According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

Parents who vote Republican may do so because of their daughters, researchers have concluded. Sociologists Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher say families with more girls than boys or those whose first child is a girl are more likely to have parents who identify with the GOP. It also “significantly reduces the likelihood of Democratic identification and significantly increases the strength of Republican Party identification,” Conley and Rauscher found.   read more

Another requirement in the bill calls for the administration to publish foreign aid information on a country-by-country, program-by-program basis on the website, foreignassistance.gov. However, the State Department can waive the transparency requirements on grounds of U.S. national interests or to protect the “health or security” of another country.   read more

Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery told the courtroom that those living in the U.S. have “no reasonable expectation” to privacy when it comes to the phone calls they make. Delery made his remark while pointing out that because Americans go along with telecommunications companies keeping records of their calls, they have no basis to challenge the NSA’s large-scale collection of that data.   read more

At a recent hearing of the Senate homeland security and government affairs committee, the heads of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) told lawmakers that cyber-attacks were likely to surpass terrorism as a domestic danger over the next decade. “That’s where the bad guys will go,” FBI Director James Comey said. “There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].”   read more

So far this year, Vermont shipped prisoners to Arizona and Kentucky; Idaho sent prisoners to Colorado; California exported prisoners to Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi; and Hawaii sent prisoners to Arizona. A fifth state, West Virginia, intends to ship 400 inmates to private out-of-state prisons. Prisoners in these private out-of-state facilities are held between 450 and 3,000 miles from their home states.   read more

Numerous specialists in the field were surprised and not pleased by the board’s decision—some saying they expect it to lead to major setbacks. One of them, Dr. Elizabeth Stier of the Boston Medical Center, has been treating male patients for a decade and expected to sign up about 100 men for the anal cancer trial. Those men will have to be replaced with women.   read more

In Lebanon, Ohio, (pop.: 20,033), for example, cops and firefighters can work with a .04 blood alcohol level. Under Ohio law, drivers under 21 can be ticketed for drunk driving for blood alcohol content above .02—meaning an officer could write a ticket to someone more sober than he or she is.   read more

Barely three weeks after largely avoiding historic first-person testimony by Pakistani victims of U.S. drone strikes, Congressional lawmakers killed a proposal to force the government to publish an annual count of the casualties caused by American drone attacks. In fact, none of the 15 members of the House Intelligence Committee who voted against the idea bothered to attend the victims’ hearing.   read more

In 2012, an average family of four in the U.S. was defined as living in poverty if its pre-tax cash income was below $23,492. The rate varies widely from state to state—from 24.2% In Mississippi to 10.0% in New Hampshire.   read more

Just 3 donors accounted for 28% of Crossroads GPS's funding, while million-dollar donors gave at least 54% of it. Priorities USA, the Democratic-leaning political nonprofit founded last year by some former aides to Barack Obama, claimed a relatively modest $8.4 million of revenue on its 2012 return, including a donation of $2 million, three of $1 million, one of $900,000, and three of $500,000. Thus 89% of the group's revenues came from eight donors.   read more

The three pro-fracking bills were HR 1900, which would fast-track pipeline construction, HR 1965, which would speed up oil and gas drilling permitting on federal lands, and HR 2728, which would weaken federal fracking regulations. Although none of the bills is thought to have a chance of passing the Senate, critics decried the financial influence of the industry.   read more

The federal government has unveiled new rules governing the use of drones in U.S. airspace, sparking debate over how the technology can be employed without compromising Americans’ privacy. The new regulations unveiled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were produced so that Washington can move forward with testing drones at six sites across the country. The testing sites will be operated by private contractors still to be determined.   read more

More than 1,400 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. and Canada discharge 4.8 billion gallons of treated water into the Great Lakes basin every day. The study found that six chemicals (an herbicide, an anti-seizure drug, two antibiotics, an antibacterial drug and an anti-inflammatory drug) were detected frequently and had a low rate of removal in treated effluent.   read more

Since 2011, the Pentagon has paid $1 billion to Rosoboronexport to provide 63 Mi-17s. Those helicopters are either on order or have already been delivered to Afghanistan. Lawmakers and good government groups complained about the contract, saying the U.S. shouldn’t be doing business with a company accused of selling weapons to Iran and Syria.   read more

Thirty-nine out of the 50 largest fines assessed over the five-year period reviewed were never collected. This included a Shasta County facility that operated without a license and was fined $250,000, but never paid a dime.   read more

Little did Palmer know that her action left her liable for $3,500—the amount KlearGear charges any customer who agrees to the site’s terms and conditions, which included for a time a Non-Disparagement Clause. Palmer wasn’t billed for the $3,500 for three years. Once she learned about the fee, she tried to take down her negative review on Ripoffreport.com—but they charged $2,000 to do so.   read more