President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

The online review website Yelp has been ordered by a court in Virginia to reveal the identities of individuals who posted negative reviews of a carpet cleaning company that questioned whether the reviewers were really customers. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning succeeded because Virginia law authorizes the revealing of anonymous Internet users’ real identity as long as those seeking the information can pass a six-step legal test.   read more

The anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List wanted to put up a billboard criticizing Democratic U.S. Representative Steven Driehaus for supporting the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare). They wanted to “shame” Driehaus for his decision, contending that a vote for Obamacare amounted to a vote for taxpayer-funded abortions. However, the ACA states abortions must be paid for through non-ACA accounts. In addition, previously passed federal law prohibits taxpayer money from funding abortions.   read more

The Obama administration quietly sent a small team of soldiers, described as trainers and advisers, to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, three months ago. Senior defense officials said they plan to expand the number of advisers later this year. Elite Special Operations teams already make occasional forays into the country to conduct hostage rescues and counter-terrorism raids. There are also regular U.S. drone flights over Somali territory to conduct surveillance and occasional air strikes.   read more

The focus on the pope, Mandela and Prince George demonstrated the rise of “celebrity journalism” in news coverage, Andrew Tyndall, the report’s publisher, told Inter Press Service. He added that “a minor celebrity like Oscar Pistorius (the South African track star accused of murdering his girlfriend) attracted more coverage (51 minutes) than all the rest of sub-Saharan Africa in the [11] months before Mandela’s death.”   read more

In Oklahoma, the Department of Corrections (DOC) has had to handle a 368% population rise in state prisons, from 7,000 in 1983 to more than 26,000 today. During this period, the state’s overall population only grew by 25%. But what’s not kept going up is the DOC’s budget for correctional officers, who number 300 fewer than a decade ago.   read more

Passed by Congress in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) requires that all imported fish be accompanied by proof that the technology used to catch them does not kill or seriously injure marine mammals in excess of U.S. standards. Congress intended to protect dolphins and whales, American consumers concerned about them, and U.S. fishers’ whose costs are higher because they have to use mammal-safe technology.   read more

Ma’Lik Richmond, one of two teens convicted in the August 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, was released last week after 10 months of incarceration. Deric Lostutter, 26, is the computer hacker who blew the lid off the cover-up by focusing the attention of the online collective known as “Anonymous” on the rape case. He now faces up to ten years in prison for his role in obtaining tweets and social media posts that exposed details of the rape   read more

About 20% of fracking materials injected into the ground come back up as wastewater. On land, that dubious product is slammed back into the ground in a separate wastewater well. At sea, a lot of that wastewater is dumped back into the ocean. A new regulation published Thursday by the EPA merely requires the oil companies to self-report what they have only recently been discovered doing in sensitive waters   read more

Just under 1% (0.96%) of all individual tax returns were audited in 2013. The rate marked the second consecutive yearly decline, and the lowest level in eight years. IRS efforts to answer calls from taxpayers also declined last year. Budget cuts may be impacting the IRS’s mission. It has lost $1 billion in annual funding and 8,000 employees over the past three years.   read more

The IG estimates that Medicare’s share of organ procurement costs was overstated by $8,851,018. The report attributes the miscounting to a lack of guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), whose Provider Reimbursement Manual does not provide guidance on how to count the organs involved in a double-lung operation. The manual does, however, direct the OPOs to count both kidneys in a double-kidney transplant.   read more

Area residents reported a foul, licorice-like odor in the air, which DEP and firefighters traced to a 35,000-gallon storage tank along the Elk River that had overflowed its containment area and migrated over land and through the soil into the river. The chemical that leaked, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (sometimes called “Sextol”), is used by the coal industry to wash coal of impurities.   read more

Back in the 1990s, the GAO worked closely with the NSA to perform audits and investigations of the spy agency’s work. But over time lawmakers inexplicably stopped asking GAO auditors to check in on NSA programs, resulting in the congressional watchdog vacating its offices at NSA headquarters.   read more

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute reported last month that more than 800 of the giant sea cows died in 2013, which was the highest total on record since the institute began researching the mammals 40 years ago. A record number of manatees died from red tide (276) caused by high concentrations of algae in the ocean. Seventy-two were killed by watercraft and 36 died of cold stress.   read more

David Strickland, the top official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who announced last month he was resigning, has now added that he is accepting a position at Venable LLP, which counts carmakers among its many clients and represents them before the NHTSA. Strickland will work in the firm’s regulatory group after running an agency that oversees vehicle safety standards, recalls, fuel economy regulations and other vehicle regulatory issues.   read more

Of 534 current members of Congress, at least 268 were millionaires, according the Center for Responsive Politics’ review of financial disclosure reports filed last year. The center also found that Democrats overall were a little wealthier than Republicans in Congress, $1.04 million versus $1 million. Both groups saw their collective net worth go up, from $990,000 for Democrats and $907,000 for Republicans in the previous year.   read more

The auction will take place this weekend, during the Dallas Safari Club’s annual meeting, which it calls “the greatest hunters’ convention on the planet.” The highest bid—likely to be six figures—will get the permit issued by the Namibian government to hunt and shoot a Black Rhinoceros. The money will go to support conservation efforts in the southern African country to protect the endangered species, now numbering about 5,000.   read more