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

Is the “business-friendly” orientation of Texas government for whites only? The state of Texas—whose governor regularly touts the laxity of its regulatory environment—stands accused of over-regulating the trade of African hair-braiding in a lawsuit filed by one of its premier practitioners.   read more

Just last week, Lockheed received two more contracts worth $7.8 billion for 71 F-35 jets, a program that has attracted widespread criticism, including by lawmakers, for its rising costs. “For the public not to know for days, and perhaps even a number of weeks, about large-scale contract spending is anathema to open government,” explained Charles Tiefer, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is a form of secret contracting.”   read more

American law enforcement made just more than 60,000 violent crime arrests of youth under age 18 in 2012—a decline of 10% compared to 2011, and an overall drop of 36% since 2003. Over the same decade, violent crime arrests involving adults fell 9%. Between 2003 and 2012, youth arrests for murder fell 37%, forcible rape arrests went down 36%, robbery arrests slipped by 20%, and aggravated assault arrests plummeted by nearly 43%.   read more

If workers do access their inboxes, they will be in violation of a 19th century law, the Antideficiency Act, adopted during the Chester Arthur administration that carries a penalty of fines or even imprisonment. The no-email prohibition also applies to managers, prohibiting them from even using their agency email systems to alert workers that the shutdown has ended and to report back to the office.   read more

The case pits U.S. bankruptcy law—which gives the judge vast authority to decide who gets dinged for a filer’s debts—against California state law that says funding for the pension plan cannot be monkeyed with. Stockton has continued to make payments to the pension fund throughout the negotiations, unlike the city of San Bernardino, which filed for bankruptcy in August.   read more

Although Heyman has been working with wealthy Canadian clients of Goldman since 2001, his qualifications for nomination were not damaged by the fact that he has been a “mega-bundler” for both of Obama’s presidential runs, helping to raise millions of dollars and serving on Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2012. A longtime Democrat in an industry dominated by Republicans, Heyman has donated more than $180,000 to political causes, including $96,000 to the Democratic National Committee.   read more

This undercounting takes place because local officials, including coroners, will mistakenly classify the deaths as something other than an accident, like a homicide. The New York Times also determined that in almost every case, the accidental shooter was a boy and that 81% of the victims were boys. In 28% of the cases, the fatal wound was self-inflicted.   read more

Members of the III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa won’t begin moving until sometime in the early 2020s. For many of the island’s residents, the move can’t come soon enough. Many Japanese have been calling for the U.S. to get off Okinawa for decades, particularly after American military personnel stationed on the island were convicted of raping a Japanese woman last year and gang-raping a 12-year-old Japanese girl in 1995.   read more

The University of Edinburgh had a $2 million (£1.2 million) stake in Ultra Electronics, a British firm that manufactures navigation controls for Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles and ground control stations. Investing in drone development was deemed not “socially responsible” by the university as well as students and campaign groups that lobbied Edinburgh to pull out of the business.   read more

Lu compared Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to the two young mafia dons of The Godfather films: the impulsive Sonny Corleone and his calculating younger brother Michael. Lu wrote that Aliyev’s foreign policy—which he characterized as based on “restraint and a helpful bias toward integration with the West” represented his inner Michael, while his “increasingly authoritarian” domestic policies channeled Sonny   read more

Chad, South Sudan and Yemen were identified by the State Department as countries utilizing child soldiers, making them ineligible for American military aid under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (pdf). But the law, which is intended to discourage nations from forcing children under the age of 18 to fight in wars, contains a national security interest waiver that authorizes the president to override the statute when deemed necessary. That’s what Obama did on Monday.   read more

Five hundred is considerably more than the two flights that DHS admitted to operating when the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General contacted the agency for a report on unmanned aircraft. DHS has filed a motion (pdf) with the federal judge overseeing the EFF lawsuit to throw out the remainder of the case before it has to reveal any more details about drone activity.   read more

Callahan's DHS colleagues accused her of being a “terrorist” for trying to put the brakes on agency work that threatened people’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. Some officials even told her that if she got in the way of DHS efforts to prevent a terrorist attack, she would have to explain her actions to Congress.   read more

Officially, 29 deaths have been attributed by the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office to “excited delirium syndrome,” an uncommon brain malfunction not recognized by the American Medical Association. Of the 29 deaths linked to the syndrome, most have involved police action, including officers using physical restraint or stun guns on the victims.   read more

Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanow, who was denied a visa by the State Department. No explanation was provided for why Trojanow did not receive clearance. It was noted in the German press that the award-winning writer had previously signed a protest petition against the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities.   read more

The jurisdiction with the most executions is Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, with 115. Dallas County is second with 50. Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona accounted for 60% of all of the nation’s executions. In fact, 36% of executions took place in Texas. Eighty-five percent of counties did not carry out a single execution.   read more