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

Following protests in Northern California’s Bay Area against an Obama administration crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, the Los Angeles City Council this week voted to ban most such shops.   The unanimous decision was supported by th...   read more

Florida’s “stand your ground” law has been a popular defense for convicted, oftentimes-violent criminals who have used it after committing other crimes.   The Tampa Bay Times reviewed more than 100 “stand your ground” cases that involved a fatal...   read more

Guardians of U.S. government secrets are not part of some small circle of chosen officials. Rather, they are part of a very large one.   Individuals in possession of a security clearance from Washington now total more than 4.8 million, a new hig...   read more

Last year’s bickering between House Republicans and President Barack Obama over raising the nation’s debt limit was indeed costly, and not just because it resulted in the government borrowing even more money to keep Washington going.   By taking...   read more

Senior officials in the Afghanistan government have been named in a special human rights report detailing atrocities that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.   Compiled over six years, “Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan Since 1978” accuses 500 ...   read more

Americans may soon be getting checks in the mail, and they will have the federal healthcare reform law to thank.   One key, but little known provision of the Affordable Care Act, has to do with the medical loss ratio (MLR) and insurance companie...   read more

If you combined the economies of the United States and Japan, you would have the dollar equivalent of the amount of money being stashed away by the super-rich of the world in offshore tax havens.   A new report from the Tax Justice Network found...   read more

Chad Spurley, convicted of manslaughter while driving drunk, won’t be attending his mother’s funeral, because he’s still in prison for the crime. This fact has upset, of all people, the mother of Spurley’s victim.   Davi Dohm, 36, of Madison, Wi...   read more

Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines … they all were represented last weekend in San Diego’s annual gay pride parade. The presence of hundreds of military personnel—in uniform—marked the first time gay service members had marched in such an event anywhe...   read more

Doctors who sell medications out of their offices are adding millions of dollars a year to the country’s ballooning healthcare bill.   With the help of middlemen and drug distributors, physicians have opened up mini pharmacies allowing them to d...   read more

House Republicans are attempting to block states’ ability to impose tough animal-welfare laws through a federal agricultural bill.   The Protect Interstate Commerce Act, recently approved by the House Committee on Agriculture, would prevent stat...   read more

Americans want a Peace Dividend, but their leaders won’t give it to them. Despite multiple polls showing broad support for cuts in U.S. defense spending, a sort of anti-democratic bipartisanship has emerged in Washington, where both Republicans an...   read more

 The office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) gutted a much-publicized ethics law earlier this year by creating a huge loophole for family members, although the Congressman insists the change was inadvertent and promises to fix it....   read more

Residents of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, have fought the building of a new mosque for more than two years, during which opponents have said Muslims are a threat to American democracy.   When the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which has been operat...   read more

 Banking representatives have dominated meetings with federal regulators charged with implementing the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, leaving reform advocates with considerably less time to make their case.   Large ba...   read more

The Obama administration violated the U.S. Constitution last year when it ordered airstrikes that killed three Americans in Yemen, according to a lawsuit brought by family members of those who died.   The drone attacks launched by the Central In...   read more