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

What made this legal event noteworthy was the fact that the defendant wasn’t even allowed to attend because prosecutors insisted the information being revealed was so secret that the hearing had to be completely closed. After concluding the hearing, the military revealed only one thing to the media: that it lasted 78 minutes. A Saudi millionaire, Nashiri has been in U.S. custody for 11 years.   read more

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will begin separating out arrests involving Latinos in their annual crime reports, doing for this ethnic group what the FBI has already done for whites, blacks and Asians. Until now, it was impossible to know just how many Latinos were arrested and for what types of crimes because FBI tabulations only revealed numbers by race, which factored in Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans or Alaska Natives.   read more

West claims supplier CF Industries sold two 100-ton shipments of agricultural-grade ammonium nitrate to Adair Grain dba West Fertilizer Company prior to the explosion that killed 15 people and flattened part of the town. At the time of the explosion, the second shipment of chemicals was still in a railcar parked just outside Adair’s fertilizer mixing building. Inside that building was 30 tons of the ammonium nitrate not yet sold—which ignited after the building caught fire.   read more

The controversy began after the developers of a mall in Ariel (population: 18,000), located ten miles beyond the Green Line that has divided Israel and its neighbors between 1949 and 1967, offered McDonald’s a spot in the new retail project. The owner of McDonald’s Israel, which has 180 franchises, said no thanks, citing the company’s policy of avoiding the West Bank.   read more

Residents reportedly found about 1,000 pieces of material on their own, according to the Detroit Free Press. Some of them were almost a century old. Also in the dumpster were bank and tax documents with personal information.   read more

For the first time, the federal government has exercised its authority to approve and reject tobacco products, which it had been granted under a 2009 law. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced this week that it had authorized the sale of two new makes of cigarettes, both of them by the Lorillard Tobacco Company. The FDA also rejected four other new tobacco products, but was prevented from releasing any information about them due to the law’s guidelines.   read more

At the Department of Defense, workers were told to “hammer this fact home…leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” according to a June 2012 Pentagon document obtained by McClatchy. The zero-tolerance policy demands that employees turn themselves and others in for failing to report observed security breaches. Any person who does otherwise must be reprimanded or have his security clearance revoked by his manager.   read more

Journalists in Louisiana who publish the identity of individuals who possess or have applied for concealed handgun permits can now be fined or thrown in jail. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal signed legislation last week that outlaws the publishing of “any information regarding the identity of any person who applied for or received a concealed handgun permit.”   read more

A new report by the inspector general (I.G.) of the Department of Health and Human Services identified more than 417,000 prescriptions in 2009 alone written by people who aren’t allowed under the law to do so, like massage therapists, athletic trainers, interpreters and others. The cost of the unauthorized prescriptions was $31.6 million, according to the study.   read more

The FBI reported that the city’s violent crime last year dropped 3.6%, while data compiled by the police revealed a 9.3% jump. Similarly, aggravated assaults reportedly declined 4%, according to the FBI, while Denver police said they went up 11% from 2011 to last year. While it’s not unusual for there to be minor differences between local police crime statistics and those held in the federal data base, observers found the Denver discrepancies to be glaring and highly unusual.   read more

Until Congress does redo the criteria, the Republican Party has its dream situation, one in which states can enact whatever voting procedures they want to limit minority voting without serious threat of reprisal from the federal government. This means that Republicans have absolutely no motivation to cooperate in rewriting the criteria for oversight.   read more

The plaintiff claimed she was subjected to discrimination by a supervisor—whom she defined as someone who controlled her work schedule and performance evaluations. But the supervisor in question did not possess the power to hire, fire and promote workers—and on that basis, the pro-corporate wing of the Supreme Court rejected (pdf) the plaintiff’s argument because the superior was really a coworker in their view.   read more

George’s audit stated the IRS wrongly used “Be On the Look Out” (BOLO) memos to single out tea party groups. But he failed to mention that at least seven BOLO memos included the word “progressive.” The IRS also keyed on terms like “Occupy” and “medical marijuana,” as well as advocacy of President Obama’s health care law.   read more

Boeing billed the Pentagon for $13.7 million more than it should have, according to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), including $2,286 for an aluminum bearing sleeve that really only costs $10 apiece. The Pentagon purchased 573 of the sleeves to be used on landing-gear doors, resulting in an overcharge of $1.3 million just for that particular device.   read more

A lot of the time, Carney says he can’t answer the media’s question on an issue. Since taking the job in early 2011, the former Time reporter had conducted 444 briefings through June 18. During that span Carney used some variation of "I don’t have the answer” a total of 1,905 times, according to Yahoo! News.   read more

EPA officials said they will not finalize a 2011 draft study that found contaminants in the groundwater of Pavillion, Wyoming, were consistent with chemicals used in fracking. They also said they will not ask outside experts to review the EPA’s research. Instead, the agency will turn the matter over to the state of Wyoming, which intends to work with Encana, the company that conducted the fracking, to finish the study.   read more