After Jeffrey Epstein got out of the Palm Beach County jail in 2009, having served 13 months of an 18-month sentence resulting from a plea deal that has been widely criticized, he began a media campaign to remake his public image.

The effort led to the publication of articles describing him as a selfless and forward-thinking philanthropist with an interest in science on websites like Forbes, National Review and HuffPost.

The Forbes.com article, posted in 2013, praised him as "one of the largest backers of cutting-edge science around the world" while making no mention of his criminal past. The National Review piece, from the same year, called him "a smart businessman" with a "passion for cutting-edge science." The HuffPost article, from 2017, credited Mr. Epstein for "taking action to help a number of scientists thrive during the 'Trump Era'," a time of "anti-science policies and budget cuts."

Individualism cannot save humanity from the crises it faces. It's not the right tool.

There is a widespread belief that if we just eliminated all collectivist impulses within our society, we could eliminate all our problems. That the government which causes so much bloodshed and oppression wouldn't be harmful if we can shrink it down to a minor role, or even to nonexistence, and the corporate powers which attach themselves to governments would thereby lose power over individuals. Let individuals take care of themselves however they see fit, with no collectivist power interfering in their affairs, and the world will sort itself out in a harmonious way.

This will never happen.

The most common argument for why this will never happen is that the world is full of awful people, and if you place the will of the individual over the will of the collective, the awful people will be able to do a lot more awful things. The people who are sociopathic enough to destroy the environment and exploit others for profit will be able to exert more influence over the total wellbeing of the world than those who aren't, and there'll be no safety nets in place protecting those who are born into under-privileged situations. Individuals like mothers who aren't as capable of earning money would frequently find themselves dependent on the kindness of a man who may or may not be kind. Such a society would claim to be just, since it makes the same demands of everybody, but due to real circumstances could only ever be gravely unjust.

This argument is of course true, but it's not the primary reason that individualism cannot save us.

Just when you think you've heard it all, the American Psychological Association decides this: Monogamy is the new bigotry.

That's right. According to the supposed "mental health experts," open marriages are the tolerant approach to intimacy. And they've launched a task force to prove it to the world.

According to the APA's official description of this initiative, "Finding love and/or sexual intimacy is a central part of most people's life experience. However, the ability to engage in desired intimacy without social and medical stigmatization is not a liberty for all."

A recently released financial record shows a money trail between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office.

The record, released to Contact 5 through a records request, shows Epstein's company, Florida Science Foundation paid PBSO $128,136 during his incarceration between 2008 and 2009.

Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges in 2008, including solicitation of a minor. The guilty plea was part of the secret non-prosecution agreement which kept Epstein out of federal prison on numerous accusations that the part-time Palm Beacher allegedly ran a sex-trafficking ring out of his Palm Beach mansion.

The agreement also kept Epstein out of prison, and instead, allowed him to serve his sentence out at the local county jail, run by PBSO Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.

While there, the convicted sex offender was granted work-release benefits, and allowed to leave his cell six days a week, 12 hours a day to work at his Florida Science Foundation, located in a high-rise off Australian Ave. in West Palm Beach.

That foundation appears to be the same Epstein foundation which paid PBSO nearly $130,000 between October 2008 and May 2009. It's unclear if Epstein wrote off the payments, as financial records for the so-called non-profit were not immediately available.

Federal authorities arrested a leading lieutenant with Mexico's Gulf Cartel in Texas after he illegally snuck across the Rio Grande to enter the United States. Law enforcement agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had their sights on the cartel cell leader for some time in connection with multiple drug shipments allegedly linked to him.

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Rene "El Diablo" Garcia Cantu near La Paloma, Texas, after he illegally entered the country in a remote rural area. During a background check, agents determined that Garcia Cantu is the target of an ongoing DEA investigation into the Gulf Cartel and their marijuana smuggling operation.

Could it be possible that we are on the verge of the next "Lehman Brothers moment"? Deutsche Bank is the most important bank in all of Europe, it has 49 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives, and most of the largest "too big to fail banks" in the United States have very deep financial connections to the bank. In other words, the global financial system simply cannot afford for Deutsche Bank to fail, and right now it is literally melting down right in front of our eyes. For years I have been warning that this day would come, and even though it has been hit by scandal after scandal, somehow Deutsche Bank was able to survive until now. But after what we have witnessed in recent days, many now believe that the end is near for Deutsche Bank. On July 7th, they really shook up investors all over the globe when they laid off 18,000 employees and announced that they would be completely exiting their global equities trading business...

It takes a lot to rattle Wall Street.

But Deutsche Bank managed to. The beleaguered German giant announced on July 7 that it is laying off 18,000 employees — roughly one-fifth of its global workforce — and pursuing a vast restructuring plan that most notably includes shutting down its global equities trading business.

Though Deutsche's Bloody Sunday seemed to come out of the blue, it's actually the culmination of a years-long — some would say decades-long — descent into unprofitability and scandal for the bank, which in the early 1990s set out to make itself into a universal banking powerhouse to rival the behemoths of Wall Street.

It is undoubtedly my favorite part of every wedding. That awkward, but strangely forthright moment when the preacher asks the crowd for any objections to the couple's marriage. No one ever objects, of course, but it's still a raw, if tense, moment. I just love it.

I suppose we had that ubiquitous ritual in mind back in 2007 when Keith - a close buddy and fellow officer - and I crafted our own plan of objection. The setting was Baghdad, Iraq, at the start of the "surge" and the climax of the bloody civil war the U.S. invasion had unleashed. Just twenty three years old and only eighteen months out of the academy, my clique of officers had already decided the war was a mess, shouldn't have been fought, and couldn't be won.

Me and Keith, though, were undoubtedly the most radical. We both just hated how our squadron's colonel would hijack the memorial ceremonies held for dead troopers - including three of my own - and use the occasion of his inescapable speech to encourage we mourners to use the latest death as a reason to "rededicate ourselves to the mission and the people of Iraq." The whole thing was as repulsive as it was repetitive.

So it was that after a particularly depressing ceremony, perhaps our squadron's tenth or so, that we hatched our little defiant scheme. If (or when) one of us was killed, the other promised - and this was a time and place where promises are sacred - to object, stand up, and announce to the colonel and the crowd that we'd listen to no such bullshit at this particular ceremony, not this time. "Danny didn't believe in this absurd mission for a minute, he wouldn't want his death to rededicate us to anything," Keith would have said! Luckily it never came to that. We both survived, Keith left the army soon after, and I, well, toiled along until something snapped and I chose the road of public dissent. Still, I believe either of us would have actually done it - even if it did mean the end of our respective careers. That's called brotherhood...and love.

A police chief in Louisiana is promising to take action against one of his officers who reportedly posted on Facebook that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a "vile idiot" who "needs a round" but the chief said he didn't view the post as a threat.

"This vile idiot needs a round," officer Charlie Rispoli allegedly wrote on Facebook Thursday. "And I don't mean the kind she used to serve."

Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., worked as a bartender before she got elected.

A screenshot of the comments was obtained by nola.com, which reports on the greater New Orleans area. The website said the reported post and the officer's Facebook page have been taken down.

President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka has faced the wrath of the eternally woke for gifting her eight-year-old daughter a white dog. Enraged liberals immediately saw Nazi symbolism in the cutesy image.

In a photo posted to Twitter on Sunday, Ivanka welcomed the first four-legged addition to the Trump clan: a snow-white pooch named Winter. "Meet Winter, Arabella's birthday dream come true and the newest member of the Kushner family!" Trump gushed on Twitter, after gifting the dog to her daughter Arabella as a birthday present.

Some commenters speculated on the dog's breed, suggesting Winter was part Pomeranian and part Husky. Others -seeing things through the rainbow-tinted goggles of wokeness- saw bare-faced white supremacy.

President Donald Trump announced that he would use ICE to track down and deport illegal aliens who have been convicted of a crime.

The move prompted outrage from many on the Left who accused the practice of being anti-immigrant and unprecedented.

Proponents of the move pointed out this week that President Barack Obama gave his support to the same policy when he was in office and bragged of deportations of criminals having increased 80 percent during his tenure.