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

The South Dakota-based meat processor wants $1.2 billion in damages from the network, which was named a defendant along with reporter Diane Sawyer and Gerald Zirnstein, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) microbiologist who coined the term pink slime in 2002. Beef Products chose ABC to sue because of its “sustained, concerted, long-duration attack.”   read more

Officials said the public will be able to visit the archives and access its collections of documents, but by appointment only. Even these appointments will be limited because staff will also be reduced.   read more

Stephanie Kirschner and Brad Kane claim Eden Memorial Park did not ask their permission to relocate the ashes of Jeannine Kane, who died in 1979. They say in their lawsuit the move was motivated entirely by money, believing the spot adjacent to the famous comedian Marx could be sold to the highest bidder.   read more

Walter E. North has spent his career at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Most recently, North served as USAID mission director in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 2007 to 2011, and as USAID mission director in Cairo, Egypt, from 2011 to 2012.   read more

"This Court rejects the Government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention, and have as their sole remedy a habeas petition adjudicated by a single decision-maker.”   read more

During a February speech to the Human Rights Campaign Gala, Sebelius advocated for the election of Walter Dalton, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, to the governorship. She also told the audience it was important to reelect President Barack Obama in November. Sebelius appeared at the event in her official capacity as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Under federal law (the Hatch Act), administration officials are prohibited from making “extemporaneous partisan remarks.”   read more

Prior to the Bush administration’s establishment of warrantless wiretapping, such spying had to be authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court now has been relegated to largely rubber-stamping eavesdropping missions on American communications. Republicans were largely responsible for the bill’s passage. However, not all GOP lawmakers approved it.   read more

Of the 90 arrests, the majority were for DUI and domestic violence arrests. Others, though, were charged with crimes such as possessing child pornography, sexual assault and murder. The newspaper compared the DC police to their counterparts in Philadelphia. So far in 2012, 18 DC officers have wound up behind bars. In Philadelphia, only six out of 6,600 were arrested this year.   read more

“Avoiding annoyance is never a proper basis on which to curtail protected speech,” wrote Judge Joel Flaum for the panel. “We cannot conceive of an annoying behavior, however annoying it may be, that could constitutionally draw as a remedy dispersing others engaged in protected speech.”   read more

Since 2004, DHS has spent about $100 million a year sending undocumented Mexicans by plane to Mexico City. It used aircraft to return immigrants a thousand miles away with the hope that the distance would dissuade them from traveling all the way back north to the border. By this summer, however, the Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were picking up fewer illegal immigrants—to the point where officials had trouble filling up flights.   read more

“The report also sheds light on the failure of the George W. Bush administration, in the pursuit of suspects behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, to distinguish between Islamists who were in fact targeting the United States and those who may simply have been engaged in armed opposition against their own repressive regimes."   read more

Judge Peter D. Lichtman said at the time that $200 million was the most he could award under the law, implying he would have ordered a higher amount were it not for the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997, which capped train accident settlements at $200 million. The Act also did not allow for adjustments for inflation, which has risen 40% since 1997.   read more

As a result of his whistleblowing, the IRS was able to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from various individuals. UBS, meanwhile, paid $780 million to the U.S. government to avoid criminal prosecution and turned over account information for more than 4,500 Americans.   read more

But three years into his confinement at Guantánamo, the Department of Defense concluded Latif was not a threat and should be released. The military came to the same conclusion again in 2006 and 2008. A federal judge ordered Latif’s release in 2010, but an appeals court overturned the ruling the following year. Both the Bush and Obama administrations were reluctant to free Latif and others from Yemen, citing the country’s poor security conditions for keeping them locked up.   read more

Sever’s illegal voting was discovered during GOP Governor Rick Scott’s expensive effort to identify non-citizens on voting rolls by examining the state motor vehicle database. Out of 180,000 potential liars, the search turned up one name, Sever’s, who was referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). The FDLE is said to be investigating six more cases of suspected voter fraud.   read more

Naval officials said the work and the training would not pose a significant risk to the whales, which number only 313. Judge Lisa Wood acknowledged that the North Atlantic right whale is “the world's most critically endangered large whale species and one of the world's most endangered mammals.” . However, Judge Wood concluded that the Navy properly analyzed “marine mammal densities and bottom habitat surveys” while performing its environmental impact statement.   read more