Members of Congress are reportedly poised erect a significant barrier to Washington, D.C.’s blueprint for legalizing recreational pot, tucking a provision into the federal budget via their extraordinary power to govern the District of Columbia. Sources told the National Journal Tuesday that the budget measure agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats would thwart the D.C. Council from passing any …

LeBron James joined the list of professional athletes to don an “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt in pre-game warm-ups before Monday’s meeting with the Brooklyn Nets, joining other Nets players and his Cavaliers teammates in brandishing the last words of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man killed by a New York police officer in July. James was not the first player …

All senior U.S. officials and CIA agents who authorized or carried out torture like waterboarding as part of former President George W. Bush’s national security policy must be prosecuted, top U.N. officials said Wednesday. It’s not clear, however, how human rights officials think these prosecutions will take place, since the Justice Department has declined to prosecute and the U.S. is …

Iman Hadieh was standing outside a bar smoking with some new friends on the evening of October 6 when the police cars came. It was about eight young black men, and her, a woman of Palestinian origin who describes herself as white. “I can’t tell you how many vehicles descended upon us because it all happened so fast,” she said. …

Detroit will officially exit the biggest-ever U.S. municipal bankruptcy later on Wednesday, officials said, allowing Michigan’s largest city to start a new chapter with a lighter debt load. The city, which filed for bankruptcy in July 2013, will shed about $7 billion of its $18 billion of debt and obligations. “We’re going to start fresh tomorrow and do the best …

Students at medical schools around the United States planned “die-ins” to protest the chokehold death by police of an unarmed black man and New York activists demanded the city take action after a grand jury declined to indict the officer involved. Protests intensified last week after the grand jury decision to not charge a white New York City police officer …

In principle, Saturday’s vote to keep the government open should be the perfect curtain-raiser for the political debates between now and the 2016 election. As their price for averting a government shutdown, Republicans demanded and got a gutting of one of the most important provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, preventing banks from speculating with government insured money. Agencies hated by …