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 oil company sponsored the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative in which Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, participated in a plenary session, ’Invest in Girls and Women.’ In 2008, ExxonMobil gave $3.5 million to the Clinton Foundation’s malaria elimination efforts. Exxon gave $20,348 to Hillary’s campaign in 2008.   read more

38.5% of those incarcerated by the New Jersey County Jail System (NJCJS) remain locked away due to their inability to pay for bail. “This means that the inmates were not serving a sentence, had no holds or detainers, and could have been released if they were able to post bail in the form of cash, cash/bond, 10% option or support arrears,” VanNostrand wrote.   read more

A new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on children’s well-being in 29 countries revealed that, during the years 2009 and 2010, the U.S. ranked only 23rd in terms of life satisfaction for those age 11, 13 and 15. The U.S. finished just ahead of Canada, as well as Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.   read more

The busing tactic coincided with the state’s decision to slash funding for mental health services. Between 2009 and 2012, Nevada cut mental health spending by 28%. Prior to those cuts, the state’s funding for those services was already well below the national average.   read more

Even Democrats, who have historically viewed the federal government favorably during Democratic administrations, are fed up. Only 41% said they have a positive outlook, while 51% have a negative one. Republicans continue to express displeasure towards Washington, with only 13% holding a favorable opinion. Twenty-seven percent of independents said the same.   read more

Based on the latest data published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the number of individuals cleared for access to classified information was more than 4.9 million last year. This total represents a sizeable increase from a similar report issued in 2010 by ODNI that said the number was 4.2 million.   read more

In recent decades the amount of ice that has melted has increased at an alarming rate. The melting is attributed to rising temperatures across the Antarctic Peninsula that have risen 2.8°C over the past 50 years, making it the most rapidly warming region in the Southern Hemisphere.   read more

The decision will enable newspapers, which had sued to have the settlement unsealed, as well as environmentalists and community rights advocates, to examine the court case’s health issues and causes. Seneca’s decision represented a major blow to fracking companies, which have relied on secrecy agreements with landowners to hide the environmental and health impacts of natural gas drilling.   read more

The decision to relocate some detainees came during a hunger strike that has now lasted more than two months. More than 40 prisoners of the 166 still being held at Guantánamo have refused to eat since guards conducted a search on February 6 that resulted in the confiscation of detainees’ letters, photographs and legal mail, and the rough handling of copies of the Koran. At least 13 hunger strikers are being tube fed by American authorities to keep them from dying.   read more

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), gave a speech to express the NRA’s official position on the tragedy, he received extensive national media coverage. However, little attention was given to the fact that the six teachers who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were members of the Newtown Federation of Teachers Local 1727. The NRA has about 4 million members, while 14.4 million Americans belong to labor unions.   read more

While the nation’s unemployment rate is still high, joblessness in the technology sector is much lower (less than 4%) due to the high demand for skilled labor. According to Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, “The American economy creates 120,000 new computer-related jobs annually that require a bachelor’s degree, but we are currently producing about 51,000 graduates with a degree in computer science each year.”   read more

The DPLA will function more as a portal to other libraries with digitized collections than as a single repository. Because many libraries are not linked up, the DPLA hopes to act as a hub that can improve Internet users’ ability to find and access materials available online.   read more

The federal government's various efforts to encourage the development of renewable energy are fragmented. In Fiscal Year 2010, 23 agencies with 130 sub-agencies implemented 679 renewable energy initiatives, with four cabinet-level departments—Agriculture, Defense, Energy, and Interior—implementing nearly 60% of the initiatives, and the other 40% run by a wide array of agencies. In Fiscal Year 2011, 82 different programs dealt with wind energy alone.   read more

Even if the Supreme Court strikes down Myriad's patents, however, critics point out that the company will still own the largest database of genetic mutations and what they mean—and Myriad stopped sharing the information in the database eight years ago.   read more

An earlier IRS document from 2009 showed the agency’s disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against illegal searches. But the Criminal Tax Division at the IRS claimed in an internal handbook that in general “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server.”   read more

In 2011, Tulsa World found that nearly half ($506 million out of $1.2 billion) of all food stamp expenditures between July 2009 and March 2011 went to Walmart Stores, according to data supplied by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.   read more