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

Next year the LA City Council will vote on a plan to prohibit circuses from using elephants in shows. Pushed by animal rights advocates, the ban would mostly affect The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which has been bringing Asian elephants to the city since 1919.   read more

Michelle Obama’s speech, in fact, was the highest of any given by a presidential nominee’s wife at a convention, according to Eric Ostermeier of Smart Politics. Her address was also higher than those given by her husband, President Barack Obama, during his the State of the Union speeches, all of which have rated at an 8th grade level.   read more

Sworn in as a board member on April 7, 2010, he was confirmed by the Senate on June 22, 2010, for a term ending on August 27, 2013. He left for private practice, co-founding the Buffalo, New York, law firm of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux, where he practiced union and plaintiff side labor and employment law from January 2002 to April 2010.   read more

By December 31, Congress must adopt a new five-year farm bill that includes addressing milk subsidies because the current statute is expiring. If lawmakers don’t act, the government will be forced to operate under a 1949 dairy price subsidy that mandates the U.S. Department of Agriculture to purchase milk at inflated prices. That could mean a doubling of milk prices in stores, from the current average of $3.60 to somewhere between $6 and $8 per gallon.   read more

According to “No Room at the Inn: Trends and Consequences of Closing Public Psychiatric Hospitals,” a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center, per capita state psychiatric bed populations plunged in 2010 to 14 beds per 100,000 population, identical to 1850, when the movement to treat seriously mentally ill persons in hospitals began. The number peaked at 300 beds per 100,000 in 1950, and has been declining ever since.   read more

Abbate tried to intimidate Obrycka into giving him the videotape, which she refused to do. Then, a city official who was friends with Abbate tried to bribe the victim by offering to pay for her medical bills, as long as she didn’t press charges. Abbate was initially charged with misdemeanor battery. But after Obrycka released the video to the media, the district attorney elevated the charge to aggravated battery. Abbate was convicted in June 2009.   read more

Almost 52% of households are now relying on cell phones for their day-to-day communications. Demographic groups most likely to use cell phones only included Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 (60.1%), renters (58.2%), Americans between the ages of 30 and 34 (55.1%), adults living in poverty (51.8%) and Hispanic adults (46.5%). An estimated 1.9% of adults have no phone at all.   read more

Hall has been a Republican for only nine years, after switching parties in 2004 to boost his chances of reelection after redistricting changed the makeup of his northeast Texas seat. He does not hold the record for the oldest person to serve in Congress. That distinction goes to another party switcher, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who left the Senate on January 3, 2003, at the age of 100.   read more

About 90% of all new mortgages are backed by the government, three times more than in 2006. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-controlled, semi-private housing giants, were saved with infusions of $187.5 billion of public funds starting in 2008, and now guarantee 69% of new mortgages, up from only 27% in 2006, while the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs back about 21% of mortgages, up from just 2.8% in 2006.   read more

The majority of the deportations (55%) involved individuals with criminal records, which represented another record, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Another 21% were repeat immigration violators. The total number of those deported in Obama’s four years in office has nearly matched all deportations during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.   read more

NHTSA officials say expanding the use of the data recorders in all new cars and trucks will help them better assess the cause of accidents. The boxes have heretofore recorded a vehicle’s speed, its location and total number of passengers at the time of an accident. There will now be a requirement that 15 types of data be recorded. Privacy advocates don’t want the data in the black boxes to be used by marketers.   read more

“Normally, the federal government is not in the business of preserving graffiti,” Alexandra Picavet, a Park Service spokeswoman, told The New York Times. “The water tower was the occupation’s most outwardly focused message to the world and it is an important part of the island’s history.” Alcatraz gets 1.4 million visitors per year.   read more

Sakineh Sarreshteh is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Daryoush Sarreshteh possessed a green card, although he had not been in the U.S. for three years, according to The Washington Post. In any event, CBP officials decided to interrogate the Sarreshtehs for five hours, during which they were shouted at in English—according to Sakineh—which neither understood. When the husband and wife were released, Daryoush Sarreshteh appeared shaken and crying.   read more

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was used two years ago to allow the government to indefinitely detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, has been approved again by the U.S. Senate. A group of Democrats and Republicans pushed for an amendment to the NDAA that would have prohibited the military from detaining American citizens on U.S. soil. But then a House-Senate conference committee led by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) removed the provision from the bill.   read more

Especially upsetting to some is the scene in ZD30 that shows an older prisoner indicating he’ll talk to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—and provide key intelligence that will ultimately lead to locating bin Laden—as long as his interrogators agree not to torture him anymore. This event as portrayed in the film didn’t happen in real life, despite Bigelow’s assertion that her film is a “journalistic account” of what took place to get the most hated terrorist in the world.   read more

The documents show that FBI agents began spying on Occupy organizers as early as August 2011, a month before demonstrators camped out in—and were eventually evicted from—Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, site of the movement’s public birthplace. In one memo, an FBI agent expressed concern that the Occupy movement could become “an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction.”   read more