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

According to the complaint, Tanvir landed on the no-fly list after refusing an FBI request to work as an informant in his predominantly Muslim community. When Tanvir contacted the bureau, FBI agents offered to take him off the list in exchange for information.   read more

The case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission will focus on the cap that one person may contribute during a two-year election cycle to federal candidates, political parties and committees. the two political parties will likely court about a thousand super-rich donors who gave at least $134,300 0f their own money in 2012, which will give these individuals “a unique ability to set and limit the party agendas.” Two-thirds of these donors are Republicans.   read more

“Under Section 215 [of the Patriot Act], NSA is not receiving cell site location data and has no current plans to do so.” Alexander limited his answer to NSA’s present conduct under Section 215, much to the dissatisfaction of Sen. Wyden. Note what he left out of his answer: Is NSA collecting location data under any other section of the Patriot Act or under an unknown or secret source of authority? How about other agencies? Have they collected such data in the past?   read more

Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.   read more

Is the “business-friendly” orientation of Texas government for whites only? The state of Texas—whose governor regularly touts the laxity of its regulatory environment—stands accused of over-regulating the trade of African hair-braiding in a lawsuit filed by one of its premier practitioners.   read more

Just last week, Lockheed received two more contracts worth $7.8 billion for 71 F-35 jets, a program that has attracted widespread criticism, including by lawmakers, for its rising costs. “For the public not to know for days, and perhaps even a number of weeks, about large-scale contract spending is anathema to open government,” explained Charles Tiefer, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is a form of secret contracting.”   read more

American law enforcement made just more than 60,000 violent crime arrests of youth under age 18 in 2012—a decline of 10% compared to 2011, and an overall drop of 36% since 2003. Over the same decade, violent crime arrests involving adults fell 9%. Between 2003 and 2012, youth arrests for murder fell 37%, forcible rape arrests went down 36%, robbery arrests slipped by 20%, and aggravated assault arrests plummeted by nearly 43%.   read more

If workers do access their inboxes, they will be in violation of a 19th century law, the Antideficiency Act, adopted during the Chester Arthur administration that carries a penalty of fines or even imprisonment. The no-email prohibition also applies to managers, prohibiting them from even using their agency email systems to alert workers that the shutdown has ended and to report back to the office.   read more

The case pits U.S. bankruptcy law—which gives the judge vast authority to decide who gets dinged for a filer’s debts—against California state law that says funding for the pension plan cannot be monkeyed with. Stockton has continued to make payments to the pension fund throughout the negotiations, unlike the city of San Bernardino, which filed for bankruptcy in August.   read more

Although Heyman has been working with wealthy Canadian clients of Goldman since 2001, his qualifications for nomination were not damaged by the fact that he has been a “mega-bundler” for both of Obama’s presidential runs, helping to raise millions of dollars and serving on Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2012. A longtime Democrat in an industry dominated by Republicans, Heyman has donated more than $180,000 to political causes, including $96,000 to the Democratic National Committee.   read more

This undercounting takes place because local officials, including coroners, will mistakenly classify the deaths as something other than an accident, like a homicide. The New York Times also determined that in almost every case, the accidental shooter was a boy and that 81% of the victims were boys. In 28% of the cases, the fatal wound was self-inflicted.   read more

Members of the III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa won’t begin moving until sometime in the early 2020s. For many of the island’s residents, the move can’t come soon enough. Many Japanese have been calling for the U.S. to get off Okinawa for decades, particularly after American military personnel stationed on the island were convicted of raping a Japanese woman last year and gang-raping a 12-year-old Japanese girl in 1995.   read more

The University of Edinburgh had a $2 million (£1.2 million) stake in Ultra Electronics, a British firm that manufactures navigation controls for Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles and ground control stations. Investing in drone development was deemed not “socially responsible” by the university as well as students and campaign groups that lobbied Edinburgh to pull out of the business.   read more

Lu compared Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to the two young mafia dons of The Godfather films: the impulsive Sonny Corleone and his calculating younger brother Michael. Lu wrote that Aliyev’s foreign policy—which he characterized as based on “restraint and a helpful bias toward integration with the West” represented his inner Michael, while his “increasingly authoritarian” domestic policies channeled Sonny   read more

Chad, South Sudan and Yemen were identified by the State Department as countries utilizing child soldiers, making them ineligible for American military aid under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (pdf). But the law, which is intended to discourage nations from forcing children under the age of 18 to fight in wars, contains a national security interest waiver that authorizes the president to override the statute when deemed necessary. That’s what Obama did on Monday.   read more

Five hundred is considerably more than the two flights that DHS admitted to operating when the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General contacted the agency for a report on unmanned aircraft. DHS has filed a motion (pdf) with the federal judge overseeing the EFF lawsuit to throw out the remainder of the case before it has to reveal any more details about drone activity.   read more