Trump said, “We need people to be afraid. Right now many Americans are surprised when protestors are killed, but they’ll get used to it.” Trump did add one suggestion: “Try not to kill white people. That gets too much attention. Stick to protestors of other colors.”   read more

It has been five years since the State Department had a permanent IG, leaving the office in the hands of deputy inspector general Harold W. Geisel. No other agency in the federal government has had an inspector general vacancy as long as the State Department has. The last State Department IG, Howard Krongard, resigned effective January 15, 2008, after allegations that he had blocked investigations into Iraq-related contract fraud and alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater Worldwide (now Academi).   read more

The FTC found that about 20% of consumers have an error on at least one of their three credit reports. The consumer credit rating business is dominated by three players: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Federal regulators also found that 5% of consumers have credit-report errors that could result in them having to pay more for financial products, such as auto loans and insurance.   read more

Navy Captain Thomas J. Welsh, Guantánamo’s staff judge advocate, told The Washington Post that the microphones were placed inside devices that look like smoke detectors in rooms where attorney-client meetings take place. In addition, Maurice Elkins, director of courtroom technology at the base, testified that 32 mikes were used to monitor legal hearings even when public microphones were muted.   read more

Perhaps the most high-profile concern in this arena is President Obama’s nomination of Mary Jo White to become the new SEC chief. During her most recent job at the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, White’s clients included JPMorgan Chase, General Electric, Verizon Communications, former Bank of America chief executive Kenneth Lewis, and Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member convicted of insider trading.   read more

Of the 12,000 students taken from school to jail by police in 2012, 67% were accused of misdemeanors, such as disorderly conduct. Oftentimes, disorderly conduct amounts to little more than a student disobeying a teacher’s order to put away a cell phone or stop talking in class. It was also found that African-American and disabled students were arrested disproportionately in number.   read more

The researchers said two organizations most identified with the modern tea party, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, received large amounts of money from Big Tobacco. In fact, before they became separate organizations, they were part of a single entity called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was co-founded in the 1980s by billionaire David Koch.   read more

The community recently gained the distinction of being the most impoverished in the United States, with 42% of its population living in poverty. The city also suffers from 18.6% unemployment. In addition to its terrible economic situation, Camden was listed as the “most dangerous” urban setting in the country by CQ Press. Last year, 67 murders occurred in the city of 77,000. It also had the highest rate of rape and, perhaps not surprisingly, robbery.   read more

Bowman was accused by Monsanto of infringing on its rights regarding its Roundup Ready soybean seeds, which were engineered to withstand its Roundup herbicide. The 75-year-old farmer never bought Monsanto’s seeds. But he did find soybean seeds in a local grain elevator used for feed and then planted them. Monsanto insists that regardless of where or how Bowman got the seeds, he owes the company for using them. It sued him in district court and won an $84,456 settlement.   read more

Among the useful tools exploited by Riot are the encoding of latitude and longitude embedded in photos taken by Smartphones and GPS locations posted on Foursquare. Raytheon has received approval from the U.S. government to export the software. Put in the hands of dictatorships, Riot could become what some have dubbed the “Google for spies” and others have characterized as “stalking technology.”   read more

State law includes a “failure to vacate” statute that allows landlords to demand police evict renters for falling behind on their rent without local prosecutors first investigating the matter. Once in court, tenants are not allowed to enter evidence, for example that they withheld rent in order to persuade a landlord to make needed repairs. Many landlord-friendly, tenant-unlikely provisions were added to Arkansas law with passage of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 2007.   read more

New wind farms can supply electricity at a cost of AU$80 per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to AU$143/MWh for new coal-fired power plants and AU$116/MWh for new gas-fired generation, according to research by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The calculations included the cost of carbon emissions. But even without a carbon price, wind energy still was 14% cheaper than new coal plants and 18% cheaper than new gas plants.   read more

Government inspectors reported unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the prison, including prisoners having to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination. The inspectors also reported padlocked fire exits, likely falsification of food service records and a failure to monitor “pill call” when prisoners receive medications. The prison has experienced a 20% turnover among staff and a 21% increase in violent attacks since CCA took over.   read more

Americans have no Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures if they happen to be within 100 miles of the border, according to the “Executive Summary” of a still-secret report by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The entire populations of Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, DC, and Michigan—live in this “Constitution free” zone.   read more

U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who represents the El Paso area in Congress, bolstered Napolitano’s remarks. “The fact is, the border has never been more secure—whether measured in the $18 billion spent annually on border security, the 22,000 boots on the ground, the record number of criminal deportations in the past four years, or the record-low immigrant apprehensions this past year,” O’Rourke said.   read more

If it weren’t a religious institution, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles might be in a heap of legal trouble for taking $115 million from a cemetery maintenance account to pay clergy sex abuse settlements. The money represented 88% of the perpetual care fund when the church tapped it in 2007 after signing over $660 million to victims of priest molestation.   read more

The U.S. “War on Terror,” specifically the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have exacted a frightening toll on American military personnel the past eleven years. More than 50,000 Americans have been wounded in action and 6,656 have died. More than 1,700 troops have lost one or more limbs, almost 130,000 have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more than 253,000 have experienced some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI).   read more