississippi are considering bills to limit their state’s involvement with NSA surveillance programs.   read more

Being poor can be very costly, despite what conservatives say about low-income people having it easy because of government programs. Poverty is something affecting more Americans these days. At least 15% of the country lives in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That translates into more than 46 million people. Half the population is categorized as “near poverty” and about three-fourths live paycheck to paycheck.   read more

The rate that American women are having abortions has reached its lowest level since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure in the early 1970s. Fewer than 17 abortions for every 1,000 women were recorded in 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available, according a paper (pdf) published by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. That rate was only slightly higher than the one in 1973, when abortion became legal in the U.S.   read more