Imagine that China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, sends one million Chinese troops to invade the United States. Fighting breaks out all over the U.S. as U.S. troops and civilians battle against the Chinese invaders. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are killed. Meanwhile, China has taken over Florida and declared it an overseas province of China, with Chinese nationals taking over control of the Florida government.   read more

Democrats say damage has already been done as a result of the 48-hour provision. Over the past year, Democratic Party registration increased by only 11,365—compared to an average of 209,425 each year from 2004 to 2008. While Democrats struggled to register new voters, the number of registered Republicans went up by 128,039 from 2011 to 2012.   read more

The voter ID law, which GOP lawmakers and Governor Scott Walker adopted, was declared unconstitutional in March by Circuit Judge Richard G. Niess. A second judge, David T. Flanagan, ruled the law invalid in July following a nonjury trial. Niess was appointed by Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, in 2004 and then elected in 2011. Flanagan was appointed by Governor Tommy Thompson, a Republican, in 1999 and then elected in 2012.   read more

Since the economic recovery began, low-wage occupations ($7.69 to $13.83 an hour) have made up 58% of all job growth, even though these jobs represented only 21% of job losses during the downturn. What the country lost the most was middle-wage positions that paid $13.84 to $21.13 an hour. These accounted for 60% of layoffs from 2008 to 2010. So far, middle-wage jobs have made up only 22% of employment growth.   read more

The US Chamber of Commerce, like many large trade associations, is international in scope and has many foreign business members. Although the Chamber claims that money received from foreign source is segregated from domestic money, there is no way of knowing if that is true, because there’s no way to audit foreign corporate spending when it occurs through trade associations.   read more

Active since the late 1980s, the group has been involved in numerous attacks, including the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, the December 2009 Camp Chapman attack, and the September 12, 2011, attack on the US Embassy and nearby NATO bases in Kabul. Nonetheless, the group, known as the Haqqani Network after its founder and leader, Jalalludin Haqqani, has not been officially designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government.   read more

Regular readers of AllGov may have noticed that we have updated the site. As part of this changeover, the AllGov RSS feeds have been changed. Please click on the RSS button above to keep up with the feeds. Thank you.   read more

In April, the Obama administration approved Shell’s emergency blueprint for containing an accidental blowout. The plan was designed to deal with a spill as large as 480,000 barrels of oil that, at that size, could reach the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill dumped about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.   read more

The Marines, who brought pilots, communication teams and combat engineers, have four UH-1N Huey helicopters. Their assignment is to spot drug traffickers from the Guatemalan drug cartel Las Zetas in boats—including crude mini-submarines—and then radio the Guatemalans, whose job is to seize the drugs and arrest cartel members.   read more

These killings “cost producers approximately $11,076.49 per year between 1987 and 2003 … [and] accounted for <0.01% of the annual gross income from livestock operations in the region.” Such losses, moreover, are subject to compensation by the federal and state governments.   read more

Rahman died in November 2002 inside a freezing cell at a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, while al-Jamadi died while in CIA custody in November 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A military autopsy concluded that Al-Jamadi’s death was a homicide that followed an interrogation conducted by CIA officer Mark Swanner.   read more

For three months she served as a gate guard at a forward operating base. Soon she began to question the purpose of U.S. involvement in Iraq. “Why am I here? What am I giving my life for? How am I helping my comrades and Iraq's people?...Is what I am doing self-defense or aggression?”   read more

She stands accused of coming up with a novel method of carrying out this task…having people—namely her three children—take FINRA exams 64 times so that they could memorize the questions. The Leahys managed to retake the tests over and over again thanks to an 81% failure rate.   read more

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has suggested that 12 police officers arrested for alleged involvement in the shooting might have ties to criminal organizations. The CIA agents have been flown back to the United States, leading some Mexican politicians to questions whether they will cooperate with the official investigation into the incident.   read more

App developer Josh Begley received an email this week from Apple saying that “We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable.” Before that, the company rejected the app on grounds of it being “not useful.”   read more

The focus of the audit was the Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) program, which was established in 1996 to provide individuals ineligible for Social Security numbers, in particular resident aliens, with ID numbers for tax purposes. Nearly three million tax returns were filed in 2011 using ITINs, involving tax refunds totaling $6.8 billion, most of it as a result of applying the Additional Child Tax Credit.   read more

The 7/20 Recovery Committee charged with distributing the donations does not include any victims or their families. 7/20 Committee spokesman Rich Audsley said, “This committee will not be having the victims decide how the dollars are allocated. It will be done by the committee with input by victims.”   read more