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 EPA has agreed for the first time to regulate the disposal of coal ash, but only because environmentalists and others sued the agency to finally take action. It did not say what the new rules would contain. In 2008, a mammoth spill in Tennessee released more than a billion gallons of coal ash, damaging 300 acres of riverfront property. Following this disaster, the EPA drafted new regulations for coal ash but nothing more followed until they were taken to court.   read more

Pricier facilities were outperformed by low-priced hospitals in keeping patients from coming back within a month of being discharged and for avoiding blood clots and death in surgical patients. The high-priced hospitals also weren’t any better at keeping heart attack and pneumonia patients alive. Overall, their ratings among patients were not significantly different than those for low-price hospitals.   read more

Currently no national statistics on how many people are shot by police each year. In some areas, such as L.A., New York City, Philadelphia and Massachusetts, police shootings have increased. Whether those numbers can be extrapolated to a national trend is not known though. Police departments are not required to release data on how many civilians are shot by officers each year and many don’t. Some observers believe that there are more police shootings than there had been five or 10 years ago.   read more

Eric Lawson was one of many actors who played the Marlboro Man in advertisements that equated tough, rugged Americanism with smoking cigarettes. Lawson died recently of a smoking-related illness, just like three others who carried on the cowboy image that Marlboro used so effectively for decades to sell its deadly products. “He knew the cigarettes had a hold on him,” his wife, Susan Lawson, told the Associated Press. “He knew, yet he still couldn't stop.”   read more

Suspicions of corruption in Afghanistan’s government have lingered for years since the U.S. invaded the country 13 years ago. But the latest report from a government watchdog characterizes the problem as being so bad that not a single Afghan agency can be trusted with American tax dollars. The report also accuses the U.S. State Department and USAID of not being open with Congress and the American people about the dire nature of U.S. financial aid to the war-torn country.   read more

The petition urges that 19-year-old Justin Bieber, who was arrested January 22 in Miami Beach for driving under the influence and drag racing, be deported. Bieber, who also faces charges of resisting arrest in the case, is from Canada. The White House has said it will issue a response to all petitions reaching the threshold of 100,000 signatures. The Bieber petition has met that test.   read more

Low-income families with less education are more prone to producing obese children who don’t exercise enough, unlike families with higher earnings and college education. A study out of Harvard found obesity among teenagers with college-educated parents started to decline about 10 years ago. But just the opposite happened for teens with parents who had only a high school diploma—obesity continued to climb.   read more

Students in Utah who rely on a school lunch program to feed themselves were humiliated in front of their classmates when an official ordered their meals taken away and thrown in the garbage because their parents purportedly owed the school money. The incident involved about 40 children at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City. “She took my lunch away and said, ‘Go get a milk,’" said fifth-grader Sophia Isom. “She said, ‘You don't have any money in your account so you can't get lunch.’”   read more

The appellate justices—in a unanimous ruling— ordered the case to be reheard in Schreier’s courtroom. The USDA can still argue for an exemption on other grounds, such as privacy or confidentiality. There are hundreds of thousands of vendors nationwide contracted with SNAP. And although 15% of them are made up of small convenience stores and markets, those retailers constitute 85% of the fraud perpetrated against the program.   read more

A portion of the report that recommended agents restrain from shooting rock throwers was redacted, according to The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). The think tank report said CBP should “train agents to de-escalate these encounters by taking cover, moving out of range and/or using less lethal weapons. Agents should not place themselves in positions where they have no alternatives to using deadly force.”   read more

Republicans embraced the law because it would curb government spending for flood costs. Democrats liked the bill because, they said, the reforms would reveal just how much climate change is impacting flood-prone areas. But a year and a half after Biggert-Waters was approved, many Democrats and Republicans want to delay, block or repeal many of its key provisions. Why? Money.   read more

The ruling means that lawyer Thomas Durkin will be able to examine secret authorizations from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed the FBI to spy on Daoud. Until now, only the government and federal judges have been permitted to see a FISA application or material derived from one since Congress approved FISA in the 1978.   read more

Eighty-five percent of the injuries occurred to the youngest children—between newborn and age four. Most injuries (70%) occur from kids falling out of the carts, followed by collisions with carts, carts tipping over, and limbs getting trapped in a cart. Nearly 80% of all injuries involved the head.   read more

Martin P. Schweitzer, a commander with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, was caught sending emails to other generals about U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers (R-North Carolina), in which he said she was “smoking hot” and jokingly talked about explicit sexual acts he wanted to perform with her. Schweitzer’s anticipated promotion to major general is now on hold pending a formal review.   read more

Last decade, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 18 antibiotic additives for use in livestock and poultry despite their “high risk” to humans. These same additives would not be available today if they had been reviewed under current FDA guidelines, and yet the antibiotics are still on the market because the agency has not reconsidered its decisions from 2001 to 2010.   read more

While running the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) from 2006 to 2011, Sheila Bair said the “revolving door,” which creates lucrative private sector opportunities for government officials after they leave office, should be closed to those who regulate banks. In her book she wrote, "There should be a lifetime ban on regulators working for financial institutions they have regulated.”   read more