U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the longest serving member of Congress, resigned this week under sexual harassment allegations and Minnesota U.S. Sen. Al Franken was pressured to do the same in a resignation confirmed Thursday.

At least 32 Democratic colleagues signed statements Dec. 6 urging Franken to resign following multiple claims that he had harassed women years ago, primarily when he was an entertainer before his 2008 election to the Senate, where he has been reliable liberal voter.

Meanwhile, President Trump and the Republican National Committee ramped up their support for Alabama's embattled GOP U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore in the special election scheduled next Tuesday for one of the state's two seats.

A New York Daily News front page story headlined "I'm With Perv" on Dec. 4 mocked Trump's decision to back Moore over Democrat Doug Jones despite multiple allegations from women that Moore had sought to date or molest them while they were in their teens and he was in his thirties and working as a state prosecutor.

Allegations against Conyers, 88 (right), included claims that he forced himself upon staffers during a career that began with his election to Congress in 1964 in a district representing part of Detroit. Earlier this week, he issued a statement from a hospital room, reportedly being treated for stress, saying that he was resigning.

Republicans and their sympathizers had mounted a campaign against Conyers and Franken following the Moore revelations. As part of the Justice Integrity Project's coverage, this editor attended a news conference last week at the National Press Club featuring several accusers of former President Bill Clinton who called for renewed investigations of his conduct during the 1990s and the removal of Conyers and Franken from their current posts. 

A Dallas ceremony and a Washington, DC vigil and a documentary film premiere were among the events on Nov. 22 commemorating the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and protesting the official cover-up that government and the major news have maintained until present.

Proponents of that historical view convened at noon in Dealey Plaza in Dallas among other places that included the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and, separately in the nation's capital, a free showing on Capitol Hill of the new documentary film The American Media: The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The movie's producer, director and writer John Barbour answered questions after the 2 p.m. screening at the Stewart Mott Foundation, which is located at 122 Maryland Ave., NE between the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Senate Hart Office Building.

Barbour, the only man to win TV Emmys for both news and entertainment, described mainstream coverage of the assassination as “fake news.”

His compelling film alleges that a false narrative continues to the present in hiding the truth:

That New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison documented in the 1960s about how powerful American oligarchs used the CIA and allied operatives to kill Kennedy for what they regarded as a traitorous foreign policy that emphasized peace too much during the Cold War era.

The documentary further shows how Kennedy's 1963 commencement address at the American University illustrated his break with Cold War thinking and along with his actions infuriated his critics, including those within government, research has shown.

This editor and the Justice Integrity Project have been active in reporting, commenting and supporting these disclosures because they highlight ongoing, shocking aberrations by government and the media following the president's murder during his motorcade through Dealey Plaza. I lectured at two separate conferences in Dallas over the No. 17-19 weekend about the media's role in mis-reporting key events.

Following the historic release of new JFK assassination documents since this summer, two three-day annual JFK assassination research conferences in Dallas will focus on the latest insights beginning Friday.

Many of the nation's most prominent and committed experts are convening at the JFK Lancer Productions and Publications 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference at the historic Adolphus Hotel and at the Fifth Annual 2017 JFK Assassination Conference organized by author and lecturer Judyth Vary Baker and her team at the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel on Elm Street.

The latter is several blocks from where President John F. Kennedy (shown at right with his daughter Caroline) was killed on that street on Nov. 22, 1963.

Two conferences with minimal overlap provide an extraordinary opportunity for speakers and audiences alike to hear in-depth presentations from notable, still-living witnesses, medical doctors, historians, legal experts and authors who are expert in the topic.

That expertise includes those sensitive matters that the mainstream media normally ignore or suppress because the evidence would, among other things, show how careless (at best) and dishonest their coverage has been since the shooting occurred.

Registration and speaker program details are here for the JFK Conference, whose program begins at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 17. That information can be found by clicking on the title here of the 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference, whose program begins at 1 p.m. on Friday. The conference is named for Kennedy's Secret Service code name "Lancer" and is led by a team of researchers, authors and book publishers that include Debra Conway and Larry Hancock. 

The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) and the Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), on whose boards this editor serves, supports each conference as important to both the public. 

Famed news and entertainment leader John Barbour will host two free screenings of his latest film, “The American Media: The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” and will deliver a lecture at the National Press Club over the next 10 days to underscore the media cover-up, continuing “fake news” on TV, and the ongoing importance of the true facts of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

Barbour, the only man to win TV Emmys for both news and entertainment, will premiere in the nation’s capital his documentary at the American University on Nov. 15 and on Capitol Hill on Nov. 22. 

Also, he will deliver a dinner lecture on Nov. 16 at the press club “The Last Hurrah for JFK and America.” All three events are free and open to the public, although the dinner is a no-host, Dutch-treat event before the McClendon Group speaker society. The society, named for famed White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, has featured important speakers with alternative viewpoints at the club for the past quarter century.

Barbour, 84, a five-time Emmy winner, is also known as “The Godfather of Reality TV” for his co-producing and co-hosting NBC-TV’s No. 1 hit “Real People” credited with spawning the genre. He is shown at left in a photo from the show.

“No matter what people know about the assassination of JFK,” says Barbour, “they will be stunned by what they learn in this film. It is the definitive film about the assassination and the birth of fake news, which plagues us to this day. Fake news impeded New Orleans District Attorney’s Garrison’s 1960s investigation at every turn.”

The National Archives announced on Nov. 9 the release of 13,213 additional records pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

Most of the documents were previously released in redacted form as part of a long-term process to comply with a 1992 federal law. More than four million pages have been released previously in full or with parts blocked out. Released records are available for download here.

The announcement by the National Archives is excerpted below, as are several hard-hitting commentaries by experts analyzing three previous releases this year as the Archives and Trump administration seek compliance with law that required release of all such documents by Oct. 26 last month.

President Trump's announcement on Oct. 26 said the White House was postponing some releases — estimated by experts to be some 98 percent of the more than 30,000 documents still at issue — for up to six months to enable further review on "national security" grounds.

The Justice Integrity Project along with Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) have been monitoring this process closely. That grows out of the decades-long experience of most of CAPA's leaders in documenting why the major 1964 Warren Commission findings on the assassination were wrong.

Yet the vast majority of major news organizations have parroted the commission's claims and ridiculed critics through current times as crazed "conspiracy theorists."  The Commission's major findings were that that former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald (shown in custody in Dallas after the shooting) acted alone with no accomplices in killing JFK with three shots from behind.

To counter this clearly false history that even Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson did not believe (according to a now declassified tape-recording), CAPA is co-sponsoring with the South Texas College of Law /Houston a unique mock trial, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, from Nov. 16-17 at the law school.

The mock trial will use scientific forensics to reach a verdict and educate the public. Registration is here via the law school.

"What makes our conference truly special, " commented CAPA Chairman Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, the noted forensic pathologist, author, medical school professor and JFK researcher (shown at right), "are the specifics of the program, namely, the presentation of medical, forensic scientific, and acoustic evidence in testimony fashion.  And, of course, the banquet with Alec Baldwin."

In a chaotic chapter of government efforts to suppress research into the evidence regarding President Kennedy's 1963 assassination, President Trump on Oct. 26 suddenly backed away from his promises this week to comply with a 1992 Congressional law and release all remaining documents related to the assassination.

The president released in full via the National Archives website at about 7:30 p.m. some 2,891 remaining documents after a conference call with news reporters beginning at 5:46 p.m. This followed a day in which many in the public long focused on the document release were left wondering until after normal business hours what was happening.

Update: One expert suggested privately to fellow researchers that his preliminary review of the documents and the initial media coverage indicates vast confusion in the news coverage, as follows:

Most journalists who mentioned the numbers of documents in their initial reporting implied that the released documents, 2,891, came from the trove of some 3,100 that had been expected to be released in full on Oct. 26. Instead, the expert said, at least 98 percent of the released documents appeared to be from the larger universe of some 30,000 documents that had been previously released with partial redactions.

In other words, the new information may be far less than implied by initial news reports, even those from major news organizations. A further implication is that staff disorganization in the White House must have been at a monumental level for a 25-year project regarding the murder of a president in broad daylight in what's been called "The Crime of the Century" to crash into such confusion and secrecy on its long-anticipated deadline day. 

The White House issued a statement saying that it was giving federal agencies until March 12 to register objections to remaining documents.The White House scheduling a decision on the those objections by April 26, with some documents to be released on a rolling basis in the meantime.

Earlier in the week, Trump had promised compliance and transparency on the documents. They were supposed to have been released by Oct. 26 as part of a process begun after the U.S. Senate and House each passed by unanimous votes in 1992 the so-called "JFK Act" to release all documents absent compelling national security reasons.

This editor has been monitoring these developments closely for years via the Justice Integrity Project and Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA). Along with more than 200 other reporters and interested parties, I joined a White House conference call that began at 5:46 p.m. (EST) whereby officials described how and why they were only partially complying with their own and congressional timetables. Also, I undertook a number of interviews this week with U.S. and international outlets to describe the importance of developments.

The news is summarized in an appendix to this column. It contains a number of news stories and commentaries arranged in reverse chronological order. Another appendix includes our so-far 43-part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination," which helps show how virtually all major U.S. media continue to support the controversial 1964 Warren Report claiming that former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy in Dallas.

Virtually all major media also couch their coverage in terms of smearing researchers with the term "conspiracy theorists," a term popularized by the CIA in the 1960s to discredit critics of the Warren Report, previously declassified CIA documents show.

Especially notable among the columns this week are those by JFK research experts John M. Newman, Dan Hardway, and Jacob Hornberger. Important also is a  news story by the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette in which noted forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, chairman of CAPA, described medical evidence proving that the accused JFK assassin Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, as alleged by the 1964 Warren Commission.

Wecht has been a leader in arranging with CAPA and the South Texas College of Law / Houston a unique mock trial, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, that will showcase at the school top medical experts discussing evidence. Proponents from CAPA believe the evidence will show conclusively on the basis of scientific facts that Oswald could not alone have killed Kennedy, in contrast to claims by government authorities and the vast majority of news reporters..Details of the mock trial are here. Many researchers believe also that Oswald did not fire any shots, but such a conclusion is not necessary to raise doubts about the professed certitude of authorities that he acted alone.