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

Sensenbrenner’s bill would do the following: • Limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects • End “secret laws” by making courts disclose surveillance policies • Create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests • Allow companies to disclose how many requests for users’ information they receive from the government • Restrict a loophole involving overseas surveillance that has allowed the NSA to target Internet and email activities of Americans.   read more

Research published in March by University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that female mortality rates went up in nearly half of U.S. counties between 1992 and 2006. For men, only 3% of counties witnessed increases in male mortality over the same period.   read more

According to the study report, a team of researchers based in Europe found that 145 of the Internet’s top 10,000 websites use Flash-based fingerprinting, and that 404 of the top 1 million sites use JavaScript-based fingerprinting to track non-Flash devices. But the researchers found the websites used device fingerprinting to track visitors even when they explicitly request not to be tracked by enabling the Do Not Track HTTP header, and that few sites informed visitors of the practice.   read more

Gaspard signed on as Obama’s national political director in June 2008 and after the election served as associate personnel director of President-elect Obama’s transition team. He then worked in the White House as assistant to the president and director of the Office of Political Affairs from 2009 to 2011. As the re-election effort loomed, he moved over to the Democratic National Committee, where he was executive director from 2011 to 2013.   read more

In South Carolina, the sheriff of Richland County acquired a tank (dubbed “the Peacemaker) with 360-degree rotating machine gun turrets. In Jefferson County in upstate New York, the sheriff’s department guarding a community of about 120,000 people now has a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, which was developed for the U.S. military to survive roadside bomb attacks. It was given to the county sheriff by the Pentagon.   read more

The five-day notice is intended to give journalists and publishers time to challenge the subpoena or narrow the scope of information the third party would be required to disclose. The new law, which was drafted by Democratic state Sen. Ted Lieu of Torrance, also requires the notice to include an explanation of why the government wants the records and why it can’t obtain the information through alternate sources.   read more

Donald Eugene Miller Jr. of Ohio was declared legally dead nearly 20 years ago after he walked out on his life and disappeared. But Miller never died, and now he’s struggling to convince the legal system that he should live again. Judge Davis refused to reverse the original decree, citing the three-year legal limit for changing a death ruling.   read more

Despite the fact that the message included the date 1973 and a reference to the long-gone Soviet Union, traders mistook the Twitter post as indication Israel had just attacked Syria. This mistaken assumption led them to worry that the supply of petroleum might shrink, which prompted a buying spree that raised the barrel price of oil by $1. But even after traders realized the tweet wasn’t about a current event, oil prices went up even higher.   read more

Moreno became a federal judge when he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, where he served from February 1998 to mid-2001. Nominated by Gov. Gray Davis (D), Moreno served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California from October 18, 2001 until his retirement on February 28, 2011.   read more

A new Gallup poll found 33% of Americans said dissatisfaction with government and elected representatives was the nation’s top issue. Not since 1939, when Gallup began keeping track, have so many people put government at the top of the fix-this list. The economy came in a distant second, at 19%, . The situation in Syria, which last month was rated as the country’s top problem by 8% of Americans, has now fallen nearly out of sight at 1%.   read more

A Pentagon spokesperson stated that the U.S. government is reviewing Panama’s request and will resolve it “in a timely manner.” In negotiations this year at The Hague over Panama’s petition to have the U.S. clean up the munitions, U.S. officials reportedly requested one change to the document. They insisted that it say the U.S. did not “abandon” the weapons in Panama, but rather that it had “forgotten” about them.   read more

The two areas of the U.S. with the highest rates of prescription-drug overdoses are Appalachia and the Southwest. West Virginia leads the nation, with 28.9 deaths per every 100,000 people. Prescription overdoses have skyrocketed in the state by 605% since 1999. Men between the ages 25 and 54 are most likely to abuse drugs like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. But rates among female abusers are accelerating, increasing by 400% over the past 14 years.   read more

Over the past 20 years, radioactive fuel from 20,000 disarmed Russian warheads was sold to the U.S. for about $8 billion. The U.S. government then turned around and provided it to commercial nuclear power plants to run their reactors and power electricity to millions of homes and businesses. During these two decades, 500 metric tons of Russian weapons-grade uranium has generated half of all nuclear power and, during the past 15 years, about 10% of all electricity produced in the U.S.   read more

“It’s really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,” Salgado shouted at McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton while he spoke to the Union League Club of Chicago. “Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I’ve worked for McDonald’s for ten years?” Stratton responded by saying: “I’ve been there for forty years.”   read more

Whether or not a representative is accepting his or her salary, all House members can still enjoy the perk of using the House gym. The facility—which offers a swimming pool, basketball courts, steam room, sauna, and flat-screen TVs— has remained open during the government shutdown...although lawmakers are having to go without towel service at this time.   read more

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin regulating e-cigarettes this month, and state and local governments may not be far behind in deciding how to tax or limit the use of this new nicotine-delivery technology. Manufacturers of e-cigarettes, however, aren’t in support of their products being regulated, and are trying to minimize the government’s interference in the industry.   read more