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 Sacklers own Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin, a heavy-duty painkiller that has turned millions into addicts. The drug has been blamed for helping cause the increase in prescription drug overdoses. “According to the Centers for Disease Control, of the nearly 44,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2013, more than half were from prescribed drugs, and of those deaths, 72% were from opiate overdoses,” AlterNet's Phillip Smith wrote.   read more

Called the geoduck, the clam features a long probing siphon that bulges out of its shell, according to BBC News. The geoduck is the largest burrowing clam in the world, weighing up to 16 pounds. Its siphon can grow as long as three feet, and the clam can live up to 160 years, but most commercial geoducks are harvested when they reach maturity after about six years.   read more

Chinese immigration has almost tripled, while Indian immigration has doubled. The shift is “remarkable” due to how rapidly it occurred, said the Migration Policy Institute. While Indian and Chinese migration has risen steadily, the rate of Mexican immigration has declined at a much more rapid pace. Yet “Latinos still make up the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the United States,” said ThinkProgress. However, Chinese immigrants constitute 65.4% of the foreign-born population.   read more

Haiti’s economy was hit hard by the damage done to its country’s rice farmers after Clinton called for an elimination of tariffs on imported, subsidized U.S. rice. In 2010, Clinton sat before a U.S. Senate committee and conceded “it was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.”   read more

The Archive said that the documents cleared for release had been identified by Chiquita as the most sensitive of all the records it had given up to the SEC. “Chiquita became the first U.S. company to be convicted for engaging in transactions with a global terrorist organization,” said Michael Evans. “Finally the victims of AUC violence and the general public will get a look at what might be the most important document collection ever assembled on corporate ties to terrorism.”   read more

in the wake of Obama’s recent commutation of 46 prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and his plans to have Congress change federal sentencing laws, the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys is warning lawmakers and others to not make changes. The group says crime rates will go up if Congress adopts sentencing reforms, and insists “drug trafficking is inherently violent." FAMM's Molly Gill called it a “demonstrably false claim and a shameful scare tactic.”   read more

Wendell Potter said Medicare Advantage has become an “increasingly important revenue stream” for insurance companies. He said a big reason why Aetna wants to buy up Humana and why Anthem seeks to merge with Cigna “is the desire of the acquiring companies to boost their presence in the privately-run Medicare business. A big chunk of that federal money is now flowing through the insurance industry, so much so that many companies have become dependent on it to sustain their profits.”   read more

The probe was challenged by conservative and business organizations—the Wisconsin Club for Growth, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and Citizens for a Strong America—which also spent money on others running for office, such as members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In fact, the four justices who voted to quash the investigation all received substantial contributions from the groups.   read more

The EEOC’s ruling was based at least in part on a Supreme Court decision written by none other than Justice Antonin Scalia. In a 1997 case in which a man claimed sexual harassment by other men, Scalia held for the plaintiff. Those whose rights have been violated may still have to sue to have the EEOC ruling enforced, and courts are not bound to follow independent agencies’ rulings. However, courts usually defer to the agencies’ decisions.   read more

Some of the enthusiasm for the bond issues comes from a rule change from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Pension funds on the brink of insolvency are required to use conservative projections for growth in their statements. But if the fund gets an infusion of money via a bond sale, it can return to using more optimistic growth projections, making it seem more solvent than it actually is.   read more

Unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada are guaranteed a hearing before they can be deported. However, the Department of Homeland Security has more leeway with immigrants from the United States’ neighboring countries. Those minors may be returned if they’re not victims of a severe form of trafficking in persons or they’re able to make an independent decision about returning. It’s the last provision that appears to be violated in the case of the youngest immigrants.   read more

The rule that has been stuck in limbo the longest—1,439 days and counting, almost four years, according to White House Safeguard Tracker—is one from the U.S. Agency for International Development that specifies that USAID funds can’t be used to build religious structures that would be ineligible for government spending domestically because of the establishment clause of the constitution.   read more

The average hold time was 23 minutes. Last year, it was 14 minutes. Only a little more than a third of callers looking for help got through to a human, the lowest rate in a decade. The IRS has struggled to operate since Congress began cutting its budget five years ago. The agency has lost $1.2 billion in funding, about 17% of its budget, since 2010.   read more

A 2013 law required the Department of Justice to publish “a description of protocols and practices . . . for the accurate, timely, and effective collection and processing of DNA evidence, including protocols and practices specific to sexual assault cases.” That was supposed to be accomplished by September 7, 2014, but has yet to be done. There has been $1.2 billion appropriated to ensure that rape kits are tested, but some of that money has been used on other things.   read more

Texron claims the bomb is designed to be used only on specific targets and will either pre-destruct or be rendered inert if it doesn’t hit what it was aimed at. Perhaps Texron needs to go back to the drawing board. Not only have civilians been injured by the CBU-105, but unexploded components of the bombs have been found on the ground. There is concern that those looking to sell the bombs as scrap will be injured by them.   read more

Symantec issued a report saying that for the first time since 2003, spam is under the 50% mark. Other online attacks, such as phishing attacks and email-based malware, have also dropped. hackers have other means of attack that are on the rise. There were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June. Another form of attack, ransomware, has also increased.   read more