Busy day for Congress: Today's news for February 3rd

CNN:

House rolls back Obama gun background check rule

The Republican-led House voted Thursday to repeal an Obama-era regulation that required the Social Security Administration to disclose to the national gun background check system information about people with mental illness.

The regulation instituted in the final days of the Obama administration required the SSA to share information about those who are considered incapable of managing their own disability benefits due mental illness.

The rule sought to limit the ability of those with mental illness to purchase guns but drew criticism for casting too wide a net and not providing the opportunity for due process. Opponents of the rule, including the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, also said the broad range of reasons that could be used to designate someone for the SSA database include conditions that should not stop a gun purchase.

...The Senate is expected to pass the National Rifle Association-backed measure soon and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it.

While nobody wants insane people walking around with guns, who determines insanity? How is it determined? And what happens if a person is cured of their insanity? How do they get off this government list?

The potential for abuse with such a law is enormous. It doesn't take much imagination to picture Democrats defining all Republicans as insane. Democrats already act that way.

But the Congress didn't stop there...

CNN:

GOP Congress votes to undo first of many Obama regulations

The Senate voted Thursday to roll back the Stream Protection Rule, an Obama administration regulation aimed at curbing waste from coal mines from entering waterways but that Republicans complained was an onerous job killer in coal country.

The 54-to-45 vote was largely along party lines though four red state Democrats supported it and one moderate Republican voted against it.

The vote came out one day after the measure passed the House 228-194, sending the bill to President Donald Trump's desk.

This is the first of what is expected to be dozens of environmental, financial disclosure and energy rules put in place by Obama in the last weeks of his tenure that the GOP leaders on the Hill plan to undue using a special legislative tool known as the Congressional Review Act. Trump is expected to sign each of the measures.

Before the Lefties start screaming about polluted water, ask yourself: Is the waste from coal mines removed during the processing of water to clean it? If it is, then what is the problem?

By the way, if a coal mine did pollute a waterway and hurt people, how long before the very expensive class action lawsuit started? This isn't the Flint water crisis, which was caused by politicians, who are above being sued for their incompetence.

One other thing: If a coal mine were to flaunt the regulation and still pollute a waterway, what good is this regulation? You would still be in the same situation you would have been in without the regulation. Preventive regulation doesn't work with criminals.

In other political news...

The Daily Beast:

Kellyanne Conway Invents Fake Massacre

During an appearance on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” on Thursday night, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and now an adviser in his administration, appeared to make up a fictional “massacre” when justifying the President’s ban on refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway said during an exchange on the program. “Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”

The media didn’t cover the Bowling Green Massacre because no such event ever happened.

What Conway was likely referring to was an incident in 2011 in which two Iraqi nationals were indicted for allegedly having ties to IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.

According to a 2013 release from the Department of Justice pertaining to their sentencing for terrorist activities, “Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.” The two men lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky and according to the release “admitted using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and who attempted to send weapons and money to Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) for the purpose of killing U.S. soldiers.”

There is no information about the men having committed violent offenses in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Conway’s reference to a “ban” from Obama likely alludes to a review of vetting procedures for individuals coming from Iraq which did occur in 2011 as a result of the Bowling Green arrests. It was not a ban though.

In other words, Conway gave Obama far more credit for his actions than he deserves. She really needs to stop lying for Obama.

Finally...

Study Finds:

Researchers: Fake News Did Not Alter Election Results

As social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat move to eliminate “fake news” reports from their sites, researchers from Stanford and New York Universities say Americans can be sure of one thing: the phenomenon did not affect the results of the presidential election.

The new study released last month investigated the influence that fake news may have had on President Trump’s victory.

NYU economics professor Hunt Allcott and Stanford economics professor Matthew Gentzkow led the research. The pair ran a series of tests to determine which fake news articles were circulated, how much of it was circulated, and the amount of voters that believed the stories to be true.

The results?

Although fake news stories in Trump’s favor were shared more times (30 million compared to 8 million for Hillary Clinton), the authors of the report had determined that these stories still did not reach enough voters nationwide to change the election results.

“The average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories, with just over half of those who recalled seeing fake news stories believing them,” the authors wrote. But, “for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads.”

The observers’ work also revealed that a majority of voters were capable of accurately deciding whether or not a news story was true. They concluded that an insignificant number of American voters casted their final decision based on false information.

“In summary, our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” the study concludes.

The problem with so-called "fake news" is confirmation bias. It tends to confirm what people already believe, rather than influence them to change their beliefs.

But it was a nice political talking point while it lasted.