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

The U.S. still holds 67 non-Afghan detainees at the facility. The question now is what to do with these individuals, most of whom are from Pakistan and deemed too dangerous to release by the administration. This despite the fact that informal military review boards cleared many of them, the newspaper reported. None of them have been put on trial. Unlike the prisoners at Guantánamo, those at Bagram do not have habeas corpus rights.   read more

Inflating the credit-worthiness of dicey Wall Street financial securities was a winning strategy for the nation’s top ratings agencies before the financial collapse of 2008 put a crimp in their style. But despite multiple multi-billion-dollar lawsuits filed by the federal government and more than a dozen states, Standard & Poor’s is revisiting those discredited practices, according to a study commissioned by the New York Times.   read more

• In 2011, Thomas and Scalia were the main speakers at a fundraiser for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group with strong ties to Republican politics. • In 2010, both attended secretive political events sponsored by Koch Industries intended “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it,” just months after they voted in the landmark Citizens United case to allow corporate money to flood politics.   read more

The judge cited a friend-of-the-court submission from Senator Durbin about the true meaning of the law—along with a footnote to Strunk & White’s Elements of Style on how to use basic English—to castigate the board for its “blatant act of policymaking that runs counter to Congress’s will.”   read more

Feinstein's proposal defines journalists as those who earn salaries regardless of their qualifications. Thus, under Feinstein’s bill, if Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh does volunteer work for WikiLeaks, he would not be a journalist, but if Fox News pays Sean Hannity to be on TV, he is.   read more

Until recently, chemical and other related industries opposed federal laws governing their products, but have changed their tune since individual states have become more aggressive in overseeing their behavior. Conservative arguments about states’ rights trumping federal authority have morphed into an argument that allowing individual states to set policy preempts the authority of other states by pressuring industries to change on a national scale.   read more

Besides threatening court action, they are seeking legislation at the state and federal level to snuff out the nascent movement, and revving up advertising campaigns to argue their case. However, as David Brodwin of U.S. News and World Report put it, “it's hard to see why bailing out homeowners with a program of this sort is any less an affront to the principles of capitalism than bailing out banks that made bad investments in mortgage backed derivatives.”   read more

Republican legislators in Missouri—and in fourteen other states—want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, by refusing to set up state health insurance exchanges for their residents, but then regulating the federal exchanges to make them harder for consumers to use. More than 850,000 Missouri residents are uninsured. Many could qualify for coverage through the exchange, if they are able to understand the system and claim their rights.   read more

Several Exxon employees testified during the 2009 trial that MTBE “might render water undrinkable,” and that they informed Exxon managers that it has “low taste and odor thresholds.” A jury found Exxon liable for product liability, failure to warn the public about the dangers of MTBE, trespass, public nuisance and negligence.   read more

The next chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will be an advocate for energy efficiency and renewable sources who angered coal mining interests and electric companies during his tenure as chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission from 2007 to 2011.   read more

Ryan served on the White House staff of First Lady Hillary Clinton as special assistant to the First Lady’s chief of staff from 1994 to 1997 and as deputy director of scheduling from 1997 to 2000. In 2007 and 2008, Ryan was deputy campaign manager for the presidential primary campaign of Joe Biden, who was then serving as U.S. Senator from Delaware. After Biden was nominated to run for vice president, she worked for the general election campaign as well.   read more

The prosecution of former analyst Stephen Kim under the Espionage Act is based on charges that he orally disclosed classified defense information to someone in the media, but does not allege that he stole or gave away documents, acted with intent to harm the U.S., received money, or acted in secret. Kim is accused of giving Fox News reporter James Rosen secret information—that North Korea was planning to test a nuclear bomb.   read more

There had been speculation that Blythe Masters, one of JPMorgan’s top executives and global head of commodities, would be sanctioned for her role in the affair. But that didn’t happen, despite what the investigators originally termed her “false and misleading statements under oath.” Although Masters is considered a pioneer in the use of complex financial instruments called credit derivatives, she reportedly told investigators that she didn’t really understand how the scheme even worked.   read more

Agency veteran Kevin Shea was appointed administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture on June 18, 2013. From 1992 to 2000 Shea was director of budget and accounting, and from 2000 to 2004 he was deputy administrator for policy and program development. Shea served as associate administrator from September 2004 to May 2012. He has been acting administrator since then.   read more

When the mistake was discovered, Chong was severely dehydrated, he had lost 15 pounds, his liver and kidneys were giving out, his sodium levels were off the charts, his muscles had atrophied and he was hallucinating. He had broken his glasses and tried using shards to carve a goodbye message to his mother on his body. He only got as far as an “S” for “sorry.” He was finally found covered in feces and taken to Sharp Hospital, where he ended up in intensive care.   read more

Of the 59 members of Congress (not including this year’s five inductees) who appeared on the list from 2004 through 2012, 37% of them eventually lost reelection, failed in a campaign for higher office, resigned in scandal, or retired.   read more