Josh Quiggin argues persuasively that the easiest way to seem "presidential" is to drop bombs on someone else, and reminds us that Americans only recognize bombing people as "cowardly and evil" when the people being bombed are Americans. Read the rest

The imminent implementation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been hailed as a victory for global privacy advocates; since the regulation severely limits the collection of data on Europeans -- even when they're communicating with non-Europeans -- services like Facebook would risk running afoul of the GDPR if they collected data on anyone in a way that violated EU rules, and since the penalties for violating the GDPR are incredibly draconian, the benefits of such surveillance would surely be outweighed by the risk of getting it wrong. Read the rest

American health care is so screwed up, so horribly distorted by the insurance companies' abusive practices, that millions of Americans (even those with insurance) fly to Mexico every year to get state-of-the-art medical care -- and a resort vacation in the bargain -- rather than face the US system, and save money by doing so. Read the rest

John Oliver is in very good form in this 18-minute explainer on America's ghastly immigration courts, where "we try death penalty cases like it was traffic court," forcing refugee claimants (even children as young as three years old) to represent themselves in deportation proceedings where their very lives are at stake. Read the rest

Remember when Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to make Americans safe, and promised an end to "American carnage" at his inauguration? Yeah, neither does he. Read the rest

When Nixon formed the EPA in 1970, the agency had the prescience to send photographers across America to photograph the kinds of environmental catastrophes that triggered its formation: chemical factories belching smoke; smog over cities; burning barges in the middle of waterways; clearcuts, litter and filthy lakes and rivers. Read the rest

While a shooter rampaged through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, the school's armed cop (who was a Broward County Sheriff's Deputy) and three of his deputy colleagues were hiding behind a police car outside the school. Read the rest

For six months, the Intelligence Community Inspector General office investigated the cases of 190 whistleblowers who went through US spy agency channels to report corruption, waste, fraud, abuse and criminality, discovering that the overwhelming majority had faced some combination of indefinite delays and retaliation (being fired, facing paycuts and demotions, being passed over for promotions, etc) -- only one of the 190 whistleblowers had their case upheld, and that took 742 days. Read the rest

A leaked set of disclosures made by Equifax to the US Senate have revealed that the breach of 145.5 million Americans' sensitive financial data was even worse than suspected to date: in addition to data like full legal names, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, and home addresses, it appears that Equifax also breached drivers' license numbers and issue-dates. Read the rest

When a serial bomb-report hoaxer reported a fake hostage-taking on behalf of a gamer upset at a $1.50 wager, he set in motion a string of events that ended with a Wichita police officer murdering an innocent bystander on his own doorstep, without warning. Read the rest

Donald Savastano was a self-employed carpenter eking out a marginal living without retirement savings or health insurance; when he won the $1 million jackpot in New York's "Merry Millionaire" lotto, he could finally afford to see a doctor to check out his long-term sense of unwellness. Read the rest

Edtech Strategies, "a boutique consultancy focused on providing strategic research and counsel on issues at the intersection of education, public policy, technology, and innovation" has published a report detailing the dismal state of America's state education agencies web-practices, where encrypted connections are hard to find and adtech trackers are everywhere. Read the rest

Weeks before the publication of Virginia Eubanks's new book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, knowledgeable friends were already urging me to read it, which was a no-brainer, having followed Eubanks's work for years.

Whenever we drive on the Ronald Reagan Expressway, my daughter asks me to remind her what Reagan was famous for, and I have to recount as much as I can recall: brought us to the brink of nuclear extinction, murdered a generation through homophobic indifference to the AIDS crisis, put the War on Drugs on overdrive, funded terrorists throughout Latin America, grew the national debt by trillions, and literally allowed astrology to steer the course of the nation. Read the rest

Writing in the Baptist News, Miguel De La Torre -- a progressive professor at Denver's Iliff School of Theology -- denounces evangelicals who "forgive" Trump for his myriad sins and support child-molesters like Roy Moore, saying that they embrace a faith that "fuses and confuses white supremacy with salvation." Read the rest

If you're lucky enough to be friends with a cop, they may give you one of their get out of jail cards, which you can flash to other cops along with a request for favorable treatment. Read the rest

Hospital chain Intermountain Healthcare is leading a industry consortium representing 450 hospitals in total in an initiative to manufacture their own generic drugs, either directly or through subcontractors. Read the rest