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

Any hesitancy that Kollar-Kotelly may have indicated in giving approval to the program was outweighed by the assumption of a legitimate need on the part of the George W. Bush administration. “Deference should be given to the fully considered judgment of the executive branch in assessing and responding to national security threats and in determining the potential significance of intelligence-related information,” she wrote.   read more

Alaskan Natives are treated differently under federal law than Native Americans elsewhere. Not only has the Alaskan government managed to obtain court rulings that Alaska Natives have no “Indian Country” over which to exercise public safety jurisdiction, but Alaska’s legislators frequently get Congress to exempt Alaska from Indian law reforms. In 2012, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski inserted language into the Violence Against Women Act ensuring that its reforms would not apply to Alaska Natives.   read more

Anthera was also required to survey all patients six months after the end of the trial period to see if they were still alive. But the company collected that data for only 31% of the patients, which made it impossible to gauge whether the drug increased the risk of death. The trial was terminated by a safety monitoring committee after early results showed patients who got the drug actually had a higher risk of cardiovascular problems, mainly heart attacks, than those who received a placebo.   read more

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives now want to limit what TSA does with the money. They have introduced legislation, H.R. 1095, the TSA Loose Change Act (pdf), which would require the agency to donate the coinage to charities that “provide certain travel-related assistance to military personnel and their families.”   read more

The federal government must release documents explaining how, when and why it might decide to shut down the nation’s wireless networks because of a “national crisis,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled last week. Boasberg added that the Government’s only recourse—aside from an appeal to the D.C. Circuit—is to get Congress to change the FOIA. The judge ordered DHS to release SOP 303 within 30 days.   read more

In one case cited in the report, the U.S. Army managed to lose $5.8 billion from 2003 to 2011 on equipment and supplies that were supposed to be sent to reserve and regular units. In another case, Reuters found that various military divisions had signed contracts for new orders of supplies that they already had in excess, often up to three years’ worth.   read more

Sotomayor mentioned some of the strange justifications cited by Alabama judges in overriding jury verdicts. In one case, the judge noted that a defendant who had an IQ of 65 “intentionally test[ed] low on standard IQ tests.” In another case, a judge up for reelection when he sentenced a 19-year-old defendant said, “If I had not imposed the death sentence, I would have sentenced three black people to death and no white people.”   read more

One physician singled out by ProPublica was Dr. Hew Wah Quon, whose practice is in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Quon wrote $27 million in prescriptions from 2009 to 2011 for his mostly low-income patients. But he largely prescribed branded medications. Had he recommended available generics instead, Medicare would have saved $5 million from this one doctor alone.   read more

One longtime Canton store employee—who requested her name not be used for fear of being fired—found the Walmart campaign “demoralizing” and “kind of depressing.” “Why would a company do that?” OUR Walmart strike organizer Vanessa Ferreira said to the Plain Dealer. “The company needs to stand up and give them their 40 hours and a living wage, so they don't have to worry about whether they can afford Thanksgiving.”   read more

An overwhelming majority of Americans support efforts to raise the minimum wage, according to a new national poll. Gallup says 76% of respondents to a survey conducted November 5-6 back a plan to increase the minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $9 an hour. A similar percentage (69%) said they would also support a bump to $9/hour plus automatic increases based on the inflation rate.   read more

In what may be the first death penalty case of its kind, an Ohio convicted killer avoided execution with only hours to spare after Governor John Kasich (R) issued a stay for the purposes of organ donation. Ronald Phillips asked that his death by lethal injection be delayed so doctors could remove one of his kidneys and transplant it into his ailing mother. He also wants to donate his heart to his sister, who suffers from heart disease.   read more

The IRS wants to eliminate a tax break that financially has benefited wealthy landowners, but also preserved historic buildings and open lands. That’s why getting rid of the tax deduction may prove difficult, what with conservationists and rich individuals teaming up to fight the change. Under a provision in the tax code, landowners can deduct millions of dollars from their tax bills if they own—and don’t alter—the historic structures they own.   read more

Members of Occupy Wall Street have shifted their activism from street protests to raising money to alleviate the medical debts of thousands of Americans. Rolling Jubilee, a creation of Occupy’s Strike Debt group, has purchased $14.7 million owed by individuals, largely as a result of medical expenses. Remarkably, the group managed to do this while spending only $400,000 of the more than $622,000 it has raised so far for the debt-relief cause.   read more

Given Republicans’ persistent efforts to downsize the federal government—and reduce the number of federal jobs in the process—one would assume that GOP areas wouldn’t have much to lose as a result of such cost-cutting measures. But it turns out the highest concentrations of federal employment actually exist across the Sunbelt of the United States, where Republicans tend to dominate political office.   read more

The procedure involves TSA officers spotting passengers who appear suspicious, and then engaging them in conversation to make a further determination as to their potential as a threat. “TSA has yet to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the program despite spending about $900 million on it since 2007,” Steve Lord, who directed the investigation for the GAO, told the Associated Press.   read more

A British inquiry into how the government of the United Kingdom decided to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is being held up by officials in the White House and the U.S. State Department, which have refused to allow the publication of secret documents revealing conversations between former President George W. Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.   read more