Rumors are spreading that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote 5-4 to rule that a U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for anything he does while he is president. Some Democrats are suggesting that Joe Biden bring a gun to his first debate with Donald Trump. If he shoots Trump, he would be immune, but if Trump shoots Biden he would be prosecuted because he is not a sitting president.   read more

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has an idea for making colleges cheaper — ditch the instructors and start playing online videos for students. "Why do you have to keep paying different lecturers to teach the same course? You get one solid lecturer and put it up online," Johnson said.   read more

The drier, warmer autumn weather that's becoming more common due to climate change may extend summer smog well into the fall in the Southeastern U.S. in the years ahead, according to a study published on Monday. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences also suggests a culprit for the smog that many people might not expect: It's the lush woodlands that give much of the South a lovely green canopy.   read more

Two weeks ago, members of the Dakota, Lakota and Yankton Sioux set up tipis in camps on a tributary of the Missouri River to fight a crude oil pipeline they fear will poison the Missouri River. For the moment, they have stood off the pipeline company and the Army Corps of Engineers. Two hearings are set in North Dakota Federal Court this week: on Wednesday, the court will consider the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's July 27 lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers.   read more

African-American women earned gold medals in 15 events (including participation in team sports) at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. If they had been a nation, they would have been in sixth place. This despite with a population of about 19.6 million, they would be only the 67th most populous nation in the world.   read more

The nation’s oldest and newest black civil rights organizations are calling for a moratorium on charter schools. In separate conventions over the past month, the NAACP and the Movement for Black Lives passed resolutions declaring that charter schools have exacerbated segregation. They argue that the closing of traditional schools as students migrate to charters has disproportionately disrupted black communities.   read more

An investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’ inquiry also found that Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.   read more

New York prosecutors attempting to shore up a case against an accused baby killer have subpoenaed a reporter the suspect spoke to. The action will test the state’s press shielding law, which tends to side more heavily with confidential sourcing versus named sourcing. “This is all a show to make it look like the police have credibility and are not the thugs they are when they are doing these interrogations,” attorney Michael Croce said.   read more

New Illinois rules, signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner this month, extend sexual harassment protections as well as minimum-wage pay and a guaranteed one day off in a seven-day work week to the domestic workforce, which is mostly female and immigrant heavy. Six other states have similar laws, but Illinois is now the first in the Midwest and advocates say they hope to expand their efforts into the southern states.   read more

Until recently, only nonprofits were allowed to run programs like these. But a year ago, the government flipped the switch, opening the program to for-profit companies as well, ending one of the last remaining holdouts to commercialism in health care. The hope is that the profit motive will expand the services faster. Hanging over all the promise, though, is the question of whether for-profit companies are well-suited to this line of work, long the province of nonprofit do-gooders.   read more

Every week in immigration courts around the country, thousands of children act as their own lawyers, pleading for asylum or other type of relief in a legal system they do not understand. Suspected killers, kidnappers and others facing federal felony charges, no matter their ages, are entitled to court-appointed lawyers if they cannot afford them. But children accused of violating immigration laws, a civil offense, do not have the same right.   read more

The National Marine Fisheries Service has authorized the Navy to continue harming protected marine mammals with low frequency sonar, despite a court ruling against the practice. The notices for the four Letters of Authorization, published Thursday, are surprising in that the agency has virtually ignored the July 15 U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision that the Navy’s peacetime use of sonar is not in compliance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act   read more

The prosecution of current and former state of Michigan employees for their role in Flint’s lead-contaminated water crisis likely will face an early test over whether one of the most serious charges can even be levied against the middle- and lower-level government officials. All eight workers charged so far face a misconduct in office charge. But there is no statute clearly defining official misconduct.   read more

A federal judge Friday referred Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his second-in-command for criminal prosecution, finding that they ignored and misrepresented to subordinates court orders designed to keep the sheriff’s office from racially profiling Latinos. The referral does not mean the sheriff will face criminal charges; it is up to federal prosecutors to decide whether to pursue the case.   read more

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 7-2 on Friday to put Jeffery Wood’s execution on hold. Wood, 43, was scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday. Wood and his friend Daniel Reneau were convicted in the shooting death of a 31-year-old store clerk during a robbery. Wood waited in a car while Reneau shot the clerk in the face. Wood was convicted of capital murder under what’s known as the Texas law of parties, which makes a participant in a capital murder case equally culpable.   read more

For both presidents Bush and Obama, it has meant saying yes to any initiative that could be sold as plausible protection against a future attack. This approach has remained in place even as those who commit acts of terrorism have shifted in recent years. Despite the billions wasted on homeland defense, no one ever figured out how to detect bio-attacks. BioWatch, which was obsolete the day it was put into use, produced 149 false alarms by 2014, none of which were linked to an attack or threat.   read more

An average of 50 children a day end up in hospital emergency rooms because of stroller or baby carrier accidents, and it appears far more of them are suffering brain injuries than previously believed. The data showed that the majority of the injuries occurred in children who were younger than 1 year old, and most of the injuries occurred when children fell from a stroller or carrier or when they tipped over. The head and face most commonly took the brunt of the falls.   read more