Humboldt Superior Court will receive a $110,000 loan from the California Judicial Council to help pay for 24 homicide cases. Eighteen of them are currently headed to trial. The county usually averages 11 murders a year. Many of the pending trials are for homicides that occurred in 2014, when Humboldt experienced 16 murders. That was the highest number in the county in at least 30 years.   read more

A review of more than 50 contracts found "the vast majority have provisions that block accountability and protect officers from being investigated, indicted, and ultimately convicted,” ThinkProgress reported. They include the expungement of internal records and the use of a “do not call” list of officers who cannot testify, which can “impede the effective investigation of reported misconduct and shield officers who are in fact guilty of misconduct from meaningful discipline,” said the study.   read more

The authors of the study said “stabilization programming actually had the perverse effect of increasing support for the Taliban in Taliban-controlled villages.” In other cases, USAID did such a poor job of managing its projects that Taliban leaders were able to successfully submit requests through intermediaries for American aid projects for villages under their control. Also, USAID’s targeting of some villages not under Taliban control resulted in increased violence from the Taliban.   read more

RCP’s polling analysis showed Sanders with 32.2% support among voters, and Trump with just slightly more at 33%. But Gallup’s party affiliation numbers showed 44% of those surveyed identify with Democrats, compared to 42% of Republicans, giving a bit more weight to the Sanders supporters. Meanwhile, Trump this year received 234 minutes of coverage among NBC, CBS and ABC evening news broadcasts, while Sanders got only 10 minutes of coverage from the Big Three.   read more

Fatal drug overdoses in 2014 totaled 47,055, a 7% increase from 2013, according to figures from the NCHS. Heroin deaths, which numbered 10,574 in 2014, have tripled over the past five years. The rise in opioid overdoses has come despite local, state and federal agencies devoting “additional resources to cracking down on illegal drug traffic, more widely distributing the drug naloxone, which reverses overdoses, and sending users to treatment instead of jail when possible,” reported the Post.   read more

Despite recent high-profile police shootings in places such as Chicago, St. Louis and Baltimore, it’s not a big city that leads the U.S. in killings by police. Kern County, California, is home to oil wells, country music star Merle Haggard and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. It’s also where America’s deadliest police forces patrol the streets. A new study shows that officers in Kern County, including Bakersfield, kill more people per capita than in any other U.S. jurisdiction.   read more

“Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds seemed like an ordinary American soldier, but he had an extraordinary sense of responsibility and dedication to his fellow human beings,” Avner Shalev told AP. “[He] set an example for his fellow American soldiers as they stood united against the barbaric evil of the Nazis.” The Israeli honor might not be the only one to be bestowed upon Edmonds. He's now being considered for the Medal of Honor, America's highest award that can be bestowed on a combat soldier.   read more

"We used to be a balanced people. We used to be true to our values, but now we’re willing to betray our values because of a sense of fear? That’s not American,” said Marine Sgt. Emir Hadzic. “What the hell happened to that America I immigrated to?” Some say the climate in the U.S. is worse than ever since the Sept. 11 attacks. “The rhetoric is definitely different, it’s very alarming,” former Corporal Ibrahim Hashi told the Post. “And I’m concerned for myself and my family’s safety.”   read more

The Best Places to Work Agency Rankings, based on employee survey data collected by the Office of Personnel Management, put DHS at the bottom for the second year in a row. The office with the lowest score was DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Right behind it was the Secret Service and the third worst was Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two other bottom-ranked DHS offices were the Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology, and Customs and Border Protection   read more

About 20% of the task force's $766-million budget was used on accommodations for its 5 to 10 employees. The spending included a luxury villa, flat-screen TVs, mini-fridges and DVD players. Their meals were “at least 3 stars” and each offered “at least two entree choices and three side order choices.” This is the same group that spent $43 million on a natural gas refueling station, “roughly 140 times more than what analysts say the project should have cost,” wrote the The Intercept.   read more

The BioWatch system consists of 600 air-collection units positioned at public places and special events, such as Super Bowls. Homeland Security spent $1 billion on the system, claiming it can detect deadly biological agents released into the atmosphere. That assertion has been challenged by the GAO, which says that BioWatch often produces false alarms because it cannot distinguish between “harmless germs and the lethal pathogens that terrorists would be likely to unleash in an attack."   read more

Gene editing actually transforms the DNA of its subject and those changes are passed down to subsequent generations and thus affect the world’s gene pool, potentially altering the very nature of the human species. In spite of the committee’s recommendation to press the pause button on actual gene editing, it endorsed the continuation of laboratory research to perfect the editing technique, including the manipulation of human cells.   read more

One U.S. senator—who happens to be the most powerful of them all—gets far more thumbs-down than thumbs-up from those in his state. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a 52% disapproval rating, according to polling data. He’s the only senator with a disapproval rating over 50%. Nor does McConnell have many who approve of the job he’s doing. At 38%, he barely edges out Democrats Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who’s under indictment, and Gary Peters of Michigan, each at 37% approval.   read more

The doctors' petition was presented just hours before news of the mass shooting in San Bernardino. “It’s disappointing to me that we’ve made little progress in the past 20 years in finding solutions to gun violence,” said Dr. Nina Agrawal. “In my career, I’ve seen children lives saved from measles, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, motor vehicle accidents…because of federal scientific data and research. It’s frustrating that the CDC is not permitted to do the same type of research for gun violence.”   read more

Human Right Watch argues “sufficient evidence exists” for Attorney General Lynch to carry out investigations of “senior United States officials and others involved in the post-September 11 CIA program for torture, conspiracy to torture, and other crimes.” HRW offers evidence to support criminal charges against those responsible for state-sanctioned torture, and claims the Senate "torture report" showed that CIA torture was “more brutal, systematic, and widespread” than had been previously found.   read more

Crime isn’t paying like it used to, at least for burglars. They’d be better served working for the federal government. Armstrong Economics pointed out last month that in 2014, U.S. Attorneys seized more than $4.5 billion of assets. An even larger figure, more than $5 billion in assets, was forfeited to the departments of Justice and Treasury. The loss to burglaries, on the other hand, was about $3.5 billion last year. “The police are now taking more assets than the criminals,” wrote Armstrong.   read more