Department of Defense

Popping on computers across Michigan last week were campaign advertisements for the state's Supreme Court justice that supported James Robert Redford. They showed the GOP candidate in his military uniform, looking very proud. The problem? The Department of Defense has a few rules about that.

The Department of Defense released proposed rules late last week targeting the practices of a broad range of high-cost lenders and prohibiting them from charging service members interest rates over 36 percent. The new rules would overhaul the Military Lending Act, which, when enacted in 2007, narrowly defined potentially abusive loans. But as ProPublica and Marketplace reported last year, high-cost lenders easily circumvented the law by offering longer-term loans. The new rules would have a substantial impact.

It almost makes sense on the surface: Police departments across the country receive the military's excess equipment, everything from fax machines to riot shields to "various types of land vehicles." While in effect since 1990, things really skyrocketed after 9/11 and then the de-escalation of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The data regarding these acquisitions and the local departments' ability to use them are starting to flood out, and it's just as scary as the images of police militarization that have made Ferguson, Missouri, the center of this debate.

The top U.S. special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. The secret move set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules.

Do you read Salon or The Onion? Are you a federal employee? Then you could be deemed a high risk for leaking classified information, according to the Pentagon.

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services unanimously voted Tuesday to support an amendment allowing the military's health plan to cover abortions in cases of rape or incest. More than 70,000 emails were sent to Members of Congress asking them to end the ban on abortion coverage for servicewomen and military dependents who had experienced rape or incest.