By Sarah N. Lynch @ Reuters.com, updated an hour ago

WASHINGTON  - A proposed overhaul of America’s prison policies and criminal sentencing standards was being revised on Monday as U.S. lawmakers scrambled to win enough support for it ahead of the end of the year, senators said.

Revisions to the bill could pressure Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it up for a vote, which he has so far declined to do, despite broad bipartisan support and backing by President Donald Trump.

Journalists have been beaten, arrested, and robbed in the wake of the civil revolt that paralysed the country earlier in the year

By Toby Stirling Hill from Managua @ TheGuardian.com, Dec. 10

Nicaraguan TV journalist Miguel Mora was driving home from work when he was pulled over by armed police.

That Luntz is tweeting this is the most amazing thing about it, must mean a change in tastes among GOP voters, he knows this stuff:

Trump lies so much that the WaPo has to create a new rating to properly reflect how many times the lie was repeated. The new rating, the Bottomless Pinocchio, requires that the lie was rated 3-4 Pinocchios by the WaPo, and that the lie was repeated at least 20 times. Fourteen statement by Trump meet the standard so far.

Walgreen’s, your friendly neighborhood pharmacy, funds the Republican legislators in Wisconsin who are diminishing the powers of the newly elected Democratic Governor. Microsoft is another major Republican donor. The reason for the support, tax cuts. These corporations are OK with gerrymandering and any other tactic that keeps the GOP in power. 

From the NYT

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By Heather Murdoch @ VOANews.com, Dec. 7, from MOSUL, IRAQ

[....] On average, IS has conducted 75 attacks a month in Iraq in 2018, claiming more than 1,500 civilian lives, according to new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research group.

The death toll is considerably less than in 2017, when IS still held physical territories, but the group appears to be refocusing its efforts on government targets, the report says.