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

Proponents thought California voters would approve a 2012 ballot initiative mandating GMO labeling. Six weeks before Election Day, polls showed pro-labelers outnumbering anti-labelers 67% to 22%. But the proposition’s strong level of popular support eroded by Election Day, a victim of a $46 million opposition campaign funded by the likes of DuPont, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods and others. Backers of the initiative were only able to raise $9 million.   read more

Judge Scriven concluded that the state had it all wrong: “In sum, there simply is no competent evidence offered on this record of the sort of pervasive drug problem the State envisioned in the promulgation of this statute.” Going even further, Scriven wrote that if even Florida had been right and the poor actually did have a higher rate of drug use, placing them in a class of people denied constitutional rights would be dangerous.   read more

SFPD unveiled a modified selection process called “banding” for use after the first eleven vacancies were filled. Banding treats exam scores that fall within a particular range or “band” as equivalent, regardless of their exact order. Buckley and Hofmann allege that SFPD decided to use banding because it “felt a need to promote more blacks and Asians to Captain.”   read more

While Medicare offered a single, uniform plan based on the sole eligibility criterion of age, the Obamacare exchanges feature thousands of insurance company plans (each with its own premiums, co-pays, etc.) and a system of premium subsidies based on verifying income, family size and immigration status. As result, Himmelstein and Woolhandler contend, Obamacare overhead costs are expected to run closer to the 13% average of private insurers than to the 2% average achieved by Medicare.   read more

Signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and modified since, Executive Order 12,333 covers government surveillance of Americans’ international communications—but the government’s interpretation of it is secret. the ACLU argues that there is no outside supervision of EO 12,333 surveillance, which is outside the jurisdiction of the FISA Court and is “not meaningfully overseen” by Congress.   read more

DOJ proposes to clarify that the statute covers “persons who are found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, lack of mental responsibility, or insanity, and that the term includes persons found guilty but mentally ill.” The rule would also “clarify that the statutory term ‘committed to a mental institution’ applies to involuntary inpatient or outpatient treatment.”   read more

The haphazard efforts have undermined counterterrorism aims, and perhaps more importantly, compromised the constitutional rights of Americans. “Many police departments and fusion centers have reported on constitutionally protected activities such as photography and political speech,” Michael Price wrote at Salon. Officers in California often report on “suspicious” activities that amount to little more than standing around at bus or train stations, or talking at length on public phones.   read more

A career Foreign Service Officer who has spent the bulk of his career fighting the so-called “war on drugs” is set to be the next ambassador to the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica, home to more than 29,000 Rastafarians, who regard the smoking of marijuana a holy sacrament. On February 29, 2004, it was Moreno who accompanied Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the airport when he was forced out of office in a military coup.   read more

For two decades, the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) has received millions of taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Department of Education to hound former students into paying their student loans—even when they’ve already paid off their debt or run into financial troubles stemming from serious health problems. ECMC’s egregious behavior has been particularly evident in trying to stop student loan holders from gaining bankruptcy protection.   read more

The 36-year-old put himself through college and Cal Northern School of Law. Garcia was working as a paralegal when he applied to the bar. He passed the examination on his first try in 2009. His father, a naturalized U.S. citizen, applied for his son’s legal residency in 1994. Garcia was put on a waiting list and was told he could get his green card in six years. He’s still waiting.   read more

Major newspapers in the United States and the United Kingdom have come out in support of Edward Snowden, calling on President Barack Obama to go easy on the National Security Agency whistleblower living in exile in Russia. In the view of The New York Times, The Guardian and other news outlets, Snowden is a hero for exposing NSA spying operations that have compromised the privacy of millions of people around the world.   read more

After spending a few hours of research and even fewer dollars, the student snoopers identified names for 91 out of 100 numbers. Their conclusion? “If a few academic researchers can get this far this quickly, it’s difficult to believe the NSA would have any trouble identifying the overwhelming majority of American phone numbers.”   read more

A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, La Lime lived in Angola as a child because her father worked for Texaco. La Lime has been detailed to the Defense Department since 2011, serving as director of Outreach for the United States Africa Command. She served as ambassador to Mozambique from April 2003 to December 2006 and in South Africa from 2006 to 2011.   read more

In the case of Portland, Medicaid took care of certain out-of-pocket costs the previously uninsured Americans had to pay themselves, making it easier for them to utilize ERs. White House sSpokeswoman Tara McGuinness dismissed the findings of the study, claiming its timeframe (18 months) was too short to show that ER use will decline in time. Indeed, for many uninsured people, the emergency room is almost their only experience with formal health care.   read more

Professor Steven Sherwood at the University of New South Wales said the research reveals how climate change is impacting clouds, and consequently, increasing the likelihood of higher air temperatures in the coming decades. The warming of the planet results in fewer clouds, which in turn allows for less sunlight to be reflected by clouds back out toward space, causing temperatures to rise even more.   read more

The senator who logged the most speaking time was Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who spent much of his time railing against federal spending or plans to reform immigration. Sessions talked for more than 33 hours last year. His speaking total eclipsed that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who recorded about 30 hours on C-SPAN.   read more