President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

The researchers speculate that the unknown trader may have tried to alter the perception of how well Romney was doing. After examining market bets placed during the end of the campaign, Sethi and Rothschild say the trader accounted for about 30% of all the money wagered on Romney in the last two weeks before Election Day. “This was someone who was extremely sophisticated,” Sethi told The Wall Street Journal. “It was not someone who was dumb or stupid.”   read more

USIS wa spun off from OPM in July 1996, during the Bill Clinton administration. Essentially, OPM’s security and investigations unit was privatized as USIS, which retained those OPM employees as part of the company. When the private firm was launched, the government awarded it a three-year non-competitive contract. With 100 active federal contracts under its belt, USIS stands as the government’s largest private contractor handling background checks.   read more

The panel assembled to determine if the NSA has violated Americans’ civil liberties consists of five members—four of whom have previously worked for Democratic administrations. Nowhere in the White House memo is the panel instructed to investigate surveillance abuses. The panel’s report is due by December 15. On that date it is not to be made public, nor is it to be delivered to the press. Rather, it will be submitted to the White House for review.   read more

Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News said the ruling represented “a rare judicial setback for the CIA, and a reversal of the more familiar expansion of national security secrecy authority.” Harry Hammitt of Access Reports, which monitors FOIA policy, told Aftergood that the ruling “really is something pretty remarkable,” because “Judge Howell has narrowed the interpretation of the statute dramatically.”   read more

Gallup says 60% of people in the United States now believe Washington has too much power, according to a survey taken September 5-8. This total is one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. When Gallup first asked the question in September 2002, only 39% of respondents thought the federal government had too much power. At least half of the U.S. population has said the government is too powerful for eight years in a row, going back to 2005.   read more

A new study conducted by Professor Jonathan Zittrain and law student Kendra Albert—both of Harvard—says nearly half of the hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions (49%) no longer work. What this means is that footnotes and citations become lost, making them unavailable to legal professionals. Since 1996, there have been 555 instances in which the Supreme Court justices cited materials only found on the Internet.   read more

Ten members of Congress who have benefited from government-funded farm subsidies voted last week to reduce funding for food stamps that help poor people eat. Rice farmer Doug LaMalfa led the pack. He and his wife, Jill, own one–third of DSL Lamalfa Family Partnership, which received $188,570 in direct payments in 2012 and $5,132,156 total since 1995.   read more

Article 32 hearings are used to determine if there is sufficient evidence to to initiate a court-martial. Over the course of four days, the defense attorneys asked the woman whether she wore a bra, how wide she opened her mouth during oral sex, and whether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she had intercourse “for being a ho.”   read more

In a previous lawsuit brought by the town of Roxana against Shell, the refinery was said to have allowed 18 spills over a 25-year period. The new civil case claims more than 200,000 pounds of pure benzene have been released from Wood River since Shell owned the refinery. The company also stands accused of polluting the area around Roxana with other chemicals, including ethylbenzene, toluene and n-hexane.   read more

The investigation revealed that fake reviews were often written in other countries, including Bangladesh and the Philippines, where individuals sold them for as little as one dollar each. Businesses are often tempted to purchase fraudulent feedback for their websites because higher rankings can often mean more customers. For instance, a bump in just one star on Yelp can result in a 5%-9% increase in revenues, according to a 2011 Harvard Business School study.   read more

A big problem with the system is a lack of required federal standards, which has resulted in states and local governments using different rules for food dating. This has caused consumers to lack confidence in the information they’re given. And when consumers are in doubt, they’re likely to throw out food, including items that are still edible.   read more

Several states are paying private prison companies for housing prisoners who don’t exist, according to a new report from the advocacy group In the Public Interest. And there’s not much they can do, because of “occupancy clauses” in many private prison contracts that guarantee revenue even when prison populations decline. The report found quotas for prisoners ranging from 70% to 100% in nearly two-thirds of them. Most of the contracts mandated that at least 90% of prison beds be filled.   read more

Nearly half of the poor—43.9% or 20.4 million Americans—live below one-half of the poverty line, or $9,150 for a family of three. Thus 6.6% of the total population lives in “deep poverty,” including 9.7% of children. Poverty, regardless of its depth, along with the daily stresses that accompany it, is especially harmful to children, especially young ones. Studies have shown that living in poverty impairs the cognitive development of children.   read more

By introducing the exemption for past bad acts, Coffee argues, “the SEC is here acting, not simply as a weak-kneed enforcer, but rather as a generous Board of Pardons, granting immunity to those few persons that it has enjoined or held otherwise accountable within the last decade. If one were seeking to further tarnish an already compromised agency’s reputation and image, this would be the way to do it.”   read more

In a unanimous decision, a New York state appeals court sided with 50 citizens and residents of Israel who sued the Bank of China after they or their families were victimized by terrorist acts committed by Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas between 2005 and 2007. The government of China has majority ownership of the bank. The plaintiffs sued the Bank of China in New York alleging it had handled international fund transfers that helped pay for the terrorist actions.   read more

To celebrate the first airmail flight, the Post Office decided to issue a commemorative 24-cent stamp, with a picture of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, or “Jenny,” the aircraft being used to carry the mail. The Post Office accidentally issued 100 Jenny stamps showing the biplane flying upside down. Printing inspectors and the postal clerk who sold the sheet to a collector missed the error, the clerk later explaining, “How was I to know the thing was upside down? I never saw an airplane before.”   read more