A petition was filed with the White House’s “We the People” website requesting the rule changing, while citing the story of Mina, a dog who served nine tours in Afghanistan. Mina was promoted to sergeant and received an honorable discharge from the military, before dying at the age of 13 back in the United States.   read more

Hutchenson also concluded that ex-prisoners who gain employment pick up more illegal income than those ex-prisoners who are unemployed. “The same human capital variables that lead to success in the conventional labor market,” wrote Hutchenson, “also lead to success in the illegal economy.” Being white also increases the acquisition of illegal incomes, as does belonging to a gang.   read more

“I Give God 10% Why do you Get 18?” read the note on the receipt from Alois Bell, who was charged an automatic 18% tip because she was with a large group at the restaurant, five adults and five children following services at the Word Deliverance Ministries church. Thinking the note was both funny and insulting, waitress Chelsea Welch took a photo of the receipt and posted it on Reddit.   read more

Scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimated that cats take down 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.9 to 20.7 billion mammals annually, including shrews, chipmunks and voles. The numbers mean that cats kill off more birds and mammals than cars, pesticides, and collisions with buildings, making the felines one of the biggest threats to wildlife in the nation.   read more

The amount of refunds that prisoners tried to receive also skyrocketed, from $68 million in 2004 to $2.5 billion in 2012. In many instances, inmates used stolen identities and other false information as part of their schemes. The IRS has taken actions to catch many of the phony refunds before they are sent out. In 2010, the agency received $757 million in refund requests from prisoners, but only issued $35.2 million (about 4.6%).   read more

A new study published by the journal Pediatrics found heavy metal, gothic, punk music, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, and electronic dance music, such as trance and techno, were more likely to cause delinquency among minors than pop, classical and jazz.   read more

Airport screeners with the Transportation Security Administration checked more than 600 million people last year and confiscated both the dangerous and the bizarre from passengers. Among the oddities taken away were a chastity belt, eels, dead venomous snakes, and more than one samurai sword. More than 1,500 guns were discovered in carry-on bags.   read more

Economists at the Wharton School have refuted the idea that money can’t buy happiness, claiming in a research paper, “The New Stylized Facts about Income and Subjective Well-Being,” that money can purchase a happier state of being. They found a direct correlation between richer countries and people who are happier.   read more

Congress hasn’t always been so obsessed with naming post offices. But after September 11, senators and representatives began memorializing some victims of the attacks by attaching their names to U.S. Post Service (USPS) operations. Then, the practice continued by naming branches after fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. During all of this time focused on memorials, Congress did little to shore up the USPS’ financial future, making it uncertain just how long the dedications will last.   read more

Among the 376 reports are the following: • A Corporation for National and Community Service “Report on Reports Provided by Other Federal Agencies,” which is literally a report about other reports; • A DHS report on the illegal importation of products containing dog and cat fur, which has found only one violation in the last five years.   read more

The document stated that the worker, whose identity was redacted, was continuously “passing gas and releasing an unpleasant odor” that created a “hostile work environment.” The 38-year-old man reportedly farted 63 times in his office over a three-month period, and as many as nine times in one day (September 19, 2012). The exact times of each unpleasant gaseous discharge are listed in the reprimand document.   read more

Lawmakers were less popular than root canals (32% to 56%), lice (19% to 67%), colonoscopies (31% to 58%), cockroaches (43% to 45%), traffic jams (34% to 56%) and used-car salesmen (32% to 57%). But they did score higher than illegal drug labs and a venereal disease, as well as telemarketers, the Kardashians, lobbyists, North Korea, the ebola virus, Lindsay Lohan and communism.   read more

“Smart guns” can come equipped with biometrics and grip pattern detection that allow only the registered owner of a gun to fire it. The iGun, made by Mossberg Group, requires the owner to wear a special chip-implanted ring that activates the gun. TriggerSmart in Ireland makes a childproof smart-gun that can’t be fired near schools that have the requisite technology installed on campus.   read more

Frieman, a lawyer and nonprofit consultant, was ticketed in October for driving in the carpool lane during restricted hours, and failed to sway the police officer by waving his papers of incorporation and claiming the company’s company as sufficient qualification under the law. Frieman’s attorney, Ford Greene, told a reporter for the Bay Area News Group that “when a corporation is present in one’s car, it is sufficient to qualify as a two-person occupancy for commuter lane purposes.”   read more

Her sexual orientation has made her a historic figure already, but there’s much more to Kyrsten Sinema than just being the first openly bisexual member of Congress. The financial struggles she endured as a child motivated her to overachieve. After growing up in a Mormon family, she experienced homelessness in the 1980s following her mother’s divorce, which forced her family to live in an abandoned gas station for two years.   read more

On behalf of the panel, Judge Jon Newman wrote that “This ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity. Surely no passenger planning some wrongful conduct toward another occupant of an automobile would call attention to himself by giving the finger to a police officer.”   read more