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

Among its other transgressions, JPMorgan has been found to have • misled investors • engaged in fictitious trades • collected illegal flood insurance commissions • wrongfully foreclosed on soldiers, charged veterans hidden fees for refinancing • violated the Federal Trade commission Act by making false statements to people seeking automobile loans • illegally increased their collection of overdraft fees by processing large transactions before smaller ones   read more

During these incidents, 26 people were killed, with two-thirds of the accidents occurring on farms, including four incidents involving workers younger than 16. Grain bin suffocation deaths have averaged ten a year for the past 50 years.   read more

Last year, a new policy went into effect that requires retailers to report thefts under $50 by mail instead of by telephone or in person. The result of this change is that many business owners just stopped telling law enforcement about shoplifters. Not surprisingly, police statistics for 2012 showed petty shoplifting had plummeted by 75%, from ten reports a day to less than three.   read more

Hunt said, “The database of useless information is 500 million gigabytes, the database of useful information is 5K. Our problem is, which 5K?” “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of fundamentally trying to collect everything and hang on to it forever, forever being in quotes of course.”   read more

Making drought conditions even worse, NOAA predicts hotter than usual temperatures across most of the continental U.S. and northern Alaska, with below-normal temperatures predicted only for the Pacific Northwest and northern Great Plains. Last year was the hottest year since recordkeeping began more than 100 years, with several weeks in a row of 100-plus-degree days and high temperature records shattered across the country. Yet there will be water—just not where we want it.   read more

All together, Republicans spent about $1.4 billion to win the White House and the Democrats $1.1 billion. The Republicans also outspent the Democrats in Congressional races, $1.66 billion to $1.54 billion. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, pro-Romney forces alone spent at least $492 million on TV ads, 91% of which were negative. The pro-Obama team laid out at least $404 for TV ads, 85% negative.   read more

The general public overwhelmingly supported spending more money on social security, health care and homeland security, while the super rich believed that the budgets for all three should be cut. The super rich were also more likely to oppose increased spending for defense, environmental protection and education. But they were somewhat more likely to call for increasing the budget for scientific research.   read more

After first promising to put her on a plane to New York, where she was born and lived with her parents, CBP agents later told her father they could not return her to “illegals,” and gave him one hour to choose between having her sent back to Guatemala or to an “adoption center.” Fearing he would lose his child forever, and not knowing that CBP’s threats were illegal, Mr. Ruiz chose Guatemala.   read more

The Fourth Amendment does protect against unauthorized surveillance or searches, and there are laws on the books that address spying by companies, for instance. But these legal protections were crafted long before drones came into existence. Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said, “Just because the government may comply with the Constitution does not mean they should be able to constantly surveil, like Big Brother.”   read more

In 1994, Congress passed a bill that forbids most people who are the subject of a permanent protective order from possessing firearms. However the law is rarely enforced, with less than 50 cases in all of 2012. This means that for practical purposes, each state makes its own laws. Currently, only a handful of states require gun owners to give up their weapons if a restraining order is placed on them by the courts.   read more

In the case of SNL, prime contractor Sandia Corp., which relies heavily on subcontractors, spending about 38% of its total budget on them, hired former employees as subcontractors and paid them a higher hourly rate than the employees had received prior to retiring.   read more

Constituents tended to support gay marriage and universal health care by 10% more than their representatives had assumed. The disconnect was even greater among conservative politicians, who tend to be 20% more conservative than the people they represent.   read more

This is the second time a President of the Fifth Republic has been indicted. After Jacques Chirac was accused of embezzlement while he was mayor of Paris, in a mild surprise, Nicolas Sarkozy, after five years of proceedings, has been accused of taking advantage of Liliane Bettencourt’s mental weakness.   read more

An estimated 110 tons of deadly DDT, lying for years on the ocean floor off the coast of Palos Verdes, California, has been recalculated to be around 14 tons, according to a report in Environmental Health News. And no one is quite sure what happened. The contamination could have been overestimated before, underestimated now or unexpectedly dechlorinated into something harmless. Or the pesticide could have dissipated into the water where it would be absorbed by all manner of creatures.   read more

The switch gets the companies out of certain reporting requirements by the Food and Drug Administration—like revealing any deaths or ailments associated with the products. Bad publicity has caused Monster Energy’s stock value to plunge more than 40% in a year.   read more

The bra measures heat patterns and breast shapes, and its built-in computer can compare the data to stored information about cancerous tissues, according to the company, which claims a 90% accuracy rate for the product. Clinical trials have been performed on the bra, and First Warning Systems hopes the FDA will approve it in time for the bra to go on sale within a year.   read more