Former Democratic congressman Mel Reynolds says that he has “given up on America” and will move to Africa after he serves his latest prison sentence.

But Mel Reynolds was not the only one with things to say about this latest conviction for failing to file tax returns on more than $400,000 he received in consultant fees. “It’s a tragedy that you squandered the opportunities you had and the type of person you could have become,” federal Judge Robert Gettleman scolded him in court.

Reynolds represented Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District from January 1993 to October 1995. That is when he was convicted of the statutory rape of a 16-year-old worker in his campaign. Later, he was also convicted of funneling money for voter registration drives into his campaign and concealing various debts.

The former congressman acted as his own defense and argued that his prior convictions should not be counted against him in the sentencing. “The question is,” Reynolds asked, “how long does a person have to pay for mistakes?” He also attempted to contrast his misdeeds with his time in the military and fathering three children.

Reynolds was convicted of four counts of not filing tax returns on money that the prosecution claims he received while consulting for Chicago businessmen in Zimbabwe. He has been credited the two months already served in jail, so he will likely only serve another four months. The maximum penalty would have seen him behind bars for another four years.

Still, Reynolds does not believe he should serve any time at all. In fact, he is pretty certain his time there is the result of racism. “To put me in jail serves what purpose?” he asked the judge. “To teach me a lesson? … I’ve been taught about this racist society … every day of my life.” Then, “I’m going home to Africa,” he told reporters outside of the court. “I’ve given up on America because how long do African-Americans put up with this nonsense?”

Facebook is facing a class-action lawsuit following the revelation that the company logged users’ text and call logs using the Facebook smartphone app.

Facebook is now reportedly facing a class-action lawsuit relating to the company’s collection of user text and audio logs via the Facebook smartphone app, Fast Company reports. A lawsuit filed in the northern district of California names John Condelles III as the main plaintiff and states that Facebook “presents several wrongs, including a consumer bait-and-switch, an invasion of privacy, wrongful monitoring of minors and potential attacks on privileged communications.”

It was revealed recently that Facebook was collecting and storing logs of users phone calls and texts, including the recipients of texts and duration of conversations. According to the lawsuit, “Facebook has collected and stored information in a scope and manner beyond that which users knowingly authorized. The practice is ongoing.” The complaint alleges that this practice violates California’s Unfair Competition Law in relation to three counts as well as fraudulent business practice and violation of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

According to the filing:  “The terms of service and privacy notice materials do not inform (and in the past have not informed) the ordinary and reasonably attentive Facebook user that installing the application on a mobile device will result in the logging of all the user’s phone and text communications — including recipients, dates of communication, length of communication and mode of communication — on Facebook’s servers for Facebook’s own use.”

The issue specifically affected Android phone users as until an update was issued in 2012, Android applications could access users phone calls and text messages without asking for explicit permission. “By granting this access, Android users were also automatically and unknowingly granting Facebook permission to ‘scrape’, or automatically gather, Android users’ call and text logs,” states the lawsuit. “In other words, Facebook scraped years’ worth of call and text data, including whether the call was ‘incoming’ ‘outgoing’, or ‘missed;’ the data and time of each call; the number dialed; the individual called; and the duration of each call.”

Condelles is looking for approximately $5 million in damages and would like to make the complaint a class-action lawsuit across the entire United States.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pointed to short-term and association health plans during Friday’s White House press briefing as possible solutions to Obamacare and health insurance premiums reaching new heights.

Breitbart News asked Azar about insurers in areas like Maryland and Virginia who are considering double-digit health insurance premium increases in 2019. “There’s a Maryland regulator that’s said something like the ACA is in a ‘death spiral,’ echoing past words of the President [Donald Trump]. What are you doing to deal with that? Does HHS just accept these premium increases as reality? What are you doing to reduce those costs?”

Azar said some of the premiums being discussed now are “the very beginning of a process that happens with state regulators around those insurance designs.”

The secretary pointed to the massive Obamacare premium increases which occurred under President Obama. “They continue because of the structural infirmities in how Obamacare was designed,” He explained.

Azar highlighted President Trump’s efforts to solve the problem of spiking rates:

This is why the President has been so adamant about producing alternative, affordable options for patients because for so many, the 28 million forgotten men and women in this country have been forced out of the individual market and are sitting there without insurance even though they were promised they would have accessible, affordable, competitive insurance that they could keep.

6.7 million Americans paid 3.1 billion dollars in the Obamacare taxes for the privilege of not buying insurance they couldn’t afford and didn’t want and 80 percent of them make 50,000 dollars or less.

So we’re trying to bring short-term plans as an option for people. We’re trying to bring association health plans out of the Labor Department as options for people. The President is just- we want to keep looking for more options to get people out of some of the traps that the Obamacare system has created of these high cost and uncompetitive plans for people. 

Maryland and Virginia health insurers are among those considering double-digit health insurance premium increases in 2019 for individual plans, according to Bloomberg. These states’ rates are the first 2019 rates being revealed. Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. said one insurer is looking to nearly double rates in his state. “I believe we’ve been in a death spiral for a year or two,” he told reporters on a recent call.

Health carriers have fled cities like Charlottesville, Virginia under what Kaiser Health News described as “the instability of the Obamacare marketplace,” which it said, “created a coverage vacuum, leaving locals and insurance regulators scrambling.”

Health insurance premiums have soared under Obamacare. HHS reported in May 2017 that “Average individual market premiums more than doubled from $2,784 per year in 2013 to $5,712 on Healthcare.gov in 2017 – an increase of $2,928 or 105%.”

Efforts to fulfill the campaign pledges of many Republicans to repeal Obamacare stalled after a late attempt to pass even a “skinny repeal” bill sank with Sen. John McCain’s thumbs down vote. What the administration has managed to do is repeal the health insurance mandate with a provision in the major tax cut plan passed late last year.

President Trump and Secretary Azar unveiled a new plan on Friday to return prescription drug prices to levels that are affordable for Americans. The two announced the “blueprint to lower drug prices” in a White House Rose Garden ceremony. Azar took reporters’ questions in the White House briefing room shortly thereafter.

Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana