The lawsuit, directed at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), says the coal leasing program’s impact on climate change hasn’t been updated or assessed since 1979. The plaintiffs want the Department of the Interior, BLM’s parent agency, to conduct a comprehensive environmental review of the coal program. Such a review is critical, they say, because coal mined on federal lands produces 14% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions annually and 11% of its yearly greenhouse gas emissions.   read more

Green advocates have been working with investors to develop a new generation of biofuels that instead rely on sources such as corn husks, and forest brush. Those efforts, however, could come to a halt without the EPA’s mandate in place. And the end of the program could mean the end of the line for smaller companies engaged in ethanol production from sources other than corn. The decision by EPA officials came after intense lobbying by oil companies, car manufacturers and driving enthusiasts.   read more

Federal officials are now advising local law enforcement agencies to be careful about confiscating cars, cash and other valuables from motorists. But the new code of conduct is strictly voluntary. Cities and counties have seized more than $2.5 billion since 2001 from local police stopping citizens and seizing their possessions, even if they haven’t been proven to having done anything wrong. The agency making the seizure gets to keep 80% of the loot.   read more

Their attorneys say the failure to include the men’s testimony in the report raises questions about the thoroughness of the Senate probe. “If you’re conducting a genuine inquiry of a program that tortured people, don’t you begin by talking to the people who were tortured? It seems here, as far as my client is concerned, no effort was made to do that,” said David Nevin, who represents Mohammed. Three of the four men were waterboarded, the CIA has admitted.   read more

Elonis v. U.S. stems from the conviction of Anthony Elonis, who served several years in prison for posting messages to his wife on Facebook that she took as threats. In one, he indicated his desire to shoot her despite a court order to stay away. A court brief said people “have experienced real-life terror caused by...public posts to Facebook and other social media sites." Elonis claimed he was merely venting and performing “therapeutic efforts to address traumatic events” in his life.   read more

In what amounts to a trust-us-we-really-know-what’s-best argument, the Department of Justice filed a brief in federal court recently that seeks to explain—in a non-explainable way—why it wants the case against UANI tossed. All officials have been willing to say is the case could expose government secrets. They won’t say what kind of secrets they are, or which agency might be involved in the matter. Legal observers have called the administration’s legal position “extraordinary and unprecedented."   read more

From suicide bombings to political protests, volleyball has been at the center of recent high-profile incidents in countries known for Islamic extremists. In Iran, a group of women were arrested in June for staging a protest outside a men’s game. The women sought access to the event in defiance of local custom that allows only male spectators. One of those arrested was British-Iranian Ghoncheh Ghavami, who was freed on bail over the weekend after spending five months imprisoned for the protest.   read more

“Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status.” President Ronald Reagan July 30, 1981   read more

An investigation by USA Today found that 55% of suspects in these kinds of cases were black and more than a third were Hispanic. The total is more even than the percentages of black and Hispanic people caught up in the criminal justice system, much less the population in general.   read more

From liberal Democrats to community bankers, opposition is lining up to President Obama’s choice for Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Dept.: Antonio Weiss. “Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She criticized Weiss for helping U.S. corporations relocate in countries that demand fewer taxes.   read more

Oops, they did it again. The Republican Party, despite vowing to be more inclusive of women and minorities, has chosen white men to lead all but one House committee. Over in the Senate, all but one standing committee will be led by a man. “Republicans promised to be more welcoming to women—but passed over women to give every single new committee chairmanship to a white man,” Spokeswoman Emily Bittner at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement.   read more

The focus of the controversy is the Border Patrol’s Sandusky Bay Station, which has disproportionately targeted Hispanics since 2008, the plaintiffs say. Professor Kara Joyner says 85% of those arrested by Sandusky Bay agents have been Hispanic, even though the minority group makes up only 3% of the local population. Emails obtained as a result of the lawsuit show that Cory Bammer, who’s in charge of the Sandusky Bay office, has used racial slurs to refer to Latino workers.   read more

Prosecutors won their case against Jackson by relying on the testimony of then 13-year-old Edward Vernon—who recently admitted he lied under pressure from police about what he saw on May 19, 1975, the day Franks was shot and killed. “The detective said that I was too young to go to jail, but he would arrest my parents for perjury because I was backing out,” Vernon said. “My mom was sick at that time, and that really scared me. I didn’t want my parents to get in trouble over this.”   read more

A document from 1961 by then-Defense Secretary McNamara regarding development of strategic nuclear missiles was fully released for public viewing in 1996. But the version of the document at the National Archives has been “heavily excised” of key information … that, again, was made public 18 years ago. Similarly, another 1961 memo, this one from the Joint Chiefs chairman to McNamara was mostly declassified long ago. But the National Archives and Pentagon censored large portions of it.   read more

Police were suspected by a defense attorney of using the StingRay system, which can capture information about cell phone calls and users, to collect data about their client. So the lawyer pressed Detective Haley in court about how the department obtained certain evidence against the accused. The judge told the officer to answer the question, but the prosecution instead withdrew evidence, including a handgun and cellphone, from the case so they wouldn’t get in trouble with the FBI.   read more

The IG’s 2013 audit report revealed that the agency’s IT operations had 6,000 cybersecurity vulnerabilities that needed fixing and it listed 35 corrective actions to be taken. Stephen Warren, VA’s IT executive, said that the 6,000 vulnerabilities isn’t really that large of a number if viewed in the proper context: “When you talk about 6,000 vulnerabilities, we treat them all as important, but when you look at it on the scale you've got to put some balance in it.”   read more