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

Two New York City police unions failed to convince a state appellate court that a law prohibiting controversial stop-and-frisk tactics is at odds with longstanding criminal procedure rules. A law prohibited law enforcement officers from engaging in racial or ethnic profiling — i.e. basing police action on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Yet the law didn't provide any enforcement mechanism, like a cause of action against individual officers.   read more

Carlton Palms has faced enormous criticism in recent years after a series of incidents involving abuse by staff and the death of a 14-year-old autistic girl from dehydration after a night in which she was at times strapped to a bed while vomiting repeatedly. Carlton's workers have relied for years on mechanical restraints, such as ankle shackles and a device similar to a full-body straight jacket. Carlton’s staff used restraints roughly 28,000 times in less than five years, records showed.   read more

Arsenic exposure raises the inmates' cancer risk and the prison does not have air-conditioning in inmate housing areas, so officials recommend that the inmates, many of whom suffer from health problems and take medication that make them heat-sensitive, drink lots of water to fend off heat stroke. "At least 20 prisoners have died indoors in non-air-conditioned TDCJ prisons from hyperthermia since 1998. ... Ten inmates died of heatstroke in 2011 while in TDCJ custody," the June 21 order states.   read more

In 2005, Hrle moved to the embassy in Vienna, Austria and served as chargé d’affaires, becoming ambassador in 2008. While he was in charge there, a Bosnian general, Jovan Divjak, who had been accused of war crimes by Serbia, was arrested in Vienna. Divjak was eventually released without being extradited to Serbia. Hrle returned home in 2011 to work in the ministry’s office of public relations. In 2013, he was made ambassador to Saudi Arabia with responsibility for Oman and Yemen as well.   read more

Fistfights at campaign rallies. A congressional sit-in. Angry political trolling on the internet. It’s not your imagination: America’s partisan divide is deeper today than at any point in nearly a quarter-century, says a new study. The Republican Party strikes fear in the hearts of 55% of Democrats surveyed, Pew found. Among Republicans, 49% felt the same way about the Democratic Party. “It’s really this intensity of negativity that’s increased,” said Pew report author Carroll Doherty.   read more

Among all ages, there were nearly 19,000 fatal overdoses on prescription opioids in 2014. The magnitude of its use among seniors is "astounding," said Frederic Blow. "It's not just a young person's problem," he said. Overdose risk for older Americans is heightened by medication interactions and alcohol. There were about 40 million prescriptions for these drugs last year," said lead study author Miriam Anderson. "That's enough to give one to every Medicare beneficiary in the country."   read more

Rap Back is a service of the FBI that provides continuous criminal-record monitoring for law-enforcement. When a Hawaii firearm owner is arrested for a criminal offense anywhere in the country, the service alerts county police departments in Hawaii. Law enforcement then will be able to evaluate whether that gun owner may continue to legally possess firearms. "This system will better enable our law enforcement agencies to ensure the security of all Hawaii residents and visitors," said Gov. Ige.   read more

The incongruity of the increasing numbers of executions and the plummeting numbers of death sentences took both prosecutors and defense attorneys by surprise. "Wow," defense attorney Akil Secret said. "Maybe the times are changing." The precipitous declines raise the question of whether prior capital sentences were justified, Secret said. "If a life-without-parole sentence is sufficient for today's worst crimes, why isn't it sufficient for those crimes from the past where death was imposed?"   read more

Thomas worked at the Bank of New York for 22 years, eventually serving as vice president and regional manager. Beginning in 2004, he worked independently in the banking industry. He took time out in 2007 to run for parliament in Jamaica. He was the candidate of the People’s National Party, but lost. In 2010 he returned to the University of the West Indies as a senior teaching fellow in the Mona School of Business and Management. Thomas was tapped in 2013 to be Jamaica’s ambassador to China.   read more

Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge using waterboarding, loud music, confinement, slapping and other harsh methods but deny that they were torture. "Defendants deny that they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual human experimentation and/or war crimes," their lawyers wrote. "This is historic," ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said Wednesday. "Until now, no one responsible for the CIA torture program has ever been forced to admit their actions in court."   read more

A new study indicates that what people really want to ride in is an autonomous vehicle that puts its passengers first. If its machine brain has to choose between slamming into a wall or running someone over, well, sorry, pedestrian. Should manufacturers create vehicles with various degrees of morality programmed into them, depending on what a consumer wants? Should the government mandate that all self-driving cars share the same values, even if that’s not so good for a car’s passengers?   read more

Justice Scalia was an enthusiastic traveler, taking more than 250 privately funded trips from 2004 to 2014. A few weeks before he died, he visited Singapore and Hong Kong. Justice Stephen G. Breyer was the most active traveler last year, taking 19 paid trips, including three to London and two to Paris. The trips were partly to promote his book “The Court and the World,” which was published last year. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was next, with 16 paid trips, but to less exotic places.   read more

"Trump is concerned about a poisoned jury pool," wrote Forge. "After dedicating months to poisoning that pool with dozens of nationally publicized speeches denigrating the claims against him and championing his hollow defense, he should be concerned. He knows the best cure for a snake bite comes from the snake's own venom. After months of spewing venom into the jury pool, Trump is trying to suppress the cure — his own admissions."   read more

"Blood tests are significantly more intrusive, and their reasonableness must be judged in light of the availability of the less invasive alternative of a breath test," said the ruling. For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court should also require warrants for breath tests. "A citizen's Fourth Amendment right to be free from 'unreasonable searches' does not disappear upon arrest," she wrote. Sotomayor slammed the majority for creating a "categorical exception to the warrant requirement.   read more

The Senate rejected the amendment 58-38, two votes short of the 60 necessary to move ahead with the measure that would give federal law enforcement direct access to email and text message logs, internet browsing histories and other potentially sensitive online data. Sen. Ron Wyden opposed the amendment and decried what he said was the hypocrisy of defending gun rights while pushing for a measure that would undermine the constitutional prohibition against unlawful search and seizures.   read more

The Obama administration on Wednesday decried a ruling by a federal judge that blocks rules for hydraulic fracturing. The Bureau of Land Management and a coalition of environmental groups say the rules are necessary to protect the environment. The bureau's rules would have required petroleum developers to disclose to regulators the ingredients in the chemical products they use to improve the results of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.   read more