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

The DEA forked over $854,460 over a 20-year period to a secretary-turned-snitch. The DEA was involved in a joint drug enforcement task force with Amtrak Police during the payoffs—and it could have easily gotten the information through this channel without paying a dime, the IG reported, leading to speculation that DEA officials didn’t trust their legitimate Amtrak partners.   read more

In a court filing produced two years ago for a lawsuit brought by 9/11 victims against the Saudi government, Graham said: “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.”   read more

The law bans same-day voter registration, cuts early voting days from 17 to 10, eliminates the use of provisional ballots if the voter votes in the wrong precinct, eliminates a program to allow 16- and 17-years-old to pre-register at public high schools, says that a disabled voter can only be helped by a near relative or legal guardian and mandates that candidates belonging to the same party as the governor have their names appear first on the ballot.   read more

Truck drivers’ salaries have declined since the Great Recession, from more than $42,500 a year in 2009 to $40,940 last year. The drop is even larger going back to 2003, when the average trucker salary was more than $43,000 annually. In addition, the industry is having trouble replacing retired drivers with younger workers who are reluctant to take a job that involves long hours and sometimes weeks at a time on the road.   read more

The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) issued a report Friday saying formaldehyde, a common chemical found in clothing, homes and furniture, causes head and neck cancer (nasopharyngeal), nose cancer (sinonasal) and bone cancer (myeloid leukemia). The NAS findings supported other reports by American and international experts who have said the chemical is a danger to human health.   read more

FICO announced last week that it would give less weight to medical debts when factoring credit scores—a significant move considering the debts account for about half of all unpaid collections on consumers’ credit reports. The company also said paid collections would no longer cause scores to be downgraded. . It might take a year or more for the changes to be adopted by lending institutions.   read more

The 10 states with the highest uninsured rates in the country, all run by Republican governors or legislatures or both, have all refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid and have declined to participate in the state exchanges. Those states are Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New Mexico.   read more

The controversy centers around policy changes made at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which issues reports on so-called “hospital acquired conditions (HACs),” such as when surgeons accidentally leave sponges inside a patient’s body or a nurse causes air bubbles inside a person’s bloodstream. CMS has decided it will no longer disclose eight types of HACs that patient-safety advocates and consumers used to access.   read more

A group of 47 inspectors general (IGs) informed Congress that the Department of Justice, the Peace Corps and the Chemical Safety Board have at different times stymied the audits by IGs by not turning over important internal documents. With the Peace Corps, the agency reportedly withheld records of sexual assaults against its volunteers.   read more

Medicare, which accounts for about a quarter of Acthar prescriptions, pays an average of $41,763 per prescription for the drug and spent $141.5 million on it in 2012. The 2013 bill may reach $220 million. Despite the growing use of Acthar, there are no scientific studies showing that the drug works any better than cheaper alternatives for the conditions for which it’s prescribed.   read more

Hartley and Schlosstein have been active in Democratic politics. In the 2012 campaign, Hartley is credited with bundling at least $500,000, and possibly up to $1.4 million, for Obama’s re-election effort. In 2011 she and Schlosstein hosted a $71,600-per-couple fundraiser for Obama. She has also contributed to the campaigns of numerous Democratic Congressional candidates.   read more

“We assumed the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it. We did not realize what the focus was,” Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux, a board member of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, a private, nonprofit institution and chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeal, told The Lens. “Had we known of the real use,” he said, “we never would have done it.” The hospital sold the drug to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center.   read more

Last year, the United States was ranked 99th most peaceful country in the world, out of 162. The U.S. has slipped two places in this year’s survey to 101st, nestled between Benin and Angola. Canada did much better in the rankings, coming in seventh in the world. To the south, Mexico landed at 138.   read more

Nevada Department of Wildlife personnel are gathering fish from ditches usually fed by the Truckee River near Reno to a hydroelectric generating station. Because of the drought, water is not being diverted into the ditches, which would normally result in a fishkill. But last week about 25 people waded into the ditches, electrically stunning then gathering fish to be transplanted back to the Truckee or into a nearby pond.   read more

When Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) confronted Bass with details of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s crackdowns on free speech, Bass proved reluctant to criticize Erdoğan. McCain asked, “Do you believe...that is a drift towards authoritarianism?” Finally, when McCain threatened to withhold Bass’s nomination if he didn’t get a direct answer, Bass conceded that “It’s a drift in that direction, yes.”   read more

In 1996, Osius was among the first U.S. diplomats to work in Vietnam since the end of the U.S. war there. The following year, he helped set up the U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). While there, he travelled 1,200 miles by bicycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Osius told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the time is coming to consider lifting U.S. restrictions on arms sales to Vietnam, which currently buys most of its weaponry from Russia.   read more