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

Despite the fact that the message included the date 1973 and a reference to the long-gone Soviet Union, traders mistook the Twitter post as indication Israel had just attacked Syria. This mistaken assumption led them to worry that the supply of petroleum might shrink, which prompted a buying spree that raised the barrel price of oil by $1. But even after traders realized the tweet wasn’t about a current event, oil prices went up even higher.   read more

Moreno became a federal judge when he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, where he served from February 1998 to mid-2001. Nominated by Gov. Gray Davis (D), Moreno served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California from October 18, 2001 until his retirement on February 28, 2011.   read more

A new Gallup poll found 33% of Americans said dissatisfaction with government and elected representatives was the nation’s top issue. Not since 1939, when Gallup began keeping track, have so many people put government at the top of the fix-this list. The economy came in a distant second, at 19%, . The situation in Syria, which last month was rated as the country’s top problem by 8% of Americans, has now fallen nearly out of sight at 1%.   read more

A Pentagon spokesperson stated that the U.S. government is reviewing Panama’s request and will resolve it “in a timely manner.” In negotiations this year at The Hague over Panama’s petition to have the U.S. clean up the munitions, U.S. officials reportedly requested one change to the document. They insisted that it say the U.S. did not “abandon” the weapons in Panama, but rather that it had “forgotten” about them.   read more

The two areas of the U.S. with the highest rates of prescription-drug overdoses are Appalachia and the Southwest. West Virginia leads the nation, with 28.9 deaths per every 100,000 people. Prescription overdoses have skyrocketed in the state by 605% since 1999. Men between the ages 25 and 54 are most likely to abuse drugs like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. But rates among female abusers are accelerating, increasing by 400% over the past 14 years.   read more

Over the past 20 years, radioactive fuel from 20,000 disarmed Russian warheads was sold to the U.S. for about $8 billion. The U.S. government then turned around and provided it to commercial nuclear power plants to run their reactors and power electricity to millions of homes and businesses. During these two decades, 500 metric tons of Russian weapons-grade uranium has generated half of all nuclear power and, during the past 15 years, about 10% of all electricity produced in the U.S.   read more

“It’s really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,” Salgado shouted at McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton while he spoke to the Union League Club of Chicago. “Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I’ve worked for McDonald’s for ten years?” Stratton responded by saying: “I’ve been there for forty years.”   read more

Whether or not a representative is accepting his or her salary, all House members can still enjoy the perk of using the House gym. The facility—which offers a swimming pool, basketball courts, steam room, sauna, and flat-screen TVs— has remained open during the government shutdown...although lawmakers are having to go without towel service at this time.   read more

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin regulating e-cigarettes this month, and state and local governments may not be far behind in deciding how to tax or limit the use of this new nicotine-delivery technology. Manufacturers of e-cigarettes, however, aren’t in support of their products being regulated, and are trying to minimize the government’s interference in the industry.   read more

Journalists and researchers who have long relied on foreign news posted on an open Central Intelligence Agency-fed website will lose access at the end of this year. The CIA’s Open Source Center has decided to halt its information feed to the publicly accessible World News Connection (WNC) as of December 31, ending 50 years of this service.   read more

Kurt A. Carr took Matthew Cardoza’s iPhone in December 2010 while he was making a call outside a hospital in Martinez, where he worked. Cardoza fought with Carr to get it back and, after getting punched a few times, managed to wrest it away. But did Carr really break the law, which defines theft as depriving someone of their property with the intention of permanently keeping it from them?   read more

There are a lot of things out there that Americans will choose over Congress. These include: • Hemorrhoids (which poll 22% over Congress) • Potholes (+11% above Congress) • Dog shit (+7%) • Zombies (+6%) • Toenail fungus (+3%) • Cockroaches (+2%)   read more

With about half of the workforce at the Food and Drug Administration on furlough, 91% of seafood imported into the United States is not being inspected, according to media reports. Nearly 50% of fruits and 20% of vegetables imported and consumed in the U.S. also aren’t undergoing inspection.   read more

Early in 2013, Edwin Meese III, former attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, gathered together a group of conservative activists in the capital to plot strategy for stopping Obama’s health care law from going into effect in October. The meeting produced a “blueprint to defunding Obamacare” that Meese and leaders of nearly 40 conservative groups pledged to implement.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to consider a lower-court ruling that struck down Virginia’s anti-sodomy law, first passed in 1960, much to the dismay of state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, who is running for governor. Cuccinelli has defended the state’s “crimes against nature” law, which bans oral and anal sex, claiming it is necessary to prosecute child predators.   read more

The law, authored by U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-Virginia), chair of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, restricts foreign nationals from NASA facilities in an effort to counter espionage. The conference at the center of the controversy will focus on NASA’s Kepler space telescope program, which searches the universe for other planetary systems.   read more