Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) voted against the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill last year, but on Wednesday he plans to “discuss the need for immigration reform.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost his Republican congressional primary to Tea Party-backed Dave Brat in a shocking landslide Tuesday, is the highest-ranking Jew in the history of the U.S. Congress. As news of Cantor’s defeat spread, Jews on both sides of the aisle wrestled with what his defeat meant for American Jews in politics–and for Republican Jews in particular, who had long seen Cantor as a champion for their cause. Continue reading “Jews Wrestle with Cantor Defeat”
In a scenario that could’ve been extremely devastating, the United States narrowly averted a nuclear disaster in 1961 when an atomic bomb nearly detonated after falling out of a B-52 bomber that broke up in the sky.
Two residents of Lafayette, Colorado are suing the state, Gov. John Hickenlooper, and energy trade group Colorado Oil and Gas Association for the enforcement of the city’s fracking ban, which was passed last fall in a city-wide vote.
The class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Boulder County District Court comes in response to a separate suit filed by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) in December that seeks to negate Lafayette’s ban on new oil and gas extraction in the city. Sixty percent of Lafayette voters supported the measure to curb hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in November. Continue reading “Colorado residents sue state, governor to enforce local fracking ban”
Microsoft is attempting to fend off a search warrant served by federal prosecutors in the United States because the tech giant says the government lacks the authority to compel the company for customer data that’s stored overseas.
Experts are already saying that Microsoft’s attempt to squash a search warrant served last December marks the first time that a major company has fought requests from the Justice Department for digital information held on overseas servers. If the Silicon Valley corporation fails to win, however, then a precedent could be established to ensure prosecutors in the US will in the future have little problem asking for digital files even if that data lacks all other ties to America. Continue reading “Microsoft fights US warrant demanding information from overseas servers”
LAS VEGAS — Police shooter Jerad Miller was a convicted felon, but he still was able to gather several guns, which he and his wife Amanda used to kill three people Sunday.
A Henderson police officer was hospitalized Wednesday morning after he was shot or struck by shrapnel during a fatal officer-involved shooting.
Police spokeswoman Kathleen Richards said the officer was in good condition. The officer was struck during a shootout with a man near Horizon Ridge Parkway and Gibson Road about 4:30 a.m. It’s unclear if the officer was directly shot or struck by shrapnel, she said. Continue reading “Henderson police officer wounded, suspect killed in morning shooting”
US Banks enjoyed more or less steadily climbing, or rather soaring, deposits by Russian institutions and individuals, having tripled in just two years to $21.6 billion by February, according to the US Treasury.
It may seem a bit counterintuitive that in times of ZIRP anyone would put any money in anyUS banks, and it may seem even more counterintuitive that Russians who have other opportunities with their money would voluntarily subject themselves to the Fed’s financial repression. Continue reading “Giant Sucking Sound: Russian Money Yanked From US Banks”
The Senate’s draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2015 was written behind closed doors and kept secret for around 11 days, but the text of the bill was publicly released last week.
President Barack Obama is looking for new ways to act “administratively, unilaterally using his executive authority” to enact new gun control legislation, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said during a press conference Tuesday.
Washington, DC – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked the Supreme Court of the United States to weigh in on a long-standing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in which EFF sought to obtain a secret legal memo authorizing the FBI to obtain phone records without any legal process.
As part of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issues opinions that provide the legal justification for a wide variety of executive branch activities, in ways that affect millions of Americans. The opinion sought by EFF appears to have authorized the federal government, specifically the FBI, to obtain call records without judicial approval and without citing an emergency to justify the data collection. Continue reading “Public Deserves to See Secret Law Written by Office of Legal Counsel”
We bemoan our decisions when we get a bad deal or miss out. New research published in the journal Nature Neuroscience this week finds that regret may not be just a human emotion. It turns out rats also experience regret.
Researcher David Redish at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis set up a “restaurant row” for his lab rats. The “restaurants” consisted of four stops where the rat could receive one option of his favorite flavor foods — banana, cherry, chocolate and a fourth unflavored food. The rat stops at the entrance and presses a button, which made a sound. The pitch indicated how long the rat needed to wait for food, anywhere from one to 45 seconds. If the rat was impatient, it could walk to the next stop and try again. However, each rat had an hour to get through the course, so it needed to be efficient. Continue reading “Rats regret their decisions, study finds”
US President Barack Obama launched a heart-felt lament that gun attacks were “becoming the norm” after a gunman shot and killed a student at an Oregon high school on Tuesday, the latest in a spate of US shootings.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the health care system you’re depending on to make you well ends up damaging your health, but this is precisely what happens in an alarming number of cases.
At a time when Venezuela’s record $25 billion in arrears to importers has its citizens waiting hours in line to buy drinking water and crossing borders in search of medicine, President Nicolas Maduro is using the nation’s dwindling supply of dollars to enrich bondholders.
Venezuela, which imports just about everything, and its state oil producer have paid $2.8 billion in interest to overseas creditors this year, according to Barclays Plc. Including debt principal, bondholder outlays will balloon to almost $10 billion by year-end, the London-based firm estimates. Continue reading “Venezuela Sacrifices Drinking Water to Pay Bondholders”