New Zealand’s gun control laws will be strengthened following the massacre of 49 people in Christchurch mosques, the country’s prime minister has said.

Jacinda Ardern said she would consider banning semi-automatic firearms altogether after the alleged gunman behind the shootings obtained five guns legally.

“I can tell you one thing right now: our gun laws will change,” said Ardern. “There have been attempts to change our laws in 2005, 2012 and after an inquiry in 2017. Now is the time for change.”

Ardern said the alleged shooter was found to have used five guns that he appeared to legally own under a “category A” licence obtained in November 2017. He appeared to have begun buying guns the following month, she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/15/new-zealand-prime-minister-gun-control-jacinda-ardern

Source: AP

President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming the Trump Organization broke a promise to pay his legal bills and owes at least $1.9 million to cover the cost of his defense.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York state court, claims the Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen's mounting legal fees after he began cooperating with federal prosecutors in their investigations related to Trump's business dealings in Russia and attempts to silence women with embarrassing stories about his personal life. It alleges breach of contract and seeks damages on Cohen's behalf. 

The lawsuit says the company stopped paying for his legal defense about two months after the FBI raided Cohen's home and office.

The lawsuit said that as part of his work for Trump, the company agreed to indemnify him for his company-related work. It said the Trump Organization initially lived up to that promise, footing the bill for more than $1.7 million in Cohen's legal fees.

Read more: https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/michael-cohen-sues-the-trump-organization-says-he-is-owed-19m/507-8b3cc49c-5829-4bf3-b330-ce0e3d7905bb?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5c81ed7a00bd47000112b06e&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5c81ed7a00bd47000112b06e&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

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The depo transcripts in this should be a hoot!

Source: NBC News/AP

The government collected lower taxes from individuals and corporations, reflecting the impact of Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut.

The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the deficit for the first four months of this budget year, which began Oct. 1, totaled $310.3 billion. That's up from a deficit of $175.7 billion in the same period a year ago. The surplus in January was $8.7 billion.

The higher deficit reflected greater spending in areas such as Social Security, defense and interest payments on the national debt. Meanwhile, the government collected lower taxes from individuals and corporations, reflecting the impact of the $1.5 trillion tax cut President Donald Trump pushed through Congress in 2017.

Individual income taxes withheld from paychecks total $818 billion for the October-January period, down 3 percent from the same period last year. Corporate income taxes total $73 billion over the four-month period, down 23 percent.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/federal-deficit-77-percent-so-far-budget-year-n979631

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So much for Republicans being "fiscal conservatives."

At CPAC yesterday, Trump claimed Democrats investigating his "deals" before he assumed office was "sick." Yet Republicans spent years investigating the Clintons' involvement in the failed 1979 Whitewater real estate deal, once Bill Clinton assumed office in 1992, making it one of the biggest political controversies of the 1990s.

It began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation. While Special Counsel Kenneth Starr failed to find criminality by the Clintons in that deal, he did eventually dig up other dirt in the course of that investigation, namely Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky that he denied in a deposition, which Republicans used to impeach Clinton.

The Whitewater failed business venture was incorporated in 1979 with the purpose of developing vacation properties on land along the White River near Flippin, Arkansas. The Clintons lost between $37,000 and $69,000 on their Whitewater investment. Trump, on the other hand, has made hundreds of millions of dollars in shady deals with Russians, our biggest geopolitical adversary.

Any time Republicans claim investigation of Trump's old finances is off limits, we need to remind them of what they did with Whitewater.

On Edit: On AM Joy today, Seema Iyer, former prosecutor and defense attorney, noted that n 2017, the NY Times published a a secret memo by Kenneth Starr's attorneys finding that sitting presidents CAN be indicted for crimes committed before taking office. Something else to throw back in Republicans' face!