Campaigners say 139 people arrested in Chicago in what is thought to be the largest protest McDonald's has ever faced

McDonald’s closed part of its corporate headquarters on Wednesday in response to a mass protest by workers and activists that campaigners say ended in more than 100 arrests.

Over 2,000 people calling for a hike in the minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation descended on the fast food giant’s suburban Chicago headquarters in what is believed to be the largest demonstration McDonald’s has ever faced. Chanting, “Hey McDonald’s You Can’t Hide, We Can See Your Greedy Side,” and “No Big Macs, No Fries, Make our Wage Supersize,” protesters blocked the entrance to McDonald’s campus in Oakbrook, some 20 miles outside Chicago.

A short walk from Hamburger University, McDonald’s training center, the protesters were confronted by a phalanx of police officers in riot gear. After they sat down the police issued two orders to disperse and arrests began.

Police said 101 McDonald's workers and 38 community supporters were arrested. McDonald’s workers, church leaders and Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry were among those arrested.

Northrop Grumman improperly charged government more than $100 million, IG says

Northrop Grumman improperly charged the U.S. government more than $100 million in “questionable” costs on a contract, according to a Defense Department inspector general’s report.

The report found that from October 2007 through March 2013, the major defense contractor “did not properly charge labor rates” for a counter-narcoterrorism contract, and that the Army agency in charge of the contract did not ensure that the people performing the work had the necessary qualifications. The agency also did not review invoices for millions of dollars of overtime, the report said.

The IG found $21.7 million in “potentially excessive payments” for overtime, including one employee who billed $176,900 for 1,208 hours in a 12-day period. That caught investigators’ attention, since the employee was billing for more than 100 hours a day.

The IG found that out of the charges submitted over nearly six years for 460 DynCorp employees working for Northrop Grumman, 360 did not meet the specified labor requirements, leading to $91.4 million in questionable costs. In one case, a program manager who billed 5,729 hours over a year and a half, totaling $1.2 million, did not have a bachelor’s degree, which was a requirement of the position. Another employee billed 16,270 hours worth $2 million over five years but was qualified for only 161 hours of the work.

WASHINGTON — Signs that a long-awaited economic recovery may finally be gaining steam should be welcome news for President Obama and his party as they try to stem losses in this year’s midterm elections. But rising payrolls, lower unemployment and a buoyed stock market, while lifting the fortunes of the rich, are leaving behind major Democratic constituencies, including young women and blacks, just as the party tries to motivate them to turn out to vote in November.

...

Though broad measures of the economy are showing signs of improvement, a closer look at important indicators among individual groups reveals that voting blocs critical to Democrats in recent elections are not yet feeling the benefits. Consider women, whose unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent, up almost two percentage points from when Mr. Obama took office, as they weighed whether to vote in the midterms of 2010. Today, it is 5.7 percent, a seemingly shining number for Democrats desperate to widen the gender gap.

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But while the number of women out of work appears to be much improved, the number of women employed compared with the total female population is 55.2 percent, actually worse than it was in October 2010. Progress, in fact, is a mirage, the product of what economists call the disappearing work force: people giving up and dropping out.

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Midterm elections tend to be fueled more by mood than by policy, and five years after the recession’s official end, core Democratic constituents might be forgiven for their sour mood or disenchantment with the president. Voters with family incomes below $30,000 backed Mr. Obama against Mitt Romney 63 percent to 35 percent in 2012, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in late April, 46 percent of such voters said they would vote for a Democrat running for Congress, versus 43 percent who would vote Republican. Women between the ages of 18 and 49 would back a Democrat over a Republican for Congress 48 percent to 42 percent, much narrower than the gap of 59 percent to 39 percent that Mr. Obama enjoyed.

RoJo: "Government Shouldn't Even Be Involved in Granting Student Loans"

Governor Scott Walker couldn't have drawn a better three judge panel to hear a sweeping case that aimed to gut Wisconsin's campaign finance laws. Judge Diane Sykes, however, was a little too good of a draw.

Considering that Walker had recently and very publicly promised to appoint her to the U.S. Supreme Court if he's elected president, she absolutely should have recused herself from hearing this case. Instead, she not only heard the case, but wrote the decision. Why? Because no one benefitted more than Scott Walker from this decision. Not only will it be a huge boost to his re-election campaign, but as head of the Wisconsin Republican Party it will overwhealmingly benefit them as well.

This is a clear violation of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges guidelines for appearances of improriety:

An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge’s honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired. Public confidence in the judiciary is eroded by irresponsible or improper conduct by judges. A judge must avoid all impropriety and appearance of impropriety. This prohibition applies to both professional and personal conduct. A judge must expect to be the subject of constant public scrutiny and accept freely and willingly restrictions that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen. Because it is not practicable to list all prohibited acts, the prohibition is necessarily cast in general terms that extend to conduct by judges that is harmful although not specifically mentioned in the Code. Actual improprieties under this standard include violations of law, court rules, or other specific provisions of this Code.