Tag Archives: congress

A federal law that has helped consumers avoid paying taxes on money they never even had is set to expire at the end of the year. If it does, homeowners who are forgiven any of their debt when they are foreclosed on will have to pay income tax on the forgiven amount.   Forgiven “Income” To Be Taxed It seems crazy, but it’s true: Normally, if a homeowner owes $100,000 on her mortgage, but the property sells in foreclosure for …

A years-long effort by federal prosecutors to punish a baseball star for allegedly lying about steroid use collapsed on Monday, when a Washington, D.C., jury acquitted Roger Clemens of all charges against him. Clemens has repeatedly denied using anabolic steroids or human growth hormone to enhance his late-career pitching prowess, despite testimony by his former athletic trainer that he did, in fact, cheat by using these drugs. The pitcher’s 2008 testimony before Congress was at the heart of the 10-week …

A new pending law called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA) might make your email a matter of national security. The proposed legislation could include monitoring of your e-mails, filtering content and blocking access to sites. Critics of the proposed statute argue that it would let internet service providers monitor you for possible infringement of intellectual property, which might include downloading a TV show or watching it on a site like Hulu, posting pictures on Pinterest that …

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has called upon Congress to enact tougher guns laws after four of his city’s police officers were shot and wounded while responding to a hostage situation in Brooklyn on April 8. Those shootings brought to eight the number of NYPD officers who have been shot in recent months—one of them resulting in a fatality—and, according to Bloomberg, all the guns used in those events were illegally owned. “And make no mistake: It will …

The alleged strip search of an 85-year-old grandmother by a Transportation Security Administration officer has prompted the introduction of a bill to deprive TSA employees of their rank and uniform. The elderly victim, Lenore Zimmerman, of Long Beach, N.Y., is threatening to sue the TSA after she charged that she was strip searched by female TSA officers at JFK Airport in New York. In response to Zimmerman’s claim, along with a variety of other alleged wrong-doing by TSA officers, Representative Marsha …