Trump ordered that the term Homo sapiens be changed to Hetero sapiens. In history books and on websites, the airplane from which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima will no longer be identified as the Enola Gay, but rather the Enola Straight. Trump also ordered billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, to change his name to Mark American. If he does not do so, he will be charged with terrorism.   read more

“Normally, the federal government is not in the business of preserving graffiti,” Alexandra Picavet, a Park Service spokeswoman, told The New York Times. “The water tower was the occupation’s most outwardly focused message to the world and it is an important part of the island’s history.” Alcatraz gets 1.4 million visitors per year.   read more

Sakineh Sarreshteh is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Daryoush Sarreshteh possessed a green card, although he had not been in the U.S. for three years, according to The Washington Post. In any event, CBP officials decided to interrogate the Sarreshtehs for five hours, during which they were shouted at in English—according to Sakineh—which neither understood. When the husband and wife were released, Daryoush Sarreshteh appeared shaken and crying.   read more

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was used two years ago to allow the government to indefinitely detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, has been approved again by the U.S. Senate. A group of Democrats and Republicans pushed for an amendment to the NDAA that would have prohibited the military from detaining American citizens on U.S. soil. But then a House-Senate conference committee led by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) removed the provision from the bill.   read more

Especially upsetting to some is the scene in ZD30 that shows an older prisoner indicating he’ll talk to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—and provide key intelligence that will ultimately lead to locating bin Laden—as long as his interrogators agree not to torture him anymore. This event as portrayed in the film didn’t happen in real life, despite Bigelow’s assertion that her film is a “journalistic account” of what took place to get the most hated terrorist in the world.   read more

The documents show that FBI agents began spying on Occupy organizers as early as August 2011, a month before demonstrators camped out in—and were eventually evicted from—Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, site of the movement’s public birthplace. In one memo, an FBI agent expressed concern that the Occupy movement could become “an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction.”   read more

Thanks to unauthorized shredding of documents, U.S. officials in Afghanistan have been unable to account for about $200 million spent by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on fuel for the Afghan Army over a two-year period.   read more

Judge William Alsup objected to the government’s tactic. He wrote: “Here the government seeks to affirmatively use allegedly privileged information to dispose of the case entirely without ever revealing to the other side what its secret evidence might be.” Ibrahim is currently dean of the Faculty of Design and Architecture at Universiti Putra Malaysia.   read more

The federal government will continue to access Americans’ emails without a warrant, after the U.S. Senate dropped a key amendment to legislation now headed to the White House for approval. Currently, the government can collect emails and other cloud data without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. Federal agents need only demonstrate that they have “reasonable grounds to believe” the information would be useful in an investigation.   read more

If they could afford bail, they would most likely never spend any length of time incarcerated. That’s because about 95% of all jail inmates are never given prison sentences after being convicted. Instead, the vast majority of those arrested and found guilty wind up serving probation or (for drug offenders) going into rehab. In some jurisdictions, it would appear that unaffordable bail is used as a form of unofficial punishment.   read more

Simple assaults (those not involving an injury or a weapon) constituted 60% of violent victimizations committed by strangers two years ago. Aggravated assault made up another 20%, robbery 17%, and rape or sexual assault just 2%. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that about 45% of violent crimes by strangers are not reported to the police.   read more

Counting only random mass murders with at least two casualties, Lankford found that 179 such crimes occurred between 1966 and 2010, an average rate of 3.97 per year. From 1966 to 1980, there were 20 mass killings for a rate of 0.75 per year, but in the 1980s the rate doubled to 1.8 per year, tripled in the 1990s to 5.4, and went up 160% in the 2000s to 8.7 per year. The rate could easily reach 10 per year during the present decade.   read more

For about thirty years now, the federal government has been implementing policies that take tax dollars from middle class Americans and give them to the rich. The net effect has been to redistribute wealth to the rich and create the most unequal developed society on earth. Three specific aspects of federal policy—low taxes for the rich, outsourcing government functions to private companies, and the financial clout of Washington lobbyists—have been the major drivers of growing inequality.   read more

Even after that gift from Judge Streitfeld, Philip Morris still appealed the reduced judgment—and recently got Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, which had affirmed the verdict in June, to reverse itself and throw out the award entirely. The appeals court now says Naugle must face a new trial to determine damages, which will take months, if not years, to complete.   read more

Swiss bank UBS has been fined $1.5 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for manipulating a key interest rate that affects borrowing between banks. When asked why the Justice Department chose to not prosecute any UBS executives, Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer told reporters, "Our goal here is not to destroy a major financial institution.”   read more

One piece of bad news was that African-Americans age 12-17 were still experiencing higher rates of violent crime. From 2002 to 2010, the rates of serious violent crime declined among white youth by 26% and among Hispanic youth by 65%, but actually increased by 4% among black youth.   read more

Energy companies would have to inform the state what chemicals were being injected into the ground, but a giant loophole would allow them to keep private any chemicals they deemed “trade secrets.” There is no process explicitly laid out for appeals by property owners who oppose the fracking, and well operators wouldn’t be required to collect pollution data that could be used to gauge environmental effects.   read more