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

Another Guardian survey question revealed that 56% believe Congress has not done enough to keep watch over the NSA. The Guardian poll also showed that 58% are worried about private contractors handling secret intelligence for the government. Additionally, 59% of both Democrats and Republicans said that the government needs to be more transparent about its data collection activities.   read more

The British targeted the finance minister and more than a dozen delegates from Turkey in an attempt to assess their position on a deal “to coordinate the global economic recovery to avoid the recession becoming a depression,” according to one of the documents. The latest disclosure surfaced just as representatives of the Group of 8 industrialized nations prepared to meet in Northern Ireland. Among those attending the meeting are some leaders who were spied on in 2009.   read more

Simone Gordon, who worked at the bank from 2007 until early 2012 as a senior collector, told ProPublica that she and other workers “were told to lie to customers and claim that Bank of America had not received documents it had requested.” “We were told that admitting that the Bank received documents ‘would open a can of worms,’” she added. Bank employees “who placed ten or more accounts into foreclosure in a given month received a $500 bonus.”   read more

The first explosion occurred on June 13 at a chemical plant in Geismar owned by Williams Cos. Inc. that resulted in two deaths and dozens of injuries. It is not yet known what caused the accident. The plant produces ethylene and propylene. The very next day an explosion at a chemical plant just a few miles away in Donaldsonville, killed one worker and injured eight others.   read more

Take Miami, Florida, for example. It has a human population of about 409,000. But a factory farm with 2,500 cows can equal Miami’s production of “fertilizer.” Even more concerning is that the waste from really large factory farms, what the government calls “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), is not treated. It simply gets dumped—either onto fields as fertilizer or stored in surface ponds that can grow into small lakes.   read more

A study was convened by the Over-Criminalization Task Force, which discovered the criminal code had grown by 500 new statutes in about 10 years. It now includes about 4,500 crimes. Some of the laws have wound up punishing Americans for actions not considered a serious offense, such as a child who was fined $535 under the migratory bird law for saving a woodpecker from her family’s cat. After a public outcry, the fine was cancelled.   read more

Keith Cressman of Oklahoma City filed litigation in 2011 objecting to the state’s standard license plate, adopted in 2008, which appears on three million vehicles statewide, claiming the image on it promotes Native American spiritual beliefs and thus endorses a religion. Federal Judge Joe Heaton dismissed the lawsuit last year, but a panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to reinstate it on June 11.   read more

The government is relying on Section 215 [of the Patriot Act] to collect “metadata” about every phone call made or received by residents of the United States. The practice is akin to snatching every American’s address book—with annotations detailing whom we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our intimate associations.   read more

Not only is the Pentagon wasting taxpayer dollars on overpriced contractors, the contractors’ role in running PPBS makes them, in the words of Defense contracting expert Chuck Spinney, “privy to—and in some cases deeply involved in—shaping the detailed decisions concerning how the Pentagon intends to spend its money over the next five or six years. That means, to put it charitably, there are conflicts of interest between the buyer and the sellers.”   read more

The ruling means that if either defendant is convicted, he cannot be punished with a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge, and could receive an honorable discharge allowing him to collect veteran benefits. The case also opens the door for other military defense attorneys to use the same argument in sexual assault cases throughout the military.   read more

Demographers attribute the early arrival of Caucasian natural decrease to several factors, especially the Great Recession and sluggish aftermath, which depressed both birth rates and immigration; and the much higher average age of whites compared to other groups (the median age of whites is 42, of Asians-34, of blacks-32, of Hispanics-28), which translates into lower rates of population growth.   read more

In 2003, as President George W. Bush prepared to invade Iraq, his administration used the NSA’s capabilities to spy on diplomats from countries undecided about voting to support the United Nations’ authorization for the American-led attack against Saddam Hussein’s regime. The NSA intercepted the home and office telephone and email communications of the U.N. delegates   read more

Appearing on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Loretta Sanchez said, “I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg,” She added that she was “astounded” by what she heard and that NSA’s surveillance system is “just broader than most people even realize.”   read more

Defendants who used “stand your ground” as a defense were more than likely to get off if the victim was black, the newspaper found, following a review of criminal cases involving the notorious statue. In fact, 73% of those who killed a black person faced no penalty at all, while 59% of those who killed a white person got off.   read more

When a single gray wolf wandered into California two years ago from neighboring Oregon—after an absence of 86 years—it inspired conservationists who hoped that the legally endangered species could reassert a foothold in the state. That optimism was dimmed last week when the Obama administration proposed that the federal government remove protection for the gray wolf in the 42 states, including California, that still have it.   read more

Serving as State Department spokesperson since May 2011, Nuland played a major role in editing the administration “talking points” in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year. Nevertheless, recent praise for her nomination from key Senate Republicans. Nuland served and as principal deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005. She is married to neoconservative writer Robert Kagan.   read more