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

Callahan's DHS colleagues accused her of being a “terrorist” for trying to put the brakes on agency work that threatened people’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. Some officials even told her that if she got in the way of DHS efforts to prevent a terrorist attack, she would have to explain her actions to Congress.   read more

Officially, 29 deaths have been attributed by the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office to “excited delirium syndrome,” an uncommon brain malfunction not recognized by the American Medical Association. Of the 29 deaths linked to the syndrome, most have involved police action, including officers using physical restraint or stun guns on the victims.   read more

Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanow, who was denied a visa by the State Department. No explanation was provided for why Trojanow did not receive clearance. It was noted in the German press that the award-winning writer had previously signed a protest petition against the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities.   read more

The jurisdiction with the most executions is Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, with 115. Dallas County is second with 50. Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona accounted for 60% of all of the nation’s executions. In fact, 36% of executions took place in Texas. Eighty-five percent of counties did not carry out a single execution.   read more

The research published in BMJ Open, an open access journal for general medical research, revealed that the average street price of heroin, cocaine and cannabis in the U.S. declined by 81%, 80% and 86%, respectively, from 1990 to 2010. Meanwhile, the purity/potency of these drugs increased by 60%, 11% and 161%, respectively.   read more

When Marissa Alexander, who is black, fired a warning shot into the ceiling near her estranged husband, she claimed that she was acting out of self-defense during a heated conversation with the man who had previously abused her. Her husband was not injured. But the judge ruled that the stand-your-ground law didn’t apply in Alexander’s case. After a jury found her guilty in May 2012, Alexander—who had no prior criminal history—received a 20-year prison sentence from the judge.   read more

Examples noted by Horowitz included a Federal Bureau of Investigation official classifying a terrorist watch list that was supposed to be public information, and an official from the Justice Department’s National Security Division who shielded unclassified laws, statutes and designations from otherwise classified documents, according to Courthouse News Service (CNS).   read more

Contributing to the debit card’s launch amounts to joining “the revolution to make banking fair, open and affordable,” according to the cooperative’s website. Some Occupy participants hate the idea of the debit card, saying it conflicts with the movement’s messaging and purpose. “Too much blood, sweat and tears have been going into Occupy to have that turned into a piece of plastic,” Bill Dobbs, a longtime Occupy member, told The New York Times.   read more

No. XV of the House Rules—applies in situations where the Speaker of the House refuses to have an up-or-down vote on the House floor, as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is now doing. If a majority of House members sign a “discharge petition,” Boehner would have to allow a vote. Given that all 200 Democratic members would sign, only 17 Republican signatures would be needed to force a vote and end the shutdown.   read more

“Demonizing the opposition is central to the process” of raising campaign money in the current environment, Steven S. Smith, political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Los Angeles Times. “The more important the development in Washington, the easier it is to scare potential donors into handing over the cash.”   read more

President Barack Obama has managed to keep his numbers from falling further, according to CNN/ORC. His approval/disapproval ratings are at 44%/53%, which is virtually the same as they were in the last poll (45%/52%). Americans also disapprove of the Democratic and Republican parties. The Dems’ approval rating stands at 43%, while the GOP’s is 32%. The Tea Party is also not well liked, with only a 31% approval rating.   read more

At one time the NSA only created profiles of foreigners it was watching. But officials decided to include Americans as part of their “discover and track” operations to find connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States. This policy shift occurred even though there were internal concerns that Americans’ privacy rights might be violated in the process.   read more

The Justice Department is challenging four provisions of North Carolina’s voting law, including the requirement that residents show a photo ID at polling places before casting their ballots. The administration also objects to the elimination of the first seven days of early voting; the elimination of same-day voter registration during the early-voting period; and the prohibition on counting provisional ballots cast by voters in their home county but outside their home voting precinct.   read more

Denied tougher gun-control measures in the wake of last year’s Newtown school shooting, the Obama administration is taking a different approach to making classrooms safer: Fund more school security. The U.S. Department of Justice announced late last week that it would distribute $44 million in grants to help schools in 141 cities and counties hire more than 350 security personnel, known as school resource officers.   read more

VA prescriptions for these four medications have skyrocketed since 2001 by 270%, contributing to fatal overdoses among VA patients, who have nearly double the national average. Dispensing of painkillers has become so prevalent, in fact, that the agency issued more than one opiate prescription per patient, on average, for the past two years, CIR found.   read more

The study found that the number of women age 65 and older living in extreme poverty increased by 18% from 2011 to 2012. The statistical jump translated into 135,000 more elderly women living on less than $5,500 annually, with the total in this group reaching 733,000.   read more