Trump said, “We need people to be afraid. Right now many Americans are surprised when protestors are killed, but they’ll get used to it.” Trump did add one suggestion: “Try not to kill white people. That gets too much attention. Stick to protestors of other colors.”   read more

Solzhenitsyn’s three-volume narrative about the Soviet-era forced labor camps was written between 1958 and 1968, smuggled out of the U.S.S.R., and first published in the West in 1973. The word “gulag” has been used by critics to describe Guantánamo. Solzhenitsyn’s work isn’t the only book kept from detainees. Last month, all of John Grisham’s books were banned at the prison.   read more

Under the Affordable Care Act, employers will be required to cover healthcare insurance for part-time employees working 30 hours or more a week. To get out from under this new requirement, cities and counties are trimming these workers’ hours so they have 29 or fewer hours per week. Local officials say they must take these steps because of limited resources, even though the mandate won’t go into effect for another 16 months.   read more

A surgeon left the operating room during a procedure, forcing residents to continue unsupervised until another surgeon was found. Although he was suspended for 14 days without pay, the surgeon got $11,189 in performance pay, nearly three-quarters of what he could have gotten.   read more

The IRS, according to the complaint, has flouted the intent of the statute by writing regulations that gut its social welfare requirement. Although the regulation “recognizes that electoral activity does not fall within the scope of activity promoting social welfare,” it also states that it is sufficient for an organization to operate “primarily” to promote social welfare, rather than “exclusively” so.   read more

Public health advocates, anti-tobacco activists and corporate watchdog groups are criticizing the Obama administration for capitulating to big tobacco lobbyists by gutting a proposal to ensure that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) cannot be used to undermine anti-smoking laws and regulations. The TPP is a broad trade treaty being negotiated—in secret—by the U.S. and 11 other countries.   read more

Starr was principal deputy assistant secretary and director of the diplomatic security service. He also served as the acting assistant secretary for DS from October 2007 to July 2008 following the resignation of Richard J. Griffin in the wake of controversies regarding the killing of Iraqi civilians by private contractors. After retiring from the Senior Foreign Service, Starr served as United Nations under-secretary-general for Safety and Security from May 2009 to January 2013.   read more

Over the last 50 years, the jobless rate for blacks has consistently been twice as high as the rate for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1963 the ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment was 2.2; in 2012 it was 2.1. In 1967, the median black household earned 55% of what the median white household earned. By 2011, that gap had nudged up only to 59%.   read more

Chambers, who is black, was performing Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” which he had dedicated to Trayvon Martin and his family, when Andrews-Potter climbed on the stage and attacked him. The moment was captured on video and shows the 43-year-old woman being wrestled to the ground by onlookers. Chambers was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.   read more

The FBI eventually identified 1,553 pages of potentially responsive records and released 356 pages (some redacted) including training materials; notes about particular groups or elements; program assessments; electronic communications; and maps. The agency argued that the remaining 1,200 pages were exempt from disclosure because they could affect law enforcement proceedings. The ACLU disagreed and filed suit.   read more

Prosecutors withheld “significant impeachment evidence” by not disclosing that key witness Barbara Cabral—whose testimony was the only evidence directly linking Seda to the Chechen mujahedeen—had been paid $14,500 by the FBI. “The records of the FBI’s payments…would have shaded the jurors’ perceptions of Cabral's credibility,” wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown.   read more

From 2004 to 2010, Winfree was chief litigation counsel for Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, which through its subsidiary, Phelps Dodge, is one of the world’s largest producers of copper, gold and other industrial and precious metals. He also founded the Eight Iron Golf Apparel Company to market his two patents, registered in 1995, for a “sport shirt or other garment provided with a load-distributing shoulder yoke for relieving the strain resulting from carrying a golf bag.”   read more

Sarah Blakemore, director of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a campaign working to ban the weapons, noted that the U.S.-Saudi Arabia deal comes at a time when the two countries have condemned Syria’s use of cluster bombs against rebels trying to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad.   read more

Critics of the decision said it would deny a large portion of the federal workforce some due process rights. They also warned that agencies could use the ruling to punish employees without worrying about the MSPB getting in the way. The administration proposal refers to a new regulation under consideration that would allow the government to categorize virtually any federal position as national security “sensitive” and therefore outside the civil service system rule of law.   read more

On September 1, the city’s mayor will once again oversee the police. Not since 1861 have city leaders controlled those responsible for maintaining law and order in Missouri’s second largest city. The city lost its authority over the police just before the outbreak of the Civil War, when pro-South politicians wanted to keep Union sympathizers in St. Louis from gaining power.   read more

President Barack Obama has nominated an Indian-American woman to be the next assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Affairs. Assistant administrator for Asia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) since September 2010, Nisha Desai Biswal will be the first person of South Asian origin to head the bureau.   read more

“The court is troubled that the government’s revelations regarding NSA’s acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program,” Bates wrote.   read more