From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
In the 1990s, I watched a federal trial in a Los Angeles courtroom. The defendant was charged with selling medical drugs without a license to practice medicine.
The defendant was prepared to argue that a) the substance he was selling was naturally produced in the body and b) it was effective. Continue reading “Would the government let Jesus cure cancer?”
On January 23, the House of Representatives passed an appropriations act billed to ““reopen the government and pay our federal employees.” But buried inside the bill are diverse financial allotments and perks for a foreign country: Israel.
The legislation contains paragraphs and sections far removed from the shutdown, committing billions of dollars in payments to Israel – without the robust debate that usually accompanies big-ticket spending. Continue reading “Israel has starring role in H.R.648, “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019””
Police in Portland, Oregon, are investigating messages between a police lieutenant and a leader of a right-wing group in which the officer appears to give tips on how to avoid arrest and the location of counter-protesters, authorities said.
Hundreds of emails and text messages released by the city’s police bureau on Thursday showed Portland Police Lieutenant Jeff Niiya and Joey Gibson, leader of right-wing group Patriot Prayer, often discussed Gibson’s plans to demonstrate. Continue reading “Portland, Oregon, police probe texts between officer and right-wing leader”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is back at the court after missing oral arguments in January as she recovered from lung cancer surgery at home, a court official said on Friday.
Ginsburg, who will turn 86 in March, had been working from home and participating and voting in cases since her December surgery by reading argument transcripts and case briefs. She attended the justices’ closed-door conference to discuss cases on Friday. Continue reading “Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg back at court after cancer bout”
The U.S. had called for a high level anti-Iran meeting in Poland. The purpose of the meeting was to bring with its allies and poodles into line with the U.S. agenda on Iran, to press them at least into issuing harsher sanctions. But the European rejected that.
The State Department then changed the agenda: Continue reading “Netanyahoo Asks Arabs To “Advance The Common Interest Of War With Iran””
Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist
Chicago, IL — After nearly 4 years, last October, former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of 2nd degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm after shooting and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. In January, he was sentenced to just 6 years and 9 months in prison.
While the sentence is certainly short given the slew of crimes it appears the inmates may be trying to seek their own justice for McDonald. Continue reading “Cop Sentenced to Just 6 Years for Murdering Teen Boy Beaten By Inmates After 4 Hours in Prison”
The Economic Collapse – by Michael Snyder
Our health insurance system is theoretically supposed to prevent Americans from going bankrupt when they are hit by huge medical bills. But in case after case, that is simply not happening. Even though more Americans are “covered by health insurance” than ever before, a new study has found that “about 530,000 families each year are financially ruined by medical bills and sicknesses”, and most of those families actually had health insurance. Continue reading “A New Study Discovers Two-Thirds Of All Bankruptcies In The United States Are Primarily Caused By Medical Bills”
Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” gun control advocate David Hogg said he was working to “ban assault weapons” in his home state of Florida.
Discussing working with relatives of some of the 17 people killed at last years mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, Hogg said, “Sometimes it does have to be state by state. Even at the state level, sometimes they don’t want to work with us. Continue reading “David Hogg on AR-15s: ‘You Are Not Defending Yourself, You Are Hunting a Human Being’”
A former US Air Force counterintelligence agent with access to top secret national defense information was charged with spying for Iran after she defected to the Islamic Republic and helped it target her former colleagues, according to a seven-count indictment made public on Wednesday (see below).
According to prosecutors, Monica Elfriede Witt a.k.a. Fatemah Zahra, a.k.a. Narges Witt gave the Iranians the code name and mission of a secret Pentagon program which involved American intelligence operations, reports the New York Times. Continue reading “US Charges Air Force Counterintelligence Agent With Spying, Committing Cybercrimes For Iran”
The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor class organizations is backing a Republican-Democrat coalition that would allow for the swift outsourcing of middle-class American jobs to mostly Indian nationals. Continue reading “Billionaire Kochs Back GOP/Dem Plan to Outsource Middle Class American Jobs”
Update: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has apologized over Twitter, saying in a statement that she is “grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” and that her intention “is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole.”
She added, however, that she reaffirms “the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry.” Continue reading “Rep. Ilhan Omar Apologizes To Jewish Americans, Thanks Colleagues For Educating Her On “Anti-Semitic Tropes””
House Democrats plan to move legislation criminalizing private gun sales out of committee and get it to the floor for a vote this week.
On January 8, Breitbart News reported that House Democrats introduced the legislation, dubbed H.R. 8, in honor of the eighth anniversary of the January 8, 2011, attack on Gabby Giffords. Continue reading “House Democrats Plan Vote to Criminalize Private Gun Sales This Week”
Just when frustrated residents of New Jersey, one of the most heavily taxed states in the US, thought Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy had already brought the state into the ninth circle of taxation hell with new taxes to save the state’s ailing pension system, middle class voters in one of the least affordable states in the country have now been given one more thing to complain about: A tax on the rain. Continue reading “NJ Voters Furious As Governor Murphy Prepares To Sign ‘Rain Tax’ Into Law”
Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist
As politicians and anti-gun rights activists continuously chant, “we don’t want to take your guns,” behind the scenes — in only the year — politicians have been working overtime to limit your right to bear arms. These laws are all a reaction to the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida and, like most politicians always do, they are not letting this tragedy go to waste.
Since the tragic shooting in Florida last February, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has recorded a whopping 55 new gun control measures in 26 states—in just the first six months of the year. Continue reading “Unprecedented Gun Confiscation Hits US as Thousands Of Guns Seized from Innocent Citizens”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic lawmakers are pushing stricter gun laws in statehouses across the country, emboldened by sweeping electoral victories in 2018 and confident that public opinion is on their side a year after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Last year’s wins handed Democrats control of the governorship and legislature in several more states, including New Mexico, New York, Colorado, Maine and Nevada, and lawmakers are using their new power to draft or pass gun laws. Continue reading “Armed with new power, Democrats push for stricter gun laws”
President Trump is “reconsidering” his strategy to pull US forces out of Syria following an “eye-opening trip to Iraq” the day after Christmas, Bloomberg reports.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who sits on the Senate Armed Forces Committee – a harsh critic of Trump’s announced pullout, said earlier Sunday that he would try to change Trump’s mind during a private lunch since the Islamic state isn’t quite defeated in the region as the President had previously stated. Continue reading ““The President Is Reconsidering”: Syria Pullout On Thin Ice After Lunch With Lindsey Graham”
In a video announcement and email to supporters sent Monday morning, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced that she was officially launching an exploratory committee to seek the 2020 Democratic nomination, making her the first candidate to officially announce in what’s expected to be a “long and crowded” primary, according to the New York Times.
In her video, Warren leaned on the anti-Wall Street themes that have become a hallmark of her political career since she was elected to the Senate in 2013 after defeating moderate Republican incumbent Scott Brown. Prior to that, she had been a bankruptcy law professor at Harvard. Continue reading “Elizabeth Warren Announces Plans For Presidential Run”
Following a string of stories published this year about its work for autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia (including work that helped the Saudi government crack down on dissidents living abroad), China and elsewhere, vaunted consulting firm McKinsey has endured a firestorm of criticism. But a story published Friday by the Wall Street Journal revealed that a former partner for the consulting firm has languished in a Saudi prison since Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s now-infamous “anti-corruption purge” cash grab/political crackdown. Continue reading “McKinsey Partner Imprisoned And Beaten By Saudi Arabia”
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A former Israeli armed forces chief who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for reelection next year formally established a political party on Thursday.
Details about Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party, leaked to local media after it was registered, gave little indication of its ideological tilt. Continue reading “Israeli ex-general, polling closest to Netanyahu, joins 2019 election race”