Free Talk Live

Eduardo Saverin will be doing a lot of long-distance poking from now on — and probably won't be giving the thumbs-up “like” to Uncle Sam. The billionaire co-founder of Facebook, Inc. has renounced his US citizenship.

Saverin, 30, forfeited his US citizenship back in August, Bloomberg News has learned. The maneuver isn’t all that magnificently out of the ordinary, though. According to a recent report from the US Internal Revenue Service that RT reported on earlier this year, Americans have been renouncing their citizenship in record numbers.

Mr. Saverin, a Brazilian-born immigrant to the United States, now lives in Singapore, which has no capital gains tax. He renounced his United States citizenship in September. With that act of antipatriotism, Mr. Saverin stands to avoid at least $67 million in United States taxes.

“Mr. Saverin has decided to ‘defriend’ the United States of America just to avoid paying his taxes. We aren’t going to let him get away with it so easily,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s infuriating to see someone sell out the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire.”

To Eric Holder: Stop Lying About The PATRIOT Act

From Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall: Law enforcement is using a secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act to spy on people who aren't connected with terrorism. The FBI operates under a cloak of secrecy, so we only know about this because these two courageous senators are defying the intelligence agencies and speaking out. Here's the New York Times:

Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to ban caffeinated alcohol drinks, which it has been reviewing the drinks since last year. Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY) wrote the FDA will rule that caffeine is an unsafe additive to alcoholic beverages, effectively banning them from the U.S. market.

"Let these rulings serve as a warning to anyone who tried to peddle dangerous and toxic brews to our children. Do it and we will shut you down," wrote Schumer.

Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.

"'Truth, justice, and the American way' - it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran. Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.

The Oregon teen who was arrested after he posted a ‘Drivin drunk’ status update on his Facebook page New Year’s Day says it was all a misunderstanding.

If there's a surefire way to get caught for committing an offense these days, it's airing the details on social media. Jacob Cox-Brown, an 18-year-old from Oregon, learned that lesson on New Year's Day when police showed up at his door after they were alerted to a Facebook post he wrote about driving drunk, KGW.com reports. "Drivin drunk... classsic ;) but to whoever's vehicle i hit i am sorry. :P," the status update read, according to the news outlet.