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

Vance-Cooks joined GPO in 2004 and has held a succession of senior management positions. She was named chief of staff in January 2011, and was promoted to deputy public printer in December 2011 by Public Printer Bill Boarman, whose recess appointment expired at the end of 2011 when Senate Republicans blocked a vote on his nomination.   read more

That rider (referred to by some opponents as the “Monsanto Protection Act”) authorizes the USDA to nullify any federal court decision that bans the use of GE crops. Critics also noted that the provision was approved without any vetting in the agriculture or judiciary committees. The only good news for opponents of the rider is that it can only be in effect for the life of the continuing resolution, which is about six months.   read more

Forty-three percent of travelers who have visited the United States told surveyors that they will recommend others avoid a trip to the U.S. because of the entry process, and one in seven travelers said they missed a connection because of long delays at Customs, causing them to cancel hotel reservations, car rentals and other activities.   read more

Federal regulators have busted Neiman-Marcus and two other retailers for selling products marketed as containing fake fur, when in reality the fur was real. Why would businesses sell the real deal, which presumably is worth more, as something fake and less valuable? Because demand for real fur has declined, while stores have had trouble keeping fake fur in stock, leading at least these three companies to do what would have been unthinkable years ago.   read more

City administrator Sandra Underwood was accused of instructing male public works employees to bring their own TP, claiming the workers were using far more paper than female employees. Underwood denied the charge. The town’s mayor and aldermen only learned of the decision after a local citizen raised the subject at a council meeting, and suggested starting a fundraiser so the male workers wouldn’t have to pay for their own toilet paper.   read more

In arguing that GPS vehicle tracking be a warrant-free tool of law enforcement, the Obama administration is claiming that the prevention of terrorism in the U.S.—in addition to fighting conventional crime and drug trafficking—is a primary reason that the court should rule in its favor. It also requests a lower standard that would allow police to attach GPS devices—merely “reasonable suspicion” rather than the Constitutional requirement of “probable cause.”   read more

Respondents were told that a nuclear attack on the lab would be twice as likely to succeed as a conventional attack. However, while 100 innocent bystanders would be killed in the non-nuclear assault, 25,000 people would die in the nuclear strike. In spite of the huge loss of life, 39% of the respondents chose the nuclear option. And 52% said they would approve of it as well if they learned about it after the fact.   read more

In total, these wars are costing the government $40 billion a year to compensate veterans and survivors. World War I still costs taxpayers $20 million a year, World War II $5 billion and the Korean War $2.8 billion. The total cost of the Vietnam War, estimated to be more than $1 billion in current dollars, includes $270 billion paid out in benefits.   read more

The institutionalized abuses in Iraq owe much to the abuses committed by U.S. and Iraqi forces during the U.S.-led occupation of the country, according to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The abuses set in motion over 10 years ago by the Bush administration’s ‘torture memos,’ and the brutal detention policies that followed, facilitated Iraq’s creation of a system that is today either unwilling or incapable of delivering justice to its citizens.”   read more

Big Business hasn’t paid anywhere near 35% because of tax breaks. One analysis showed that from 2008 to 2012, the largest corporations paid an average of 8.1% in federal taxes. Meanwhile, they have seen a doubling of profit in less than 10 years. In some cases, major companies, like General Electric, paid no taxes, while others, such as ExxonMobil, paid just 2%.   read more

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll (pdf) found that 58% back same-sex marriages, which represents quite a change from only three years ago when opponents still outnumbered supporters on the issue. The shift in support occurred in part because of a change of opinion among some conservatives. A slim majority of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents under the age of 50 now support gay marriages, according to the survey.   read more

“You'd think the Congress would listen, but they clearly listen to the National Rifle Assn.,” Feinstein said after Reid’s decision. The majority leader’s decision comes one week after Feinstein recounted at a Senate hearing her experience during the City Hall shootings—trying to find the pulse of a dying Milk and putting her finger through a bullet hole.   read more

More than 2,500 “phantom requests” for absentee ballots were sent to the Miami-Dade County elections website prior to the state’s August primary, according to law enforcement officials investigating the case. The fraudulent requests for ballots focused on Democratic voters in the 26th Congressional District and Republicans in Florida House districts 103 and 112.   read more

Ntaganda faced a rebellion within his own rebel group—referred to as M23—from those secretly working with the Rwandan government. The issue of whether or not to turn in Ntaganda to the government contributed to a recent split within M23, which resulted in scores of their members fleeing to Rwanda and being forcibly disarmed. “The Rwandans would have killed him,” Barnabé Kikaya bin Karubi, the DRC’s ambassador to Great Britain, was quoted as saying.   read more

Pew researchers said that those most likely to stop using news sources were better educated, wealthier and older than those who still used them—“in other words, they are people who tend to be most prone to consume and pay for news,” Pew’s The State of the News Media 2013 read. Losses of subscribers and ad revenues have negatively impacted many news organizations in recent years, forcing layoffs and reduced coverage.   read more

A recent Gallup poll also showed that a majority of Americans think the United States made a mistake sending troops to Iraq. In fact, according to Gallup, a majority of Americans have held this opinion since at least the summer of 2005. Another poll, by the Pew Research Center, showed that only about 40% of Americans who fought there believed the reasons for going to war justified the costs, according to NBC News.   read more