From the Trenches World Report

The New American – by Bob Adelmann

When Jeff Klee was asked by a client if his travel agency,CheapAir.com, would accept Bitcoins, he admitted he didn’t even know what they were. He didn’t know that thousands of merchants were already accepting them in payment for services and products, such as WordPress, OKCupid, and even Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic on which Klee no doubt had already booked some of his clients.

Once he learned what they were, and found a digital “wallet” — Coinbase — to help him manage the transactions, he saw the marketing advantage: “We expect people to come to us especially because they can use Bitcoin.” Klee isn’t taking much of a risk as more than 14,000 merchants already use Coinbase, which has opened up nearly half a million Bitcoin wallets for its customers. Said Klee: “If you have a lot of people accepting it, it becomes a useful and legitimate form of payment.”   Continue reading “The Bitcoin Continues to Gain Credibility From Merchants and the Fed”

NBC Montana

HELENA, Mont. – A Montana judge is hitting an elusive political group with a $260,000 fine for failing to disclose campaign spending.
The civil penalty levied against American Tradition Partnership demonstrates that new campaign freedoms extended to corporations don’t make them immune to state disclosure laws.   Continue reading “Judge hits ‘dark money’ group with big penalty”

Lew Rockwell – by Hunter Lewis, Mises.org

This is an adaptation of chapter 10 from Hunter Lewis’s book Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012.

During the presidential campaign of 2012, an online commentator observed that President Obama had not met with his Jobs Council for six months. How could this be, the commentator asked, when jobs were foremost on the president’s agenda? The answer was not hard to discover.    Continue reading “General Electric’s Crony Capitalism”

ABC News – by PABLO GORONDI Associated Press

The price of oil dropped to near $93 a barrel on Monday as a deal between Iran and six world powers on the country’s nuclear program made it more likely that sanctions choking Iranian oil exports will be lifted.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark U.S. crude for January delivery was down $1.44 at $93.40 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Friday, the contract fell 60 cents to close at $94.84.   Continue reading “Oil Prices Drop Sharply After Iran Nuclear Deal”

CNN – by Catherine E. Shoichet and Rafael Romo

Mexican authorities set free a former teen cartel hit man on Tuesday and sent him back to the United States.

The release of Edgar Jimenez Lugo, a U.S. citizen known as “El Ponchis” or “The Cloak,” comes less than three years after a Mexican court found him guilty of torturing and beheading at least four people and kidnapping three others as an operative for the South Pacific Cartel.   Continue reading “Mexico: Teen hit man freed, sent to U.S.”

The Courant – by Jenny Wilson

CNN – by Catherine E. Shoichet

Gail Sandidge rushed to help when screams rang out during a stabbing at a Texas medical center on Tuesday.

Horrified patients and family members watched as a man stabbed the nurse in the chest.

“She was just saying…’I’m hurt. He got me,'” witness Jana Jackson told CNN affiliate KLTV. “And that’s when we realized there was blood all on the front of her scrubs.”   Continue reading “Nurse dies protecting patients in Texas surgical center stabbing”

Dallas News – by Robert Wilonsky

One week after workers removed the X that marked the spot on Elm Street where President John Kennedy was gunned down on November 22, 1963, it has returned.

And, says 1500 Marilla spokesman Frank Librio, the city has no intention of removing this X or any other — at least, for the time being.   Continue reading “In Dealey Plaza, the X that marked the spot on Elm Street where Kennedy was killed has returned”

Fox News

Three teenage sisters have been rescued from an Arizona home after reportedly being held captive for two years.

Police tell TucsonNewsNow.com the girls, ages 12, 13 and 17, were discovered after the younger two escaped to a neighbor’s house and claimed their stepfather had threatened them with a knife.   Continue reading “3 teenage sisters reportedly held captive in Arizona home for 2 years”

American Free Press – by Keith Johnson

While the National Security Agency (NSA) spying scandal continues to grab national headlines, the equally egregious intelligence gathering on United States citizens by Israeli security firms has virtually flown under the radar.

A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine, entitled “Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on Protesters,” comes close to scratching the surface by identifying the four major security contractors that have been aggressively hawking their invasive surveillance products at various trade shows and police conferences throughout the nation. However, they fail to mention that at least two of those companies are owned and operated by members of a foreign nation with a long and notorious history of spying on the U.S. government and its citizens.   Continue reading “Israeli Data Spies Have Eyes Focused on U.S. Citizens”

Sydney Morning Herald

The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting US news organisations and journalists, United States officials say.

The officials stressed that a formal decision has not been taken and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impanelled, but they said there is little possibility of bringing a case against the Australian, who has sought asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, unless he is implicated in criminal activity other than releasing online top secret military and diplomatic documents.   Continue reading “Julian Assange unlikely to be charged in US”

Isn’t this the same Garrow who also proclaims to be a doctor and rescues kids from China, when he isn’t saving the free world?

Right Wing Watch – by Brian Tashman

Did President Obama and George Soros plot to murder 300 million Americans by dropping nuclear bombs? Yes! That is, according to right-wing activist Jim Garrow, who now claims to be a former intelligence officer. Erik Rush kicked off his radio show on Tuesday by reading from a Garrow article about how Obama planned to detonate nuclear weapons throughout the US until three heroes in the military stopped him:   Continue reading “The Obama-Soros Conspiracy To Nuke America And Kill 300 Million People Exposed!”

SHTFplan.com – by Mac Slavo

The frustration and anger in America are growing.

So much so that one militia leader has publicly called for the assassination of the President of the United States.

In a post on his Facebook page, Christian American Patriots Militia leader Everest Wilhelmsen has claimed authority under the U.S. Constitution to take matters into his own hands.   Continue reading “Militia Leader Publicly Threatens President: “We Now Have Authority to Shoot Obama””