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

Gilbert admitted to shooting Frago, but his legal defense argued that Gilbert’s actions were justified because under Texas law, a person can use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft of the commission of “criminal mischief.” Prosecutors insisted the law did not apply to someone trying to force another person into an illegal act such as prostitution. But the jury sided with Gilbert, who avoided a possible life sentence in prison.   read more

As of Friday, Dingell had served 20,997 days (or 57 years, 5 months and 26 days) as a representative from southeast Michigan. He first joined Congress in 1955. He had already broken the record for the longest time served in the House of Representatives in February 2009. Now he has broken the overall Congressional record, previously held by Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who served in the House of Representatives from 1953 to 1959 and in the Senate from 1959 until his death on June 28, 2010.   read more

Madden summarizes the beginning of the story of The Silver Collar, the book that preceded The Silver Crown thus: “The plot of The Silver Collar is almost traditional. Iris and Alfie are lovers. Deeply besotted until one night a werewolf attacks them and Iris’s twin brother, Matthew. Matthew is killed and Alfie is bitten. Alfie becomes a werewolf as Iris becomes a werewolf killer. Suddenly their relationship isn’t going so well….”   read more

President Barack Obama said that he welcomed “this debate,” although his actions make it clear that there is no room for debate. Despite the assurances of Obama and Clapper, civil liberties advocates point out that there is no guarantee whatsoever that use of the gathered information is limited to combating terrorism.   read more

The two researchers conjured up a two-dimensional graph that measures the “ideological distance between the median of the Democratic and Republican parties in the state legislative chambers.” The congressional median is around 1.2. Louisiana is the least divisive state at 0.5. California is literally off the grid, which only goes up to 2.5. California’s score looks to be around 3.0. The next closest to California is Colorado at 2.2.   read more

The 50 worst charities identified by the investigation raised about $1.4 billion in donations over the past 10 years, but paid $970 million of the total to for-profit companies that encouraged Americans to make donations. These 50 charities devoted less than 4% of donations to direct cash aid.   read more

President Barack Obama has turned to a career diplomat with extensive experience in Africa to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the troubled nation of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. James F. Entwistle, who has been ambassador to the even more troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since November 2010, will succeed Terence P. McCulley.   read more

The court order allows the NSA to gather phone records on a daily basis for three months until July 19. The data is then turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for use in counterterrorism investigations. The order appears to be simply the latest in a program that has gone on for seven years. According to an ACLU analysis of the order, the NSA wants to know “when you’re calling, who calls you, how long you talk, and maybe where you’re calling from.”   read more

Two days after Chrysler’s unusual pushback, the company did announce the recall of 630,000 Jeep SUVs as the result of transmission and restraint system problems. These recalls include 254,000 Compass and Patriot SUVs from 2010 to 2012 to fix a delay in air bag and seatbelt functioning, and 181,000 Wranglers from 2012 and 2013 relating to leaks in transmission cooler lines.   read more

“According to the DoD Office of Security Review, the individual’s name is protected from public release” under federal law, the report says, which also states however that “no precautionary measures were taken to protect special operators from being identified by the Hollywood executive at this event.”   read more

Monsanto said it does not know how it happened. The company tested GM varieties of wheat between 1998 and 2004 in 17 states, including Oregon. But officials said all tested material was destroyed after the program was shut down nine years ago. Currently, no varieties of GM wheat have been approved for commercial farming anywhere in the world. The discovery led the governments of South Korea and Japan to temporarily suspend imports of U.S. wheat.   read more

Logs were placed across the road on April 1, along with a “closed” sign, according to the civil complaint. Cheng says the road closure was “unauthorized” and goes against the doctrine of “love your neighbor.” Cheng accused Father George Belgarde, the Jesuit shrine’s director, of taking “an openly hostile stance toward our temple and our members, and refused to discuss or consider a compromise like his predecessors.” Belgarde became director of the Shrine in 2011.   read more

In 2012, reports of murder, rape, and similar violent crimes increased in the West as well as in major metropolitan areas of the United States. In the Western U.S., violent crime rose 3.3%, according to data released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   read more

Twenty years after the Cold War, the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, and China are holding onto their nuclear arsenals and even expanding them despite their commitments to non-proliferation. In 2013, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said those nations plan to or are currently deploying new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.   read more

To stem the high number of sex crimes in the armed forces, Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand has introduced legislation that would give military prosecutors, rather than commanders, the power to decide which sexual assault cases to try. However, the U.S. military’s top commanders have told Congress that they object to the idea.   read more

Connecticut could become the first state to require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically modified organisms. Connecticut will mandate GMO labeling if four other states, at least one of which shares a border with it, passes similar regulations, and if those states include Northeastern ones with at least 20 million people.   read more