The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits businesses from making auto-dialed or pre-recorded calls to a person's cell phone and similar telemarketing calls to home phones. However, this law does not apply to the federal government, nor to contractors working on the government's behalf. The only prohibition for the feds is political campaign telemarketing (RCReader.com/y/ntk1).

President Donald Trump visited an Illinois county last week which was once considered a Democratic-party bastion, but has been slipping away to the Republicans throughout this decade.

Right up front, let’s just stipulate that the recent appointment of state Representaive Christian Mitchell (D-Chicago) as the Democratic Party of Illinois’ interim executive director will not usher in an immediate sea-change.

Let’s assume you love cats and/or dogs. And you see an ad for The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), on television or on the Internet (RCReader.com/y/hsus1). Do you get emotional over the sight of stray cats or dogs living in Dickensian squalor before being euthanized? And do you consider writing out a check to the national organization based on the work it does on behalf of those animals, consistently depicted in rescue shelters?

It’s an impulse you may want to reconsider.