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

O’Malley, an attorney in St. Louis, is a longtime supporter of President Barack Obama. O’Malley has strong Irish roots; all four of his grandparents were born in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland. Until being nominated for the Dublin post, O’Malley held dual Irish and American citizenship, but gave up his Irish citizenship to accept the ambassadorial position.   read more

For the past 65 years presidents of both parties have continued a tradition started by Harry Truman—appointing a woman as U.S. Treasurer. No, not the Secretary of the Treasury; white men appear to have a lock on that job. The treasurer is responsible for “oversight” of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and of the U.S. gold reserves in Fort Knox. And her signature appears on the paper currency printed during her term.   read more

A suit (pdf) was filed last week by two men, at least one of whom has ties to the No Berkeley Beverage Tax campaign, which receives funding from the American Beverage Association. It claims that the city substituted the phrase “high-calorie, sugary drinks” for “sugar-sweetened beverage” in the ballot language. The plaintiffs, Anthony Johnson and Leon Cain, would prefer the phrase “sugar-sweetened beverage products” to be used.   read more

In July 2015, Dr. David J. Skorton, who is currently president of Cornell University, will become the 13th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He has said he hopes to keep his medical license current when he becomes secretary of the Smithsonian.   read more

Most of Robinson’s career has been spent in Latin America. In 2009, Robinson was sent to Guatemala as deputy chief of mission, serving there until 2011. He then returned to Washington as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, beginning in June 2011.   read more

The ABA’s National Task Force on Stand Your Ground laws found that when a white shooter kills a black victim, the shooting is 350% more likely to be ruled justified than when a white shooter kills a white victim. A Texas A&M study cited by the ABA reported that states with stand-your-ground laws saw an 8% increase in homicides.   read more

Neither Moskowitz nor Brothman testified in their own defense because they didn’t want their affair to become known. Nevertheless, she was convicted in 1950 and served two years in prison. Moskowitz also had to pay a $10,000 fine (equal to nearly $100,000 today), and, after being released, she struggled to put her life back together with such a black mark against her during the Cold War.   read more

ISIS controls or has a presence in much of northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, with its footprint there nearly matching that of al-Qaeda in Iraq during its zenith in 2006. ISIS has received financial backing from the Sunni-led governments in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Cockburn and others have written.   read more

Arab Bank “knowingly and willfully” financially helped Hamas and other “terrorists who have killed, injured and maimed civilians” and “aided and abetted and conspired to commit said acts of international terrorism,” according to the lawsuit filed by 297 Americans.   read more

On September 25, 2012, President Barack Obama made Dr. Rodney C. Ewing chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel on which Ewing has sat since July 2011. Obama reaffirmed Ewing’s position on June 13, 2014. The Review Board conducts scientific and technical assessments of the Department of Energy’s activities to dispose of the nation’s commercial spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste.   read more

It would be the first ambassadorial posting for Mustard and one of the few for diplomats from the USDA. In his testimony, he noted that U.S. relations with Turkmenistan have been “constrained by significant human-rights concerns because the government seeks to exert control over the lives of its citizens,” but he also pointed out that this hasn’t stopped Boeing and GE from experiencing “great success in the Turkmen market.”   read more

Until Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) ordered the state highway patrol to take charge of security in Ferguson, the police officers patrolling the city’s streets were carrying 5.56-mm rifles similar to the M4 carbine employed by the U.S. Army. They also had sidearms, body armor, multiple ammunition clips, and they rode around in armored vehicles reminiscent of the kind used to shuttle soldiers through Iraq.   read more

The one discordant note is that hiring has not risen at the same rate as job openings. Openings are up 17.6% in the past year, while hires have increased only 9.3%. Some economists say it’s because companies might not be offering high enough wages. Others say the disparity is because of a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills of job seekers. For example, a former factory worker wouldn’t necessarily be qualified to fill a nursing position.   read more

an official with the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which provides protection for American diplomats and works to maintain the integrity of U.S. travel documents, decided to test new facial recognition software created to detect passport fraud. The DSS official happened to use an FBI wanted poster containing Stammer’s image for his experiment and found that it matched the photo of an American in Nepal going by the name of Kevin Hodges.   read more

Following rules promoted by President Barack Obama in 2010 that barred lobbyists from being advisers on the boards, a group of lobbyists who had been dismissed from boards sued the government claiming the restrictions violated their rights. They won their case in federal court, forcing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue new guidelines that allow lobbyists to serve on the boards if they are representing clients.   read more

According to the report, “She advanced a theory integral to RedX product development, promoted a multi-step process the RedX product suite used to implement the theory, highlighted the results of field trials that used RedX products to demonstrate the efficacy of the theory and process, and featured a RedX sales slogan.” Dugan left her post in 2012 during the investigation and became an executive at Google.   read more