Obama submitted “a complex draft resolution that authorizes the president to use force against the Islamic State,” said The Atlantic. Some Republicans in Congress, however, won’t touch the authorization—not because it could potentially draw the U.S. into a protracted conflict, but because it doesn’t go far enough. Obama’s request specifies that the use of U.S. ground troops is forbidden, and it puts a three-year limit on the authorization. Republicans would prefer something more open ended.   read more

Does using a government computer to access a website dedicated to helping people have extramarital affairs constitute grounds for punishment? The answer is probably not. “The rules of the game for morality in federal offices may be straightforward for pornography (it can get you fired) — but the kind of skeleton in the closet that showed up in the trove of 36 million users exposed on the cheating Web site presents officials with a murkier problem, experts say,” according to the Washington Post.   read more

Opponents of ballot selfies say they could lead to vote buying or voter intimidation. Legislators feared, for instance, that a selfie could be used as proof that a voter had cast his or her ballot a certain way to collect payment. The New Hampshire law said anyone showing photographs of their completed ballots to others or posting them online could be fined up to $1,000. The ACLU objected to the statute, claiming it violated free speech and the right of political expression.   read more

Lockheed Martin operates Sandia National Laboratories, one of the nation’s leading nuclear research facilities. It has had this responsibility since 1993, yet Lockheed officials decided to use some of the federal contractor funding to lobby Congress from 2008 to 2012 to get a more lucrative deal. While it did not receive the kind of contract it hoped for, Lockheed Martin came away with a two year non-competitive extension worth $7.7 billion.   read more

Judge Gee said the detention of immigrant children violates the 1997 Flores legal settlement, which established legal requirements for housing children who are undocumented immigrants or who are seeking asylum in the U.S. She says the detention centers and temporary holding cells along the border are “deplorable” and don’t “meet even the minimal standard” for “safe and sanitary” conditions. She also stated that children may not be held in facilities not specifically licensed for housing minors.   read more

Fatalities from truck-involved crashes have been on the rise, climbing 17% from 2009 to 2013. During the same period, car-related deaths declined more than 3% thanks to “airbags...and anti-lock brakes,” Abramson wrote. “The trucking industry has resisted most of those safety devices.” The industry instead is trying to push Congress to loosen rules on trucking. That includes allowing truck drivers to work 82 hours a week and eliminating the weekly two-day rest break.   read more

Some of the five schools ended up with fewer counselors than other schools with lower numbers of at-risk students. As a result, violence skyrocketed at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose elementary schools, averaging eight incidents a day for the five years starting in 2010. In 2014 there were more violent incidents at those five schools than there were at the county’s 17 high schools.   read more

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is refusing to release an internal study of its vulnerable computer network, which Chinese hackers infiltrated two years ago. The Chinese cyberattack reportedly crippled the commission’s systems that inform the public about the billions of dollars raised and spent each election cycle by candidates, parties and political action committees.   read more

The six board members who voted against the proposal said it was because there’s not enough evidence that marijuana is a safe and effective treatment for the condition. So, victims of PTSD, many of them veterans, will continue to be treated with opioid drugs that can lead to addition, overdose and many other unpleasant side effects.   read more

Testing of the drug showed only modest results in accomplishing the drug’s mission of improving female sexual desire. Its effectiveness rate was between 8% and 13%, while causing such side effects as fainting, dizziness, and low blood pressure. The drug was originally created to act as an anti-depressant, but it was found to be ineffective for that purpose. So it was decided to instead promote it as a cure for decreased female libido.   read more

The EPA estimates the regulations would cost the industry up to $420 million to implement by 2025. Oil and gas producers, along with Republican members of Congress, criticized the plan, saying it’s too expensive and will cost jobs. But since Chevron Texaco, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell made a combined $61 billion in 2014, the oil companies can probably afford it. Environmentalists say the plan doesn’t go far enough as it applies primarily to new wells, not most existing facilities.   read more

The performance of the body scanners has been so bad that one lawmaker, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), said TSA should use metal detectors as a backup system to catch threats. “These things weren’t even catching metal,” he said. “If you really want to keep using those, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t, at a minimum we should put a metal detector on the other side,” Johnson told Politico. “Why not go through two? You’ve just gotta use common sense.”   read more

Of the 25,000 overincome people identified by the report, more than 10,000 were in New York City, where more than 300,000 others are on waiting lists to receive public housing. Forty-five percent of the overqualified tenants nationwide were earning $10,000 to $70,000 a year more than the threshold allowed. “We did not find that...authorities had taken or planned to take sufficient steps to reduce at least the egregious examples of over income families in public housing,” said the report.   read more

Researchers found no defendants were acquitted when juries had two or fewer blacks serving on them. But when juries had at least three black jurors, the acquittal rate was 12%. With five or more blacks--19%. “Why do race-based peremptory challenges persist? Because race is an unfortunate but powerful basis for generalization,” wrote Edelman. "A prosecutor has reason to think that a black juror is less likely to side with the government against a black defendant than a white one.”   read more

The percentage of black students in majority white schools has fallen to a level not seen since 1968, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. In 2011, majority white schools had an average of 23.2% black students. That compares to a high of 43.5% in 1988.   read more

The EPA is supposed to acknowledge a claim within five days, decide within 20 days whether it will be investigated and complete any investigation within 180 days. But that’s not how it works in the real world. A list on the EPA website shows all the Title VI complaints and some of the claims are old enough to vote.   read more