Trump announced that from now on the NFL will be known as the NTL: The National Trump League. The Super Bowl will be renamed the Trump Bowl, and professional players must be called Trumpball Players. Anyone, on any level, who refuses to comply with Trump’s orders will be arrested and charged with being a threat to national security.   read more

A rabbi who frequently complained about service on his favorite airline has lost his case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which said enough-is-enough to the kvetching plaintiff. Rabbi Ginsberg brought suit against Northwest Airlines after it kicked him out of its frequent flyer program in 2008. The airline claimed he abused the program. In six months, the rabbi filed 24 complaints over travel problems, nine of which were related to his luggage arriving late at baggage pickup.   read more

Clapper’s admission goes against President Barack Obama’s assurance last year that his administration was not prying into people’s communications. “When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about,” Obama said in June. “As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.”   read more

In 2013 alone, Powell found 10,885 peer-reviewed articles that discussed global warming or climate change. But only two described as peer-reviewed denied the widely-held belief that the planet is warming up because of humans, he says, and one of the two turned out not to be peer-reviewed. One of those papers was produced by a Russian scientist, S. V. Avakyan, who claims global warming is a product of solar activity.   read more

When FBI employees expressed concerns about their workload, the center’s managers allegedly retaliated against them, according to the IG probe. Specifically, the center’s director from the DEA reportedly warned staff that anything they said to the IG inspectors could be traced back to them, and that they should answer all questions from the inspectors, but not elaborate on their answers.   read more

The legislation would permit the public ridicule of gay students for being sinners, according to critics and civil libertarians. Such actions could take place in class, during school assemblies, or at other locations and times while school is in session. But the pending law could also be used by those such as Satanists, to espouse their beliefs in the classroom, opponents say.   read more

Even team mascots are paid better—much better—than cheerleaders: $23,000 a year. And the cheerleaders are required to pay for their travel and team-mandated cosmetics. The Raiderettes are also subject to fines for various infractions, such as wearing unapproved underwear or having the wrong shade of fake tan.   read more

Each time objects spotted in the search for Flight 370 turn out to be trash, it shows how mankind has treated the ocean as a dumping ground. There are up to 10,000 shipping containers that fall off ships each year, With them go their contents, be it computers, toys, clothing, appliances and more. The 2011 Japan tsunami swept 10 million tons of debris—including homes, cars and trees—into the Pacific. “The ocean is like a toilet bowl that swirls but doesn’t flush,” said Charles Moore.   read more

JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $13 billion to settle its mortgage violations. But nearly $4 billion of this amount will be reclaimed through a tax deduction. BP, responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history, received a $10 billion tax break after writing off its settlement. “Americans don’t deduct their parking tickets or library fines from their taxes. Corporations like JPMorgan or BP shouldn’t be able to deduct their settlements for wrongdoing, either,” said Phineas Baxandall.   read more

A small town in Oklahoma has discovered what other communities across the U.S. have found once their hospital is bought by an ever-growing Catholic medical enterprise: Patients can’t get birth control. During the last three years there have been 20 instances in which Catholic medical organizations have joined with smaller secular hospitals, which often results in policies that ban or restrict access to contraception, sterilization and abortion.   read more

The USS Miami nuclear submarine survived military campaigns in the Middle East and the Balkans, but couldn’t overcome the petty sabotage of an American civilian worker who just wanted to go home early. Casey Fury started a blaze on the sub that grew into an inferno which raged for more than 12 hours before 100 firefighters put it out. The reason he set the fire, Fury said, was because he wanted to leave work early due to anxiety caused by heated text messages with his girlfriend.   read more

Font nerds have been upset since a 14-year-old student became a media darling for figuring out that the U.S. government could save half a billion dollars a year if it switched to a different font for printed materials. Suvir Mirchandani compared four different fonts to see if any one of them used less ink. He determined the Garamond font required 24% less. But experts in the world of fonts weren’t convinced. Thomas Phinney said the student’s conclusions were “a bit off-base.”   read more

Researchers in New York and California have concluded that wind-derived electrical power costs an average of 8.7 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). That’s cheaper than nuclear power (10.8 cents) and coal (12.3 cents), as well as two alternative energy sources: solar (14.4 cents) and biomass (11.1 cents). Only natural gas is cheaper than wind, averaging 6.6 cents per kWh.   read more

Another bad sign for the GOP is that the party is even losing out among young white people. “From 1995 to 2005, young whites consistently identified as or leaned Republican rather than Democratic, by an average of eight points. Since 2006, whites aged 18 to 29 have shown at least a slight Democratic preference in all but one year, with an average advantage of three points.”   read more

Motorola has padded its corporate board with law enforcement and national intelligence chiefs and won friends by using its foundations to donate more than $26 million over a six-year period to nonprofits formed by police and firefighters. In addition, Motorola has spent nearly $60 million over 10 years to lobby Washington and contributed nearly $2 million to the Republican and Democratic governors associations.   read more

The retail company claims price fixing and other antitrust violations occurred from 2004 to 2012, resulting in Visa collecting more than $350 billion, some of that at the expense of Walmart and its customers. Walmart’s move comes after it opted out of a 2012 class action settlement between merchants and Visa and another credit card company, MasterCard.   read more

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) has informed Washington that he won’t comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Perry’s decision has puzzled some observers, considering the 2003 law was approved by President George W. Bush, whom Perry replaced as governor. Although PREA was signed 11 years ago, it took the federal government nearly a decade to implement the act.   read more