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

The lawsuit is the culmination of a four-year effort to lure the Oakland franchise. MLB did not want the move and invoked a league rule that gave the San Francisco Giants territorial rights to the San Jose area in 1990. Each of the 30 franchises has veto power over a club moving into its operating territory.   read more

The Associated Press found 24 instances of defendants who went to jail because of bite marks, but ultimately were found not guilty as a result of DNA testing. In separate cases, two men in Mississippi were convicted in the 1990s of raping and murdering three-year-old girls based on bite mark evidence. DNA testing later revealed that another man was guilty of both crimes and that the alleged bite marks were actually caused by crawfish or insects.   read more

Ayalde served two consecutive stints as a USAID mission director, first in Bolivia from 1999 to 2005, and then in Colombia from 2005 to 2008. Ayalde left USAID in 2008 to serve as ambassador to Paraguay from June 2008 to 2011, returning to Washington to serve as deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, beginning July 16, 2012.   read more

A poll conducted in 2012 by the National Opinion Research Center showed that 57% of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court prohibition against public schools requiring the reading of Bible verses or the Lord’s Prayer, while 39% approve. However, there were sharp regional differences. A majority in the Northeast and the West did approve of the prohibition, while in the South 73% disapproved. In addition, Americans age 18-29 differed from their elders, approving of the prohibition 56% to 38%.   read more

FBI agents killed about 70 people, and wounded another 80 or so, between 1993 and 2011—and in every case, the bureau ruled the incidents justified, according to a review of bureau records by The New York Times. In most of the shootings, the FBI was the only government body to review the incidents. Out of 289 times that agents fired their weapon, only five were disciplined. But in those five cases, no one was hurt or killed, and the agent merely received a letter of censure.   read more

John Shafer, a self-described conservative Republican, said he was the one who flagged the first application for tax-exempt status by a Tea Party affiliate in February 2010, back when court rulings were unleashing a flood of organizations seeking to take advantage of the shifting law.   read more

Now the U.S. is on a tight deadline to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, and bringing home all 11,000 MRAPs from the conflict would not be cost effective, military experts say. Leaving them with the Afghan military also appears out of the question, due to concerns that the Afghans wouldn’t be able to maintain them. So, it’s on to the scrap yard. About 2,000 of the vehicles will be shredded and their metal sold for pennies on the pound on the Afghan scrap market.   read more

Eight Americans were selected from 6,100 candidates, the second largest pool of applicants in NASA’s history. A mix of scientists and military pilots, the group of four men and four women will begin training for future space missions that may include trips to an asteroid and Mars.   read more

Remaining silent during questioning by police can be used against a person in a court of law, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a startling reinterpretation of Fifth Amendment rights. A narrow majority ruled 5-to-4 in Salinas v. Texas that it was permissible for authorities to present at Genovevo Salinas’ trial that he refused to answer the police’s questions about a fatal shooting because Salinas had already answered some questions prior to being arrested and read his Miranda rights.   read more

The new law applies only to state and local law enforcement. Federal law enforcement agencies are only required to get a warrant to access recent emails before they are opened by the recipient. No such provision in federal law prevents the FBI from reading emails once they have been opened or have remained unopened for 180 days. The Texas initiative requires Texas law enforcement officials to get a court warrant to gain access to emails, no matter how old they are.   read more

Terrance Brown, charged with the attempted robbery of armored cars that culminated in the murder of a Brink’s armored truck messenger in October 2010, has asked a federal judge to ask the government about telephone records that are pertinent to the case. Brown’s legal defense tried to compel prosecutors to turn over the records. But they claimed the phone company, MetroPCS, no longer had them. Judge Robin Rosenbaum ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to respond to Brown’s inquiry.   read more

It is unclear how many of these government requests were terrorist-related and how many were unrelated to national security. Whatever figures these companies are ultimately allowed to release, they are likely to be inexact or lower than the actual figures. The reason is that the government gives itself permission to add more names and search data under the umbrella of every FISA request it makes, for up to a year after the initial request.   read more

The new law, if adopted, would produce enough new revenues through taxes paid by immigrants-turned-citizens to reduce the deficit by $197 billion during the first 10 years. The savings would be even greater in the next decade, the CBO said. From 2024 to 2033, the deficit would shrink by $700 billion. During the latter time frame, government spending would increase by $262 billion, primarily due to refundable tax credits and health insurance subsidies kicking in.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Arizona’s law requiring residents to prove their citizenship before registering to vote. The ruling, which had only two dissents (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito), represented the second time that the Supreme Court has overturned an Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants. In both cases, the court said the state had entered legal territory where the federal government and its law are dominant.   read more

A total of 37 states now use facial-recognition technology as part of their driver’s-license registries—of which 26 permit local, state, or federal law enforcement agencies to search or request searches of photo databases to assist with criminal matters. In most cases, there was little public notice of this expanded, police use of driver’s license photos of U.S. citizens who are not under suspicion for any crime.   read more

The FTC, which estimates that the pay-for-delay deals cost American consumers $3.5 billion per year in higher drug prices, announced that it plans to proceed with litigation, now that it has gotten a green light from the Supreme Court. So which side really came out ahead as a result of this ruling? Jeffery Cross, an antitrust expert with Freeborn & Peters LLP, told Reuters that that answer was simple: “The winners here are the trial lawyers.”   read more