According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

“America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished,” Epstein wrote. “Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had."   read more

Until eight years ago, Missouri had one of the country’s toughest gun control laws. But in 2007, the state legislature repealed that law and has since adopted others making gun ownership less restricted. Federal data released last month showed that from 1999 to 2006, Missouri’s gun homicide rate was 13.8% higher than the national rate. After the background checks were repealed, from 2008 to 2014, it was 47% higher.   read more

Parent Kimberly Herndon said the assignment amounted to “indoctrination” and that it violated the students’ right of religious freedom. Not all members of the community were as quick to condemn LaPorte. A Facebook page supporting the teacher had more than 2,000 members. “As a community, it is up to us to defend a teacher who is not in the wrong and deserves our support as she supported a great number of us through our high school years,” Grace Zimmerman, a former student of LaPorte’s, posted.   read more

The Observer has stopped running pot ads in its issues it mails. “The ban could have a chilling effect on newspapers that deliver by mail,” wrote Willamette Week. “The outdated federal approach to marijuana as described in the response from the Postal Service undermines and threatens news publications that choose to accept advertising from legal marijuana businesses in Oregon and other states where voters also have freely decided to legalize marijuana," said three Oregon politicians.   read more

“It’s outrageous that lawmakers are interfering with the most modest measures to increase disclosure of political spending,” said Public Citizen's Lisa Gilbert. “The American people want – and deserve – to know who is trying to buy our elections.” The budget deal also includes another Republican-supported rider designed to prevent the SEC from moving forward with a regulation requiring disclosure of political donations by public corporations.   read more

One message was sent out on Thunderclap, a social media tool that allows sharing on a wide scale. That message, which reached 1.8 million people at once, read: “Clean water is important to me. I support EPA’s efforts to protect it for my health, my family and my community.” The GAO ruled the message illegal, according to the Times, because during its subsequent sharing across the Internet, some may not have known it was originally sent by the EPA, thereby qualifying it as covert propaganda.   read more

Agrabah is a fictional city in the Disney movie, "Aladdin." The question’s insertion into the survey was inspired by the “extreme rhetoric” of Republican presidential candidates in the debates and on the campaign trail. “Anything that sounds Arab might make these [respondents] think of people who might associate with terrorism,” Mayhew told MTV News. “It also relates to the fear people are feeling and it speaks to the fear that the right is playing to with their campaigns.”   read more

The one thing that historically has held back women in the armed forces is that not all jobs were open to women, especially spots in combat units which are seen as a prerequisite for promotion. But Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s announcement that all jobs are open equally to men and women changed that and women should soon see a clearer path to advancement. The Coast Guard offers a two-year sabbatical to encourage mothers to stay in the service.   read more

Humboldt Superior Court will receive a $110,000 loan from the California Judicial Council to help pay for 24 homicide cases. Eighteen of them are currently headed to trial. The county usually averages 11 murders a year. Many of the pending trials are for homicides that occurred in 2014, when Humboldt experienced 16 murders. That was the highest number in the county in at least 30 years.   read more

Jane, a retired science teacher, said the solar technology might interfere with nearby plants’ ability to carry out photosynthesis. “She added that no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer,” the Huffington Post reported. Lane said Woodland had already approved three major solar farms within the past year, and that the decision to reject the fourth had more to do with space and location because it “would have completely boxed the town in with solar farms.”   read more

A review of more than 50 contracts found "the vast majority have provisions that block accountability and protect officers from being investigated, indicted, and ultimately convicted,” ThinkProgress reported. They include the expungement of internal records and the use of a “do not call” list of officers who cannot testify, which can “impede the effective investigation of reported misconduct and shield officers who are in fact guilty of misconduct from meaningful discipline,” said the study.   read more

Death row numbers are dwindling because states are handing down fewer death sentences. This year saw courts sentence only 49 individuals to death, the lowest number of death sentences imposed since 1973. “The numbers are consistent with a long-term trend in which public support for the death penalty is dropping, the number of executions is dropping and the number of death penalties imposed is dropping,” said DPIC executive director Robert Dunham.   read more

The authors of the study said “stabilization programming actually had the perverse effect of increasing support for the Taliban in Taliban-controlled villages.” In other cases, USAID did such a poor job of managing its projects that Taliban leaders were able to successfully submit requests through intermediaries for American aid projects for villages under their control. Also, USAID’s targeting of some villages not under Taliban control resulted in increased violence from the Taliban.   read more

The GAO makes recommendations to federal agencies on ways they can save taxpayer dollars. However, some of the larger agencies have yet to embrace 4,800 recommendations made by auditors. The Defense Dept., which has failed to implement 1,004 such suggestions, has by far ignored the GAO the most. One of the biggest defense programs the GAO has examined is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Pentagon, said GAO, did not adequately assess the affordability of the plane, which has had severe problems.   read more

RCP’s polling analysis showed Sanders with 32.2% support among voters, and Trump with just slightly more at 33%. But Gallup’s party affiliation numbers showed 44% of those surveyed identify with Democrats, compared to 42% of Republicans, giving a bit more weight to the Sanders supporters. Meanwhile, Trump this year received 234 minutes of coverage among NBC, CBS and ABC evening news broadcasts, while Sanders got only 10 minutes of coverage from the Big Three.   read more

The report warned that in gathering census information electronically, “the threshold for effectively manipulating the census process is surprisingly low.” It noted that particular concern should be paid to “large-scale, organized fraud [which] could pose a threat to the integrity of the census.” Census fraud can have serious consequences, such as affecting the loss or gain of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives,” according to the study.   read more