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

Rao was hooked up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. The device relayed a thought—moving his finger to press the space bar on a keyboard to play a video game—to a computer that sent the information over the Internet to Rao’s associate, Andrea Stocco, who like Rao wore a blue swimming cap with a magnetic stimulation coil affixed over his left motor cortex. The result: When Rao thought about moving his right hand, Stocco’s moved.   read more

Hazle told WestCare California, Inc., a private company that contracts with the state to provide substance abuse coordination services, that he was an atheist, and requested assignment to a non-religious treatment program. They sent him to Empire Recovery Center, where he found they used a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, including references to “God” and a “higher power.” Hazle refused to attend and was thrown back in prison for 125 days.   read more

Córdova’s scientific contributions have been in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources, and space-borne instrumentation. She has published more than 150 scientific papers, and has a current experiment on the European Space Agency’s X-Ray Multi-Mirror Mission.   read more

Americans who do not purchase health insurance for themselves next year will face a $95 penalty, or 1% of their income, whichever is larger. This penalty will go up in 2015, to $325 or 2% of income, and again in 2016, to $695 or 2.5% of income. Also, anyone claiming dependents on their tax return will be responsible for paying these fines if the dependents don’t have health insurance.   read more

The legislation, which was vetoed by Governor Jay Nixon (D), but could still become law if lawmakers override the veto, seeks to nullify all federal gun laws in the state. It also states that federal agents who try to enforce said laws would be committing a felony.   read more

Hundreds of lobbyists in at least 20 states currently are entitled to public pensions (and in some cases health care benefits) because they represent associations of counties, cities and school boards. Critics point out that the associations lobbyists represent are often private entities that face no public oversight of their activities, and can pay their executives private-sector salaries.   read more

Part of the problem, according to Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, is that the court’s decision did not apply to all life sentences for juvenile offenders. Instead, each case must be judged individually. It also did not state whether the decision should be applied retroactively, nor did it deal with cases in which a life sentence was given for reasons other than a mandatory sentence law.   read more

Drafted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the new regulations would streamline the approval process for tribes to gain federal recognition. A key change would make it less difficult to be recognized by having to demonstrate political continuity only since 1934, instead of “first contact” with European settlers, which is the existing rule.   read more

Government reports calling attention to the lack of chemical accident data go back to the 1980s. The Environmental Protection Agency attempted to establish such a database in 1985, but within four years it lost its funding. The National Toxic Substances Incident Program gathers this data from state and local agencies, but it has lacked funding to establish a fully inclusive national resource.   read more

Entergy said the plant will cease production after it spends its current cycle of nuclear fuel. Decommissioning should begin towards the end of 2014, although that does not mean the reactors will be dismantled anytime soon. After it ceases producing electricity, the plant will be in a state of “safe store” and remain shuttered as its radioactive components cool for up to 60 years, according to the Associated Press.   read more

Charles Falconer, a longtime Labour Party politician, helped introduce Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act. “There is no suggestion that Miranda is a terrorist, or that his detention and questioning at Heathrow was for any other reason than his involvement in his partner Glenn Greenwald’s reporting of the Edward Snowden story. The state has not even hinted there is a justification beyond that involvement,” Falconer wrote.   read more

Risen’s defense team appealed to the court asking for it to convene a full session of the 15 judges serving in the Fourth Circuit to decide whether the journalist should be granted First Amendment protection that would spare him from having to reveal the identity of his source. Prosecutor Neil Macbride has argued that there is no such thing as a reporters’ privilege in a criminal trial, and therefore, Risen should be denied a full hearing of the appeals court.   read more

So, now, the VA intends to spend $12 billion over five years to upgrade the agency’s IT systems, which is supposed to include interoperable software that can be used between the VA and the Pentagon. The VA began investing in this project in July 2011—back when the agency and the Defense Department were still spending money on the joint healthcare records system.   read more

Another 25% said that they would support intervention if Assad used chemical weapons. The Obama administration said in June that Syria had already done this, so “a large share of people who answered that the United States should intervene if Assad uses chemical weapons are apparently unaware that this line has already been crossed,” Fisher wrote. Regardless of how many Americans want their country involved in the Syrian civil war, Obama is reportedly weighing his military options.   read more

One internal document showed NSA officials were very pleased once they began eavesdropping on UN talks by tapping into the video conferencing system. “The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!),” the document reads, according to Der Spiegel. The 1970s program “Blarney” involved the cooperation of at least one American telecommunications company, while going after “diplomatic establishment, counter-terrorism, foreign government and economic” targets.   read more

In the case of those who worked on Obamacare, more than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who helped draft the law have become lobbyists since 2010. They now operate out of offices on K Street, the traditional home of lobbying firms in Washington, DC, assisting large corporations, such as GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, as well as Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola.   read more