https://nypost.com/2018/11/17/the-obamas-are-becoming-a-billion-dollar-brand/
Coast Guard seizes about 18 tons, $500 million worth of cocaine
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - The United States Coast Guard seized cocaine with an estimated street value of around $500 million during a series of interdictions in international waters.
The 18.5 tons (16.7 metric tons) of cocaine was unloaded at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale Thursday.
In a news release, Coast Guard officials said they worked with other U.S. agencies and law enforcement from other countries to seize the drugs from 15 smuggling boats off the coasts of Mexico, Central and South America.
The operation also led to the arrests of 49 people who will be prosecuted in South Florida.
Capt. Jeffrey Randall tells the Miami Herald the volume of cocaine being smuggled by water is draining the Coast Guard's resources. In 2017, the agency seized 226 tons of cocaine and brought in 708 suspects.
http://www.fox29.com/news/coast-guard-seizes-about-18-tons-500-million-worth-of-cocaine
Stacey Abrams Amassed Nearly Three Dozen Lawyers to Contest Georgia Gubernatorial Election
Stacey Abrams’ Georgia gubernatorial campaign amassed nearly three dozen lawyers on Friday to challenge the validity of the Georgia gubernatorial election.
The Associated Press (AP) reported her team amassed nearly three-dozen lawyers who will draft a petition, along with affidavits from voters and would-be voters who argue that they were allegedly disenfranchised during the election.
Abrams could decide as early as Friday whether to go to court. Under Georgia election law, a losing candidate can challenge the result of an election based on “misconduct, fraud or irregularities … sufficient to change or place in doubt the results.”
Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams’ campaign chair, said that her legal team is “considering all options,” which also includes federal court remedies. Some Democratic legal observers note Abrams would be dependent on statues that set a high bar for the court to intervene.
Abrams Republican challenger, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has held the lead and is expected to be declared the winner on Friday, charged that Abrams has led a “publicity stunt” and her refusal to concede the election serves as a “ridiculous temper tantrum.”
Abrams faces a narrow path to winning the Georgia gubernatorial election. Preliminary election results show Kemp winning with about 50.2 percent of the vote, which puts him with over 18,000 voters over the threshold required to win by a majority and avoid a December 4 election runoff.
Lawrence-Hardy told the AP that Abrams believes that many of her supporters, many of them minority and low-income voters who do not regularly vote, went to the polls and ran into electoral barriers, although she did not say what barriers they were.
“These stories to me are such that they have to be addressed,” said Lawrence-Hardy. “It’s just a much bigger responsibility. I feel like our mandate has blossomed. … Maybe this is our moment.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/16/stacey-abrams-amassed-nearly-three-dozen-lawyers-to-contest-georgia-gubernatorial-election/
Greenwald: Prosecution of Assange ‘Grave Threat To Press Freedom’
Glenn Greenwald, known for his work exposing the NSA’s covert surveillance of American and other citizens, writes that the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange poses a “grave threat to press freedom,” reminding readers that even Obama’s Department of Justice recognized this.
Despite this, Greenwald notes the current DOJ has obtained sealed charges against the WikiLeaks founder, even while it ignores former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to compromise national security by hosting sensitive government material on insecure private email servers.
Writing in The Intercept, Greenwald contrast the threats to Assange’s freedom with similar complaints by mainstream journalists.
Over the last two years, journalists and others have melodramatically claimed that press freedoms were being assaulted by the Trump administration due to trivial acts such as the President spouting adolescent insults on Twitter at Chuck Todd and Wolf Blitzer or banning Jim Acosta from White House press conferences due to his refusal to stop preening for a few minutes so as to allow other journalists to ask questions. Meanwhile, actual and real threats to press freedoms that began with the Obama DOJ and have escalated with the Trump DOJ – such as aggressive attempts to unearth and prosecute sources – have gone largely ignored if not applauded.
But prosecuting Assange and/or WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents would be in an entirely different universe of press freedom threats. Reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism. From the Pentagon Papers to the Panama Papers to the Snowden disclosures to publication of Trump’s tax returns to the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, some of the most important journalism over the last several decades has occurred because it is legal and constitutional to publish secret documents even if the sources of those documents obtained them through illicit or even illegal means.
The Obama DOJ – despite launching notoriously aggressive attacks on press freedoms – recognized this critical principle when it came to WikiLeaks. It spent years exploring whether it could criminally charge Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified information. It ultimately decided it would not do so, and could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. After all, the Obama DOJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing.
As the Washington Post put it in 2013 when it explained the Obama DOJ’s decision not to prosecute Assange:
Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/11/16/greenwald-prosecution-of-assange-grave-threat-to-press-freedom/
American computer programmer C. Curtis is seen in this video testifying under oath in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio. He tells how he was hired by Tom Feeney (Jeb Bush's running mate) to build a prototype software package that would secretly rig an election
https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1063573572902371334
you can repost if youre still around ;)
https://www.legistorm.com/memberdisclosure/85/Sen_Chuck_Schumer.html