President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

The first three months of 2014 were banner ones for lobbyists representing drug manufacturers, chemical companies and other big-business interests. These industries significantly ramped up their spending on lobbying in Washington, DC. The biggest of the big spenders was Dow Chemical, which poured $5.15 million into its influence-seeking strategies. That total “is far and away the most the company has spent in a quarter over the past five years,” OpenSecrets.org reported.   read more

Climate change is affecting all parts of the United States, but the majority of Americans aren’t very concerned. A new study says droughts, floods, heat waves and other extreme weather are here to stay and yet multiple surveys reveal most Americans don’t take climate change or global warming very seriously. One poll showed only 40% of Americans listed global climate change as a major threat to the nation. Residents of other developed nations put it much higher on their lists.   read more

Sixteen major U.S. news organizations have filed a complaint with the federal government over the FAA ban on drones for commercial use, claiming the restriction violates freedom of the press. Currently, the FAA authorizes only limited use of drones in U.S. airspace by government agencies. “The FAA’s position is untenable as it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding about journalism,” said the complaint. “News gathering is not a ‘business purpose.’ It is a First Amendment right.”   read more

Many of the nation’s leading think tanks, both on the right and the left, have been reluctant to disclose their major donors, raising questions about whether their research is being swayed by special interests. Transparify, a small nonprofit, examined many of the top think tanks to see which ones reveal the names of their key contributors. "If you are concealing the sources of funding that is relevant, as people don’t know how your research may be motivated,” said Hans Gutbrod.   read more

In one corner of the U.S. House of Representatives, reform legislation was introduced aimed at restricting the NSA collection of Americans’ phone data. This bill, the USA Freedom Act, has gotten qualified support from privacy advocates. In another corner of the House, a competing measure has been introduced, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act, which doesn’t go as far as NSA critics would like. Observers wonder which plan will make it out of the House, and in what shape.   read more

The EPA has been accused by one of its investigators of operating a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has stymied independent probes of EPA personnel and activities. Assistant EPA inspector general Patrick Sullivan charges that EPA’s Office of Homeland Security, "under the heavy cloak of national security," has impeded investigations into employee misconduct, computer security and external threats.   read more

In a controversial decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has sanctioned the practice of prayer, particularly Christian ones, before local government meetings. The dissenting justices disagreed with the majority’s assertion that Greece’s town hall predominantly Christian prayers did not violate “the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government."   read more

The investigation discovered that many school districts no longer pay attention to their desegregation orders, even though they are still in effect. Officials “have never read them, or erroneously believe that orders have been ended. In many cases, orders have gone unmonitored, sometimes for decades, by the federal agencies charged with enforcing them,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones. Some active desegregation orders were shipped back to Washington to be boxed up in the federal archives.   read more

The national debate over Obamacare just added a new talking point now that research shows the inspiration for President Obama’s healthcare law appears to have helped people live longer lives. Massachusetts’s 2006 healthcare law, signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney, required universal coverage. In the four years since, the state’s mortality rate declined by nearly 3%, and by 4.6% for blacks, Asians and Latinos. Under Obamacare, such a drop would mean about 17,000 fewer deaths a year.   read more

Asian students are not smarter than white students, according to a new study. They just work harder. Sociologists found that Asian-American students do better in school than white classmates. The reason for this is due to having a stronger work ethic. “[They] are harder working because of cultural beliefs that emphasize the strong connection between effort and achievement,” wrote the researchers. And their parents "better cultivate qualities that enable their...academic success.”   read more

Medical marijuana is legal in the state of New Mexico, but federal border patrol agents operating in the southern part of the state have been seizing residents’ cannabis as allowed under federal law. These actions have frustrated New Mexicans authorized to carry and use marijuana products for medicinal purposes. State Rep. Bill McCamley complained that “legal card-carrying medical marijuana patients can’t carry their marijuana anywhere else in the state."   read more

The people who will decide the fate of online privacy in court cases have little or no personal point of reference when it comes to understanding how email and other electronic communications have shaped Americans’ lives. Nearly half the U.S. Supreme Court was born during the 1930s. Four are in their 60s, and the youngest is 54. Most of them already lived half or more of their lives when the Internet came into being, putting them behind the modern curve of email, texting and social media.   read more

Camp Stanley, a U.S. Army base outside San Antonio, may have doubled as a secret weapons depot for the CIA going back to the height of the Cold War. Guns and explosives were shipped from the base to foreign countries where the CIA was operating covert missions, including those aimed at the Soviet Union and al Qaeda. The cache also helped supply the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, as well as rebels in Angola, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan.   read more

White men certainly enjoy the attention of university professors more than women and minorities do, according to a new study. Researchers tested the response rate of professors when it comes to students requesting help. They crafted phony emails from fictitious doctoral students and sent them to 6,500 professors at 259 universities. Results showed professors ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from white males.   read more

The fatal attack two years ago on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which congressional Republicans continue to use as an issue against President Barack Obama and other Democrats, serves as reminder of how dangerous U.S. diplomatic postings have been under presidents of both political parties. The September 11, 2012, assault that killed four in Libya, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, represented the sixth deadly attack on embassy or consulate personnel since 2000.   read more

Following in the footsteps of other large cities, Indianapolis may start charging the hosts of major public events for police protection. With public revenues at a premium, city leaders say it may be time to bill the Indianapolis 500 and other popular festivities that usually require significant security. The change could bring in $1 million in added monies for the city annually, which also hosts the Indiana Black Expo Summer Celebration and the 500 Festival.   read more