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<p>My grandfather used to keep all sorts of things in the trunk of his car: Fishing gear, duct tape, aluminum foil, a large chain, a defused WWII hand grenade. When we asked why he squirreled away such a random assortment of items, he would shrug and say, "Just in case."</p>

The inmate who died of an apparent heart attack after a botched execution this week was Tasered the morning of his execution, and doctors inserted an IV to administer lethal drugs into his groin after being unable to locate a usable vein in his arms, legs or feet, authorities said Thursday. Prisons chief Robert Patton also disclosed in a letter to Oklahoma’s governor that death-row inmate Clayton Lockett deliberately cut his right arm before sunrise Tuesday and refused to be restrained or to eat any food in the hours leading up to his death.

Major U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when their information is targeted for government seizure. This increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered....

Illinois must really stink. Half -- yes, HALF -- of Illinois residents say they'd move out of the state if they could. Trailing just slightly behind is Connecticut -- the Fix's home state! -- with 49 percent of its residents saying they would leave if they could. In a surprise to absolutely no one, Texas -- along with places like Hawaii and Montana -- is where residents were least likely to say they would move if they could. (The Fix in-laws are Texans and we can assure you almost no one in Texas willingly leaves there; there's a reason this...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is seeking an explanation for the State Department’s recent request for outside tutors to teach a course on how to survive congressional hearings. In a letter sent to Secretary of State John Kerry this week, McCaskill, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on financial and contracting oversight, questions whether paying contractors to prep officials to face Congress is a good use of the agency’s resources. “I question the Department’s decision to award a new contract to manage its communications with Congress, rather than focusing its time and attention on fixing its...

Keystone XL supporters on Thursday introduced legislation they said was backed by 56 senators that would immediately greenlight the controversial oil pipeline. "I have 56 hard yeses," Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who introduced the bill with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), told reporters Thursday. "Beyond that I've got six or seven maybes. Our challenge is going to be to get to 60 votes," he said. Eleven Democrats are among the 56 senators backing the bill, which would immediately give pipeline developer TransCanada the green light on a permit to begin construction of Keystone XL, according to a release from Landrieu's office....

Over the 25 years Hillary Clinton has spent in the national spotlight, she’s been smeared and stereotyped, the subject of dozens of over-hyped or downright fictional stories and books alleging, among other things, that she is a lesbian, a Black Widow killer who offed Vincent Foster then led an unprecedented coverup, a pathological liar, a real estate swindler, a Commie, a harridan. Every aspect of her personal life has been ransacked; there’s no part of her 5-foot-7-inch body that hasn’t come under microscopic scrutiny, from her ankles to her neckline to her myopic blue eyes—not to mention the ever-changing parade...

In Marvel’s latest popcorn thriller, Captain America battles Hydra, a malevolent organization that has infiltrated the highest levels of the United States government. There are missile attacks, screeching car chases, enormous explosions, evil assassins, data-mining supercomputers and giant killer drones ready to obliterate millions of people. Its inspiration? President Obama, the optimistic candidate of hope and change. Five and a half years into his presidency, Mr. Obama has had a powerful impact on the nation’s popular culture. But what many screenwriters, novelists and visual artists have seized on is not an inspirational story of the first black president. Instead they...

Stop whining, Mr. President. And stop whiffing. Don’t whinge off the record with columnists and definitely don’t do it at a press conference with another world leader. It is disorienting to everybody, here at home and around the world. I empathize with you about being thin-skinned. When you hate being criticized, it’s hard to take a giant steaming plate of “you stink” every day, coming from all sides. But you convey the sense that any difference on substance is lèse-majesté. You simply proclaim what you believe as though you know it to be absolutely true, hoping we recognize the truth...

When Martha Johnson thinks back to that Monday in April 2012 when she resigned as head of the General Services Administration, she remembers a day as still as the hands on a broken clock. She had spent the weekend practicing her resignation speech in front of the mirror. She repeated it over and over until her face had memorized how to form the words without twitching. Until her voice could say it without warbling. Until her eyes could stop all that blinking. Finally it was time. She walked into the 2 p.m. senior staff meeting at the GSA, gave her...

The Obama administration doesn’t have watchdogs. It has whitewash puppies. The president’s Chicago bullies have defanged true advocates for integrity in government in D.C. from day one. So the latest report by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee on corruptocrat Charles K. Edwards, the former Department of Homeland Security inspector general, isn’t a revelation. It’s confirmation. Investigators found that Edwards compromised the independence of his office by socializing and sucking up to senior DHS officials. “There are many blessings to be thankful for this year,” the sycophantic Edwards wrote to the DHS acting counsel on Thanksgiving 2011, “but...

Judges at the lowest levels of the federal judiciary are balking at sweeping requests by law enforcement officials for cellphone and other sensitive personal data, declaring the demands overly broad and at odds with basic constitutional rights. This rising assertiveness by magistrate judges — the worker bees of the federal court system — has produced rulings that elate civil libertarians and frustrate investigators, forcing them to meet or challenge tighter rules for collecting electronic evidence. * The seeds of what legal observers have dubbed “the Magistrates’ Revolt” date back several years, but it has gained power amid mounting public anger...

Oklahoma plans to hold its first double execution in nearly 80 years, Gov. Mary Fallin said Thursday. The move comes a day after the state Supreme Court removed one of the final obstacles, ruling late Wednesday that Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The inmates had sought that information through a civil lawsuit. "The defendants had their day in court. The court has made a decision," Gov. Mary Fallin said in a statement. "Two men that do not contest their guilt in heinous murders...

After Zeituni Onyango, the woman President Obama once called Auntie, died in a South Boston nursing home this month, her closest relatives gathered her belongings at her nearby apartment. There, framed photographs of her with the president covered the wall. Weeping before a polished wood coffin at her wake this past Saturday, they described Ms. Onyango, the half sister of the president’s father, as “the spirit of the Obama family” and talked about raising money to send her body back to Kenya. Mr. Obama helped pay funeral expenses and sent a condolence note, Ms. Onyango’s family members said, but the...

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a gross violation of civil liberties and must be repealed. It is absurd and unjust that young Americans can vote, marry, enter contracts, and serve in the military at 18 but cannot buy an alcoholic drink in a bar or restaurant. The age 21 rule sets the United States apart from all advanced Western nations and lumps it with small or repressive countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Congress was stampeded into this puritanical law by Mothers Against...

The Senate may vote soon on a bipartisan bill that would give the 153-year-old Government Printing Office a new name to better reflect its digital-age work. The legislation, sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), would swap the word “printing” for “publishing” to make the agency the Government Publishing Office. It also would change the top two GPO officials’ titles from “public printer” and “deputy public printer” to ”director” and “deputy director.”Supporters of the measure say the current GPO name ignores the agency’s past and present efforts to reinvent itself for modern times with digital offerings such as e-books,...

Jared Polis really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. If you saw the Colorado congressman speaking on the House floor last month wearing a clip-on bowtie with a polo shirt under his blazer, you know what I’m talking about. He’s been this way since he first emerged on the scene. About 10 years ago, when he was just 28, Polis was one of four wealthy Colorado Democrats who pooled their considerable personal resources to create a state-of-the-art political machine that was ruthlessly effective in turning this once-red heartland state a stunning shade of blue. But Polis wouldn’t run with that...

As the intensive hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entered its second month on Tuesday, all that was certain was it would become the most expensive search and recovery effort in aviation history, with an international fleet of ships and planes scouring the Indian Ocean at a cost of millions of dollars a day. For the most part, the dozens of countries that have contributed personnel, equipment and expertise to the search have borne the costs while declining to disclose them, with officials offering a united front in saying that it would be callous to talk about money while a...

In the hours and days after a deadly shooting at Fort Hood last week, Army officials have not shied away from talking about terrorism — to contrast it with the 2009 attack and to ease fears about the motive behind the second mass shooting on the base in nearly five years. “We have not found any links to terrorism, or any international or domestic extremist groups at this time,” Chris Grey, a spokesman for the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, told reporters. That simple word has a complex and politically charged past at Fort Hood. Army officials have never...

Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary, addressed the increasingly interconnected world and its affect on global health, innovation and the economy Monday in Boulder as part of the opening day of the Conference on World Affairs. Sebelius delivered the 66th annual conference's keynote address in front of a packed Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus. In her speech "The Globalization of Health," Sebelius discussed how interconnected the world's people are in both spreading and fighting disease outbreaks. On her second day as secretary in April 2009, Sebelius said her first call was from Dr....