Three people were found guilty Tuesday of growing marijuana, but they also were exonerated of more serious charges in a widely-watched federal drug case in a state where medical and recreational marijuana is legal.

The three remaining defendants of the so-called Kettle Falls Five were all found guilty of growing marijuana. But a jury found them not guilty of distributing marijuana, conspiracy to distribute and firearms charges that carried long prison sentences.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice set sentencing for June 10.

The defendants were Rhonda Firestack-Harvey, her son Rolland Gregg and his wife, Michelle Gregg.

Firestack-Harvey wiped away tears as she declared victory in the case.

"The truth comes out," she said, noting that the defendants were growing marijuana for medical purposes and had cards permitting that use. "We would have loved to be exonerated of all charges."

However, there was no doubt that federal drug agents found marijuana plants growing on their property near Kettle Falls, she said.

Federal prosecutors did not speak with reporters after the verdict, which followed a full day of deliberations by the jury.

Prosecutors asked that the three be taken into custody until sentencing, but Rice declined.

"It's a victory, but it's bittersweet," said Jeff Niesen, an attorney for Firestack-Harvey. "They've been convicted of a federal crime."

But while the tougher charges carried sentences of a decade in prison, growing marijuana should bring a much lower sentence, Niesen said.

On Monday, attorneys for the defendants asked jurors to throw out what he described as an overzealous and overreaching case.

Attorney Phil Tefleyan criticized the government's prosecution of the three, who contend they were growing medical marijuana for personal use in a case that has drawn wide attention over the government's willingness to prosecute marijuana growers.

"They roped in this innocent family," Tefleyan told jurors.

In February of this year, US Senator Rand Paul said that the US-led effort to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 destabilized the region and created what he called a “jihadist wonderland.” Said Rand Paul in comments quoted by The Wall Street Journal, “Gaddafi was a secular dictator… Not the kind of guy that we want to have representing us in country, but he was secular. He didn’t like radical Islam, and he kept them down because they were a threat to him. What happened when we toppled the secular dictator? Chaos. More radical Islam.” Senator Paul called the Libyan intervention “Hillary’s war,” noting the fact that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for the US to get involved in the conflict, and said that it had empowered and armed extremists that would later turn against the United States.

Now, The Washington Times is reporting that former US-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group leader Abdelhakim Belhadj has joined ISIS in an effort to lead a beefing-up of the terror group’s presence in Libya. ISIS has been attempting to spread its influence into Libya, beginning in late 2014 when ISIS occupied the Libyan city of Derna and began training fighters there. The Washington Times notes that ISIS’ strategy for expansion includes the incorporation of existing jihadist groups into a global caliphate, with the integration of Belhadj’s reported Libyan ISIS franchise falling in line with that plan.

A top police representative on Tuesday said that there is no history of criminals using a round popular among AR-15 rifle shooters against officers, undermining the Obama administration's argument for banning the 5.56 M855 "lightgreen tip."

"Any ammunition is of concern to police in the wrong hands, but this specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem," said James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers, with more than 325,000 members.

He told Secrets that the round used mostly for target practice "is not typically used against law enforcement."

While he said that he is "not finding fault" with the surprise move last month by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to classify the round as "armor piercing" and then ban it, Pasco added, "While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement."

The problem is most of the regular investors are out... since btc has been in a downtrend for more than a year.

400+ is hard to achieve.

Litecoin MAY be a good thing to invest in right now, but it may be a horrible thing to invest in right now, use your best judgement.

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is returning to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to help kick-start a longshot campaign to expand criminal background checks to all commercial firearms sales.

Similar legislation that sought to expand background checks failed to get a hearing in the House last session. With the GOP expanding its majority and winning control of the Senate, prospects for the bill may be even more unlikely this session.

Still, Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson of California predicted the legislation would pass if GOP leadership would let it come to the House floor for a vote. Congress passed record funding for background checks in the last session, he said.

"If they are willing to fund the system at historic levels, they should support using the system," Thompson said.

Under the current system, cashiers at stores selling guns call in to check with the FBI or other designated agencies to ensure the customer doesn't have a criminal background. Many lawmakers want to expand such checks to sales at gun shows and purchases made through the Internet.

The National Rifle Association opposes expanding background checks. The organization says many people sent to prison because of gun crimes get their guns through theft or the black market, and no amount of background checks can stop those criminals. The group attributed the effort on Capitol Hill to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has worked to impose stricter background checks in several states.

The Obama Democrats have an audacious scheme for winning future elections. They just plan to import 5 million non-citizens and credential them as voters who will, in gratitude, vote Democratic.

The way this devious formula works is stunningly simple. Just get the new Republican Congress (under Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell) to pass a full-funding bill for Homeland Security without any exception for the funding of Obama's illegal executive amnesty, which will allow Obama to give work permits, Social Security numbers and driver's licenses to 5 million illegal aliens.

Once the 5 million so-called undocumented persons are given those valuable documents, there is no way to stop them from voting. That conclusion is drawn from the testimony of voting experts such as Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who told the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Feb. 12, "It's a guarantee it will happen."

Kobach's warning was reinforced by testimony before the same committee by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who noted that the 5 million non-citizens would receive the "same documents that federal law requires the states to recognize as valid forms of identification for voter registration." And once an alien registers to vote, Kobach said, it is "virtually impossible" to remove him from the voter rolls.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his address to Congress that there would be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East if a deal is signed with Iran.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation, and terror,” Netanyahu said to applause.
In a speech that dozens of Democrats skipped, the Israeli leader warned that a nuclear deal “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

“So you see my friends, this deal has two major concessions: one leaving Iran with a vast nuclear progam, and two, lifiting the restrictions on that program in about a decade,” Netanyahu said. “That’s why this deal is so bad. It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

The Israeli prime minister touched on the major concessions he believes will happen in a nuclear deal with Iran.

Washington (CNN)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday that a proposed agreement between world powers and Iran was "a bad deal" that would not stop Tehran from getting nuclear weapons -- but would rather pave its way to getting lots of them and leave the Jewish State in grave peril.

In a dramatic address to the U.S. Congress at what he said was a "fateful" crossroads of history, Netanyahu openly sided with President Barack Obama's Republican critics and sparked an immediate and furious reaction from the White House, as relations between Washington and Israel spun into their deepest chasm for many years.

"We have been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well this is a bad deal. It is a very bad deal. We are better off without it," Netanyahu said, building a case that Iran was not just bent on developing nuclear weapons but was determined to "gobble" up defenseless countries in a wider play for dominance in the Middle East.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus pleaded guilty to handing out classified information to his ex-mistress on Tuesday, as the facts emerged for the first time concerning the staggering amount of secrets he revealed to her during their scandalous affair.

The married Petraeus passed on eight "black books" to his brunette biographer Paula Broadwell that contained highly classified material, including code words, war tactics, the identities of covert operatives and even his private conversations with President Barack Obama, The Daily Beast reported.

Gunfire damaged a National Security Agency building in Maryland, the U.S. Park Police said.

There were reports of shots fired near the agency's Fort Meade headquarters in the Washington D.C. suburbs Tuesday, and Park Police spokeswoman Sgt. Lelani Woods said it does not appear they came from the nearby Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

A section of the commuter roadway was closed Tuesday night for investigation.

The FBI took over the case Tuesday night, but the NSA confirmed no one was injured in the apparent shooting.

Maryland Transportation Authority Police were investigating shots fired on the Inter-County Connector about 12 miles from the NSA earlier Tuesday. Police say one vehicle was hit, and one person was injured by broken glass.

Police would not say whether the shootings were related or whether the NSA was targeted.

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But while one could ascribe victory to the Florida republican in this latest scrimish, the real victor of this spat between the so-called "left" and "right" is the firm that stand to benefit no matter who wins: Goldman Sachs.

Why? Because both Bush and Clinton are desperate to be courted by the bank that made bloodsucking molluscs infamous, and to have the opportunity to return the favor in spades once either of the two moves to occupy the oval office.

As Politico reports in the "Goldman Sachs Primary", one can "forget the Democratic and Republican primaries: The two biggest names in the 2016 presidential race are competing directly against each other in an elite forum, the halls of Goldman Sachs."

...

She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have both raised huge sums from Goldman and all across Wall Street for their campaigns and charitable foundation. But Blankfein has also made warm comments about some in the Republican field including Bush. Blankfein has indicated he would be fine with either a Bush or Clinton presidency.
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Analysts have proposed a variety of explanations for America's hyperactive, oversized militarism. Here are the top three:

1. The US government has been captured by the military-industrial complex, which demands to be financed lavishly. Rationales are created artificially to achieve that result. But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on.
 
2. The US military posture is designed to insure America's full spectrum dominance over the entire planet. But “full-spectrum dominance” sounds a little bit like “success,” whereas what we see is full-spectrum failure. Again, this story doesn't fit the facts.
 
3. The US acts militarily to defend the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. But the US dollar is slowly but surely losing its attractiveness as a reserve currency, as witnessed by China and Russia acting as swiftly as they can to unload their US dollar reserves, and to stockpile gold instead. Numerous other nations have entered into arrangements with each other to stop using the US dollar in international trade. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't take a huge military to flush one's national currency down the toilet, so, once again, something else must be going on.
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Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian premier, drew criticism after becoming committee chairman in 2009 for awarding the prestigious Nobel to newly elected US President Barack Obama. He will be replaced by current Deputy Chair Kaci Kullmann Five.

The Nobel Peace Prize awarding Norwegian Nobel Committee on Tuesday elected a new chairman to replace Thorbjoern Jagland, whose six-year tenure has been lined with controversies.
 
Jagland will remain a member of the voting panel but was a contentious leader, attracting criticism for his dual role as committee chairman and head of the European Council when the prize was awarded to the European Union in 2012. His leadership also was clouded by the decision to give the prize to Barack Obama in 2009 after he had just been elected president, and the 2010 prize to the jailed dissident Liu Xiabo drew fury from China.
 
The former labor politician was replaced by the panel's deputy chairman, Kaci Kullmann Five, a former conservative party leader. She denied that Jagland's ousting had anything to do with pressure from China, which froze diplomatic ties to Norway after the 2010 award.

She did not deny that his ousting had anything to do with Obama who has since the aware become a neo-con warhawk, who has put some of the most bloodthirsty republicans to shame, and whose actions (and lack thereof) have led to not only global conflict intensity spiking To a 7-year high, but have generated untold riches to the shareholders of the military industrial complex.