Start asking security experts which powerful Washington institutions have been penetrated by Chinese cyberspies, and this is the usual answer: almost all of them.

The list of those hacked in recent years includes law firms, think tanks, news organizations, human rights groups, contractors, congressional offices, embassies and federal agencies.

The information compromised by such intrusions, security experts say, would be enough to map how power is exercised in Washington to a remarkably nuanced degree. The only question, they say, is whether the Chinese have the analytical resources to sort through the massive troves of data they steal every day.

‘The dark secret is there is no such thing as a secure unclassified network,

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The Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United v. FEC enabled wealthy corporations to spend unlimited money to change the course of American elections, and a subsequent lower court decision gave the green light to super PACs funded by unlimited donations from millionaires, billionaires and corporations. Today, the Supreme Court announced it would hear another case - brought by none other than the Republican National Committee - that would go even further towards transforming American democracy into the Wild West.

Despite recent election-buying decisions permitting unlimited donations to super PACs and other groups that exist independently of campaigns and political parties, federal law still limits individual donations to candidates and to the parties themselves. In the next election cycle, these limits include a $2,600 cap on individual donations to a single candidate, and an overall limit of $123,200 in contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations. The Republican Party’s lawsuit seeks to eliminate most of these limits on election-buying - most importantly, by removing the $123,200 cap on total contributions.

As the unanimous lower court decision upholding this cap explained, removing it would corrupt our election system even more by allowing billionaires to launder as much money as they want […]

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A recent federal study found that American children are eating fewer calories than they did a decade earlier. It’s welcome news, especially considering that other studies have proposed today’s kids are going to die five years younger due to inactivity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the study, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, to gauge how (and if) America is dealing with its growing obesity epidemic. The survey includes data on how children and adults alike eat in the 21st century. Read on to find out how our eating habits are changing for the better.

What’s the Deal

The survey compared data from 1999 with more recent responses from 2010. Participants were interviewed by phone and in mobile exam centers to report on their eating routines. The most promising stats involved children, finding that caloric intake for most age groups declined over the decade. Boys’ caloric intake decreased by about 7 percent (to 2,100 calories per day), and girls’ caloric intake shrunk by about 4 percent (to 1,755 calories per day), the New York Times reported.

Researchers suggested that a decrease in carbohydrate consumption (including sugars) played a big role in the drop. Calories from fat remained about the […]

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NEW YORK — The increasing power and accessibility of genetic technology may one day give parents the option of modifying their unborn children, in order to spare offspring from disease or, conceivably, make them tall, well muscled, intelligent or otherwise blessed with desirable traits.

Would this change mean empowering parents to give their children the best start possible? Or would it mean designer babies who could face unforeseen genetic problems? Experts debated on Wednesday evening (Feb. 13) whether prenatal engineering should be banned in the United States.

Humans have already genetically modified animals and crops, said Sheldon Krimsky, a philosopher at Tufts University, who argued in favor of a ban on the same for human babies. ‘But in the hundreds of thousands of trails that failed, we simply discarded the results of the unwanted crop or animal.’

Unknown consequences

Is this a model that society wants to apply to humans, making pinpoint genetic modifications, only to ‘discard the results when they don’t work out?’ Krimsky asked during an Intelligence Squared Debate held in Manhattan. He added that assuming no mistakes will occur would be sheer hubris.

He and fellow ban proponent Lord Robert Winston, a professor of science and society and a fertility expert […]

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The Koch brothers’ political network spent hundreds of millions to win the White House and the Senate – and came up empty. So they did what any smart business executives would do: ordered up an audit.

But they’re not waiting for the final report for heads to roll.

Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ main political outlet, parted ways with its chief operating officer, most of its 100-plus employee field staff and several fundraisers. Generation Opportunity, a Koch-backed youth mobilization effort, recently replaced its president.

Charles and David Koch’s network also is withholding cash from some groups pending the full audit results, and it has postponed both of its signature donor conferences this year.

The pressure isn’t coming just from the inside. California regulators are issuing subpoenas and demanding phone and business records in an investigation that could reveal the secret donors funding some Koch-linked groups or even result in those donors becoming targets themselves. And David Koch has told friends he is weary of being pilloried by liberals and Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama as the personification of the corrupting influence of money in politics.

It’s not all gloom and doom in Koch World, but the brothers are at a potential turning […]

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