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More than fifteen years after the “kids for cash” scandal shocked the nation, it’s back, stirring not just public incredulity but, for some, soul-slicing memories of hell on Earth.

This is thanks to Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to Michel Conahan, one of two juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County. Pennsylvania, convicted of accepting cash from private detention centers – as much as $2.8 million over a period of about six years – in exchange for sending them children (my God, as young as 8-years-old) convicted of petty offenses, such as fighting, shoplifting, underage drinking, to serve prolonged sentences in prison.

Editor note:  I do not publish all of Mazin Qumisiyeh work.  His posts are heartbreaking.  Please consider subscribing to his newsletter. 

Over 8,000 Americans die every day, many of them unnecessarily.

Why? Because the United States still doesn’t have a national health care system that guarantees everyone adequate medical attention.

One particular American’s death has driven that point home. On December 4, a gunman murdered Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s 50-year-old CEO. The bullet casings from the shooting read “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.”

Those three words neatly sum up the gameplan America’s giant insurers so relentlessly follow: deny the claim, defend the lawsuit, depose the patient.

Syria, known throughout history as the “crossroads of civilization,” now finds itself at a crossroads of its own. After 54 years, the Assad family’s brutal dictatorship in Syria has finally ended.

“I never thought I’d live to see this day,” said my dad, who left Aleppo as a teenager. My parents grew up there.

The Free Press has been a leader in the fight for fair elections, beginning with the stolen election in 2004 (Kerry vs Bush). Working with the Green Party, we orchestrated election observer programs from 2006 to 2014. We covered the 2020 election which was not stolen. At the time, we attributed that to changes in the systems, including having paper trails on all machines, establishing audit procedures, and the like.

After listening to a former crybaby Orange President blather on about stolen elections for 4 years, the country, including this author, is loath to Trump-cry about this election

being stolen. Nonetheless...

Nonetheless...there are credible computer scientists and data scientists who are credibly claiming serious issues with the last election that likely indicate that Trump may have stolen this election by manipulating votes at the tabulator level, possibly with Elon Musk involvement.

STEPHEN SPOONAMORE: I’m a network engineer..

I build hardware. Most of it is for the credit card or satellite communications business.

I find it statistically almost impossible, as do a significant number of other people who are who are statisticians, that Trump won seven out of seven swing states just outside the margin of error.

There's an additional analysis… two of them that have been completed since then…one of them is absolutely stunning. It looks at what's called the 208 hinge counties. They’re the counties that are of a scale that tend to be the lead associated with the changing of election.