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

A study of the court’s opinions, going back to 1791, included a ranking of 107 justices based on their choice of words used in opinions. It turns out five of the top 10 grumpiest justices are currently on the court. Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia and were found to have used some of the most unfriendly language in their opinions in court history.   read more

Urged on by socially conservative lawmakers, Congress has again poured more money into abstinence programs that operate under the belief that teenagers won’t have sex if you just tell them it’s a bad idea. Another $25 million was appropriated last month for Title V, a federal program started in the 1990s after Republicans won control of Congress.   read more

Many of the most U.S. powerful corporations and foundations contributed $1 million or more to the Clinton Foundation while also lobbying the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The foundation also set up a charity that may have helped some of its donors hide their contributions to the Clinton Foundation.   read more

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the looting and attacks were the product of unidentified hoodlums, not the residents of Baltimore. But the only individuals who participated in the violence—and who are known to live outside the city, if not the state of Maryland—were Baltimore police officers. As of 2012, more than 70% of Baltimore police officers lived outside the city with about 10% living out of state, some in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.   read more

Human Rights Watch said in a new report that it uncovered video, photographs and other evidence of the Saudi air force employing cluster bombs near villages in Yemen’s northern Saada Province on two separate occasions. The group, however, did not directly link any civilian casualties to the use of the controversial ordinance, which has been banned by more than 100 countries under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.   read more

As it awaits an administration decision this month on the release of photos showing torture of terror suspects, the American Civil Liberties Union has published what it knows about the contents of the still-secret photos. As a result of its Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU says more than a hundred documents it did receive from the government “either referenced photos related to cases of abuse or actually contained the photos, which were redacted before they got to us.”   read more

The House of Representatives approved a resolution 228-192 to undo a D.C. law prohibiting employers from discriminating against workers, their spouses or dependents for using family planning services or birth control. It also keeps employers from firing an employee for having an abortion.   read more

The bill doesn’t address data collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which allows the collection of the actual content of some communications, including that of Americans, and the collection of information from overseas calls. “If this bill passes, the NSA will continue unaddressed surveillance programs and will secretly torture the English language to devise novel justifications for spying on Americans,” said David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress.   read more

The American Psychological Association (APA), the leading professional group for psychologists in the U.S., met secretly with members of the George W. Bush administration to help officials justify the use of torture against detainees. The Bush administration went to the APA for help because the national organization for psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, wasn’t willing to help the CIA rationalize its methods for extracting information during interrogations of detainees.   read more

The National Park Service (NPS) has gotten a waiver allowing it to enter into a marketing agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer and maker of Budweiser. It’s a two-year, $2.5 million campaign to engage in “co-branding with a goal of attracting a younger population to the NPS and the corporate brand,” according to the memo. Part of the justification for the waiver was a previous Park Service partnership with a small winery.   read more

Sopko was told by the State Department that he must remove 40% of his staff from Afghanistan within the year. The reduction will mean the number of SIGAR staff members will fall from 42 to 25. “Any assertion that the Embassy Kabul unilaterally ordered SIGAR to make staffing cuts in 2016 is false,” a State Department official said.   read more

Madjid Bouguerra presented his credentials as Algeria’s ambassador to the United States to President Barack Obama on February 13, 2015. It’s the fifth ambassadorial posting for Bouguerra, a long-time member of his country’s foreign service. Bouguerra went to Berlin as Algeria’s ambassador to Germany in 2010. He came home in 2013 to serve as minister delegate for Maghreb and African Affairs, his last post before assuming his post in Washington.   read more

Air traffic controllers, civilians who work for the Djibouti government, regularly nap, listen to music, play video games and text on their mobile phones while directing military traffic from several nations, as well as civilian traffic from major world airlines. Many of the controllers are also resentful of the foreign presence in their country.   read more

Cleveland was taking a cut of visiting NFL players’ salaries in proportion to their team’s schedules. If the team played 20 games, including exhibitions, Cleveland would count 5% of a visiting player’s salary as subject to that city’s income tax. Former Indianapolis Colt Jeff Saturday also sued Cleveland, saying he shouldn’t have had to pay the city any tax for the game his team played in 2008 because he was back in Indiana rehabilitating an injury.   read more

Thanks to an agreement, Minute 319, between the U.S. and Mexican governments, a surge of Colorado River water was released from its floodgates down into Baja California en route to the Sea of Cortez last year. The efforts are paying off. Birds not seen in 50 years, such as the yellow-billed cuckoo, are returning to the area.   read more

Castilla joined Peru’s government as assistant finance minister under centrist President Alan Garcia in January 2010. When Ollanta Humala, a president with leftist leanings assumed office in July 2011, he surprised many by adding Castilla to his cabinet as minister of rconomics and finance. Humala thought that the presence of Castilla, an economic moderate, would calm the fears of Peru’s business community about the ascension of a leftist to the presidency.   read more