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

Over the past 20 years, radioactive fuel from 20,000 disarmed Russian warheads was sold to the U.S. for about $8 billion. The U.S. government then turned around and provided it to commercial nuclear power plants to run their reactors and power electricity to millions of homes and businesses. During these two decades, 500 metric tons of Russian weapons-grade uranium has generated half of all nuclear power and, during the past 15 years, about 10% of all electricity produced in the U.S.   read more

“It’s really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,” Salgado shouted at McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton while he spoke to the Union League Club of Chicago. “Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I’ve worked for McDonald’s for ten years?” Stratton responded by saying: “I’ve been there for forty years.”   read more

Whether or not a representative is accepting his or her salary, all House members can still enjoy the perk of using the House gym. The facility—which offers a swimming pool, basketball courts, steam room, sauna, and flat-screen TVs— has remained open during the government shutdown...although lawmakers are having to go without towel service at this time.   read more

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin regulating e-cigarettes this month, and state and local governments may not be far behind in deciding how to tax or limit the use of this new nicotine-delivery technology. Manufacturers of e-cigarettes, however, aren’t in support of their products being regulated, and are trying to minimize the government’s interference in the industry.   read more

Journalists and researchers who have long relied on foreign news posted on an open Central Intelligence Agency-fed website will lose access at the end of this year. The CIA’s Open Source Center has decided to halt its information feed to the publicly accessible World News Connection (WNC) as of December 31, ending 50 years of this service.   read more

Kurt A. Carr took Matthew Cardoza’s iPhone in December 2010 while he was making a call outside a hospital in Martinez, where he worked. Cardoza fought with Carr to get it back and, after getting punched a few times, managed to wrest it away. But did Carr really break the law, which defines theft as depriving someone of their property with the intention of permanently keeping it from them?   read more

There are a lot of things out there that Americans will choose over Congress. These include: • Hemorrhoids (which poll 22% over Congress) • Potholes (+11% above Congress) • Dog shit (+7%) • Zombies (+6%) • Toenail fungus (+3%) • Cockroaches (+2%)   read more

With about half of the workforce at the Food and Drug Administration on furlough, 91% of seafood imported into the United States is not being inspected, according to media reports. Nearly 50% of fruits and 20% of vegetables imported and consumed in the U.S. also aren’t undergoing inspection.   read more

Early in 2013, Edwin Meese III, former attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, gathered together a group of conservative activists in the capital to plot strategy for stopping Obama’s health care law from going into effect in October. The meeting produced a “blueprint to defunding Obamacare” that Meese and leaders of nearly 40 conservative groups pledged to implement.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to consider a lower-court ruling that struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law, first passed in 1960, much to the dismay of state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, who is running for governor. Cuccinelli has defended the state’s “crimes against nature” law, which bans oral and anal sex, claiming it is necessary to prosecute child predators.   read more

The law, authored by U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-Virginia), chair of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, restricts foreign nationals from NASA facilities in an effort to counter espionage. The conference at the center of the controversy will focus on NASA’s Kepler space telescope program, which searches the universe for other planetary systems.   read more

Pawasarat said the state started locking up African-Americans in droves last decade, when Wisconsin’s Three Strikes law went into effect. That caused a tripling of the prison population, and resulted in about half of the black men in their 30s or early 40s in Milwaukee County spending time in the state’s correctional facilities, he said. “And two-thirds of the men come from the six poorest zip codes in Milwaukee,” Pawasarat added.   read more

Washington scored a hit when it captured an al-Qaeda mastermind accused of being responsible for the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa. But the administration also struck out when it sent the prize of U.S. Special Forces into Somalia to capture another wanted terror leader, and came away empty-handed.   read more

America’s ascendance as an energy king has been several years in the making, as U.S. companies’ embrace of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) to tap into shale-rock formations has opened up new supplies of oil and natural gas.   read more

Issa, a conservative leader of House Republicans, supports the shutdown, a fact that did not escape Judge Jackson. “While the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion.”   read more

Bataillon rejected the girl’s request to waive the parental consent requirement, saying she would have to ask her foster parents for permission. The judge’s ruling seemed to conflict with state law that says the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services is considered the guardian of wards. The judge also ruled that the girl did not demonstrate sufficient maturity to make the decision to seek an abortion.   read more