The Oklahoma Corporation Commission wants energy corporations to reduce the amount of wastewater injection by 38% in a 40-mile stretch northeast of Oklahoma City. That area experienced 359 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in 2014 after only 14 the year before that. This year’s total is on track to be 20% higher, according to The New York Times. Reuters reported that the earthquakes aren’t related to fracking. It’s the re-injection of saltwater that is pumped out of wells.   read more

The law, drafted by the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, was passed last year after an animal rights group produced an undercover video of the Dry Creek Dairy showing workers abusing cows. Judge Winmill tossed out the law, saying it criminalized investigative journalism, undercover investigations and whistleblowing. Winmill even cited Upton Sinclair’s classic exposé, “The Jungle,” saying that if Sinclair had written that today in Idaho, he would be prosecuted.   read more

The concern stems from a device used around the world to monitor natural gas facilities and their leaks. It relies on two sensors that are supposed to measure the amount of methane that escapes. However, researchers found that one of sensors sometimes fails to do its job, causing the device to undercount the methane leak. "The finding could also have implications for all segments of the natural gas supply chain, with ripple effects on predictions of the rate of climate change," wrote the Times.   read more

Experts at the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland said many glaciers are melting up to three times the rate of the 20th century. “The observed glaciers currently lose between half a meter and one meter of its ice thickness every year—this is two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century,” said lead study author Michael Zemp. "These glaciers will suffer further ice loss, even if climate remains stable.” The researchers called it "a global phenomenon.”   read more

The Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking documents under the Freedom of Information Act that document Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) procedures for issuing national security letters to spy on the media. The Justice Department has so far refused to release the information or even respond to the FOIA request the foundation made in March.   read more

A report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that 73% of those who die in jail haven’t been convicted of a crime. In addition, 29% of those who die are African-American, more than double their percentage of the U.S. population at large. BJS found that 31.3% of all jail deaths in 2012 were by suicide.   read more

The Bush administration attempted to exempt the Tongass from the Roadless Rule because it claimed it would harm local economies. The vote fell almost completely along party lines of the presidents who appointed the judges. Of the six who voted to keep the forest roadless, three were appointed by Barack Obama, two by Bill Clinton and one by Jimmy Carter. The five voting to keep the Bush exemption included three appointed by Bush, one appointed by Ronald Reagan and one by Clinton.   read more

Prosecutions for crimes such as mail fraud, healthcare fraud and other such offenses are off almost 37% from their peak during the Clinton administration. In 1995, the number of prosecutions was about 11,000 and that number has dropped steadily since then, with the exception of a spike during the first three years of the Obama administration.   read more

The FBI has found that it can’t match salaries offered by the private sector. In addition, its strict background checks weed out those who have smoked marijuana within three years or used other drugs within 10 years. One thing the Army isn’t doing to fill its ranks is cut its standards.   read more

The report, whose findings didn’t make it into the Environmental Impact Report, recommended that oil and gas development near homes, hospitals and schools be stopped. It warned of insufficient knowledge about the dangers of shallow fracking, used by 75% of the state’s frackers, and recommended that it be halted until more was known.   read more

The law, signed in 1965 by President Johnson, was established to prevent attempts to keep blacks from voting. But in recent years, Republican-led legislatures have used the excuse of voter fraud to adopt laws that have instituted new ID requirements, rolled back early voting, and eliminated same-day registration. Conservatives on the Supreme Court have also participated by gutting the law's Section 5, which required certain jurisdictions to clear election law changes with the Justice Dept,   read more

The local district attorney, Chris Connolly, is fighting the woman's request and has even gone so far as to ask the juvenile court hearing the case to strip Doe of her parental rights, which would legally bar her from ending her pregnancy. “It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do,” said one of Doe's attorneys, Randall Marshall.   read more

Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung says the decision came down to a tussle between the Old and New sides of Boston, with the former having “smothered” the latter. “Here’s the issue: New Boston acts a lot like Old Boston. We still put up a fierce fight when someone tries something novel. Given the chance to think big about our future, we tied ourselves up in the minutiae of tax breaks and traffic studies. Accusations quickly replaced ambitions,” she wrote.   read more

Public defenders in Fresno County, Calif., have an unwieldy caseload with each attorney averaging 700 felony cases a year, making it virtually impossible to give clients a decent defense. Now the American Civil Liberties Union has sued Fresno County and the state of California for shortchanging the local public defender’s office’s budget.   read more

Starting a few years ago, DeKalb County, Ga., officials began using its Recorder's Court to prosecute individuals who had broken state laws, even though the Recorder’s Court lacks the legal authority to do so. The county is now being sued in a class-action case claiming the court was used to bolster local revenues as part of a “scheme to generate revenue for a cash-strapped local government.”   read more

The IG found examples of informants who had broken the law and were being investigated while working with the DEA. “In some cases, the DEA continued to use, for up to six years without any (Justice Dept.) intervention, individuals who were involved in unauthorized illegal activities and who were under investigation by federal entities,” according to the report. The inspector general was stonewalled in his efforts to get information from DEA, delaying access to reports “for months at a time."   read more