Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

Congressional lawmakers aren’t so hot on the idea of military equipment going to local cops anymore, and that makes national police organizations nervous.

In an attempt to counter widespread concern over ‘militarized” local police departments, law enforcement groups are pressing Capitol Hill to not cut off the supply of armored vehicles, body armor and other military equipment to the nation’s cops.

This week, the National Tactical Officers Association, the lobbying group for 1,600 SWAT teams across the country, emailed all legislative staffers in the House and Senate to express that they shared in ‘our nation’s grief” over the events in Ferguson, Missouri.

But their ultimate message was unmistakable: Don’t take away our gear.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s office is considering introducing a bill that would prohibit all transfers of weapons from the military to law enforcement officials, establishing a kind of church-state boundary that couldn’t be crossed.

‘The police have to be one step ahead of the criminal element, have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. You don’t want a community to be […]

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In short, it’s a recipe for a confrontational end to the Obama presidency. | Getty

HENDERSON, Ky. — Mitch McConnell has a game plan to confront President Barack Obama with a stark choice next year: Accept bills reining in the administration’s policies or veto them and risk a government shutdown.

In an extensive interview here, the typically reserved McConnell laid out his clearest thinking yet of how he would lead the Senate if Republicans gain control of the chamber. The emerging strategy: Attach riders to spending bills that would limit Obama policies on everything from the environment to health care, consider using an arcane budget tactic to circumvent Democratic filibusters and force the president to ‘move to the center” if he wants to get any new legislation through Congress.

In short, it’s a recipe for a confrontational end to the Obama presidency.

‘We’re going to pass spending bills, and they’re going to have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy,” McConnell said […]

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CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

California is facing a possible loss of billions to its economy thanks to sea level rise – an outcome for which it is ‘woefully unprepared” according to a new report from the state’s legislature.

The report, picked up by the San Francisco Examiner, was recently released by the Assembly Select Committee on Sea Level Rise and the California Economy. This committee held a string of hearings around the state to collect testimony from scientists and industry leaders on just what the state can expect from sea level rise, and what the consequences could be for its economy and infrastructure.

In particular, the report highlighted data from the United States’ oldest operating sea level gauge, which sits at Fort Point in the San Francisco Bay. It shows a seven-inch rise in the local sea level over the last one hunted years. The report then pointed to a 2012 analysis by the National Research Council, which said California should prepare for another three feet of sea level rise by 2100 – and that low-lying areas such […]

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A year and a half of drought has depleted 63 trillion gallons of water across the Western United States, according to a new study that documents how the parched conditions are altering the landscape.

The loss of groundwater, as well as surface water such as reservoirs, has been so extreme that it lifted the West an average of one-sixth of an inch since 2013, according to researchers from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The situation is even worse underneath the snow-starved mountains of California, where the Earth rose up three-fifths of an inch. Groundwater is very heavy, and its weight depresses the Earth’s upper crust. Remove the weight, and the crust springs upward.

The study, published online Thursday by the journal Science, showed how a lack of rain and snow cut water levels first in the U.S. Southwest and Central and Southern California before spreading into Oregon and Washington state. Water naturally evaporates, is absorbed by plants and is pumped by humans, so levels go down if the water is not replenished.
lRelated L.A. takes gentle approach […]

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The clinching shift in solar power will come when the battery storage is cheap enough and lasts long enough for users to draw down their suplus generated during the day to cover needs at night Photo: Reuters

The props beneath the global oil industry are slowly decaying. The big traded energy companies resemble the telecom giants of the late 1990s, heavily leveraged to a business model already threatened by fast-moving technology.

Citigroup warns – or cheerfully acclaims, depending on your point of view – that world energy markets are entering a period of “extreme flux”, with oil caught in triple encirclement by cheap natural gas, much more efficient vehicles and breathtaking advances in solar power as scientists crack the secrets.

The combined effect is to “bend” to the curve of global oil use over coming years, eroding the assumptions that have underpinned […]

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