Adam Dick

On Tuesday, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who is seeking reelection for what he has indicated will be his final term in the United States House of Representatives, won his Republican Party primary. Jones defeated two other candidates — a Washington, DC lobbyist who holds elective office in the district and one of Jones’ primary opponents from 2016.

Will Rahn wrote a Thursday editorial at CBS News concerning Jones’ primary victory and Jones’ history in the House. In the editorial titled “In praise of Walter Jones,” Rahn refers to Jones as a “man of conviction in Washington” who has been punished by his party’s leadership because of his independent actions, including, Rhan writes, becoming “one of the GOP’s most fervent voices for peace.”

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On Friday, the National Security Agency (NSA), which has played a primary role in the United States government’s mass surveillance program exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, disclosed it had collected 534 million phone calls and text messages of Americans in 2017 — more than three times the amount it collected the year before. But, what about the USA FREEDOM Act that the US Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law in 2015? There was much fanfare when the USA FREEDOM Act was enacted and during its consideration in Congress that the legislation’s “reform” would impose major new restraints on the mass surveillance program in order to defend liberty and privacy.

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The bank account of FIDE, a premier chess organization that governs some major international chess competitions, maintains rules adhered to at many other tournaments, calculates players’ ratings, and awards titles such as Grandmaster, was shut down this week. Peter Doggers reports at chess.com that FIDE officials say UBS Bank was terminating FIDE’s account because FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is included “on the sanctions list of the US Department of the Treasury” though “Ilyumzhinov himself has stated that the sanctions were not mentioned by UBS.” Doggers notes that FIDE, also known as the World Chess Federation, has been unable to establish an account with another bank since UBS, a Switzerland bank, announced in February that the FIDE account would be terminated.

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Investing and current affairs writer David Stockman found himself in hostile territory this week in an interview at the Fox Business show Mornings with Maria. In the often-tense interview, Stockman seems to shock and rile some of the show’s hosts with his assessments that the United States military should not have been given a big monetary infusion in the recent spending deal worked out by President Donald Trump and Congress and that the US should stop its excessive military intervention overseas.

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Retired United States Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, explains in a new interview the reason he believes the US president “can do anything he pleases with regard to the armed forces of the United States anytime he pleases.” That reason, says Wilkerson in a The Real News Interview with host Sharmini Peries, “is because the American people are apathetic” and “their representatives in the Congress are … cowards” who, but for “few exceptions like [Sen.] Mike Lee [(R-UT)] and [Sen.] Bernie Sanders [(I-VT)] and some of the others,” will not do anything to restrain such exercise of presidential power.

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