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

Only 17.8% of U.S. adults smoked last year, the CDC found. That’s the lowest rate since the government began keeping track of the behavior in 1965. The actual number of smokers in 2013 was 42.1 million. Despite fewer people smoking, the habit continues to be the leading cause of premature death in the country. Smoking kills 480,000 Americans each year and results in $289 billion in annual health costs and lost productivity.   read more

“In many respects, Applicant’s life in the U.S. parallels my own. He and I were brought to this great nation as young children by our hardworking immigrant parents," wrote Chief Justice Labarga. "[But while my parents were] defectors from a tyrannical communist regime [and] thus...received with open arms...[Applicant] is perceived to be a defector from poverty, is viewed negatively because his family sought an opportunity for economic prosperity."   read more

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which was already hamstrung by Congress’ mandate that it prefund future retirees’ health benefits and prohibition from closing some post offices, might soon have another roadblock in its way. This time, it would come from legislative inaction. The Senate is dragging its feet on confirming members of the USPS Board of Governors, which could mean that the agency will be unable to make any major decisions.   read more

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported only 27 law enforcement officers were killed by criminals last year. That figure is far smaller than any since before 1968. The 2012 number was 49. Except for 2011, when 72 were killed, the number has hovered between 41 and 58 since 2004 and had been trending down for many years. The high in recent decades was 134 police feloniously killed in 1973.   read more

The USDA spent taxpayer dollars on a study that says, “findings show that Americans purchase fast food as a means of saving time.” Seriously. Other discoveries made by researchers include: “Fast food purchasers have different eating patterns than others,” and “They are more likely to engage in eating while at work and while driving.”   read more

He said the nation needed to keep its police forces from turning into military units. But in the end President Obama is unwilling to slow down or stop the transfer of military gear to law enforcement agencies. Instead, he just wants to tweak the programs that help militarize the nation's police. “It is possible to constrain these programs with oversight, but it doesn’t seem like many people are really wanting to do it,” said Cato's Trevor Burris.   read more

At first aid groups weren’t targeted by insurgents. But that’s changed in part because of “increased use by the American government and other foreign donors of private aid contractors...which blurred the lines" between independent and government aid groups. Life for independent aid workers in Afghanistan started getting worse after the Afghan military and U.S. Special Forces began showing up at their health clinics, which raised suspicions among residents over the workers’ impartiality.   read more

Court findings showed that “potentially thousands of Georgians had their sentences illegally extended, and several of the named plaintiffs had been improperly hauled off to jail and/or subjected to electronic monitoring for alleged probation violations six years after their probation had ended for minor offenses like possession of marijuana and no proof of insurance.” Alabama Judge Hub Harrington described the practice as a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”   read more

Senator-Elect Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), who attacked Obama for his “lawless actions,” as a member of the House sponsored a bill to help a Sudanese woman, Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, and her two children, after Ibrahim was sentenced to death for apostasy after converting to Christianity. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), having characterized Obama’s action as “a naked power grab,” filed a bill to assist the Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.   read more

The movie, "The Interview," stars Seth Rogan and James Franco as television reporters recruited by the CIA to kill Kim Jong-un. With a storyline like that, it may prove to be quite a Christmas gift from Sony to the North Korean leader, as it feeds right into the government’s propaganda machine aimed at its involuntarily captive domestic audience. But that doesn’t mean Kim was pleased to be mocked. When word of the movie first surfaced, North Korean officials “reacted furiously” to it.   read more

The UN panel found problems with American rules of interrogation, police shootings of unarmed African-Americans and the use of solitary confinement in prisons. It criticized the Obama administration for not fully investigating the use of torture by the CIA during the George W. Bush presidency and cited the holdup of the Senate report into CIA torture and detention of detainees. The continued use of Guantanamo Bay to imprison foreign residents without trial was also discussed in the report.   read more

Even Sen. Rand Paul, one of the most outspoken opponents of the federal 1033 program, which provides military surplus equipment to law enforcement, suddenly stopped talking about demilitarizing the police after labor groups lobbied Congress. Paul and other politicians quit talking about it because groups like the National Sheriffs Association and the Fraternal Order of Police had their members call Congress to say how important it was to use military-type weapons for public safety purposes.   read more

Global warming has taken its toll on Glacier National Park, which by 2030 may lose all of its current glaciers, about 25. Also, water for irrigation downstream is drying up and the trout population has fallen to the point where anglers must catch and release them instead of having them for dinner. U.S. Geological Survey is now frantically documenting what’s left of the park’s namesakes. A program is underway to photograph the ice sheets before they turn to water.   read more

Memories of the massacre have not disappeared, nor have the camps themselves. They have become permanent urban slums that now are attracting another kind of refugee: Syrians fleeing their war-torn country. The influx from Syria has caused the populations of Sabra and Shatila to double in size to a combined 40,000 people in both camps. "More than a million people who have streamed from Syria into Lebanon...are radically reshaping neighborhoods like these,” wrote Anne Barnard.   read more

Some television news networks also were subjected to the intrusion, including the Canadian Broadcasting Network and NBC. Dell, Ferrari, National Geographic and Verizon Wireless were also among those attacked. The hackers left behind a pop-up screen that informed visitors to the websites that read: “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.”   read more

Ayman al Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, has been the target of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan at least twice. A total of 76 children and 29 adults have died for the sake of getting al Zawahiri, but he’s still alive. Still, the body count there is less than in the six attempts to kill Qari Hussain, a deputy commander of the Tehrike-Taliban Pakistan. One hundred twenty eight people, including 13 children, died before the CIA was able to kill Hussain.   read more