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 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will for the first time publicize the amount of pollution being discharged from dams it operates in the Northwest. The change came about after an environmental group, Columbia Riverkeeper, successfully sued the Corps into agreeing to disclose the information and to submit to federal oversight by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has sought to oversee the dams run by the Corps.   read more

Levitt’s research discovered only 31 instances of voter impersonation out of more than one billion ballots cast in general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. "The factor that really influences whether people think the elections are fair? Whether their preferred candidates win,” Levitt wrote.   read more

Some of the redactions imposed by the administration addressed phony names that the committee gave to CIA officers to protect their identity. Officials insisted that the pseudonyms had to be excised to secure the identities of agents. However, the sections considered most controversial are said to have concluded that the torture techniques used by the CIA were more brutal than previously admitted and that their effectiveness in obtaining useful information was greatly exaggerated.   read more

The government’s Terrorist Screening database includes names of 680,000 people, mostly foreign residents, who have been placed on watch lists. But more than 40% of those on the list have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation,” according to the documents, making it unclear why the government has to keep an eye on them.   read more

If the country stops waging its war on drugs, including marijuana, fewer government dollars will flow to police efforts to address this public policy issue. Municipalities will also receive less money from property seized in drug raids. States that legalize marijuana use are likely to experience a decline in prison populations—and that will reduce the need for government to hire private prison companies and correctional officers.   read more

The council also said it was “particularly disturbed by the comments Brachfeld made concerning interracial marriage, comments concerning pregnant women, and comments indicating that [he] was interested in dating NARA employees or contractors.” One reason the investigation, and Brachfeld’s suspension, took so long was because the council meets only four times a year.   read more

The chair of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, Barbara Cross, said the move made sense because of the potential threat seed borrowing posed. “Agri-terrorism is a very, very real scenario,” she told the local newspaper. “Protecting and maintaining the food sources of America is an overwhelming challenge... so you’ve got agri-tourism on one side and agri-terrorism on the other.”   read more

The immigration crisis started in Washington, when the Obama administration decided to deport thousands of convicts, many of them gang members, back home, which helped turn Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala into crime centers that prompted families to send their children on a perilous trek to the United States.   read more

A New York Times investigation revealed that GM Financial had given some sub-prime car loans to individuals who lacked sufficient income or employment to be reliable candidates for borrowing. In some instances, loan officers apparently doctored applications, claiming borrowers had more money than they actually had, or were employed when they weren’t.   read more

The 20 oil companies examined by the group reported a total of $133.3 billion in pre-tax U.S. earnings, but were responsible to pay only $32.1 billion in taxes. The deferred payments option allowed them to pay even less, only about $15.6 billion, which came out to an 11.7% tax rate. And the companies owe the federal government no interest on the deferred taxes, even if it takes decades to pay them back.   read more

One hundred twenty current and former Secret Service agents are involved in the litigation, with eight lead plaintiffs. They claim they were passed over for higher pay grades from 1995 to 2005 under the Secret Service’s Merit Promotion Plan despite being qualified for promotions. The case has taken so long to go to trial in part because the government first contended the case shouldn’t have class-action status.   read more

Alexis Davis was found not guilty on two counts after jurors agreed with the defense that ATF entrapped the man with a second-grade reading level and an IQ of 59. “To me, this was not about fighting crime,” said juror Michael Lehman of St. Petersburg Beach. “There is a lot of crime going on in the world, you don’t need to manipulate the circumstances in order to encourage people to do bad things that they might or might not otherwise do.”   read more

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism says Islamic jihadists were considered the No. 1 threat when law enforcement officers were surveyed in 2006-2007. But as of 2013-2014, Islamic extremists had fallen to No. 2 because of the leap in concern about sovereign citizens. Defined as those individuals who believe federal, state, and local governments have no legal authority over them, sovereign citizens now occupy the top spot.   read more

It is estimated that 35% of Americans nationwide are in collections, according to Delinquent Debt in America, a new report from the Urban Institute. Debts in collection can include medical bills and traffic fines, as well as consumer credit accounts. In some states, nearly half of those with credit files are being hounded by debt collectors. Nevada, “which was hard hit by the housing crisis,” the report says, has a 47% rate, the highest in the country.   read more

Initiatives 88 and 89 are being pushed by Coloradans for Safe and Clean Energy, which wants to give local governments more control over where drillers can operate. The measures would also keep new oil and gas wells at least 2,000 feet from homes and schools. A recent poll showed that a majority of Coloradans support both initiatives.   read more

The steady increase in female incarceration can be attributed in large part to drug-related convictions. In the federal prison system, 57% of female inmates have a drug offense as their most serious offense, while the rate for male prisoners is 47%. Ohio officials say much of the increase they’ve seen in female inmates has been due to a rise in opioid use, with women also often used as drug mules.   read more