Congress

Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

This year is the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson’s pulling America into World War I. Many people celebrate this centenary of America’s emergence as a world power.

But at a time when the Trump administration is bombing or rattling sabers at half a dozen nations and many Democrats are clamoring to bloody Russia, it is worth reviewing how World War I turned out so much worse than the experts and politicians promised.

Up until April 2012, members of Congress and their staff were the only people in the country actually allowed to trade stocks on insider information.  That was supposed to change with the passage of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act which was signed into law by Barack Obama on April 4, 2012.  But, as we all know, laws are only meaningful to the extent our legislators and bureaucracies are willing to enforce them.

Authored by Sarah Cronin via TheAntiMedia.org,

Last week the House passed a bill to expand the government’s ability to deport immigrants on the basis of alleged gang affiliation. 

Promoted by Republicans as a way to target members of gangs such as the transnational M13 gang, H.R. 3697, the “Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act,” amends the Immigration and Nationality Act by adding gang affiliation to the list of criminal offenses that qualify as grounds for detention and deportation.

After Democratic lawmakers exploded with outrage following Facebook's revelation that it sold some $100,000 worth of political advertising to a Russia-linked organization during the presidential campaign, the social media behemoth has agreed to release some of the 3,000 suspect advertisements that appeared on its platform with Congressional investigators, Politico reports.

Via The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board,

Congress needs to learn how the FBI meddled in the 2016 campaign.

When Donald Trump claimed in March that he’d had his “wires tapped” prior to the election, the press and Obama officials dismissed the accusation as a fantasy. We were among the skeptics, but with former director James Comey’s politicized FBI the story is getting more complicated.