Or is it...farce?

Charles Hushburg sends word of this political assessment.

US Secretary of State John Kerry couldn't hide his frustration anymore as the US-sponsored peace process continued to falter. After eight months of wrangling to push talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority forward, he admitted while in a visit to Morocco on April 4 that the latest setback had served as a 'reality check' for the peace process. But confining that reality check to the peace process is hardly representative of the painful reality through which the United States has been forced to subsist in during the last few years.

The state of US foreign policy in the Middle East, but also around the world, cannot be described with any buoyant language. In some instances, as in Syria, Libya, Egypt, the Ukraine, and most recently in Palestine and Israel, too many calamitous scenarios have exposed the fault lines of US foreign policy. The succession of crises is not allowing the US to cut its losses in the Middle East and stage a calculated 'pivot' to Asia following its disastrous Iraq war.

US foreign policy is almost entirely crippled.

For the Obama administration, it has been a continuous firefighting mission since George W. Bush left office. In fact, there have been too many 'reality checks' to count.

Per the logic of the once powerful pro-Israel Washington-based neoconservatives, the invasion of Iraq was a belated attempt at regaining initiative in the Middle East, and controlling a greater share of the energy supplies worldwide. Sure, the US media had then made much noise about fighting terror, restoring democracies and heralding freedoms, but the neo-cons were hardly secretive about the real objectives. They tirelessly warned about the decline of their country's fortunes. They labored to redraw the map of the Middle East in a way that they imagined would slow down the rise of China, and the other giants that are slowly, but surely, standing on their feet to face up to the post-Cold War superpower.

Many Americans expecting to see their tax refunds in their bank accounts soon are waking up to a very different scenario: the government actively intercepting their checks in order to pay back debts they're not responsible for.

According to a new report in the Washington Post, the federal government is seizing nearly $2 billion from hundreds of thousands of taxpayers this year in order to settle debts, some incurred by their parents, some dating back to more than a decade.

This process has been ongoing since 2011, when a revision in the farm bill passed by Congress removed the 10-tier statute of limitations on debts owed to the United States. Since that bill was passed, the government has collected $424 million on debts older than a decade. This year, however, has seen the Social Security Administration (SSA) alone claim that 400,000 Americans owe a total of $714 million in debts older than 10 years.

Multiple government agencies told the Post they were not responsible for pushing for the change, with Social Security spokeswoman Dorothy Clark saying, "We have an obligation to current and future Social Security beneficiaries to attempt to recoup money that people received when it was not due."

In one case documented by the newspaper, 58-year-old Mary Grice of Maryland discovered her tax refund had been seized by the government to pay for a debt she did not even know existed, and had been incurred under her father's Social Security number. Her father died in 1960, but her mother - also deceased now - received survivor's benefits, and the SSA claims it overpaid someone back in 1977 although it is not sure who.

Brushing aside concerns over potential lawsuits, a bill has been sent to the Louisiana state legislature that would make the Bible the official state book.

On an 8-5 vote, the House municipal committee advanced the bill which now goes to the full House for debate, according to WWLTV.


Rep. Thomas Carmody (R) said he sponsored the proposal at the request of a constituent but insisted that the bill wasn't designed to be a state-endorsement of Christianity.

"It's not to the exclusion of anyone else's sacred literature," he told the House committee. He added, "This is not about establishing an official religion of the state of Louisiana."

Not all legislators agreed, with some pointing out that it might not pass muster with the courts.

Rep. Wesley Bishop (D) said that, as a preacher's son, he loved the idea. However, as a lawyer, he thinks the bill has problems.

"I think we're going to open ourselves up to a lawsuit. You can't adopt the Bible and not adopt Christianity," he said after voting against the measure.

Other legislators see the bill as exclusionary.

The next chapter of the UN climate panel's scientific report on global warming is due out next week in Berlin, but a draft of the document seen by the Reuters news agency reveals that the main message for humanity and society is simply this: time is running out.

According to Reuters:

Government officials and top climate scientists will meet in Berlin from April 7-12 to review the 29-page draft that also estimates the needed shift to low-carbon energies would cost between two and six per cent of world output by 2050.

It says nations will have to impose drastic curbs on their still rising greenhouse gas emissions to keep a promise made by almost 200 countries in 2010 to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times.

This third chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fifth Assessment Report will move away from the causes and scientific consensus of climate change (covered in the first chapter) and the impacts of global warming and changing climate patterns (covered in the second), and focus on the possible steps that can be taken to avoid the very worst case scenarios that scientists have set forth.

A drink-fuelled and promiscuous Westminster culture allowed a small group of Tory MPs to make unwanted sexual advances on young male parliamentary staff, it can be revealed following the conclusion of the Nigel Evans trial.

Today Mr Evans, the former Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, was unanimously cleared by a jury of a string of sex assaults, following a five-week trial at Preston Crown Court.

The jury accepted Mr Evans's defence that his behaviour had been the "high watermark of over-friendly, inappropriate behaviour by a drunken man" but did not amount to any criminal offence.

Now it can be reported that other, mainly Conservative, MPs regularly got drunk, "flirted" and made passes at young male parliamentary workers during Commons drinking sessions.

One researcher described how he was approached to "go to the Gents" with an MP at an event for young political activists while another said he had been subject to unwelcome advances after an MP invited his entire office staff to a gay bar.

Russia has denied any troop build-up on the Ukraine border, a claim voiced by President Barack Obama and Kiev officials. Moscow slammed the West for ignoring the results of recent fact-finding missions for the sake of political expediency.

On Friday Obama urged Russia to pull back "a range of troops," which he said, "we have seen [...] massing along that border under the guise of military exercises."

"But these are not what Russia would normally be doing," Obama said, speaking with CBS on his trip to Rome.

He then suggested that the troop build-up could be "just an effort to intimidate Ukraine."

"It may be that they've got additional plans," Obama said.

The US president's comments came the day after a Ukrainian security official told Executive Vice President of the US-Atlantic Council Damon Wilson that "almost 100,000 soldiers are stationed on the borders of Ukraine and in the direction ... of Kharkov, Donetsk."

U.S. stocks were slammed on Thursday, with high-flying technology and biotech shares leading the declines that had the Nasdaq Composite posting its worst session in more than two years.

"The market is coming to its senses in some of the high-flying tech names; it looked like there were some pretty hefty amounts being paid for the prospect of eventual earnings. Any of us in the market more than 15 years feels the hot breath on the backs of our necks when we see such high prices being paid for tech stocks," said Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds.

"One of the interesting ironies is when you see a shift towards stocks with pretty low prices and away from momentum that tends to happen when the underlying economy is still growing," Webman added.

Two days before Christmas 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating America's latest and current central bank, the Federal Reserve System. It's a sobering thought that in the 100 years since the Fed's creation, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value. Had the Fed never been created, America would be dotted with Nickel Stores (other things being equal) instead of Dollar Stores. But that is just the beginning of the sad tale.

The Fed was not America's first experience with banking regulations or a central bank. From the very beginning, the United States had substantial money and banking regulations at the state and national levels, even with a gold standard. There was no free market or free banking. But as the 19th century came to a close, the national banks, led by J.P. Morgan, were dissatisfied with the money and banking regime under the reigning National Banking system, and sought to regain their previous dominance. As Murray Rothbard wrote in The Case Against the Fed,

[The] banks desperately desired a Central Bank, not to place fetters on their own natural tendency to inflate, but, on the contrary, to enable them to inflate and expand together without incurring the penalties of market competition. As a lender of last resort, the Central Bank could permit and encourage them to inflate when they would ordinarily have to contract their loans in order to save themselves. In short, the real reason for the adoption of the Federal Reserve, and its promotion by the large banks, was the exact opposite of their loudly trumpeted motivations. Rather than create an institution to curb their own profits on behalf of the public interest, the banks sought a Central Bank to enhance their profits by permitting them to inflate far beyond the bounds set by free-market competition.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is under fire by Republicans and conservatives yet again. And for good reason.

First it was the "Fast and Furious" operation in Phoenix, where ATF agents allowed illegal gun sales that were believed to be ultimately for Mexican drug cartels in order to track the buyers and sellers. It resulted in about 1,300 weapons' being unaccounted for by the ATF. Two weapons linked to the operation turned up in connection with the murder of a U.S. border patrol agent, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was cited for contempt of Congress.

Now it is Operation Fearless in Milwaukee. There the ATF covertly opened a store called "Fearless Distributing," which sold designer clothes, athletic shoes, jewelry, and drug paraphernalia. The undercover ATF agents working behind the counter of this storefront-sting operation "let it be known" that they were willing to buy guns and drugs. The sting operation resulted in the seizure of 145 guns, including some sawed-off shotguns, stolen guns, and guns with obliterated serial numbers. Charges were filed against about 30 people, mostly for low-level drug sales and gun-possession counts. ATF spokesman Special Agent Robert Schmidt said that "he is convinced the operation didn't bring crime to the neighborhood and instead made the streets of Milwaukee safer." "Our number-one responsibility is denying criminal access to firearms and that is what we are trying to do," he said. "It is our duty to purchase these firearms to protect the American public and citizens of Milwaukee." He "declined to say how much the sting operation cost."