According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

Tyler Harber was charged with using his role as the campaign manager for Chris Perkins, a Virginia Republican running for Congress, to steer help from the super PAC National Republican Victory Fund. Harber first solicited a large political contribution from New York real estate developer Cary Fields, but instead of having Fields give the money to Perkins, Harber told Fields to give it to the super PAC.   read more

The researchers offered some reasons why the benches tend to be populated with conservatives. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Federalist Society—a right-wing legal organization—started setting up on the campuses of American law schools. That effort, Joanna Penn wrote at the Journalist’s Resource, “may be paying off: Graduates of elite law schools who went on to become judges are far more likely to be conservative than their peers.”   read more

The crisis drew calls for Haarde’s resignation and he left office in January 2009, ostensibly for treatment for esophageal cancer. He was subsequently indicted for being negligent in his handling of the banking crisis. In April 2012, he was found not guilty of all but one charge—failing to keep his cabinet informed of developments—for which no penalty was levied. Haarde has appealed that conviction.   read more

Pham Quang Vinh, a longtime member of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), took over as his nation’s ambassador to the United States on November 11, 2014. It’s the first ambassadorial posting for Pham. In 2008 Pham was made an assistant minister for foreign affairs and in 2011 was made deputy minister for South Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. He was also Vietnam’s senior representative to ASEAN.   read more

In 78 published papers on clinical trials with which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found objectionable conditions or practices significant enough to warrant regulatory action, only three mentioned problems with the trials. The violations included researchers falsifying data and occurrences where clinical trial participants should have been ruled ineligible.   read more

The Islamic State has been looting ancient sites in Syria and Iraq, taking antiquities from Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi heritage sites and selling them on the black market. The thefts have generated enough money that they have become the second most important source of revenue for IS after petroleum sales   read more

Last year, U.S. defense spending registered $581 billion. The next closest spender on the military was China … at $129 billion. Third on the list was Saudi Arabia at $81 million. Russia spent $70 billion on defense in 2014, one-eighth of the U.S. expenditures.   read more

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) looked at the doctored stats put out by the Air Force as well as other numbers on the A-10’s performance. The numbers the Air Force released indicated the plane, nicknamed the Warthog, had killed more civilians and U.S. troops than any other aircraft in service. But POGO said the ratio of missions flown to number of civilians and soldiers killed showed the Warthog actually had one of the lowest rates of killing people.   read more

The jail population average, which has skyrocketed since 1983 when the number was 224,000, has grown even though violent crime has decreased by nearly 50% during this span and property crime has fallen by 40%. Nearly 75% of those in jail are there for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses.   read more

The real force behind the lawsuit is a group of conservative lawyers and think tanks bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act. They include the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Former CEI chairman Michael Greve has reportedly described Obamacare as a “bastard” that “has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene.” If the four plaintiffs win their case, up to 13 million Americans could lose their health insurance.   read more

Commission executive director Kendra Montgomery proudly says: “We’re the only state that has a government agency that is neutral to investigate these cases." Operating since 2006, the commission has received 1,642 claims, which led to eight exonerations so far. Montgomery says she is regularly contacted by officials from other states who want to use the North Carolina commission as a model for such an agency in their own states. Lack of funding is usually what prevents that from happening.   read more

Al Shibh told the judge: “The problem is I cannot trust him because he was working at the black site with the CIA." Walid bin Attash was reportedly “visibly shaken” by the sight of Al-Nazer in the courtroom, there to supposedly help the defense team. Defense attorney Cheryl Bormann wondered if his presence was deliberate on the part of the U.S. government, saying it was either “the biggest coincidence ever” or “part of the pattern of the infiltration of defense teams.”   read more

The U.S. Postal Service has a problem with “rude” employees manning their customer service windows. Its inspector general said the agency has so many inconsiderate workers that, by driving away unhappy customers, it could lose nearly $300 million in fiscal 2015. The report states that USPS’ negative customer feedback went up 9% from FY 2012 to FY 2013, and that 20% of customers said they were treated “worse than other retailers” at their post office.   read more

The new report showed governments in general increased their requests by 40% compared to their previous report. “Providing this insight is simply the right thing to do, especially in an age of increasing concerns about government surveillance,” said Twitter's Jeremy Kessel. After the U.S., the government filing the most requests was Turkey, with 356, followed by Japan with 288. Twitter, however, did not comply with any of Turkey’s requests for user data.   read more

About a dozen protesters in Idaho, Oregon and Washington have received calls from FBI agents saying they are seeking information about the protests. An attorney helping the demonstrators said the bureau appears to be keeping an eye on those opposed to the extraction of the toxic oil and the controversial pipeline project. A member of one protest organization said it was unacceptable what the FBI was doing since all they’re doing is practicing civil disobedience.   read more

In 2014, Oklahoma experienced 585 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher. That’s more than the state had had in the past 35 years combined. Not that leaders in Texas or Oklahoma—who are almost exclusively Republican—want to admit that fracking is behind the quakes. GOP Governor Mary Fallin has refused so far to admit that fracking is the cause. But professor Todd Halihan says there is no question of the relationship between fracking wells and the recent seismic activity in that state.   read more