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

More good news arrived on July 1, when a provision of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) went into effect and provided employees of defense subcontractors with new protections against reprisals from supervisors for reporting waste or fraud. Previously, subcontractors could go to a boss and complain, but not to a government office.   read more

For $630,000, the bureau managed to increase the fan numbers for each page from about 100,000 to more than 2 million, according to a report from the inspector general. But some employees within the State Department objected to the plan, saying the agency was merely “buying fans.” Of the new people attracted to the pages, only 2% actually “liked” what they saw, or shared or commented about them.   read more

In April 1994 she was sent to Rwanda, but two days after she arrived, the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down, and the Rwandan genocide broke out. Six-feet tall and black, Thomas-Greenfield was mistaken for a Tutsi. Hutu soldiers held a machine gun to her head, while she begged for her life: “I don't have anything to do with this. I'm not a Rwandan. I'm an American.” She then watched as the soldiers killed a Tutsi gardener.   read more

Larry Lewis, a principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, which has close ties to the Pentagon, examined a year’s worth of classified data regarding drone attacks and civilian deaths and injuries caused by them. The study contradicts what Obama proclaimed in a May speech that “conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.”   read more

Since gay marriage became legal in some states, couples whose relationships have soured have found themselves unable to legally end their union. Take Adam Cardinal for example. He got married in New Hampshire to another man, and then the couple moved to Florida. Three years into the marriage, the two decided to divorce—something they can’t do in the Sunshine State because it does not recognize their marriage.   read more

Adachi said that his reason for insisting on the U.S.-made boots, and standing by the 1933 law, is a good one. “How many American workers are unemployed because military clothing is being produced in foreign countries?" he wrote in a letter to the Air Force Times. “I did not feel comfortable ‘going to war' wearing boots made in China. This is about patriotism.   read more

Clune has been the State Department’s point man in its process of deciding whether to permit TransCanada (2012 revenues: CAN$8 billion) to build the proposed 2,000-mile long, $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would deliver tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.   read more

Six airborne radar systems made by Northrop Grumman will be purchased, at a cost of $9.3 million a piece. Helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky will benefit, too, from the legislation, through the Border Patrol buying 15 Black Hawks at $17 million each. The government even has to buy 17 UH-1N helicopters from Bell Helicopter, even though the company no longer makes that particular model.   read more

To date, the new Congress (113th) has approved only 15 pieces of legislation—that’s a little more than two bills a month. During the first six months of the previous Congress (112th), only 23 measures were adopted. Keep in mind that the 112th set the all-time record for congressional futility, approving only 220 laws in two years.   read more

The rate is 35%, but the companies examined by the GAO paid an average of only 12.6% in 2010. Peter Schroeder at The Hill noted that even if corporations’ tax payments to foreign governments, states and local governments were factored in, the rate paid came out to only 17%. Companies have been getting away with paying much less than required through a combination of exemptions, deferrals, tax credits, and other incentives, the GAO concluded.   read more

Three years ago, the Obama administration took the unprecedented step of officially revealing for the first time ever just how many nuclear warheads the U.S. possessed (5,113 as of September 30, 2009). But anyone wishing to get an update on this figure can’t get an answer—because the Department of Defense (DoD) has, once again, classified the size of the nuclear warhead stockpile.   read more

On June 9, a missile attack destroyed an SUV in the northern province of al Jawf, killing at least six people. The target of the drone strike was Saleh Hassan Huraydan, who was considered an al-Qaeda chief. But among those killed was Huraydan’s young brother, Abdulaziz, who was 10 years old.   read more

Organized crime has not gone away, and neither has Medicare fraud. But the Obama administration has decided to cut back on enforcement efforts in these two important crime-fighting areas. Since organized crime members are the biggest perpetrators of Medicare fraud, these budget cutbacks have provided a double dose of good news for crime syndicates.   read more

While the Obama administration decides whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, Americans have no way to find out exactly where more than a thousand miles of pipe would be laid. That’s because neither the U.S. government nor the Canadian company pushing the pipeline will reveal the proposed route.   read more

Leading the way was Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, the software company, who received $96.2 million in total pay. Of this amount, $90.7 million came in the form of stock options. Ellison’s income went up 24% compared to the previous year. Among his other acquisitions, in 2012 Ellison bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Meanwhile, Oracle shareholders’ returns were negative 22%.   read more

Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, told the newspaper that it was routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative “network hygiene” measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information. Soldiers can access the U.S. site for The Guardian, but have been blocked from seeing NSA articles on the British newspaper’s site   read more