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

Gene editing actually transforms the DNA of its subject and those changes are passed down to subsequent generations and thus affect the world’s gene pool, potentially altering the very nature of the human species. In spite of the committee’s recommendation to press the pause button on actual gene editing, it endorsed the continuation of laboratory research to perfect the editing technique, including the manipulation of human cells.   read more

The right-wing’s anti-Muslim rhetoric "plays dangerously into the hands of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups that thrive on the alienation of Muslim populations in the West,” said the report. The threat to resettling Syrian refugees in the U.S. "confuses the victims of terrorism with its perpetrators." Their rhetoric "also threaten[s] constitutional protections – as presidential candidates have already tied these narratives to limitations on the free exercise of speech and religion.”   read more

One U.S. senator—who happens to be the most powerful of them all—gets far more thumbs-down than thumbs-up from those in his state. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a 52% disapproval rating, according to polling data. He’s the only senator with a disapproval rating over 50%. Nor does McConnell have many who approve of the job he’s doing. At 38%, he barely edges out Democrats Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who’s under indictment, and Gary Peters of Michigan, each at 37% approval.   read more

The fight resulted in two dozen concussions, dislocated shoulders, a broken leg, broken nose, fractured cheek, and other injuries One male first-year cadet said his upperclassman commander advised him: “If you don’t come back with a bloody nose, you didn’t try hard enough.” A female first-year cadet defended the event: “Right after, when we learned how many people had gotten hurt, everyone felt totally hard-core. I know it looks weird from the outside, but it really bonds us.”   read more

The doctors' petition was presented just hours before news of the mass shooting in San Bernardino. “It’s disappointing to me that we’ve made little progress in the past 20 years in finding solutions to gun violence,” said Dr. Nina Agrawal. “In my career, I’ve seen children lives saved from measles, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, motor vehicle accidents…because of federal scientific data and research. It’s frustrating that the CDC is not permitted to do the same type of research for gun violence.”   read more

“This disenfranchisement makes no sense,” said Beshear. “It makes no sense because it dilutes the energy of democracy, which functions only if all classes and categories of people have a voice, not just a privileged, powerful few. It makes no sense because it defeats a primary goal of our corrections system, which is to rehabilitate those who have committed crimes.” Kentucky joins more than 20 other states that have eased restrictions on voting by former prisoners over the past 20 years.   read more

Human Right Watch argues “sufficient evidence exists” for Attorney General Lynch to carry out investigations of “senior United States officials and others involved in the post-September 11 CIA program for torture, conspiracy to torture, and other crimes.” HRW offers evidence to support criminal charges against those responsible for state-sanctioned torture, and claims the Senate "torture report" showed that CIA torture was “more brutal, systematic, and widespread” than had been previously found.   read more

Court documents revealed 113 students reported being raped at FSU last year, but the school officially reported only 14 such cases. Melissa Ashton, former director of the FSU’s Victim Advocate Office, testified that in the nine years she worked there, 40 football players were accused of either sexual assault or “intimate partner” violence, but to her knowledge, only one person had been held responsible. “She said most of the women chose not to pursue the cases ‘based on fear,’” said the Times.   read more

Crime isn’t paying like it used to, at least for burglars. They’d be better served working for the federal government. Armstrong Economics pointed out last month that in 2014, U.S. Attorneys seized more than $4.5 billion of assets. An even larger figure, more than $5 billion in assets, was forfeited to the departments of Justice and Treasury. The loss to burglaries, on the other hand, was about $3.5 billion last year. “The police are now taking more assets than the criminals,” wrote Armstrong.   read more

Before his nomination, Califf helped design and oversee a clinical trial for Xarelto, which thins blood in heart patients. With Califf's help, the drug won FDA approval in spite of two FDA warning letters before the trial began and a later recall notice that said testing devices in the trial could deliver false test results. An FDA review of the trial showed it was biased in favor of approving Xarelto, Patients using Xarelto were said to be “at greater risk of harm from stroke and/or bleeding.”   read more

Last year saw an 80% spike in the total number of deaths from terrorism, the highest increase since 2000. The vast majority of terrorist deaths don’t happen in Western countries. Five countries — Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria—accounted for 78% of the terrorism death toll in 2014, The six new countries with more than 500 deaths were Somalia, Ukraine, Yemen, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Cameroon.   read more

This year Montana was at the top of the list again. The state was the worst in the country for its traffic fatality rate and was among the worst in several other categories, including speeding, careless driving and failure to obey traffic laws. “Montana has the potentially deadly combination of high speed limits and severe winter weather that could really be driving up fatality rates,” said Tyler Spraul, director of the study. Second place went to South Carolina and New Mexico in a tie.   read more

The Air Force was forced to use contractors to fly its MQ-9 Reaper drones because it has struggled to recruit, train and retain military drone pilots. But some people are concerned. “The more closely related an activity is to the kill chain, the greater the likelihood the activity should be barred from contractor performance,” wrote Maj. Keric D. Clanahan in Air Force Law Review. He urged the Pentagon to “only allow military personnel to serve as aircraft pilots and … sensor operators.”   read more

The EPA banned the use of methyl bromide in U.S. homes in 1984. It is still used on American farms and throughout the Caribbean, including illegally in U.S. territories. Its continued use gained attention after a family from Wilmington, Delaware, nearly died from exposure to the pesticide on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands nine months ago. Two of the family’s boys are still hospitalized in Delaware, suffering from neurological damage and paralysis. The father is also paralyzed.   read more

Three decades of established federal policy that gave watchdogs unrestricted access to government records in their investigations is now at serious risk of being undone. That includes at least 20 investigations that have been slowed or completely shut down. “This is by far the most aggressive assault on the inspector general concept since the beginning,” said professor Paul Light. “It’s the complete evisceration of the concept. You might as well fold them down. They’ve become defanged.”   read more

“We’re going to see a stream of edited animals coming through because it’s so easy,” said professor Whitelaw. “It’s going to change the societal question from, ‘If we could do it, would we want it?’ to, ‘Next year we will have it; will we allow it?’” A variety of gene-altered creatures are already being created in labs for purposes of battling disease to enriching the food industry. Human gene manipulation is the logical next step, a prospect that excites some and frightens others.   read more