The Justice Department announced their plans to reinstate the use of asset forfeiture, especially for drug suspects -- making it easier for local law enforcement to seize cash and property from crime suspects and reap the proceeds.

The practice has been criticized because it allows law enforcement to take possessions -- such as cars and money -- without indictments or evidence a crime has been committed.


"Civil asset forfeiture is a key tool that helps law enforcement help defund organized crime, prevents new crime from committed and weakens the criminals and cartels," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Wednesday announcing the revived DOJ policy.

Sessions said these seizures help weaken criminal organizations by taking away their funding, returning property back to victims of crime, as well as give funds back to law enforcement officials by allocating the assets toward new vehicles, vests and police training.

"Funds being used to take lives are now being used to save lives," said Sessions.

Last week the world confirmed, Vladimir Putin may be the last true leader of humankind. How can I say this, you ask? Well, because the insane mainstream media proved it, that's how. And The Guardian headline reads, "Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin". Get ready for yet another intellectual mind melt, as "the west" summons every demon to thwart the great Vladimir V. Putin.

A lot has changed in the last couple of weeks. For one thing, CNN unloaded twin six-guns into their own feet when a hidden video cam recorded one of their producers admitting the whole "Russia" narrative is about ratings. Like the cartoon character Yosemite Sam, America's once venerable cable TV news giant blew the feet off any future possibility they'd be taken serious ever again. And for the globalist lefties who anchored their propaganda to CNN, the same comical high jinx will probably bring down their other famous tabloids, the Washington Post and the New York Times. In all honesty, Stanley Kramer, the man who directed the 1963 epic comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, could not have orchestrated a more fitting demise for western mainstream news. Baby Boomers reading this will identify, but for younger readers let me explain.

The California state Assembly passed a $3-billion subsidy program for electric vehicles, dwarfing the existing program. The bill is now in the state Senate. If passed, it will head to Governor Jerry Brown, who has not yet indicated if he'd sign what is ostensibly an effort to put EV sales into high gear, but below the surface appears to be a Tesla bailout.

Tesla will soon hit the limit of the federal tax rebates, which are good for the first 200,000 EVs sold in the US per manufacturer beginning in December 2009 (IRS explanation). In the second quarter after the manufacturer hits the limit, the subsidy gets cut in half, from $7,500 to $3,750; two quarters later, it gets cut to $1,875. Two quarters later, it goes to zero.

Given Tesla's ambitious US sales forecast for its Model 3, it will hit the 200,000 vehicle limit in 2018, after which the phase-out begins. A year later, the subsidies are gone. Losing a $7,500 subsidy on a $35,000 car is a huge deal. No other EV manufacturer is anywhere near their 200,000 limit. Their customers are going to benefit from the subsidy; Tesla buyers won't.

This could crush Tesla sales. Many car buyers are sensitive to these subsidies. For example, after Hong Kong rescinded a tax break for EVs effective in April, Tesla sales in April dropped to zero. The good people of Hong Kong will likely start buying Teslas again, but it shows that subsidies have a devastating impact when they're pulled.

That's what Tesla is facing next year in the US.

In California, the largest EV market in the US, 2.7% of new vehicles sold in the first quarter were EVs, up from 0.4% in 2012, according to the California New Dealers Association. California is Tesla's largest market. Something big needs to be done to help the Bay Area company, which has lost money every single year of its ten years of existence. And taxpayers are going to be shanghaied into doing it.

To make this more palatable, you have to dress this up as something where others benefit too, though the biggest beneficiary would be Tesla because these California subsidies would replace the federal subsidies when they're phased out.

Mitch McConnell became leader of Senate Republicans at the precise moment it stopped mattering. It was January 3, 2007, and Democrats had just swept both the House and Senate in a wave election that was a thorough rejection of the GOP in Washington.

Even though the Bush administration had two years left, McConnell would be doing no governing from the minority during that time. Next came the election of Barack Obama, and McConnell's now-famous decision to oppose anything his administration offered with as much solidarity as could be mustered. With only 40 members to keep in line, he kept his conference largely together — though one glaring exception was losing Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, not just on the stimulus, but as a Republican altogether. In April 2009, Specter became a Democrat, giving the party 59 senators. When Al Franken was finally sworn in in July, following an endless recount, Democrats briefly held a filibuster-proof majority.

Whitehall bosses failed to stop any of their employees from joining the private sector for three years in a row due to lack of formal powers and poor enforcement of existing rules.

A new report by the National Audit Office (NAO), the UK's leading expenditure watchdog, reveals that government departments have consistently failed to enforce rules on business appointments.

Business appointment safeguards are designed to prevent civil servants from carrying sensitive information, knowledge and connections when they leave their official position for a job in the private sector.

The French Senate has greenlit a controversial anti-terrorism bill which would make permanent the measures introduced during a two-year state of emergency. Protesters against the legislation gathered in Paris, saying France is becoming a 'police state.'

The 'Bill strengthening internal security and combating terrorism' was backed by 229 votes to 106 in the Senate, the upper house of the French Parliament, on Tuesday evening.

The lower house, the French National Assembly, is to debate the proposed legislation in October. It will then have to be signed into law by President Emmanuel Macron, who initially introduced it to parliament. He has vowed to enact tougher anti-terrorist and security laws at the start of his term.

The struggle for power from the ruins of Libya is likely to get even uglier, and what is becoming decidedly more noticeable is the role of other interfering states who are betting on one side or another in the game for the prize that is Libya.

The latest international intrigue, orchestrated by what we might call the "new colonialist alliance," surrounds the future of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's most prominent son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

The United States, UK, the UN are egging on the United Arab Emirates and their allies including France and Jordan to finish the job in Libya by cajoling Libyan National Army commander, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, to totally abandon any thought of allowing Saif a role in the future of Libya. This new colonial order is seemingly becoming afraid of his growing popularity.

In good, bad and ugly ways, this week has been a revealing metaphor for Donald Trump's presidency. The ObamaCare repeal efforts died a sensational death and the number of people known to have attended Donald Trump Jr.'s foolish meeting with a Russian lawyer increased to eight.

Also, special counsel Robert Mueller contacted at least one person at the meeting and requested an interview, according to the Washington Post.

Trump re-certified the Iranian nuclear deal that he promised to tear up, and his proposed changes to NAFTA, which he once called "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere," are so modest that Mexico welcomed them as the basis for negotiations.

On other matters, the economy is still grinding forward, the stock market is near record highs and, despite numerous hysterical predictions, Trump has not started World War III with a tweet.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers has begun preliminary preparations for the construction of segments of a wall in several places along the border with Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday.

Engineers are drilling and taking soil samples to determine what type of barriers would be most effective in the different types of geography along the border, said David Lapan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

The drilling and soil testing are taking place in El Paso; Santa Teresa, N.M.; Calexico, Calif.; San Diego; and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Mr. Lapan said the testing has been completed in El Paso and Calexico. The agency has identified the San Diego area and the Rio Grande Valley as priority regions for new border walls.

The drilling and testing come as Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, continues to evaluate dozens of proposals that have been submitted by vendors for designs for a border wall.

Significant parts of the Trump administration, Congress and the general Zionist borg would love to start a war between the U.S. and Iran.

A war is unlikely. Iran's geography and strategic position is unassailable. Its global political standing has increased during the last decades. Any war with Iran would be extremely costly yet unwinnable.

But with U.S. pressure again increasing on Iran it is important to learn and understand what happens inside of the country. Unfortunately most reporting about politics within Iran is bit of a mess. Considers the piece below from the Washington Post. Written from Turkey by a journalist who (to my best knowledge) does not speaks Farsi nor has any special knowledge of the country: With U.S. scholar's conviction, power struggle escalates between Iran's president and hard-liners

ISTANBUL — A high-stakes power struggle between Iran's moderate president and his hard-line opponents in the judiciary appeared to escalate with the arrest of the president's brother and the conviction of an American student for espionage this weekend — rulings that seemed timed to embarrass the Iranian leader at home and abroad.

The piece should be classic foreign reporting. But who is speaking here?