Featured Investigation Thousands of federal workers do not do their stated jobs, and in 2014 they cost the government $162.5 million. The kicker is, it's all above board. Called "official time," the practice, dating back to 1978, allows government employees to perform union work on the taxpayers' dime. And now the House is considering two bills to curb it. But, as Ashe Schow reports for RealClearInvestigations, federal workers call official time necessary because of the same bureaucratic forces that frustrate ordinary citizens: Government workers do not consider it a boondoggle. If taxpayers feel abused by an imperious federal bureaucracy, how do you think they feel working at the whims of a sprawling, 2.7-million-strong Leviathan? Because federal employees need representation, they say, official time may be the best way to handle union matters expertly and efficiently. Lee Stone, a scientist at NASA and a union vice president, told Schow he would rather do the scientific work he was trained and hired to do. "Nobody comes to NASA to be a union official - that is not why we're here," Stone said. But he, like other government workers, "found at some point or another during our careers that there were obstacles to doing our job as well as we thought it needed to be done." Read Full Article
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Elite High Schools Plot to Undermine College Admissions
National Review
August in Boston: when the best and brightest high school valedictorians step onto Harvard's lawn as freshmen. But if elite private prep schools have their way, the valedictorian wouldn't exist as such. They're pushing for high-school transcripts that forgo comparable grades in favor of squishier assessments of "flexibility, agility, and adaptability." As college admissions go, this is not unprecedented. But it also might not be very egalitarian. How the Trumps Moved Kids-Cancer Money To Their Business
Forbes
Eric Trump says holding charity events for St. Jude's Children's Hospital at one of his family's golf courses is a great deal: no rental expenses for a host space, so more money for the kids. But the paperwork shows otherwise. The Trump Organization got paid for the resort's use, part of more than $1.2 million that has no documented recipients past the company. The Trumps are also funneling donation money to other affiliated groups. The 47-Year Mystery of a Murder Victim's Many Identities
New York Times
She was buried in a potter's field in 1970, a woman with no name. Or rather, as an investigation has found, one with numerous aliases. Forty-seven years later, the story of Evelyn Moore has emerged. She was born into rural southern poverty and made her way alone to the 1960s Harlem of limousines, guns, stolen cars and heroin. She adopted new identities along the way, and embraced a bisexuality not often seen in that era. All told, a life of surprising breadth for its length: no more than 30 years. How Your Ugly Booking Photos Become a Commodity
Marshall Project
Mug shots were once the latest in crime-fighting technology, but their digitization has turned them, at times, into another form of voyeuristic clickbait, or worse. For the people photographed, having their least-glorious moment splashed all over the internet can have serious consequences for job prospects and social standing, even if they are later found innocent. Faking 'Wokeness': Advertisers Target Millennial Liberals
Guardian
Your toilet paper will help save the planet! Increasingly big companies are gesturing at liberal values through their ads because their coveted demographic is increasingly clustered in the bluest American cities. If television is "woke" politically with "The Handmaid's Tale," ads are woker. But as Pepsi's Kendall Jenner spot showed, appropriating Black Lives Matter to sell sugary fizz, the message doesn't always ring true. Some Call It Chevaline; Others, Horse Meat. And It May Be Back.
The Atlantic
A horse is a horse, of course, of course. Unless it's rebranded chevaline, of course. Could you wind up eating it? The White House has proposed lifting restrictions on the sale of wild American mustangs to horse meat dealers who supply Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses. The concern is that horse meat's resemblance to beef makes it easy to sneak into sausages and ground meat. Regulation is minimal, and history isn't much comfort either. Investigative Classics: Oregon Kingpin's Sexual Abuse of Teen
Willamette Week, 2004
The sexual abuse of minors is a depressing staple of recent news, from molestations at prep schools to abuses in the Explorer Scout program. In 2003, the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer for its revelations about pedophile priests. Pulitzer-winning reporting by Nigel Jaquiss of the Willamette Week got less national attention: He detailed an ex-Oregon Governor's sexual relationship with an underage teen while Portland's mayor in the 1970s. | 
