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

Keene, New Hampshire (population: 23,000), which has experienced three homicides in the last thirteen years, used $285,933 in federal funds to buy a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle, which it took possession of on November 20. Keene Police Captain Brian Costa defended the acquisition by saying, “It’s an armored vehicle, not an armed vehicle and there's a big difference.”   read more

Companies like Medtronic, which make defibrillator implants for adjusting a person’s heartbeat, provide information collected from these devices to doctors, but not to patients. The only way a patient can obtain the data about their own heart functions is through their physician. Medtronic is considering selling the aggregate data collected from the implants to health systems or insurance companies.   read more

In a notice to industry, the State Department recently solicited bids from companies to help the agency operate its fleet of more than 400 aircraft. Among the duties that a contractor will have to perform are providing pilots and support “for drug interdiction missions such as crop spraying, and the transport of personnel and cargo,” according to the State Department’s announcement.   read more

The No. 1 most looked up word on Merriam-Webster.com was socialism. No. 2 on the list was capitalism. The rest of the list consisted of touché, bigot, marriage, democracy, professionalism, globalization, malarkey, schadenfreude and meme.   read more

Kaitlyn Samuels, 15, was born with a rare neurological disorder similar to cerebral palsy that, without effective physical therapy, will eventually result in her own body crushing her internal organs, resulting in death. Spending twice a week atop a horse proved effective for Kaitlyn, as the riding helped stretch her muscles and straighten her spine. Hippotherapy is covered by Medicaid.   read more

The U.S. Senate this week took up the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a United Nations treaty that was inspired by the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark law adopted in 1990. But in order to ratify the convention, 67 senators were needed to vote for it. Only 61 did, after a block of Republicans refused to endorse the treaty that they claimed would jeopardize American sovereignty.   read more

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism also reported that 1,168 armed drone strikes, which the Pentagon refers to as “kinetic events,” were launched during the last five years in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq combined. Meanwhile, the CIA has launched 338 drone attacks in Pakistan. Although the United Kingdom releases the details of non-combatants killed by its drone strikes, the United States does not.   read more

"Iraq accounts for about a third of all terrorist deaths over the last decade, and Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan account for over 50 percent of fatalities,” Killelea added. International terrorists have caused fatal attacks in 29 countries. The United States is not included in this total because all of the deadly terrorist attacks committed inside the country since 2001 have been carried out by Americans.   read more

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania studied 400 healthy people and did not find a single person whose body was resistant to aspirin. But they did find that the coating on the pills that is meant to help protect the stomach might interfere with the body’s ability to absorb the aspirin.   read more

“Still, it is important to note that the 33% of all employed Americans preferring to work for government is nearly double the 17% who currently do work for government,” according to Lydia Saad at Gallup.   read more

Following this year’s election, Public Policy Polling (PPP) asked voters if the controversial group ACORN stole the election from Mitt Romney. Among Republicans, 49% said “yes.” What’s most remarkable about this opinion is that ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, filed for bankruptcy and disbanded in 2010 after GOP lawmakers in the U.S. House voted to end all federal support for the group.   read more

A new KIDS COUNT® report (pdf) from The Annie E. Casey Foundation says youth employment is at its lowest level since World War II, with nearly 6.5 million teenagers and young adults unemployed and not in school. Nationwide, only 26% of Americans aged 16 to 19 are employed; while 61% aged 20 to 24 have jobs.   read more

The Navy is developing an underwater drone shaped like a torpedo that can do many of the same tasks performed by dolphins. Once available, the drones can be built in much less time that it takes to train mammals, about seven years. By 2017, many of the Navy’s 80 dolphins will be reassigned to other jobs. Sea lion jobs are safe for now.   read more

The judge insisted the First Amendment ensures the right of priests and ministers to perform marriages. If CFI wants to marry people, it must register itself as a religious organization, according to Barker’s ruling. “If we would declare ourselves a religion, then we could do it,” Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director for the Indiana CFI chapter, told the Indianapolis Star. “But we’re very adamant we’re not a religion.”   read more

The Yale team says 154 Vietnam-era veterans petitioned the U.S. Army to upgrade discharges because of PTSD from 2003 to 2012, but that only two were successful. The Army Board of Corrections for Military Records, meanwhile, has been more generous in granting upgrades, at a rate of nearly 50%, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. They also claim that more than 250,000 Vietnam vets were discharged under other-than-honorable conditions, and that thousands of those probably had PTSD.   read more

The 2012 School Violence Prevention Act, which took effect December 1, makes it a misdemeanor for students to create false profiles for teachers, sign them up for Internet porn or post their images and private information on the Web. The law also prohibits any statement, “whether true or false,” which might provoke a third party to harass a teacher or administrator.   read more