GOP Takes Up Russia-Aligned Attack On Soros

A group of congressional Republicans is teaming up with Russia-backed politicians in Eastern Europe with the shared goal of stopping a common enemy: billionaire financier George Soros.

Led by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the conservative lawmakers have signed on to a volley of letters accusing Soros of using his philanthropic spending to project his liberal sensibilities onto European politics. As Lee and other senators put it in a March 14 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Soros’ Open Society Foundations are trying “to push a progressive agenda and invigorate the political left.”

House Obamacare repeal DOA in the Senate

Forget the House GOP's troubles passing a health care bill. The party's bigger problem looms in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell is being tasked with fixing what GOP senators and House members say is a flawed Obamacare repeal proposal — one with little to no chance of passing in that chamber in its current form — in a week’s time.

Erdogan Warns Europeans ‘Will Not Walk Safely’ If Current Attitude Persists

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Europeans across the world would not be able to walk safely on the streets if they kept up their current attitude.

Turkey has been embroiled in a row with Germany and the Netherlands over the barring of campaign appearances by Turkish officials seeking to drum up support for an April referendum on boosting Erdogan’s powers.

“If Europe continues this way, no European in any part of the world can walk safely on the streets. We, as Turkey, call on Europe to respect human rights and democracy,” Erdogan said at event for local journalists in Ankara.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Reuters 

While Washington Investigates Russian Meddling, Moscow Is Expanding Its Global Influence

For all the Russia-related chatter coming from Washington of late, United States policy towards the Kremlin has been difficult to discern. But while much of official Washington and American media focus on the politically charged investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Moscow isn’t standing still but rather capitalizing on the distraction. With all eyes on U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin is advancing his foreign policy agenda on multiple fronts, especially in the Middle East.

Children as Young as Three Detained 500 Days and Counting in Disgraceful Immigrant Prisons

For more than 600 days and two Christmas holidays, Marlene and her seven-year-old son Antonio have languished in indefinite detention at Pennsylvania’s “Berks Family Residential Center,” a glorified term for an immigrant prison. Her child has been granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), which the U.S. government says is supposed to “help foreign children in the United States who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected.” But instead of sanctuary, or even a fair hearing, Marlene and her son face open-ended incarceration and “expedited removal” orders, compounding the trauma they endured when they were forced to flee their home in El Salvador under threat of gang violence.

Neil Gorsuch Is Not Another Scalia. He’s the Next John Roberts.

When John Roberts was nominated as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2005, Senator Ted Kennedy asked him: “You do agree, don’t you, Judge Roberts, that the right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right?”

“It is preservative, I think, of all the other rights,” Roberts responded. “Without access to the ballot box, people are not in a position to protect any other rights that are important to them.”

Germany fears Russia stole information to disrupt election

BERLIN — In May 2015, a message popped up on every desktop in the German parliament: the computer system was about to shut down. Moments later, screen after screen around the Bundestag turned dark, affecting thousands of lawmakers, officials and staffers.

While the outage was brief, it was enough to rattle nerves — especially among those who had heard a rumor that, two weeks earlier, hackers had gained entry to the computer system by sending an email seemingly from the United Nations. Once a recipient clicked on a link in the email, however, it opened the door for malware to enter the parliament’s computer system.

Texas Senate Passes Bill Allowing OBs To Keep Info From Pregnant Women

The Texas Senate passed a controversial bill on Tuesday that critics argue would empower doctors to lie to pregnant women.

Senate Bill 25, which will now be sent to the Texas House, prevents parents from suing their medical provider if their baby is born with disabilities, even if that doctor discovered the condition during routine prenatal testing and failed to inform the parents.

Russia accused of hindering UK money laundering investigations

Britain is struggling to stop vast sums of potentially criminal money entering the country because investigators are being hampered by the Russian authorities, the head of the National Crime Agency money laundering unit has said.

In an interview with the Guardian, David Little said: “The amount of Russian money coming into the UK is a concern. “One, because of the volume. Two, we don’t know where it is coming from. We don’t have enough cooperation [from the Russian side] to establish that. They won’t tell us whether it comes from the proceeds of crime.”

Anti-wind bill costs Ohio schools hundreds of thousands of dollars

Superintendent Ken Amstutz dreamed of propelling his rural Ohio school district into a high-tech future with nearly a million dollars in annual revenue from a single wind farm set to go online this year.

That was until the state legislature blocked wind development across Ohio, halting construction of the Long Prairie Wind Farm and leaving Amstutz’s district in financial limbo.