Trump announced that from now on the NFL will be known as the NTL: The National Trump League. The Super Bowl will be renamed the Trump Bowl, and professional players must be called Trumpball Players. Anyone, on any level, who refuses to comply with Trump’s orders will be arrested and charged with being a threat to national security.   read more

The general public overwhelmingly supported spending more money on social security, health care and homeland security, while the super rich believed that the budgets for all three should be cut. The super rich were also more likely to oppose increased spending for defense, environmental protection and education. But they were somewhat more likely to call for increasing the budget for scientific research.   read more

After first promising to put her on a plane to New York, where she was born and lived with her parents, CBP agents later told her father they could not return her to “illegals,” and gave him one hour to choose between having her sent back to Guatemala or to an “adoption center.” Fearing he would lose his child forever, and not knowing that CBP’s threats were illegal, Mr. Ruiz chose Guatemala.   read more

The Fourth Amendment does protect against unauthorized surveillance or searches, and there are laws on the books that address spying by companies, for instance. But these legal protections were crafted long before drones came into existence. Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said, “Just because the government may comply with the Constitution does not mean they should be able to constantly surveil, like Big Brother.”   read more

In 1994, Congress passed a bill that forbids most people who are the subject of a permanent protective order from possessing firearms. However the law is rarely enforced, with less than 50 cases in all of 2012. This means that for practical purposes, each state makes its own laws. Currently, only a handful of states require gun owners to give up their weapons if a restraining order is placed on them by the courts.   read more

In the case of SNL, prime contractor Sandia Corp., which relies heavily on subcontractors, spending about 38% of its total budget on them, hired former employees as subcontractors and paid them a higher hourly rate than the employees had received prior to retiring.   read more

Constituents tended to support gay marriage and universal health care by 10% more than their representatives had assumed. The disconnect was even greater among conservative politicians, who tend to be 20% more conservative than the people they represent.   read more

This is the second time a President of the Fifth Republic has been indicted. After Jacques Chirac was accused of embezzlement while he was mayor of Paris, in a mild surprise, Nicolas Sarkozy, after five years of proceedings, has been accused of taking advantage of Liliane Bettencourt’s mental weakness.   read more

An estimated 110 tons of deadly DDT, lying for years on the ocean floor off the coast of Palos Verdes, California, has been recalculated to be around 14 tons, according to a report in Environmental Health News. And no one is quite sure what happened. The contamination could have been overestimated before, underestimated now or unexpectedly dechlorinated into something harmless. Or the pesticide could have dissipated into the water where it would be absorbed by all manner of creatures.   read more

The switch gets the companies out of certain reporting requirements by the Food and Drug Administration—like revealing any deaths or ailments associated with the products. Bad publicity has caused Monster Energy’s stock value to plunge more than 40% in a year.   read more

The bra measures heat patterns and breast shapes, and its built-in computer can compare the data to stored information about cancerous tissues, according to the company, which claims a 90% accuracy rate for the product. Clinical trials have been performed on the bra, and First Warning Systems hopes the FDA will approve it in time for the bra to go on sale within a year.   read more

Vance-Cooks joined GPO in 2004 and has held a succession of senior management positions. She was named chief of staff in January 2011, and was promoted to deputy public printer in December 2011 by Public Printer Bill Boarman, whose recess appointment expired at the end of 2011 when Senate Republicans blocked a vote on his nomination.   read more

That rider (referred to by some opponents as the “Monsanto Protection Act”) authorizes the USDA to nullify any federal court decision that bans the use of GE crops. Critics also noted that the provision was approved without any vetting in the agriculture or judiciary committees. The only good news for opponents of the rider is that it can only be in effect for the life of the continuing resolution, which is about six months.   read more

Forty-three percent of travelers who have visited the United States told surveyors that they will recommend others avoid a trip to the U.S. because of the entry process, and one in seven travelers said they missed a connection because of long delays at Customs, causing them to cancel hotel reservations, car rentals and other activities.   read more

Federal regulators have busted Neiman-Marcus and two other retailers for selling products marketed as containing fake fur, when in reality the fur was real. Why would businesses sell the real deal, which presumably is worth more, as something fake and less valuable? Because demand for real fur has declined, while stores have had trouble keeping fake fur in stock, leading at least these three companies to do what would have been unthinkable years ago.   read more

City administrator Sandra Underwood was accused of instructing male public works employees to bring their own TP, claiming the workers were using far more paper than female employees. Underwood denied the charge. The town’s mayor and aldermen only learned of the decision after a local citizen raised the subject at a council meeting, and suggested starting a fundraiser so the male workers wouldn’t have to pay for their own toilet paper.   read more

In arguing that GPS vehicle tracking be a warrant-free tool of law enforcement, the Obama administration is claiming that the prevention of terrorism in the U.S.—in addition to fighting conventional crime and drug trafficking—is a primary reason that the court should rule in its favor. It also requests a lower standard that would allow police to attach GPS devices—merely “reasonable suspicion” rather than the Constitutional requirement of “probable cause.”   read more