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

In March 2010 Petraeus testified to the Senate that the Taliban’s momentum had been stopped in much of Afghanistan, a statement that bore no relation to reality. He also told The Wall Street Journal that Taliban attacks involving roadside bombs had “flattened,” when Pentagon statistics showed that they had actually doubled in the previous year.   read more

Morell served as a presidential briefer, i.e., chief of the staff who presents the President’s Daily Brief, for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and he was with President Bush on September 11, 2001. After serving as executive assistant to CIA Director George J. Tenet, from 2003 to 2006, during which time the CIA was engaged in torture, Morell took a secret assignment overseas, including in London, UK.   read more

The new laws transcend what 17 states previously have done by legalizing the drug only for medical use. The Obama administration quietly made it clear before the election that it would not allow any state to sanction recreational marijuana. However, officials were careful not to make too much noise about the initiatives, especially in swing state Colorado.   read more

The Sunlight Foundation determined that the Political Victory Fund, despite its victories, actually got less than a 1% return on its investment helping or hindering candidates for office because it lost most of the big races it invested in. In the biggest race of the year, the NRA allocated $7.4 million opposing President Barack Obama, and another $1.9 million supporting Mitt Romney.   read more

two years later, the state’s rate was down, to 2.62, according to the latest assessment from the Violence Policy Center. But that rate still represented the highest in the U.S., with the national average calculated at 1.22. Other states ranking high in 2010 for female murders at the hands of men included South Carolina (1.94), Tennessee (1.91), Louisiana (1.86) and Virginia (1.77). Statistics for Florida were not available and data from Illinois were incomplete.   read more

As the military switched from paper-based recordkeeping to computer-based during the Gulf War era (1990–1991), Army units failed to keep and preserve adequate records, even after the Army introduced a centralized report collection system. Many units ignore the new system, and military culture, which had celebrated near-obsessive recordkeeping for 200 years, began to devalue the entire enterprise. In addition, competing bureaucracies blamed one another.   read more

The change was brought about by a 3.1% increase in exports to $187 billion, an all-time high. Sales of commercial aircraft, heavy machinery and farm goods, especially soybeans, helped fuel the rise. Another key factor was a $2.2 billion boost in oil exports, spearheaded by the production of natural gas by fracking (hydraulic fracturing).   read more

The study found that the presence of a Hispanic police chief correlates with a reduction in the intensity of immigration enforcement, suggesting that the political power associated with a local Latino community being able to win the appointment of a Hispanic chief leads as well to more lenient immigration enforcement, the burdens of which tend to fall upon Latinos regardless of their legal status.   read more

The Air Force had lobbied for months to have the material labeled as naturally-occurring waste in order to qualify for disposal at Clean Harbors’ Buttonwillow landfill in the Bakersfield-area. The residue is believed to be from cleanup efforts related to radioactive paint used more than 50 years ago on glow-in-the-dark dials and gauges.   read more

Despite the decreasing coverage of the war in Afghanistan, there are still about 68,000 U.S. troops in the country and 280 Americans died there during the first ten months of 2012. The United States this year has launched more drone strikes than at any other time in the 11-year conflict.   read more

Rick Tyler, a top adviser to Todd Akin’s failed Missouri Senate campaign, called Crossroads’ efforts “a colossal failure,” and said that Rove “has a lot of explaining to do, mostly to his donors. I don’t think donors are ever going to invest in that level again because it turns out that the architect didn’t know what he was talking about,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.   read more

Every dollar spent on policing in Sunnyvale, California (pop.: 140,095) yields only 20 cents in crime reduction benefits, while every dollar spent on policing in Gary, Indiana (pop.: 80,294) yields $14 in such benefits. Sunnyvale boasts low crime rates, while Gary has one of the nation’s highest crime rates. The authors also confirm a controversial finding made by previous investigators that police reduce violent crime more than property crime.   read more

James F. Hitselberger, a civilian linguist working for the U.S. Navy in Bahrain, was caught possessing classified documents. The government admits, however, that Hitselberger did not pass on the information to any foreign power. It accuses him of stealing additional classified materials dealing with Iran and Iraq and donating at least three of them, along with other papers, to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, which established a collection in his name.   read more

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” Broun further expressed his belief that the earth is only 9,000 years old, an opinion contradicted by both geology and archaeology, which have dated untold numbers of rocks and human-made objects as being millions of years old.   read more

New Jersey CVS supervisor Ryan Barna implored employees to “go out and make this happen this week and every week going forward.” Barna also provided pharmacists with helpful hints on how to respond if customers complain about the unauthorized refills. He recommended telling them that “we tried calling you several times this week on this past-due prescription” and that “I went ahead and filled it so it would be ready for you.”   read more

Katie McDonald wanted to vote, but between working nights at Christ Hospital as a patient care assistant, going to school at a local college and raising three kids, she just couldn’t find the time to get to the polling place. In Kentucky early voting is only allowed if a voter presents a valid excuse for being unavailable on Election Day. Unfortunately for the McDonalds, being a working mother who goes to school is not one of them.   read more