According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

The accusations were contained in nearly 6,000 pages of complaints and arrest statistics. ACLU lawyer James Lyall said the “records paint a disturbing picture of lawlessness and impunity, in which the agency continually operates without any regard for accepted best practices, and agents commit widespread abuses knowing they won’t be held accountable.” Rep. Grijalva said, “People make the complaints, but their complaints go nowhere. There’s no acknowledgment, absolutely no response."   read more

Christopher Ingraham at the Post pointed out the absurdity of students not being trusted to warm bagels safely, but given free rein to carry a deadly weapon. Students at the University of Texas are planning to protest the law by carrying sex toys, which are forbidden under a state law banning the display of obscene materials, around campus. “You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class.” according to the event’s Facebook page.   read more

Common symptoms include heart problems such as palpitations and chest pain; allergic reactions; or trouble swallowing. More than 2,000 people wound up being hospitalized every year on average from taking supplements. Of the 23,000 ER visits, more than 50% were made by women. Weight loss and energy products were responsible for more than half the ER trips among all patients aged 5 to 34. “What we’re seeing from this study is that the system has failed,” said Harvard's Dr. Pieter Cohen.   read more

The former terror suspects said they were subjected to mock drowning, painful bodily contortions, sleep and dietary deprivation, and being forced into coffin boxes. Salim tried to kill himself after being tortured, while Ben Soud was kept naked for more than a month and waterboarded. “This case is about ensuring that the people behind the torture program are held accountable so history doesn’t repeat itself,” said ACLU attorney Steven Watt.   read more

Alaska is already feeling the effects of climate change, with some of its villages on the verge of falling into the sea. But instead of working to combat global warming, the state’s governor, Bill Walker, is proposing more oil drilling in his state—specifically in the protected Arctic National Wilderness Refuge—to pay for relocating villages vulnerable to rising sea levels. Environmentalists say it “could have catastrophic impacts for the environment and native communities.”   read more

Women may have moved beyond gender parity in undergraduate degrees because more of them value a college education than men. “A 2011 Pew study found that 50% of women who had graduated from a four-year college or university thought their education was a good investment, while only 37% of men thought so,” wrote Kate Groetzinger. More women have been attending college since the 1960s, gradually closing a higher education gender gap.   read more

The costs of child care vary depending on the region of the country. In Mississippi, center-based infant care costs $468 a month, but in Washington D.C., it’s $1,868. For single-parent families with two children, center-based child care consumed 11.7% of family budgets in New Orleans, but 33.7% in Buffalo, New York. “How are young parents supposed to be able to afford the equivalent of a college tuition?” said EPI's Elise Gould. “This is out of reach for many [higher-income] families.”   read more

A report from Alliance for a Just Society says $15 an hour is not enough for people to make ends meet in at least 35 states and the District of Columbia. A true livable wage would be an average of $16.87 an hour, the group says. In Arkansas, a wage of $14.26 would suffice. Washington D.C. workers would need to earn $21.86 an hour. “Our emphasis...is to show just how modest a figure $15 really is,” said Allyson Fredericksen. “It is not an extravagant wage and it is not the only solution.”   read more

The Obama administration promised to crack down on those suspected of bilking thousands of people seeking higher education. But Education Dept. money has continued to flow to schools accused of illegal acts and predatory behavior. Those still receiving federal monies include the Education Management Corporation, which accepted $1.25 billion from the government over the past year. “It has been investigated or sued in recent years by prosecutors in at least 12 states,” reported the Times.   read more

Obama has decided not to ask Congress to approve a law mandating that companies open up their encryption programming to the FBI. But the White House has not given up on accessing that information, preferring for now to keep talking to companies to provide access to encryption systems on a case-by-case basis. The EFF called the change “a partial victory...[but] the president is continuing the status quo – that is, informally pressuring companies to give the government access to unencrypted data."   read more

“No one who knows him thinks he wants to weaken the regulatory agency he has been chosen to lead,” the Times reported. “But he has deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any FDA commissioner in recent memory, and some public health advocates question whether his background could tilt him in the direction of an industry he would be in charge of supervising.” The multi-million dollar research center that Califf ran received more than 60% of its funding from Big Pharma.   read more

Romney had used the 47% figure to imply there were a lot of Obama supporters who weren’t contributing their fair share to the government. But the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, pointed out that about two-thirds of those who don’t pay income tax still pay payroll taxes, sales taxes and other levies. Only 17.3% of Americans pay neither income tax nor payroll tax and most of those are retired seniors making do with very small incomes.   read more

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo, said it was important for his state to outlaw the name. “California has the largest number of Native Americans in the country,” he said in May, when the bill was passed by the legislature. “It’s time we as a state take a stand against racial slurs used by our public schools. This is part of a national movement and now is the time for us here in California to end the use of this derogatory term in our public schools.”   read more

In El Paso, where 20% of residents live below the poverty line, judges regularly send people to jail without holding a poverty hearing. Of 100 cases of people jailed for at least five days last year, not one showed that the judge had considered the defendant’s ability to pay before locking them up. “I just find this to be outrageous,” said professor Susan Crump. She said judges who jail people because they are too poor to pay are either “not knowing, or not able to read the law, or not caring.”   read more

The poll found 92% of Democrats, 90% of Republicans, and 79% of independents expressed support for politicians who know science. “We are living in a new age when science affects every aspect of public policy, and voters want candidates to give science issues like climate change, healthcare, GMO foods, and jobs in the new tech economy a higher priority," said Shawn Otto. “Evidence from science is the great equalizer in a democracy."   read more

One reason why the suicide rate is so high among ex-military women is they “are more comfortable with firearms — it’s part of the culture,” said the VA's Caitlin Thompson. It’s also the reason that vets are more successful at committing suicide than their non-veteran counterparts. Guns are a much surer method of committing suicide than almost any other. One reason for the higher suicide rate among female vets might be the incidence of sexual assault in the military, added Thompson.   read more