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

Scott’s early State Dept. postings included Croatia, Israel, and Switzerland. He stepped away from the diplomatic world for a bit in 1994 as a national security fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. When he returned to active duty with the Foreign Service in 1996, it was as a political counselor at the embassy in Moscow. In 1999, Scott was moved to a similar role at the embassy in Budapest, Hungary.   read more

Oxfam singled out the U.S., Iran, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for “fueling violence and violations of war in Syria through arms and ammunition transfers to parties to the conflict.” Along with the U.K. and Kuwait, the U.S. also was criticized for its “less than generous” offers “to welcome the most vulnerable refugees.” Oxfam claims the U.S. has resettled only 8% of its “fair share” of refugees. Since 2011, only 1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the country.   read more

There are those—including members of Congress who should know better—who believe those now imprisoned at Guantánamo, some of whom have not been convicted of any crimes, have some kind of powers that would allow them to escape from the most secure facility that the U.S. can devise. Or it might be that they just want to deny President Obama one of his original goals when he took office—to close the expensive Guantánamo camp, which is a focus of anti-American sentiment around the world.   read more

Last year’s total of opioid overdoses was 1,263, up 97 over the total in 2013, according to The Tennessean. Opioids are found in prescription painkillers such as Hydrocodone and Oxycodone, nicknamed “hillbilly heroin.” “It’s an epidemic sweeping across the state, affecting people in both small towns and big cities,” The Tennessean’s Holly Fletcher wrote. The death toll was highest among men and women ages 45 to 55.   read more

The environmental organization says this amount of greenhouse pollution is equivalent to the emissions of 6.8 million cars and is 10 to 40 times as much pollution as the cars were supposed to emit. “What Volkswagen did wasn’t just consumer fraud, it was a crime against our climate and against future generations relying on us for a livable planet,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This will have a far-reaching effect on our clean air and climate.”   read more

The majority of charter schools still open scored in the bottom 16% on the 2014 Ohio Performance Index, which measures student performance on state assessments. “Ohio has a real quality control problem,” said Alex Medler. “Ohio’s more broken than the Wild West.” Charter schools in that state spend more than twice as much of their revenue on administrative costs than public schools. That leaves less to spend on teachers and students.   read more

The European Court has invalidated an international agreement that allows the sharing of online data between the U.S. and Europe by Internet companies like Google and Facebook. The ruling could affect the flow of digital information such as users’ web search histories and social media updates. “The court said leaks from Edward J. Snowden...made it clear that American intelligence agencies had almost unfettered access to the data, infringing on Europeans’ rights to privacy,” said the Times.   read more

Valeant’s corporate strategy has nothing to do with finding cures for disease. Instead, it buys other drug firms that own older medicines. Then it jacks up the price. If “products are sort of mispriced and there’s an opportunity, we will act appropriately in terms of doing what I assume our shareholders would like us to do,” Valeant CEO J. Michael Pearson told analysts. In other words, he’s happy to squeeze money out of patients for the sake of his shareholders.   read more

When Virginia’s GOP-dominated legislature was found to have drawn congressional district maps that were racially discriminatory, the districts were ordered to be redrawn. However, the Republicans say their intent was not to discriminate, but to unfairly draw districts that favored candidates from their party, and any remapping should reflect that. Now they’ve admitted in court filings that the gerrymander was intentional, and may they please keep it.   read more

Researchers found that patients with less education, who were unemployed and who were black, Hispanic or another minority tended to have longer wait times. Hispanic patients, for example, spent 105 minutes at a clinic, while white patients spent an average of 80 minutes. When it came to travel time, black patients spent an average of 45 minutes, while white patients traveled an average of 36 minutes getting to a clinic.   read more

The chemical safety board has been rocked by chaos and coup, thanks to poor leadership, which makes you wonder what has gone on at the African Development Foundation to generate such a bottom-of-the-barrel score. Other agencies scoring below 50% were the Federal Election Commission (43%), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (46%), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (47%), and Commission on Civil Rights (49%). DHS had the lowest mark among large federal agencies.   read more

Doctors Without Borders contacted the U.S. military to urge them to stop the attack, but it went on for 30 minutes.The Pentagon first denied it even happened, then said it did but that the Taliban could have been using it as a base; then blamed it on Afghan forces that requested help from the U.S. while fighting the Taliban. Gen. John F. Campbell, American commander in Afghanistan, is said to believe U.S. troops broke rules of engagement by calling in the airstrike on behalf of Afghan forces.   read more

These failures often occur because local armies are being asked to put their lives on the line for regimes that lack legitimacy and fail to inspire people to fight for their country. “The question is can we put a government in place that’s worthy of their sacrifice?” said Richard Armitage. “And if we can’t do that, they won’t die for their country, and all the training in the world won’t get you anywhere.” Also, U.S. forces are trained to fight wars, not train others to do so.   read more

Calling slaves “workers” alarmed former English teacher Dean-Burren because it suggested that they were compensated for their labor. The passage was contained in a section called “Patterns of Immigration,” which implied the slaves weren’t forced against their will to come to the U.S. Texas authorities have an outsized effect on what goes into U.S. textbooks. Publishers defer to Texas’ wishes because their statewide market is huge, leading conservatives to push their ideas into the books.   read more

The Justice Dept. didn't point out how much of the settlement BP can write off come tax time. Advocacy group US PIRG said not only can BP deduct more than $15 billion from its income, it can expect a tax windfall of $5.35 billion from it. “This not only sends the wrong message,” said PIRG’s Michelle Surka, “but it also hurts taxpayers by forcing us to shoulder the burden of BP’s tax windfall in the form of higher taxes, cuts to public programs, and more national debt.”   read more

Judge Chutkan wrote that it was “particularly puzzling” that for some documents there was “no explanation of how the information, if released, could risk circumvention of the law, no explanation of what laws would purportedly be circumvented, and little detail regarding what law enforcement purpose is involved (other than vague references to ‘national security concerns.’) This is not enough to justify withholding records under the FOIA.”   read more