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 equipment, manufactured and supplied by International Home Finance & Development, was purchased so that soldiers at Forward Operating Base Sharana in Paktika Province could safely dispose of their solid waste. But the incinerators’ bad wiring—which wasn’t checked by the Corps of Engineers—left them useless. That, coupled with construction delays, forced base personnel to use open-air burn pits to get rid of the waste.   read more

Most of the 36 casualties were members of a wedding party. It has variously been reported that between 14 and 17 of them died, while the rest were wounded, many critically. Only two of the dead—Saleh al-Tays and Abdullah al-Tays—had at one time been identified as al-Qaeda suspects by the Yemeni government, according to AFP.   read more

For 2013, representatives in the U.S. House were in session for only 942 hours. That comes out to about a 28-hour work week in Washington. Regardless of how many hours they worked, or how few bills they adopted, lawmakers received $174,000 in salary. It wasn’t always this cushy for congressional members. Six years ago, the House logged 1,700 hours in session, nearly double the amount of this year’s total.   read more

The statute will lie dormant because of two key provisions: Four other states must enact similar legislation—and any combination of northeastern states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey) with a combined population of at least 20 million must adopt GMO labeling laws.   read more

Waddoups said bigamy is illegal only if a family fraudulently acquires multiple marriage licenses. A family with one husband and multiple wives cannot be considered a violation of the law on its own. Brown has four wives, but is only legally married to his first wife, Meri. The judge took exception to Utah’s law making cohabitation illegal, ruling the phrase “or cohabits with another person” represented a violation of both the First and 14th amendments.   read more

Last year, sales of stimulant medication intended to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) reached $9 billion—a fivefold increase from a decade ago. Today, 15% of high school students have been diagnosed with ADHD, with about 3.5 million of them on some sort of drug marketed to treat the disorder.   read more

Levinson himself doubted the wisdom of his final mission. “I guess as I approach my fifty-ninth birthday on the 10th of March, and after having done quite a few other crazy things in my life,” he wrote to a friend, “I am questioning just why, at this point, with seven kids and a great wife, why would I put myself in such jeopardy,” adding presciently that he wanted some assurance that “I’m not going to wind up someplace where I really don’t want to be at this stage of my life.”   read more

From October 4 to November 28, a “Free Weibo” app was available on the Chinese version of Apple’s online “App store,” allowing users to access the uncensored, but government-blocked “Free Weibo” website, which for about a year has been documenting the messages censored from Sina Weibo.   read more

Cantor Fitzgerald reached a settlement last week of its 2004 lawsuit against American Airlines over Cantor’s business losses arising from the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Cantor lost 658 of its 960 New York employees when terrorists flew an American Airlines jet into the center’s north tower, where its headquarters was located.   read more

The bill, introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), would cap funding for the portraits at $20,000 per painting. Another provision says taxpayer money can only be spent on portraits of those officials who are in the line of succession for the presidency (that being the vice president, the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate and cabinet members).   read more

The cross has been around in one form or another 100 years and the target of litigation for the past 24 years. The first cross was erected in 1913, stolen and replaced in 1923, then burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan after a black family moved into the area. A new cross was erected in 1934 but was blown down by high winds in 1952. It was replaced in 1954 with a 29-foot cross on a 14-foot-high base that remains there to this day.   read more

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling the paragraph he called “8(h)(i)” was really just a badly indented “8(i),” interpreting the “(i)” as a lower case letter “I”. “The printer simply made mistakes in the indentation of the two subparagraphs placed within paragraph 8(h), which the lawyers who proof-read the documents overlooked,” the court concluded.   read more

A new CBS News poll shows 49% support stricter gun laws. Only 12% backed easing regulations, while 36% preferred keeping laws as they are. An AllGov examination of The New York Times’ data revealed that 18 states approved changes that only loosened regulations; 12 states adopted laws that only tightened regulations; and 9 states passed laws that both loosened and tightened regulations.   read more

The stings were lauded by ATF in recent years for arresting violent criminals and making communities safer. But agency leaders left out stories like that of Aaron Key, whom ATF agents paid $150 to get a large tattoo of a squid on his neck to help promote their phony storefront operation at Squid’s Smoke Shop in Portland, Oregon. Key, who is mentally disabled, went along, got the tattoo, and later was arrested by ATF.   read more

The lieutenant signed a written decree crafted by child welfare officials in which he admitted to causing “moderate harm” towards his daughter. This conclusion led to the officer’s name being added to Virginia’s State Child Abuse and Neglect Registry (pdf). He was barred from seeing his children until they turned 18. The matter was reviewed by the Navy. But commanders determined no punishment was warranted, and the officer eventually received a promotion.   read more

Megan McLemore, HRW’s senior health researcher and the report’s author, said in a prepared statement, “People who use drugs can’t get clean needles, and police are confiscating condoms from sex workers and those suspected of sex work, such as transgender women.”   read more