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

It’s been a hard year for Montana’s longstanding election laws. In June the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4, struck down the state’s 100-year-old law prohibiting corporations from contributing to political candidates and committees. Now the Montana Republican Party has successfully challenged a 77-year-old state law that prevented partisan endorsements of judges running for election.   read more

A top Department of Justice official publicly defended the increasing use of deferred-prosecution agreements for white-collar criminals. These agreements allow corporations and their executives who have committed fraud to avoid criminal charges in exchange for admitting wrongdoing and paying fines. Critics of deferred prosecution claim that in practice it is just an easy for corporate executives to avoid personal responsibility for the actions of the companies they run.   read more

One nongovernmental assessment, from the nonpartisan Stimson Center, projected that Washington might need to allocate $352 billion over 10 years to keep the nuclear arsenal of 5,113 warheads working effectively in the coming decades. This includes an estimated $66 billion just to modernize the buildings and laboratories where the upgrades would take place.   read more

The biggest culprit in the problem, accounting for $6.6 billion, is a practice known as “upcoding.” In upcoding, the doctors and hospitals bill for a visit or procedure that is higher than the one they performed, a violation that is difficult to monitor considering that Medicare deals with an average of one million billings a day.   read more

The Obama administration warned last week that the government could lose funding to protect diplomats come January. The money, $129 million a year, would be slashed from the State Department budget as a result of automatic reductions set to take effect next year if Republicans and Democrats in Congress don’t agree on a deficit reduction plan.   read more

On Monday the Board of Pardons rejected Williams’ plea for clemency. The five-member board voted 3-2 in favor of clemency, but a state law required a unanimous vote. Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley voted against clemency, as did corrections expert Harris Gubernick. The three votes in favor were cast by Attorney General Linda L. Kelly; victim representative Louise B. Williams; and psychologist Russell A. Walsh.   read more

Specifically, BARK claims that private companies charge an $8 parking fee at Rose Canyon Lake in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona; that in Oregon, a private company charged for use of the Mt. Hood National Forest, “including the ‘Big Eddy’ day-use area, where visitors have traditionally parked to swim in the Clackamas River free of charge;” and that “the concessionaire now charges $5 per person to soak in Bagby Hot Springs, regardless of how they arrive.”   read more

“To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State's interest is ‘compelling’–permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to become a law unto himself,’ contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense." The opinion was written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.   read more

A three-member panel of the 9th Circuit appeals court sharply chastised the office of the U.S. attorney in San Diego on Friday for deporting a witness whose testimony could have weakened its alien-smuggling case against Jonathan Leal-Del Carmen. A jury in San Diego convicted him of three counts of alien-smuggling but acquitted him of doing so for profit.   read more

Five new detention facilities were opened during the five years under study, but the 7% increase in capacity wasn’t enough to accommodate the 9.5% rise in the federal prison population. Overcrowding was worst in high security prisons. By the end of 2011, federal prisons held 177,934 inmates, 165,595 of whom were men. Of the total, 48% of inmates were serving sentences for drug-related offenses.   read more

Because of the archaic voting system used in the United States, voters do not actually vote for a candidate, but for a slate of state electors who are pledged to vote for that candidate if he or she wins the state. In most states, these electors are not legally required to vote for the candidate who won the state. In fact, there have been 87 instances in which an elector refused to vote for the presidential or vice-presidential candidate he or she was supposed to.   read more

Organic boosters also noted that, despite the headlines that accompanied the release of the results, the Stanford study actually substantiated one of the advantages of consuming organic food, specifically that it can lead to an 81% reduction in exposure to toxic and carcinogenic agrichemicals.   read more

Since August 2010, Sheriff Babeu has requisitioned more than $7 million worth for his county, which is located between Phoenix and Tucson in south-central Arizona. Sheriff Babeu and his supporters claim there was no rule against lending the equipment, and that the Sheriff’s office received verbal approval for the practice it calls widespread.   read more

75 students from nearby Coconut Palm Elementary School in Miramar arrived at the local Wal-Mart to perform “God Bless America” in a tribute to the September 11, 2001, victims, only to be rebuffed by store management, who called them a “liability” and called the police to report a mob.   read more

About 100 people from El Alberto (out of a population of about 830) are employed by the Caminata Nocturna (Night Walk), which offers the four-hour, 7.5-mile journey that simulates the ordeal of unauthorized entry onto American soil, including physically demanding activities like running from the authorities, avoiding cactus plants and crawling under barbed wire fences.   read more

Nominated by President Obama on July 10 to be the next ambassador to Poland, Mull was expelled by the communist government there in 1986. He did such a good job of reporting on Solidarity activities that the Polish government accused him of espionage and ordered him to leave the country three weeks before his term was up; he stayed and left on schedule.   read more