President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Residents of Iowa don’t need 20/20 vision to legally own firearms or carry them in public. In fact, they don’t have to possess the ability to see at all. For at least two years now, Iowans who are legally or completely blind have been entitled to receive permits for gun purchases. They also can obtain permits to carry firearms into public places. The Des Moines Register reported that visually impaired citizens have been able to own guns for quite some time.   read more

The intelligence assessment released by the White House to support President Barack Obama’s case for attacking Syria did not necessarily reflect all of the government’s spy agencies’ views on the subject of Syrian chemical warfare. Rather it reflected “a predominantly Obama administration influence. One former official, choosing to remain anonymous, told IPS in an email that the administration may have “cherry-picked the intelligence” to fit its position on Syria.   read more

About 130 million Americans own smartphones, which from a personal privacy perspective aren’t all that smart given the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ability to pry into them. Secret NSA documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed to the German newspaper Der Spiegel that the U.S. government spends a lot of time thinking about and finding ways to infiltrate smartphones. The government can obtain all kinds of information about a person by hacking into just a single phone.   read more

The Obama administration has been accused of subverting the law and violating civil liberties by using border crossings as an opportunity to seize the personal property of individuals not accused of committing any crime. A fundraiser for the legal defense of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Private Bradley Manning, David House had his laptop, camera, thumb drive and cellphone seized by border patrol agents upon returning from a trip to Mexico in November 2010.   read more

Suspicion has lasted for decades over the mysterious crash of the plane carrying the United Nations’ top official more than 50 years ago. A new investigation of the accident says evidence may exist that could prove the aircraft was shot down, and that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) could possess some of this evidence.   read more

New York City decided to dust off its old, non-computerized voting machines and use them in time for Tuesday’s local elections. The move was prompted after some local leaders lost confidence with the newer, electronic voting machines that encountered troubles during the 2012 election. The state legislature and the NYC Board of Elections authorized 5,100 lever voting machines to come out of retirement, undergo maintenance and be set up in voting precincts for the September 10 balloting.   read more

In the month of May, petroleum operations in the U.S. surpassed the total amount of oil being imported. The nation last experienced this turnaround in January 1997. American output is so strong that if it continues on this pace, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer before 2020, according to a forecast by the International Energy Agency.   read more

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of spying on Brazil’s state-run oil company, according to a news report from the South American country’s largest television network. The implication is that not all NSA espionage has to do with fighting terrorists or even criminals.   read more

The biggest culprit, experts say, are cars and other forms of road transportation. Vehicles were found to cause 53,000 early fatalities, followed by power plants with 52,000. Steven Barrett, an MIT assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics who took part in the study, said a premature death was defined as one occurring about 10 years earlier due to exposure to air pollution than might otherwise happen.   read more

Kanye West has become the latest celebrity to get into trouble for attending a Central Asian dictator’s lavish celebration. This time the country was Kazakhstan, where West showed up—after getting paid $3 million—to participate in the wedding festivities of Aysultan Nazarbayev, grandson of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s ruler.   read more

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno led an effort with author and former Central Valley resident Tim Z. Hernandez to raise money for an official memorial, complete with the names of those who died. It was unveiled on September 2 at a ceremony attended by more than 500 people, including family members of some of the farmworkers who traveled all the way from Mexico.   read more

The 10 lawmakers supporting the resolution received 83% more campaign contributions on average from defense contractors than the committee members who voted “no.” The top three recipients who voted “yes” were Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) at $176,000; Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) at $127,350; and Timothy Kaine (D-Virginia) at $101,025.   read more

Under the rules, importers would have to ensure that their foreign suppliers comply with FDA safety rules or equivalent local regulations. Industry groups, which the FDA consulted during the drafting process, generally support the rule. Although consumer advocates were cautiously supportive of the new rules, they also worried that the companies were getting too much discretion over whether to require on-site inspections of the sites where food is grown and processed.   read more

For-profit schools use veterans to avoid a federal requirement that no more than 90% of their revenues can come from government sources like Pell grants—but a loophole says that GI Bill benefits don’t count toward the 90% cap. This makes the veterans’ aid more valuable, and the Senate committee report cited constant phone calls by recruiters, pressuring applicants to sign contracts before speaking to a financial adviser.   read more

According to the brief, the NSA domestic spying program undermines one of the key reforms included in FISA: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is supposed to supervise surveillance activities and which is “empowered…to consider each instance of placing an electronic wiretap.” “In contrast,” say Mondale and Hart, “the NSA’s program…delegates such oversight to the executive, leaving all further inquiries of the databases to the agency involved.”   read more

The full court held that because the text message was not labeled as either “classified” or “sensitive,” MacLean’s disclosure may be protected by the Whistleblower Act if he believed his leak helped expose dangers to public safety. George Randy Taylor, head of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association’s air marshal unit and also a former whistleblower, said MacLean had suffered legal harassment for “raising the B.S. flag on mismanagement.”   read more