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

EFF countered that releasing location information pertaining to drones would not aid suspected criminals. The civil rights group cited the example of Arizona, from which the government flies at least four Predators. Counties there are so large, with an average size of 7,573 square miles, that criminals could not possibly avoid detection by drones even if they knew which county was being watched at certain times.   read more

The litigation began with five workers from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who said the government violated the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act when it made them stay on the job during the shutdown that lasted until October 17. The BOP workers seek compensation of $7.25 times the number of hours worked October 1-5, when paychecks were delayed. This amounts to $290 for those who worked eight hours a day, as well as any overtime due.   read more

Six years ago, local officials put a bond measure on the ballot to fund a new jail, only to watch it get rejected. So they tried again…but instead of asking for funding for a jail, politicians called the project a joint city-county “inmate processing center.” The bond measure squeaked by on Election Day this week, by a margin of only 456 votes (out of 224,126 ballots cast).   read more

After law school, Hyatt was a litigation attorney in San Francisco until 1985. “I liked practicing law, but thought...I’d do one tour then go back to real life in San Francisco as a lawyer,” Hyatt told an interviewer in 2011. As it turned out, Hyatt stayed and is now a 28-year veteran of the Foreign Service.   read more

The Reagan administration backed prayers before state legislative meetings by clergy as long as the prayers were nonsectarian. “Remarkably, the Obama administration has backtracked from the position taken by the Reagan administration,” Chemerinsky wrote. “It now argues that even explicitly sectarian prayers are permissible.”   read more

The military is not legally permitted “to conduct hostile actions outside of a declared war zone,” such as Pakistan, wrote Lubold and Harris, so “keeping the drones with the CIA…offers legal cover.” Years of quiet Pakistani government approval for U.S. drone strikes has been with the understanding that they were purely covert. There’s also the notion that “after years of conducting drone strikes, the CIA has developed an expertise and a taste for them,” Lubold and Harris found   read more

As many as 50 billionaires benefited from more than $11.3 million in agricultural subsidies either directly or indirectly (through farm businesses they invested in) between 1995 and 2012, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The billionaires who received the subsidies have a collective net worth of $316 billion, according to estimates made by the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.   read more

The cost of caring for these individuals was $18.9 billion over eight years, or about $2.3 billion per year. The average cost of medical treatment for each hospitalization was $75,884. • 89% of gunshot patients treated in hospitals were male • 48% were African-American • Nearly 40% of patients were aged 20-30 • More than 60% of injuries were caused by handgun “assault”   read more

A new report produced by the Department of Defense showed sexual assaults rose significantly during much of the last fiscal year. Figures showed 3,553 sexual assault complaints were reported to the military from October 2012 through June, representing a nearly 50% increase over the same period a year earlier. The statistics included cases of rape, sodomy and other unwanted sexual contact, but not sexual harassment.   read more

CBP has killed 20 people, including Hernandez, since 2010. Eight died in rock-throwing incidents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The Border Patrol considers rocks deadly weapons. They were the most common type of assault on agents two years ago, when 339 incidents were recorded. In 33 cases, agents responded with gunfire, and resorted to less-than-lethal force (which includes pepper spray and batons) 118 times.   read more

Larry Choate III and Daniel Lennox got married in the chapel at West Point, marking the third homosexual wedding at the famed military school. The previous two same-sex marriages involved women. Choate, who graduated in 2009, and Lennox, a member of the 2007 class, met after they left the academy. Both are now out of the military.   read more

The mistakes took place over a year and a half (February 2012 to June 2013), during which the Department of Health and Hospitals paid $1.9 million to several insurance companies participating in the state’s Medicaid programs. The agency relied on outdated information contained in the Social Security Administration database to determine if a Medicaid participant was still living.   read more

A children’s rights group located more than 1,000 pedophiles in the United States and dozens of other countries using a computer-generated girl as bait on the Internet. Sweetie, a 10-year-old Filipina girl, was created by Terre des Hommes Netherlands. The group established Sweetie’s identity in online chat rooms, saying she was available for webcam-based sex. More than 20,000 pedophiles from 71 countries responded within a 10-week period.   read more

A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal has sentenced an American citizen to death for helping lead a militia group responsible for murdering nearly 20 intellectuals during the country’s war for independence 42 years ago.   read more

Consisting of rooftop sensors mounted on buildings and light poles through the city, ShotSpotter notes every time the sound of firearms being discharged is detected. Those sounds are analyzed by a computer and tracked to within yards of their source location—a process that takes less than 40 seconds per incident. Personnel monitoring the system notify police in the field, who then speed to the location.   read more

ALEC registers itself with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization or “charity.” ALEC thus gets several valuable benefits—including tax deductibility of donations made to it and being allowed to keep its donors’ names secret—in exchange for agreeing to behave like a charity, which means refraining from engaging in political activities like campaigning for candidates or lobbying for legislation.   read more