Joe..

 

Doing..

Independant..

Sen. Joe Manchin left the door open to one day becoming an independent, three days after Arizona colleague Kyrsten Sinema announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent herself.

While speaking with reporters, Manchin, D-W.Va., maintained that he is already "the most independent person" in the Senate and confirmed that he has considered alterations to his party affiliation before.

"I don't know how you get more independent than I am," he said. "I look at all of these things, I've always looked at all of these things. But I have no intention of doing anything right now. Whether I do something later, I can't tell you what the future is going to bring."

Just a thought.

News..

 Meta, Facebook's parent company, issued a public warning Monday that it could remove all news from its US platform if Congress passed its media-competition bill, which would force Meta and other platforms to compensate publishers and broadcasters.

Andy Stone, Meta's policy-communications director, posted the company's statement on Twitter regarding its position on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The statement said that if Congress passed the "ill-considered journalism bill," Meta "will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether."

The bill was introduced with bipartisan support and would enable publishers to negotiate with social-media platforms like Facebook and Google over how their content is distributed on such platforms. This includes requiring social-media firms to pay for news content.  Just a thought.

Wedding..

 

Paul Whelan is a citizen of four countries - the US, Canada, the UK and the Irish Republic. 

He joined the US Marine Reserves in 1994. discharged from the marines for bad conduct. He was accused of using someone else's social security number, and "writing bad cheques.  

Russia Investigators said he was a spy for military intelligence with a rank of colonel or higher and had been caught red-handed with a computer flash drive containing classified information.  

Whelan said he had been in Russia for a friend's wedding and had been given the drive in a sting by a Russian friend. He said he had thought it contained holiday photos.

Whelan, 52, was given a 16-year jail sentence in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spying in 2018. 

So what is the real story here?

Unexpectedly..

 

Poof..

Endless..

 

Safer..

 

Capital..