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

Sotomayor mentioned some of the strange justifications cited by Alabama judges in overriding jury verdicts. In one case, the judge noted that a defendant who had an IQ of 65 “intentionally test[ed] low on standard IQ tests.” In another case, a judge up for reelection when he sentenced a 19-year-old defendant said, “If I had not imposed the death sentence, I would have sentenced three black people to death and no white people.”   read more

One physician singled out by ProPublica was Dr. Hew Wah Quon, whose practice is in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Quon wrote $27 million in prescriptions from 2009 to 2011 for his mostly low-income patients. But he largely prescribed branded medications. Had he recommended available generics instead, Medicare would have saved $5 million from this one doctor alone.   read more

One longtime Canton store employee—who requested her name not be used for fear of being fired—found the Walmart campaign “demoralizing” and “kind of depressing.” “Why would a company do that?” OUR Walmart strike organizer Vanessa Ferreira said to the Plain Dealer. “The company needs to stand up and give them their 40 hours and a living wage, so they don't have to worry about whether they can afford Thanksgiving.”   read more

An overwhelming majority of Americans support efforts to raise the minimum wage, according to a new national poll. Gallup says 76% of respondents to a survey conducted November 5-6 back a plan to increase the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $9 an hour. A similar percentage (69%) said they would also support a bump to $9/hour plus automatic increases based on the inflation rate.   read more

In what may be the first death penalty case of its kind, an Ohio convicted killer avoided execution with only hours to spare after Governor John Kasich (R) issued a stay for the purposes of organ donation. Ronald Phillips asked that his death by lethal injection be delayed so doctors could remove one of his kidneys and transplant it into his ailing mother. He also wants to donate his heart to his sister, who suffers from heart disease.   read more

The IRS wants to eliminate a tax break that financially has benefited wealthy landowners, but also preserved historic buildings and open lands. That’s why getting rid of the tax deduction may prove difficult, what with conservationists and rich individuals teaming up to fight the change. Under a provision in the tax code, landowners can deduct millions of dollars from their tax bills if they own—and don’t alter—the historic structures they own.   read more

Members of Occupy Wall Street have shifted their activism from street protests to raising money to alleviate the medical debts of thousands of Americans. Rolling Jubilee, a creation of Occupy’s Strike Debt group, has purchased $14.7 million owed by individuals, largely as a result of medical expenses. Remarkably, the group managed to do this while spending only $400,000 of the more than $622,000 it has raised so far for the debt-relief cause.   read more

Given Republicans’ persistent efforts to downsize the federal government—and reduce the number of federal jobs in the process—one would assume that GOP areas wouldn’t have much to lose as a result of such cost-cutting measures. But it turns out the highest concentrations of federal employment actually exist across the Sunbelt of the United States, where Republicans tend to dominate political office.   read more

The procedure involves TSA officers spotting passengers who appear suspicious, and then engaging them in conversation to make a further determination as to their potential as a threat. “TSA has yet to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the program despite spending about $900 million on it since 2007,” Steve Lord, who directed the investigation for the GAO, told the Associated Press.   read more

A British inquiry into how the government of the United Kingdom decided to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is being held up by officials in the White House and the U.S. State Department, which have refused to allow the publication of secret documents revealing conversations between former President George W. Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.   read more

Winona (2010 pop.: 27,592) sees about 100 sand trucks go through town every day from silica mines in neighboring Wisconsin, and will be the first local government in the United States to address air pollution caused by the shipment of fracking sand. A single fracking well may need as much as 10,000 tons of sand during its lifetime, and about 50 new such wells are being drilled in the U.S. every day.   read more

Nominated August 1 to serve as the next ambassador to Morocco, businessman Dwight L. Bush, Sr., was a leading campaign contribution bundler for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, raising more than $500,000. Bush is the president of D. L. Bush & Associates, a Washington, DC-based financial advisory and business consulting firm.   read more

ZMTL is not the only Afghan contractor thought to be playing both sides of the war. In fact, Sopko estimates that over the past five years more than $150 million in contracts and subcontracts has gone to companies and individuals accused of assisting terrorist groups.   read more

Chin wrote, " It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations."   read more

The trading of foreign currencies represents the richest of all exchanges in the financial world, what with $5 trillion in monies changing hands every day. Now the U.S. Department of Justice is going after traders at the world’s largest banks who may have conspired via instant messaging to manipulate the price of currency exchanges..   read more

Karen Clark Stanton has been executive director in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs since 2009. From 2008 to 2009, Stanton was the deputy executive director in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, rising to executive director in 2009.   read more