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

Under current law, asylum seekers are prohibited from working legally for up to 180 days after filing their applications. However, the report shows that the wait is often much longer, sometimes lasting years, because the government can “stop the clock” if it determines an applicant has done something to delay proceedings. HRW says it is unclear “what stops and restarts the clock”— a practice that impacted more than 260,000 asylum seekers in 2011 alone, or 92% of all pending cases.   read more

With the website’s many hardware and software problems preventing people from signing up for insurance, the administration has called on insurers for technical help. But consumers may find themselves going directly to an insurance company’s website for information—and companies would not be required to tell visitors about other plans available through competitors.   read more

The bill would wipe out Section 716 (pdf) of Dodd-Frank that requires banks to use a non-bank entity for trading commodity, energy and other swaps. In other words, if the legislation becomes law, financial institutions could return to conducting high-risk trading with funds that are backed by the FDIC (i.e. the taxpayer).   read more

six states—Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia—have refused to comply, despite the fact that the president has the power to call National Guard units into federal service and that the federal government pays for nearly all Guard funding. Nevertheless, the states say the units are state agencies that must abide by state laws.   read more

The case is really all about money. The law was inspired by the city of Portland, which back in 2004 gave public employees the option of buying their prescriptions from licensed pharmacies outside the U.S. The move wound up saving workers hundreds and even thousands of dollars by not buying their medications through U.S. drug stores.   read more

With American troops planning to pull out next year, the interpreters say insurgents intend to kill them and their families for supporting the U.S. occupation. But the State Department has repeatedly rejected the visa applications of these men, saying there is no serious threat against them. The interpreters beg to differ.   read more

One provision in the bill, Section 1613, “would prohibit any federal agency subject to FOIA from disclosing information of any kind that concerns ‘an agricultural operation, farming or conservation practices or the land itself.’ Under this provision, not even statistical data integral to studies of impacts on public health and other effects of farmland operations would be available.”   read more

Wilson stepped down as a U.S. representative from New Mexico on January 3, 2009. She then set up a lucrative one-woman consulting firm (Heather Wilson and Company, LLC) the very next day, collecting thousands of dollars from a federally-run research laboratory for services that were never really explained.   read more

In early 2011, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation said that Global Hawk “was not operationally effective for conducting near-continuous, persistent ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] operations.” in June 2011 Air Force officials certified the project as “essential to national security” in order to ensure continued Congressional funding.   read more

Defenders of Coachella Valley High School, located in the Mojave Desert outside of Los Angeles, say the mascot was chosen in the 1920s to honor the importance of farming dates—a traditional Middle East food—to the local economy. Nearly all the country’s dates are grown there. The school’s alumni association points a few miles down the road to the town of Mecca.   read more

Between 1995 and 2002, Mamet helped Gephardt raise more than $238 million for Democratic congressional campaigns, committees and other political groups. Although he worked as a campaign contribution bundler for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, Mamet became a key player in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, bundling more than $500,000 for the President.   read more

Under UNESCO’s constitution, however, any nation that fails to pay dues for two years loses its vote in the UNESCO general assembly. That made UNESCO’s vote-stripping automatic, just as the U.S. “decision” to withhold dues was unavoidable under federal law. The U.S. had never before voluntarily given up its vote in a UN organization, according to diplomats.   read more

Ten days in jail—not prison, only jail—for engineering the wrongful murder conviction of an innocent man who languished in prison nearly 25 years is the state of Texas’ idea of justice. That was the sentence handed down on former Williamson County, Texas, district attorney Ken Anderson, who will also surrender his law license and perform 500 hours of community service to settle allegations that he hid favorable evidence from Michael Morton, who was convicted of killing his wife in 1987.   read more

CEI has long received the bulk of its funding from fossil fuel interests hostile to climate change science, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers, General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council and Arch Coal. Other big donors include the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and Pfizer.   read more

The account, called rats215, exposed more than 30 witnesses from February to early November, posting photos, police statements, and testimony—much of it taken from proceedings that were supposed to be secret. In one case, rats215 posted evidence and pictures of a shooting victim who had testified before a secret grand jury, and once posted a photo that seemed to have been taken while a witness was testifying in court—where cameras are not allowed.   read more

Reddick served her first ambassadorship as ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Principe from November 2007 to December 2010, followed by a brief stint as diplomat in residence at Howard University. Reddick has been director of the Office of West African Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs at the Department of State since 2011.   read more