Trump said, “We need people to be afraid. Right now many Americans are surprised when protestors are killed, but they’ll get used to it.” Trump did add one suggestion: “Try not to kill white people. That gets too much attention. Stick to protestors of other colors.”   read more

“Efforts to further increase transparency, no matter how well intentioned, must avoid unintended consequences that could undermine the Federal Reserve’s ability to make policy in the long-run best interest of American families and businesses,” Yellen said. One bill would require the Fed to articulate how it sets interest rates and explain why it sometimes deviates from its own rules when doing so. Another plan would establish regular external review of the Fed’s policy-making process.   read more

The Sexuality Institute’s president, Rev. Ted McIlvenna, says that among the college’s holdings is a pornographic film library. He said he'd never want to get his school accredited through an affiliate of the Department of Education. “Accreditation is a bunch of crap,” he said. “They would never let me keep my library.” The Christ for the Nations Institute has received $310,000 to educate war vets. A museum operated by the school is based on the premise that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.   read more

The B61-12 nuclear bomb will have an adjustable yield and a tail section to allow the bomb to be guided to its target. Hans Kristensen, nuclear weapons expert at the nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists, said the bomb violates a 2010 Obama pledge not to produce nuclear weapons with new military capabilities. “We do not have a nuclear guided bomb in our arsenal today,” Kristensen said. “It is a new weapon.” He said the capability will make the bomb more useable in future conflicts.   read more

In Oklahoma, a GOP Facebook post compared food stamp recipients to feeding animals in national parks, where it can result in dependency. The state's Dept. of Human Services responded: “That was an appalling and uniformed comment. Obviously you did not bother to know the majority of the 604,000 people receiving food benefits in Oklahoma are people who are aging...with disabilities...the working poor who are raising children. ...Is that the kind of dependency you are suggesting we discourage?”   read more

The numbers showed that the poverty levels for white, Asian and Hispanic kids declined from 2010 to 2013. But the rate for black youths remained largely the same. Overall, the child poverty rate in the U.S. dipped slightly from 22% to 20% during this span. The Pew study also reported that black and Hispanic children are overrepresented when it comes to poverty. “Children make up 27% of the black population, but 38% of blacks in poverty,” said Pew.   read more

"I think members [of Congress will] realize they are being sold on a bill that doesn’t solve anything consumers are asking for...a mandatory labeling standard," said Colin O'Neil. Critics have called HR 1599 the “Mother of All Monsanto Protection Acts” after the company that opposes GMO labels. OCA's Ronnie Cummins characterized the legislation as “anti-democracy and anti-state’s rights.” Vermont already has a GMO labeling law, and Big Food has been fighting in court to get it overturned.   read more

Undocumented immigrants have until now been able to get birth certificates by providing a foreign ID if they don’t have a Texas driver’s license or a U.S. passport, as allowed under state law. The officials reportedly told the women they would no longer accept either the matricula consular or a foreign passport without a current U.S. visa. “Everyone born in the United States is entitled to the full rights of citizenship," said attorney James Harrington, who represents the families.   read more

The exodus of instructors has been blamed on education spending cuts, including low teacher pay. Gov. Brownback himself has led a charge to cut school funding. The Republican-dominated legislature’s attempts to do away with tenure, undermine teachers’ unions and even pass a law that would have allowed teachers to be criminally prosecuted for presenting material deemed harmful to minors have also been cited as reasons.   read more

Navajos are getting by on seven gallons of water a day while the average Californian in 2011 used 362 gallons a day. Puerto Ricans are enduring one of the worst droughts in their island’s history, forcing the government to ration water for the first time since the 1990s. For about 160,000 residents and businesses there, water is shut off for two days, then turned on for a day, then off again. About 185,000 others have water every other day and 10,000 more are on 12-hour rationing.   read more

The sentences are a relic of the “War on Drugs,” in which legislators wanting to appear to be tough on crime enacted sentencing laws that disproportionately affected black and Hispanic defendants. "The drug war has been a war on people of color,” said Michael Collins. One of the more prominent prisoners whose sentence was commuted was Katrina Smith, whose son, Demaryius Thomas, plays for the Denver Broncos. She has been locked up since he was 11.   read more

In the last four presidential elections 40 states plus D.C. have voted for the same party’s candidate in every one of those contests. Only four states have moved from solidly one party to the other. "The nation’s electoral maps are the most static they have been in history,” said Dr. Eric Ostermeier. In 2012, only two states switched their support from the previous presidential election: North Carolina and Indiana.   read more

Obama will travel Thursday to El Reno, a medium-security prison in Oklahoma. He’ll be accompanied by outgoing Bureau of Prisons chief Charles E. Samuels Jr. Obama will use the visit to draw attention to his plan for changing federal sentencing laws, particularly those that have resulted in black and Hispanic defendants being sentenced to decades behind bars for nonviolent offenses. There’s also talk that he might work to restore voting rights to felons who have served their time.   read more

Stolen information on so many millions of Americans will allow the hackers to determine who works for U.S. intelligence agencies and where they are in the world, said Paul Rosenzweig. “Short of real-time intelligence of U.S. activities, this is the intelligence equivalent of the discovery of the nuclear bomb,” he said. The data breach “really suggests that we should take the entire government offline” and offer “complete amnesty to anyone who is approached by the Chinese and comes forward.”   read more

Big Water has been pushing lawmakers to stop more parks from banning sales of disposable water. Those involved in its $13-billion public relations and lobbying campaign include “the titans" of the bottled water industry. Finally the lobbyists found a friend in Congress, Rep.Keith Rothfus, who introduced an 11th-hour amendment into the appropriations bill, recently passed by the House, which prohibits the Park Service from using taxpayer money to eliminate disposable plastic bottles in parks.   read more

The chores included cleaning toilets, showers, windows and floors; doing laundry, clerical and landscape work; plus preparing and serving meals for GEO law enforcement events. A lawsuit filed by nine current and former detainees at the 1,500-bed Aurora Detention Facility also says they were told to clean prison cells without receiving any compensation. Those who refused were threatened with being placed in solitary confinement, according to the complaint.   read more

In 2000, the NAACP voted to implement a boycott of the state to raise awareness of the flag still flying above the capitol building. It has insisted on maintaining the boycott until the flag was removed. It was finally brought down on July 10, a day after state Governor Nikki Haley signed a measure ordering its removal. During its annual convention in Philadelphia on Saturday—the day after the flag came down—the NAACP’s board adopted a resolution ending the boycott.   read more