President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Members of the III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa won’t begin moving until sometime in the early 2020s. For many of the island’s residents, the move can’t come soon enough. Many Japanese have been calling for the U.S. to get off Okinawa for decades, particularly after American military personnel stationed on the island were convicted of raping a Japanese woman last year and gang-raping a 12-year-old Japanese girl in 1995.   read more

The University of Edinburgh had a $2 million (£1.2 million) stake in Ultra Electronics, a British firm that manufactures navigation controls for Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles and ground control stations. Investing in drone development was deemed not “socially responsible” by the university as well as students and campaign groups that lobbied Edinburgh to pull out of the business.   read more

Lu compared Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to the two young mafia dons of The Godfather films: the impulsive Sonny Corleone and his calculating younger brother Michael. Lu wrote that Aliyev’s foreign policy—which he characterized as based on “restraint and a helpful bias toward integration with the West” represented his inner Michael, while his “increasingly authoritarian” domestic policies channeled Sonny   read more

Chad, South Sudan and Yemen were identified by the State Department as countries utilizing child soldiers, making them ineligible for American military aid under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (pdf). But the law, which is intended to discourage nations from forcing children under the age of 18 to fight in wars, contains a national security interest waiver that authorizes the president to override the statute when deemed necessary. That’s what Obama did on Monday.   read more

Five hundred is considerably more than the two flights that DHS admitted to operating when the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General contacted the agency for a report on unmanned aircraft. DHS has filed a motion (pdf) with the federal judge overseeing the EFF lawsuit to throw out the remainder of the case before it has to reveal any more details about drone activity.   read more

Callahan's DHS colleagues accused her of being a “terrorist” for trying to put the brakes on agency work that threatened people’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. Some officials even told her that if she got in the way of DHS efforts to prevent a terrorist attack, she would have to explain her actions to Congress.   read more

Officially, 29 deaths have been attributed by the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office to “excited delirium syndrome,” an uncommon brain malfunction not recognized by the American Medical Association. Of the 29 deaths linked to the syndrome, most have involved police action, including officers using physical restraint or stun guns on the victims.   read more

Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanow, who was denied a visa by the State Department. No explanation was provided for why Trojanow did not receive clearance. It was noted in the German press that the award-winning writer had previously signed a protest petition against the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities.   read more

The jurisdiction with the most executions is Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, with 115. Dallas County is second with 50. Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona accounted for 60% of all of the nation’s executions. In fact, 36% of executions took place in Texas. Eighty-five percent of counties did not carry out a single execution.   read more

The research published in BMJ Open, an open access journal for general medical research, revealed that the average street price of heroin, cocaine and cannabis in the U.S. declined by 81%, 80% and 86%, respectively, from 1990 to 2010. Meanwhile, the purity/potency of these drugs increased by 60%, 11% and 161%, respectively.   read more

When Marissa Alexander, who is black, fired a warning shot into the ceiling near her estranged husband, she claimed that she was acting out of self-defense during a heated conversation with the man who had previously abused her. Her husband was not injured. But the judge ruled that the stand-your-ground law didn’t apply in Alexander’s case. After a jury found her guilty in May 2012, Alexander—who had no prior criminal history—received a 20-year prison sentence from the judge.   read more

Examples noted by Horowitz included a Federal Bureau of Investigation official classifying a terrorist watch list that was supposed to be public information, and an official from the Justice Department’s National Security Division who shielded unclassified laws, statutes and designations from otherwise classified documents, according to Courthouse News Service (CNS).   read more

Contributing to the debit card’s launch amounts to joining “the revolution to make banking fair, open and affordable,” according to the cooperative’s website. Some Occupy participants hate the idea of the debit card, saying it conflicts with the movement’s messaging and purpose. “Too much blood, sweat and tears have been going into Occupy to have that turned into a piece of plastic,” Bill Dobbs, a longtime Occupy member, told The New York Times.   read more

No. XV of the House Rules—applies in situations where the Speaker of the House refuses to have an up-or-down vote on the House floor, as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is now doing. If a majority of House members sign a “discharge petition,” Boehner would have to allow a vote. Given that all 200 Democratic members would sign, only 17 Republican signatures would be needed to force a vote and end the shutdown.   read more

“Demonizing the opposition is central to the process” of raising campaign money in the current environment, Steven S. Smith, political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Los Angeles Times. “The more important the development in Washington, the easier it is to scare potential donors into handing over the cash.”   read more

President Barack Obama has managed to keep his numbers from falling further, according to CNN/ORC. His approval/disapproval ratings are at 44%/53%, which is virtually the same as they were in the last poll (45%/52%). Americans also disapprove of the Democratic and Republican parties. The Dems’ approval rating stands at 43%, while the GOP’s is 32%. The Tea Party is also not well liked, with only a 31% approval rating.   read more