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

No wonder states like California and others experienced a boom in prison construction beginning in the 1980s.   According to statistics compiled by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to prison reform, the total number of people in j...   read more

In what could become an important legal precedent, a Colorado judge has ruled that the spraying of agricultural pesticides can be considered a form of trespassing if it impacts neighbors.   Delta County District Court Judge Charles Greenacre r...   read more

Canines used by police to sniff out drugs and explosives may not be as reliable as their law enforcement masters claim.   Two Nevada Highway Patrol K-9 troopers and a consultant are suing Las Vegas’ police department, arguing that the dogs’ ha...   read more

An obscure panel of judges who rule over copyright matters has had their powers curtailed by a federal appellate court.   After hearing a lawsuit from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting Systems Inc., which complained about a decision by the Copy...   read more

The more a state needs help with its uninsured, the more likely its (Republican) leader opposes the federal healthcare reform law.   According to the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think tank, 14 of the 19 states with the highest rat...   read more

Despite its “strong” efforts to counter money laundering, Bank of America allowed the largest drug cartel in Mexico to use its accounts to invest in U.S. horse racing.   José Treviño Morales, the older brother of the No. 2 man in the notorious...   read more

Genetically-modified seeds could become more prevalent in American fields if legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law allowing farmers to bypass federal environmental protections.   Contained within a large agricultural app...   read more

In between routing calls and text messages, telecom companies spend considerable time each day handling demands from law enforcement seeking phone and other records of customers.   In fact, businesses like AT&T and Sprint collectively received...   read more

If the United States’ war on drugs was succeeding, the prices of narcotics should be going up. After all, a reduction in the supply of drugs—the main objective of the government’s efforts—should result in less availability and thus a higher price ...   read more

More than 40 years since organic foods began as mom-and-pop operations, the multi-billion dollar movement that has transformed into Big Organic has lost much of its “organic” quality.   The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which, as a pr...   read more

Officials in Florida concealed a federal health report warning of a serious tuberculosis outbreak, while at the same time Governor Rick Scott approved the closure of a hospital that specialized in caring for TB cases.   The Centers for Disease C...   read more

For centuries prospectors panned for gold and silver. Today, those seeking precious metals need only tear apart used computers and other electronics.   The market today for PCs, cell phones, tablets, and other electronics consumes an enormous am...   read more

Pennsylvania has adopted legislation intended to help relatives of dead farmers from having to sell off farms they inherit just to pay taxes owed.   The new law, approved overwhelmingly by the state legislature in bipartisan votes, exempts adult...   read more

A growing number of United States citizens have been wrongfully detained under a government program intended to detect undocumented immigrants who are arrested by local police–and now one of them is fighting back.   Chicago-area resident James...   read more

In the ongoing fight between the energy companies that want to drill for natural gas via hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and the environmental activists warning of the technology’s dangers, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania state legisl...   read more

The June unemployment data released by the Department of Labor last week showed a disturbing rise in unemployment among African-Americans, from 13.6% to 14.4%, nearly double the rate for the white population, which was unchanged at 7.4%, and hig...   read more