U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

“As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, (Leslie James Pickering's) misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service," a New York Times report states.

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | The Guardian
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows. See more coverage of the NSA surveillance.

High prices are driving more motorists to rent tires | Los Angeles Times
Chains such as Rent-a-Wheel and Rimco are seeing business boom. Many consumers pay double or triple the cost of buying and face aggressive repossession policies.

Star witness in Debra Milke case accused of ongoing misconduct as constable | KPNX Phoenix
Condemned killer Debra Milke still sits on Arizona's death row. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her conviction largely on the testimony of Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate who claimed Milke confessed. He didn't record it, write it down or have it witnessed. Investigative ReporterWendy Halloran from KPNX (NBC) Phoenix uncovered Saldate had a history of misconduct documented in his personnel file. What’s more, other officers who worked with Saldate knew he regularly engaged in misconduct as a detective. And when he was elected Constable, the misconduct did not appear to end.

Drillers Silence Fracking Claims With Sealed Settlements | Bloomberg News
In cases from Wyoming to Arkansas, Pennsylvania to Texas, drillers have agreed to cash settlements or property buyouts with people who say hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, ruined their water, according to a review by Bloomberg News of hundreds of regulatory and legal filings. In most cases homeowners must agree to keep quiet.

At least 74 Texas sites report large stores of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate | Dallas Morning News
Some 20,000 people live within a half mile of the more than 70 sites in Texas that reported having large stores of ammonium nitrate, a Dallas Morning News analysis of state data found. In West, now the site of one of the worst chemical accidents in recent U.S. history, about 800 people lived within the half-mile area that sustained the heaviest damage.

Fulton DA spent forfeiture funds on charity galas, office parties | Atlanta Journal Constitution
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has used thousands of dollars from a little-known stash of public money to buy things that did not have much to do with putting crooks behind bars, but that burnished his image, let him hobnob with power brokers and even upgraded his home.

OSHA Inspected Philly Building Collapse Site, But Did Not Shut It Down | In These Times
According to Pat Gillespie, the business manager for the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, union workers employed at a construction site across the street from the collapsed building called OSHA on four different occasions to report problems at the site.

America's Worst Charities | The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Tampa Bay Times, CNN
Hundreds of charities now operate, not to help the needy, but to turn donations made to paralyzed veterans, dying children and cancer victims into profit for private fundraising companies. An investigation by The Center for Investigative Reporting, CNN and the Tampa Bay Times revales that the top 50 worst charities collected more than $1 billion used for corporate fundraisers. CIR and the Tampa Bay Times published reports today. CNN will air broadcast reports on June 13 during the AC360 show at 8 pm and 10 pm ET.

Navy uniforms are flammable, and military knows it | Virginian-Pilot
The Navy's standard-issue blue camouflage uniforms are highly flammable and will melt onto the skin when burning, a recent Navy test revealed. A second revelation: This comes as no surprise to the Navy.

LP’s world: What the documents reveal | The Kansas City Star
An examination of the documents obtained by The Star found what those involved in the case didn’t do: The Family Court commissioner in 2006 didn’t allow a psychological examination that had been ordered for Prince, almost a year before LP was returned to her mother’s custody. He canceled the exam the day before it was scheduled to happen. LP’s school didn’t call the state hotline to report that she had stopped attending kindergarten, the records indicate. As The Star reported May 5, Kansas City Public Schools leaders say they don’t know what happened years ago, but today the school would call the parent and, if necessary, make a home visit. No one working with the case visited the Prince home after LP was legally reunited with her mother in March 2007. No worker saw them together once they had settled in their new apartment.

In this article published by The Guardian, the 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows. Read this IRE Transparency Watch report for more coverage of the NSA surveillance.

Washington Monthly reports that "over the past five years U.S. border agents have shot across the border at least ten times, killing a total of six Mexicans on Mexican soil." According to the report, border patrol shootings were a rarity before 2009, with only a handful occurring. But after an increase in border patrol agentst between 2006 and 2009, "a disturbing pattern of excessive use of force has emerged."

According to documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, applicants who have sought sensitive law enforcement jobs in recent years with the U.S. Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, admitted to a host of astonishing crimes during the application process, including rape, kidnapping.

"The records – official summaries of more than 200 polygraph admissions – raise alarms about the thousands of employees Customs and Border Protection has hired over the past six years before it began mandatory polygraph tests for all applicants six months ago," according to CIR. "The required polygraphs come at the tail end of a massive hiring surge that began in 2006 and eventually added 17,000 employees, helping to make the agency the largest law enforcement operation in the country."