President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   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

Among the many contracts in the works are 36 Lockheed Martin F-16IQ Block 52 fighter jets, 25 Bell attack helicopters armed with Lockheed Martin laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 140 upgraded Abrams main battle tanks built by General Dynamics Land Systems and 160 Guardian armored security vehicles manufactured by Textron Marine and Land Systems.   read more

The governments of Turkey and Iraq don’t get along so well, but that hasn’t stopped Turkish goods and businesses from being invited into the war-torn country. Over the past 10 years, Turkey’s goods and services to Iraq have ballooned by more than 25% a year. In 2012, the total value of the exports reached $10.8 billion. Iraq is now the second biggest importer of Turkish goods (behind Germany). Turkish construction companies are also flourishing in Iraq.   read more

Discretionary spending is that portion of the federal budget that has to be approved by Congress, as opposed to mandatory spending, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the national debt. Historically, half of discretionary goes to the military and half goes to such non-military programs as government operations, law enforcement, education, transportation, national parks, research, and welfare assistance.   read more

According to the report, “those born in 1943–51 are wealthier than those born in 1934–42, who are wealthier than those born in 1925–33. This pattern does not hold for the younger among us. People born starting in 1952 no longer find their wealth above the prior cohort.”   read more

NSLs allow the government to demand—without a warrant—that Internet service providers, libraries, banks, etc., hand over people’s confidential records, such as profile information, books checked out, phone numbers dialed, websites visited, and more. They are prone to abuse because they include an indefinite gag order barring the recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have even received an NSL.   read more

“Given these official acknowledgments that the United States has participated in drone strikes, it is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say that the agency ‘at least has an intelligence interest’ in such strikes,” wrote Garland.   read more

Initiated under the George W. Bush administration and expanded during the Obama years, S-Comm checks the fingerprints of arrestees at local jails against FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases for immigration problems. Since 2008, S-Comm has identified more than 918,000 possible problem cases—but has also ensnared citizens, as well as immigrants whose infractions are minor.   read more