The legal sale of marijuana in Colorado is bringing a new kind of high to state officials. It is anticipated the state will collect about $134 million in taxes, with much of the money expected to go toward substance abuse and public health programs. The state of Washington expects a similar windfall. That state’s officials are planning to collect about $190 million in taxes in the four years beginning in mid-2015.   read more

Improved surveillance is making it more difficult to balance privacy rights with the desires of law enforcement agencies. “If you turn your country into a totalitarian surveillance state, there’s always some wrongdoing you can prevent,” said ACLU's Jay Stanley. “The balance struck in our Constitution tilts toward liberty, and I think we should keep that value.”   read more

The disparity between rich and poor Americans is most prominently on display in the nation’s urban powerhouses like New York, San Francisco, and other cities thriving economically. In contrast, income inequality is not as big a problem in cities with more modest economic outcomes, like Columbus, Ohio, and Wichita, Kansas. Essentially, cities said to be “vibrant” because of their total amount of income don’t do a very good job of sharing their wealth.   read more

Donna Busche was the head of nuclear safety for cleaning up the former nuclear weapons site at Hanford, Washington. Her termination came after she repeatedly warned company executives that the radioactive-waste solution being used was flawed and posed safety problems. “The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” she said.   read more

Anyone who has visited the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.org may have had their online activity secretly monitored by the NSA and its British intelligence counterpart, GCHQ. This campaign included collecting the IP addresses of any individual who visited the WikiLeaks website “in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google,” according to a report drawn from classified materials exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.   read more

A classified document revealed that a U.S. law firm was monitored while representing the government of Indonesia in trade disputes with the U.S. The monitoring was performed by the Australian Signals Directorate, which works closely with the NSA to share intelligence on global threats. A lawyer involved in the trade talks said, “I always wonder if someone is listening, because you would have to be an idiot not to wonder in this day and age."   read more

Being gay or lesbian is a dangerous reality in many parts of the world. To date, at least 77 nations have anti-gay laws. Nearly half of these countries, 38, can be found among Africa’s 54 states. The most recent African country to target homosexuals is Uganda. President Yoweri Museveni announced last week that he would sign legislation making anyone convicted of a first-time homosexual act subject to 14 years in prison.   read more

Almost half of immigrants who fight deportation win their cases, according to a recent study. This is a marked improvement from their success rate only five years ago, and denotes the lowest level of deportations since regular tracking began two decades ago. The Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said immigrants have won 49.7% of the cases in the 2014 fiscal year, which began in October. In 2009, immigrants won only 23.8% of the time.   read more

Without access to the banking system, legal marijuana businesses are still forced to complete all their transactions in cash and have nowhere to deposit their receipts, creating a security issue. “While we appreciate the efforts by the Department of Justice and FinCEN, guidance or regulation doesn’t alter the underlying challenge for banks,” Frank Keating, president of the American Bankers Association, said in a statement.   read more

Changes in the ways Americans get healthcare are causing some physicians to take down their shingles and go to work as hospital staff members. Hospitals are offering attractive salaries to physicians who join their staffs. That, combined with decreasing reimbursements from Medicare and private insurers, has caused some physicians to give up running their own businesses and opt for work as salaried employees. This could cause costs to rise for those seeking medical care.   read more

Seeking to minimize the dangers of deadly disease outbreaks, the Obama administration announced this week that it plans to work with more than two-dozen countries and international bodies to create a new anti-infectious-disease initiative. Led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. will partner with governments around the world to mitigate infectious diseases that threaten to spread across borders.   read more

Guantánamo Bay could become the focus of multiple lawsuits by detainees who have won the right to sue in federal court over the conditions of their confinement—something the Obama and George W. Bush administrations and Congress have opposed. Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer for the prisoners, called it a “huge win.” “This decision establishes that the federal courts have the power to stop the mistreatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay,” said Eisenberg.   read more

Despite having a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry, the U.S. has continued to struggle with a chronic shortage of important drugs that patients need. The result has been a tripling in the number of annual drug shortages over the past five years. The most common drugs in short supply are generic versions of sterile injectable drugs, while the most acute shortage involves basic IV fluids.   read more

Defending the nation against cyberattacks has become a priority of the U.S. military. In addition to the Army devoting resources to defend against, and possibly initiate, cyber assault, the National Guard wants in on the action. The Army, in fact, welcomes the Guard’s participation, and has proposed funding 390 positions in 10 new “Cyber Protection Teams” within the Guard. The idea of the Guard turning into cyber warriors pleases some in the intelligence community.   read more

There’s less than a 30% chance the federal government is tracking them…for now. The mining of phone call data was begun by the George W. Bush Administration in 2001 in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It came under the authority of the FISC in 2006. By that time, coverage was “closer to 100” percent, an unnamed official told The Washington Post.   read more

Three tribes, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in Arizona, the Umatilla Tribes of Oregon and Tulalip Tribes of Washington, will be allowed to arrest and prosecute non-Indians accused of domestic violence on tribal lands starting February 20. The project is a result of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.   read more