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Wednesday's Mini-Report, 6.22.16

Today's edition of quick hits.
Today's edition of quick hits:
 
* This is still ongoing: "Georgia congressman John Lewis deployed a strategy from his days as a civil rights activist and the viral nature of social media to stage a dramatic sit-in Wednesday on the House floor with his fellow Democrats to force a vote on gun control."
 
* And it's not limited to House members: several senators, including Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), joined their House colleagues.
 
* President Obama can't join them on the House floor, but it's worth noting that he's extended his support to the House Dems' efforts.
 
* "We are seeing a pickup in growth. There's been a sharp increase in consumer spending," [Fed Chair Janet Yellen] told the House Financial Services Committee. "I'm very hopeful that we will see a pickup in growth." So long as she doesn't raise rates anytime soon, I'll be hopeful, too.
 
* We've seen reports like these before, so keep expectations in check: "The Colombian government and the country's largest rebel group said Wednesday that they had agreed to a cease-fire, clearing a major hurdle in the effort to end one of the world's longest-running conflicts."
 
* That's quite a announcement: "The Justice Department announced Wednesday it had charged a record 301 people with schemes that defrauded government health programs by submitting $900 million in fraudulent health claims."
 
* A serial child molester starts his sentence: "Once two heartbeats from the most powerful office in the land, an ailing Dennis Hastert wheeled himself into a federal penitentiary Wednesday to begin serving a prison sentence for breaking the law while trying to conceal his past sexual abuse of teenage boys."
 
* This is at odds with a lot of conservative predictions: "Rates of marijuana use among Colorado's teenagers are essentially unchanged in the years since the state's voters legalized marijuana in 2012, new survey data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows."
 
* This indecision won't last long: "Top House Democrats are wrestling over whether they should demand the resignation -- or seek his expulsion from Congress -- of Rep. Chaka Fattah, the longtime Pennsylvania Democrat convicted Tuesday on an array of federal corruption charges."
 
* Here's an idea: maybe far-right congressman shouldn't give Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) advice on how best to protest.
 
* Oops: "Gary Byrne, a former Secret Service agent who worked in Bill Clinton's White House, tells a dramatic story in his upcoming book about how he personally helped a White House steward dispose of towels stained by semen and lipstick to protect the president from a sex scandal. That story, as well as another Byrne tells about walking in on Bill Clinton making out with a TV journalist, is different from what he told investigators from Kenneth Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel in 1998, a BuzzFeed News review of interviews, depositions, and grand jury testimony has found."
 
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.