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 case is really all about money. The law was inspired by the city of Portland, which back in 2004 gave public employees the option of buying their prescriptions from licensed pharmacies outside the U.S. The move wound up saving workers hundreds and even thousands of dollars by not buying their medications through U.S. drug stores.   read more

With American troops planning to pull out next year, the interpreters say insurgents intend to kill them and their families for supporting the U.S. occupation. But the State Department has repeatedly rejected the visa applications of these men, saying there is no serious threat against them. The interpreters beg to differ.   read more

One provision in the bill, Section 1613, “would prohibit any federal agency subject to FOIA from disclosing information of any kind that concerns ‘an agricultural operation, farming or conservation practices or the land itself.’ Under this provision, not even statistical data integral to studies of impacts on public health and other effects of farmland operations would be available.”   read more

Wilson stepped down as a U.S. representative from New Mexico on January 3, 2009. She then set up a lucrative one-woman consulting firm (Heather Wilson and Company, LLC) the very next day, collecting thousands of dollars from a federally-run research laboratory for services that were never really explained.   read more

In early 2011, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation said that Global Hawk “was not operationally effective for conducting near-continuous, persistent ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] operations.” in June 2011 Air Force officials certified the project as “essential to national security” in order to ensure continued Congressional funding.   read more

Defenders of Coachella Valley High School, located in the Mojave Desert outside of Los Angeles, say the mascot was chosen in the 1920s to honor the importance of farming dates—a traditional Middle East food—to the local economy. Nearly all the country’s dates are grown there. The school’s alumni association points a few miles down the road to the town of Mecca.   read more

Between 1995 and 2002, Mamet helped Gephardt raise more than $238 million for Democratic congressional campaigns, committees and other political groups. Although he worked as a campaign contribution bundler for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, Mamet became a key player in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, bundling more than $500,000 for the President.   read more

Under UNESCO’s constitution, however, any nation that fails to pay dues for two years loses its vote in the UNESCO general assembly. That made UNESCO’s vote-stripping automatic, just as the U.S. “decision” to withhold dues was unavoidable under federal law. The U.S. had never before voluntarily given up its vote in a UN organization, according to diplomats.   read more

Ten days in jail—not prison, only jail—for engineering the wrongful murder conviction of an innocent man who languished in prison nearly 25 years is the state of Texas’ idea of justice. That was the sentence handed down on former Williamson County, Texas, district attorney Ken Anderson, who will also surrender his law license and perform 500 hours of community service to settle allegations that he hid favorable evidence from Michael Morton, who was convicted of killing his wife in 1987.   read more

CEI has long received the bulk of its funding from fossil fuel interests hostile to climate change science, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers, General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council and Arch Coal. Other big donors include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and Pfizer.   read more

The account, called rats215, exposed more than 30 witnesses from February to early November, posting photos, police statements, and testimony—much of it taken from proceedings that were supposed to be secret. In one case, rats215 posted evidence and pictures of a shooting victim who had testified before a secret grand jury, and once posted a photo that seemed to have been taken while a witness was testifying in court—where cameras are not allowed.   read more

Reddick served her first ambassadorship as ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Principe from November 2007 to December 2010, followed by a brief stint as diplomat in residence at Howard University. Reddick has been director of the Office of West African Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs at the Department of State since 2011.   read more

EFF countered that releasing location information pertaining to drones would not aid suspected criminals. The civil rights group cited the example of Arizona, from which the government flies at least four Predators. Counties there are so large, with an average size of 7,573 square miles, that criminals could not possibly avoid detection by drones even if they knew which county was being watched at certain times.   read more

The litigation began with five workers from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who said the government violated the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act when it made them stay on the job during the shutdown that lasted until October 17. The BOP workers seek compensation of $7.25 times the number of hours worked October 1-5, when paychecks were delayed. This amounts to $290 for those who worked eight hours a day, as well as any overtime due.   read more

Six years ago, local officials put a bond measure on the ballot to fund a new jail, only to watch it get rejected. So they tried again…but instead of asking for funding for a jail, politicians called the project a joint city-county “inmate processing center.” The bond measure squeaked by on Election Day this week, by a margin of only 456 votes (out of 224,126 ballots cast).   read more

After law school, Hyatt was a litigation attorney in San Francisco until 1985. “I liked practicing law, but thought...I’d do one tour then go back to real life in San Francisco as a lawyer,” Hyatt told an interviewer in 2011. As it turned out, Hyatt stayed and is now a 28-year veteran of the Foreign Service.   read more