The tribal community of San Ildefonso Pueblo sits in the shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. The tribe is on the front lines of a battle to rein in contamination left behind by decades of bomb-making and nuclear research. Groundwater sampling shows increasing chromium concentrations at the edges of the plume, indicating it's migrating through an area considered sacred by the tribe. It's only about a half-mile from the closest drinking water well.   read more

Dozens of TSA employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies. OSC said 87 complaints were received last year from workers at the TSA claiming retaliation, discrimination and other prohibited hiring practices. OSC took the cases of two of the top women at TSA, Sharlene Mata and Heather Chuck, to begin a full investigation of their retaliation claims.   read more

California’s medical marijuana czar says she believes there’s a need for weed, although she’s never smoked pot herself. “Unlike regulating alcohol, I’m not a user of marijuana, so I am not familiar with how that affects people or what it does,” Lori Ajax said. “But from the outreach I’ve done since I got here, it appears there is a medical need, and I’m tasked with doing this, and I’m going to do it.”   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court may have struck down mandatory life sentences for minors, but a new federal complaint says hundreds of these “juvenile lifers” have received no “meaningful opportunity for release.” Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit Wednesday on behalf of the Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative, a nonprofit prisoners’ rights advocacy organization.   read more

A challenge to what 12 Democratic voters claim is “one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in American history” is headed to trial in Wisconsin next month. The voters sued the individual members of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board in 2015, claiming that Republican lawmakers secretly crafted and hurriedly passed a redistricting plan that would give them overwhelming – and unfair – control of the state legislature.   read more

For decades, both major parties have used a somewhat convoluted process for picking their nominees, one that involves ordinary voters in only an indirect way. As Americans flock this year to outsider candidates, the kind most hindered by these rules, they are suddenly waking up to this reality. And their confusion and anger are adding another volatile element to an election being waged over questions of fairness and equality.   read more

Under a new rule implemented by Arizona's Republican House Speaker David Gowan, reporters convicted of “a felony within the last 10 years or a misdemeanor within the last five years, excluding traffic arrests” would be denied “non-employee” badges. Non-employee badges are typically held by law enforcement officers and reporters. The rule comes after the Arizona Capitol Times reported in January that Gowan racked up travel costs at the state’s expense.   read more

The Justice Department urged a U.S. judge late Friday to keep secret many of the court records in the now-abandoned lawsuit over leaks in the investigation that led to the resignation of former Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus. The files include transcripts of sworn interviews with senior Obama administration officials about the sex scandal and its fallout.   read more

Agents in the Big Bend Sector, a sprawling part of West Texas that includes Big Bend National Park, used guns five times during the 2015 fiscal year that ended in September. Only agents in San Diego reported using guns more often — six times. In the sector of El Centro, California, a span of desert in eastern California, agents reported 68 instances of force during the same period, though none reported firing their weapons. CBP released the use-of-force data by sectors for the first time.   read more

The project will require massive groundwater pumping of lakes and streams--more than 4 billion gallons of water removed from the area over 22 years. Fisheries will be significantly affected and natural streams may dry up and take decades to recover, if at all, in violation of Montana water quality laws, according to the complaint. "Adverse impacts to the local and regional environment...are predicted to last for hundreds of years," the complaint states.   read more

Tommy Davis, who lost three family members in the 2010 tragedy, yelled to Blankenship as he exited the courthouse. "Hey Don, this is Tom...It's been six years — six years I missed my son, my brother, my nephew. How come you never came to apologize to me personally? How come you never asked to see me?" He later said, "All he gets is a year... There need to be stricter, more harsh penalties for people like that who put greed and money over human life."   read more

"My two worlds are one again," he told reporters after the Army agreed to his requests. But the Army insisted that Singh's commanders submit quarterly evaluations on the impact - if any - that the officer's hair and attire has on "unit cohesion and morale, good order and discipline, health and safety and individual and unit readiness." Singh said, "The U.S. was the only country that gave (my father) political asylum. I was and still am extremely grateful for that..."   read more

The report said global warming will make the air dirtier, water more contaminated and food more tainted. It warned of diseases spread by ticks and mosquitoes and thousands of heat wave deaths. Not to mention climate change's effects people's mental health. The government isn't doing enough, said UW public health dean Howard Frumkin: "There is a vast disconnect between the magnitude of the problem, as outlined by this report, and the response of government health agencies."   read more

The bill passed by lawmakers has alarmed those who think it sets a dangerous precedent by closing the gap between church and state. Both this bill and the one that would give a place of honor to a rifle with the power to take down a commercial aircraft are ways of playing “political football” with social issues, said ACLU's Hedy Weinberg. Last year, the state's attorney general said designating the Bible as an official state book violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.   read more

The Obama administration brushed over the threat that climate change poses to the snow-loving wolverine when it denied protections for the predator, a judge ruled Monday. The Fish and Wildlife Service had rejected the views of many of its own scientists and decided not to protect the wolverine, saying the effects of climate change on the animals remained ambiguous. Judge Christensen ordered officials to act quickly to protect the species as it becomes vulnerable to a warming planet.   read more

The recommendations call for allowing drones to fly unrestricted over people, including crowds. Drone makers would have to certify that if the drone hit someone, there would be no more than a 1% chance that the impact would cause a serious injury. In other categories, the drones would have to fly at least 20 feet over the heads of people and keep a distance of at least 10 feet laterally from someone.   read more