Lead plaintiff Valerie Simo says she would not have purchased tickets and memberships to the park if she had known that SeaWorld mistreats its killer whales by housing them in small tanks, giving them pharmaceutical drugs and depriving them of food. “This illusion masks the ugly truth about the unhealthy and despairing lives of these whales," the complaint states. The suit is one of a series of similar cases filed by those who have visited SeaWorld parks.   read more

Bringing minorities into the ranks of law enforcement in Texas has been slow to come. “In many communities, the face of law enforcement doesn’t look much different than it did before the Civil Rights Movement,” said the Dallas Morning News. In the city of Waco, whites make up 45% of the population but 80% of the police force. It was also found that almost one out of seven minorities in Texas live in a community with at least a 30-point gap between white police officers and white residents.   read more

In Arkansas, a person can work as a police officer for nine months without any training. In order for a would-be officer to use a gun, he only has to pass a 50-round test that requires hitting a target 80% of the time from 25 yards away. “To grant people arrest powers, and arm them with guns, without putting them through the proper training first is especially disturbing...when the nation has been gripped by one high-profile officer-involved shooting after another,” wrote Neyfakh.   read more

Environmentalists contend the bill is unnecessary because border officials already are able to travel onto protected federal lands. “The Border Patrol has not asked for this authority,” said Randy Serraglio. “They have full access to public lands and are working with land managers to enhance border security efforts while minimizing impacts to those lands. For someone who purports to represent the state of Arizona, Senator McCain seems remarkably ignorant about what’s really going on here.”   read more

Twitter is seeking to give its users more information about the number of times it is asked to divulge information about its users. Twitter sued, claiming constitutional protections of free speech should allow it to provide actual numbers, instead of a broad range. The government is arguing that those aren’t really rules, they’re more like guidelines. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers appears to be taking the attitude that if it looks like a rule and smells like a rule, it’s a rule.   read more

Chicago is a diverse city with a population is almost evenly divided between African-Americans (33%), whites (32%) and Latinos (29%). But Chicago’s neighborhoods are highly segregated, according to Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com. His analysis shows that while the city as a whole is diverse, the average resident is much less likely to live in a neighborhood with members of another ethnic group, with only 36% likely to do so.   read more

A bill introduced by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona that would allow Customs and Border Protection “access to federal lands for security activities” was passed out of committee this week. The change would allow the Border Patrol to roam on 10 million acres of federal lands and parks in Arizona and California and even construct radio towers in areas where no development is currently allowed.   read more

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s rules say that senators can meet in closed session only if there is a formal motion during open session to move to close session, that the motion is seconded and it is voted on immediately while the committee is still in open session. But on April 23, when the committee shuttered its meeting to the press and public to discuss the current National Defense Authorization Act, the vote to move into closed session was held during closed session.   read more

An Indiana prisoner, Leon Benson, recorded a 30-second video in August 2014 thanking supporters for working to have his murder conviction overturned. Benson’s sister posted the video to Facebook, and prison officials subsequently sent the inmate to solitary confinement, canceled out his “good time” days and suspended his email privileges. The prison claimed it was merely enforcing JPay’s terms of service.   read more

Usry found himself being investigated for a cold-case murder in Idaho after an Ancestry.com-owned business, Sorenson Database, which has about 100,000 DNA samples on file, shared its database with Idaho Falls police without asking for a warrant. After matches came up, police obtained a warrant requiring Ancestry.com to provide the “protected” name of donors.   read more

Formaldehyde and its effects first gained national attention after Hurricane Katrina, when trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house the storm’s survivors caused a variety of health problems. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that can cause respiratory ailments such as asthma and possibly cancers like myeloid leukemia.   read more

Republicans are perfectly satisfied with the way the commission is working. “Congress set this place up to gridlock,” Goodman said. “This agency is functioning as Congress intended. The democracy isn’t collapsing around us.” Those who see Charles and David Koch preparing to open their wallets to the tune of $1 billion, with others giving nearly as much in the coming election, as not being a positive sign for democracy might disagree.   read more

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the looting and attacks were the product of unidentified hoodlums, not the residents of Baltimore. But the only individuals who participated in the violence—and who are known to live outside the city, if not the state of Maryland—were Baltimore police officers. As of 2012, more than 70% of Baltimore police officers lived outside the city with about 10% living out of state, some in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.   read more

The House of Representatives approved a resolution 228-192 to undo a D.C. law prohibiting employers from discriminating against workers, their spouses or dependents for using family planning services or birth control. It also keeps employers from firing an employee for having an abortion.   read more

The American Psychological Association (APA), the leading professional group for psychologists in the U.S., met secretly with members of the George W. Bush administration to help officials justify the use of torture against detainees. The Bush administration went to the APA for help because the national organization for psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, wasn’t willing to help the CIA rationalize its methods for extracting information during interrogations of detainees.   read more

The National Park Service (NPS) has gotten a waiver allowing it to enter into a marketing agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer and maker of Budweiser. It’s a two-year, $2.5 million campaign to engage in “co-branding with a goal of attracting a younger population to the NPS and the corporate brand,” according to the memo. Part of the justification for the waiver was a previous Park Service partnership with a small winery.   read more