PrairiePundit

Washington Post:
Gunmen in Egypt kill 23 in attack on bus carrying Coptic Christians

It was the latest attack on the embattled Christian minority which has been increasingly targeted by militants from the Islamic State. This is not government sponsored persecution, but that of Islamic religious bigots who are intolerant of anyone who rejects their version of Islam.

Business Insider:
The US is preparing to attack North Korea, according to Geopolitical Futures founder George Friedman — setting the stage for a difficult, messy war with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Speaking Monday to a rapt audience at the 2017 Strategic Investment Conference in Orlando, Friedman said that while it was unlikely the US would take action before President Donald Trump returns home at the weekend, North Korea's actions appeared to have "offered the US no alternative" to a clash.

According to Geopolitical Futures analysis, evidence is mounting that the enmity between the two is escalating to a point where war is inevitable.

Friedman said that on May 20, the USS Carl Vinson supercarrier and USS Ronald Reagan were both within striking distance of North Korea.

Additionally, more than 100 F-16 aircraft are conducting daily exercises in the area, a tactic that foreshadowed the beginning of Desert Storm in 1991.

F-35 aircraft have also been deployed to …

Daily Wire:
Filmmaker Ami Horowitz has put forth a fantastic video that completely dismantles the left-wing myth of white privilege by using the Left's own words against them.

The video begins with Horowitz interviewing a number of white people at a so-called "White Privilege Conference" in Kansas City, Missouri, and asking them if they believe that every white person is a beneficiary of white privilege. The white leftists say yes, with one lady saying that she feels "super guilty all the time." In fact, a number of the white leftists Horowitz interviewed claimed that all whites in America are racist.

Then Horowitz asked the same people if it was "wrong to judge people collectively." They all answered yes, seemingly unaware of the obvious contradiction that Horowitz caught them in.

When Horowitz proceeded to ask them how white privilege benefited them that day, none of them were able to give a coherent answer except one who said he "sat in my roo…

Circa:
Declassified memos show FBI illegally shared spy data on Americans with private parties

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances about how carefully it handles warrantless spy data to avoid abuses or leaks.
...

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.

The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.
... There is much more.

I suspect that this may be one of…

Washington Times:
The diplomatic flap over American officials divulging details of a British terrorism investigation lit a fire Thursday under U.S. investigators of intelligence agency leaks, an issue that had been on a back burner when the primary victim of leaks was President Trump.

After British officials chided the U.S. for disclosing to The New York Times sensitive details of the deadly terrorist bombing in Manchester, Mr. Trump ordered a Justice Department investigation and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress demanded action.

The U.K., one of America’s closest allies and intelligence partners, stopped sharing information with the U.S. about the investigation of the Islamic State-linked bombing, which killed 22 and injured dozens more at an Ariana Grande concert Monday.

Mr. Trump called the leaks “deeply troubling.”

“These leaks have been going on for a long time and my administration will get to the bottom of this,” he said in a statement while attending a NATO summit i…

Washington Times:
Republican Greg Gianforte muscled his way to victory in Montana, overcoming a challenge from Democrat Rob Quist and an election-eve scuffle with a reporter.

that led to a criminal charge being filed against him.

Mr. Gianforte defeated Mr. Quist less than 24 hours after he allegedly body-slammed a reporter from Britain’s Guardian newspaper and police charged him with misdemeanor assault.

The Associated Press called the race for the Republican more than 2½ hours after polls closed at 8 p.m. MDT.

With 83 percent of the precincts counted, Mr. Gianforte led Mr. Quist by a 50.3 percent to 43.9 percent margin. Libertarian Mark Wicks had 5.8 percent of the vote.

“Tonight, Montanans are sending a wake up call to the Washington DC establishment!” Mr. Gianforte said at his election night party. “Montanans said, ‘Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi can’t call the shots here in Montana.’
... Nor can the left wing media that tried to destroy him.  This has to be a big disappointed for the …

Daily Mail:
Four of the five fastest-growing cities in the US are found in Texas, as population booms across parts of the south.

The US Census Bureau published a swath of new statistics on Thursday detailing population changes across the country.

Conroe, Texas, a northern Houston suburb, added more residents as a percentage of population last year than any other city, with a jump of 7.8 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Another Texas town came in second, with Frisco - a suburb in Dallas' north - recorded a jump of 6.2 percent.

Rounding of the all-Texas top-three was McKinney - another northern Dallas suburb - with a 5.9 percent increase.

South Carolina squeezed into fourth spot with Greenvile running up a 5.8 percent increase, before it was back to Texas for the fifth spot, with Georgetown - north of Austin - seeing a 5.5 percent jump.

'Overall, cities in the South continue to grow at a faster rate than any other U.S. region,' said demographer Amel Toukabri of the bureau's…

Telegraph:
The Manchester suicide bomber may have built a second device which is now in the hands of fellow jihadists, police fear.

Officers who raided the home of Salman Abedi discovered a working bomb factory with a huge stash of explosive chemicals and other components.

Security sources now believe that Abedi assembled the bomb himself after learning his trade in Libya.

But the amount of material in his home has led to fears that he could have built more than one device and and distributed them to other British-based extremists.

A security source told the Telegraph: "The worry is there was enough to build two or three bombs and we can't rule that out."

Abedi arrived back in Manchester from Libya on Thursday, travelling via Istanbul and Dusseldorf.

The following day he visited the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester, where he was caught on CCTV buying a Karrimor rucksack.

It is believed he then spent the weekend putting together the main components of the device, inc…

Washington Post:
Trump asks for U.S. investigation into British bomb probe leaks

British police investigating the Manchester attack have decided to withhold information from the United States in the wake of the leaks. British police chiefs have also criticized the leaks in a highly unusual statement. The US media has been irresponsible about leaks for sometimes and it has gotten worse because many in the media are using them to attack the President while falsely blaming him for the information they are publishing.

There is no excuse for the media publishing the alleged source of intelligence against the ISIS laptop bombs.  There is also no excuse for them publishing the President's phone conversations with foreign leaders in which intelligence information is shared.

They appear to be doing this on the basis of a hypocritical claim that Trump is the irresponsible one, but he did not give them the story. someone else did and they did it to attack the President.

Washington Post:
Montana GOP candidate charged after allegedly body-slamming reporter

A Fox News reporter who witnessed the scuffle described Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte throwing the reporter to the ground, grabbing his neck, striking him and exclaiming, “I’m sick and tired of this!" Candidates can usually tell when someone is out to get them and they try to find a more subtle way of dealing with them instead of body slamming them like they might like to do.  The Guardian is a left British paper with a negligible circulation in Montana.  I am sure their reporter was rooting for Gianforte's opponent was looking for a story to help the liberals in their coup attempt against Trump.  I think he was probably successful in that endeavor.

NY Times:
A Clear Message About Those Who Lose in Health Bill
The Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the House’s health bill predicts deeply dysfunctional markets for about one-sixth of the population. What the CBO has unwittingly exposed is how Democrats forced people to subsidize the insurance payments of groups they favored.

The biggest victims of the extortion scheme were people in the individual market who saw their premiums rise exorbitantly by forcing them into coverages they did not want or need.  And, if they did not go along with the extortion they were forced to pay a "penalty/tax" as an incentive to go along with the Democrats' scheme.

This is not how insurance is supposed to work.  The mandates distorted the price structure in order to pay for the favored 23 million.

NY Times:
Top Russian Officials Spoke of Ways to Sway Trump Advisers
The conversations focused on Paul Manafort and Michael T. Flynn, according to three current and former American officials.The intelligence was among clues received last summer as the U.S. began examining Russian attempts to disrupt the election. I am sure this is probably true of every administration since the founding of this country.  It is what foreign governments do.  It is certainly not evidence of a crime or even a non-crime like "collusion."  It hardly warrants a special counsel to investigate or the various committees of Congress wasting time on the obvious.  

It is truly remarkable how the media and the Democrats are trying to build a conspiracy theory out of normal interactions with foreign governments.  It is even crazier and more dangerous than the conspiracy theory about a murdered DNC employee and ties to Wikileaks.  This one appears to be a conspiracy theory in the service of a coup attempt aga…

Washington Times:
The Obama administration knowingly let in at least 16 admitted MS-13 gang members who arrived at the U.S. as illegal immigrant teenagers in 2014, a top senator said Wednesday, citing internal documents that showed the teens were shipped to juvenile homes throughout the country.

Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said a whistleblower turned over Customs and Border Protection documents from 2014 detailing the 16 people who were caught crossing the border.

“CBP apprehended them, knew they were MS-13 gang members, and they processed and disbursed them into our communities,” Mr. Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said.

The gang members were part of the surge of UAC, or “unaccompanied alien children,” as the government labels them, who overwhelmed the Obama administration in 2014, leaving Homeland Security struggling to staunch the flow from Central America.

Officials at the time said the children should be treated as refugees fleeing horrific c…

Washington Times:
Republican health care plan would slash premiums but leave 23 million Americans uninsured

Score should clear the path for the Senate to take up the bill using budget rules There can be only one logical reason why this is the case.  The Democrats were forcing customers in the individual market to subsidize 23 million other people's healthcare.  The high cost was in effect an additional tax on paying customers that required them to pay more than was necessary in order for them to buy the votes of other people.

I am curious why the Republicans have not yet pointed this out.

Daily Caller:
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite.

The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation.

The Capitol Police and outside agencies are pursuing Imran Awan, who has run technology for the Florida lawmaker since 2005 and was banned from the House network in February on suspicion of data breaches and theft.

“My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the annual police budget hearing of t…

The Times:
A relative of the Manchester bomber warned the British authorities that he was “dangerous”, it emerged yesterday, amid concerns that chances to stop him were missed.

Salman Abedi’s support for terrorism was reported this year to the security services, and friends had called Britain’s anti-terrorist hotline five years ago with concerns about his views, it was claimed. He was reported for violent statements, including a claim that being a suicide bomber was “OK”.

Intelligence sources have emphasised how difficult it is to assess suspects on the periphery of investigations. Against a backdrop of limited resources, security agencies and police have been deluged with the number of terror suspects and acquaintances they must triage.
... While several family members have also been arrested, apparently the mass murderers mother warned authorities that the young man was dangerous.  Unfortunately, I suspect that British authorities are overwhelmed with such warnings and political cor…

Andrew McCarthy:
...
Brennan’s story can be summed up as follows: The Russians are insidious, and they plot to manipulate Americans into helping them, wittingly or unwittingly. The Russians interfered with the American election by orchestrating the publication of unflattering information (mainly, Democrat e-mails), hoping either that Donald Trump would win, or that the likely winner, Hillary Clinton, would be badly damaged. While carrying out this plan, Russian operatives reached out to some people who were connected to the Trump campaign. Brennan supposes that the Russians must have attempted to “suborn” those people because . . . well . . . um . . . that’s “what the Russians try to do.” But he can’t say whether they actually did.

More to the point, Brennan has no idea whether these suspected but unproved Russian entreaties actually worked. When he left the government at the end of President Obama’s term, Brennan said, “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the R…

PJ Media:
A new report by Circa News details how the National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely spied on Americans, violating their privacy protections and the agency's own database safeguards. According to a classified internal report reviewed by Circa, more than 5 percent of searches seeking "upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011."

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.
The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unse…

Washington Post:
What does it take for Sean Hannity to abandon a conspiracy theory? The theory about who provided DNC emails is not so much a conspiracy as it is a theory with little supporting evidence other than suggestions by the leader of Wikileaks and the disputed claims of a private investigator.  

On the other hand, the Democrats are alleging without any supporting evidence that "the Russians hacked the election" with polls showing 55 percent of Democrats actually believe that the Russians hacked the vote in order to assure Trump's victory.

Democrat politicians alleged without evidence that there was "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russians and they are pushing an investigation in search of a crime on which to construct a constitutional coup to depose the President.  Perhaps they hope to create a process crime on which to base their coup.

I think that between Hannity and the Democrats, the Democrats are in the major leagues of unsupported …

NY Times:
Trump’s Budget Is D.O.A. That’s Good News for Trump.
The deep cuts outlined in the $4.1 trillion spending plan would compound the perils facing Republicans. In a democratic republic, the President's proposed budget is the opening bid in a negotiation.  How many people would be able to sell their house if they told the person making an offer that it was "dead on arrival."  Fortunately, most brokers are smarter than that and they attempt to get the parties closer together to a deal that is acceptable to both without getting into the swapping of insults.

The reaction to Trump's budget by the Democrats has been a disgraceful demonstration of the politics of fraud where they accuse the President of making "draconian cuts" when in most cases he is just slowing the increase in spending caused by the bad policy of  automatic increases in spending that are built into the current budget mechanism.  The media has been just as bad.

The average growth of the U…

NY Times:
Bomber’s Trips to Syria and Libya Suggest Wider Plot
Salman Abedi, who carried out Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack since 2005, had recently traveled to two Islamic State strongholds. Investigators believe he likely got help planning the Manchester bombing.Britain is on the highest level of alert — “critical,” meaning that a further attack “may be imminent.” The Brits continue to arrest suspects in the bombing which also suggests a wider plot.  If the trips to Libya and Syria, both of which have substantial ISIS enclaves,  are interesting, but I still suspect a local bomb maker put his human bomb pack together.  I would like to think it would be difficult to get a bomb vest through customs on a return flight.  The Islamic terrorists do not usually send their bomb makers out to explode on purpose anyway.

Washington Examiner:
Leading fiscal conservatives are showering President Trump's first federal budget proposal with some of their highest praise: comparisons to Ronald Reagan.

"This is the most fiscally conservative budget since Reagan," Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and editor of Downsizing Government, told the Washington Examiner.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, called it a "very strong budget" and said it's what the 40th president himself would have submitted if he had both a Republican House and Senate. Democrats controlled the House for all eight years of the Reagan administration, one of the reasons conservatives cite for why even Reagan was unable to achieve enduring federal spending cuts.

Norquist then went a step further. "This is a Reaganite, limited-government, anti-waste and anti-duplication budget," he said. "It certainly makes those Republican critics who said that T…

streiff:
Prime Minister Netanyahu Zings The Palestinians On Manchester Bombing (VIDEO) This tells you something about the sickness at the core f the Palestinian movement.  Remember these are the same people who celebrated the 9-11 attacks on the US until someone pointed out they might lose their US funding.

Washington Free Beacon:
Reporters Fall for Fake Document of Trump Making Absurd Demands in Israel

...
The Twitter account Rogue White House Senior Advisor on Friday shared what it claimed was Trump's demands ahead of a trip to Israel, including roughly a metric ton of sugary and non-kosher junk food.
...
Some elements of the purported demands were obvious jokes. The demand that microwaves remain unplugged was a mocking reference to White House advisor Kellyanne Conway's bizarre comment that the appliance could be used for spying, and the request for electoral maps to be posted on each walls mocked Trump's tendency to allude to his victory.

Nonetheless, Jerusalem Post journalist Anna Ahronheim saw the image and believed it was legitimate.
...
Other reporters at the Jerusalem Post, Business Insider, the Nation, NBC News, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones soon shared Ahronheim's tweet.
...
One of the reporters to retweet Ahronheim was Glenn Kessler, editor of the Washi…

This seems typical of liberals in the media who seem to want to turn Muslims into victims when Islamic terrorist commit mass murder.  What I would like to see is a loud backlash in the Muslim community against the mass murderers in their midst.  That would be much more reassuring of their sentiments than the playing of the victim card.

Fuel Fix:
President Donald Trump wants the federal government to stop sharing oil and gas royalties from the Gulf of Mexico with Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast.

In his budget proposal for 2018, the White House proposes eliminating a decade old program that was set to deliver up to $275 million to Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi next year.

The funds are set aside under the law to protecting the Gulf coastline, with money directed to maintaining levees and other infrastructure, hurricane relief and preventing further erosion of wetlands that are fast disappearing along the Gulf Coast.

Elected officials along the Gulf Coast, along with an oil and gas trade association, quickly raised opposition.

“This budget robs Louisiana of financial resources promised to us for coastal restoration,” said Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards.

“Eliminating Gulf state revenue sharing for offshore energy production would punish coastal states that support and host the development of …

Alan Dershowitz:
Every time a horrendous terrorist attack victimizes innocent victims, we wring our hands and promise to increase security and take other necessary preventive measures. But we fail to recognize how friends and allies play such an important role in encouraging, incentivizing, and inciting terrorism.

If we are to have any chance of reducing terrorism, we must get to its root cause. It is not poverty, disenfranchisement, despair, or any of the other excuses offered to explain, if not to justify, terrorism as an act of desperation. It is anything but.

Many terrorists, such as those who participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, were educated, well-off, mobile, and even successful. They made a rational cost-benefit decision to murder innocent civilians for one simple reason: They believe that terrorism works.

Tragically, they are right. The international community has rewarded terrorism while punishing those who try to fight it by reasonable means. It all began with a decision b…

CBS News:
Controversial study suggests earliest humans lived in Europe - not Africa

...
If the fossils mark the earliest moment of humans' differentiation, it would significant change the human origin story. The researchers believe these fossils are several hundred thousand years older than the ancient hominin known as Sahelanthropus, a 6- to 7-million-year-old pre-human which was unearthed in Chad.
... There are some skeptics of the new discoveries, but so far those skeptics have escaped being called "deniers."   It is interesting to see settled science become unsettled.  But if you are talking about global warming that has been coming and going for millions of years there is apparently no room for the skeptics.

Gregg Jarrett:
What is Robert Mueller investigating (since collusion is not a crime)? There is scant to no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, but even if there were, there is no statute that makes collusion a crime.

Victor Davis Hanson has compiled a list of all the stories the liberal fact checkers failed to catch.  They are big on listing things Trump has said that they dispute, but not so big on keeping track of their own erroneous statement.

His conclusion is they just want Trump removed from office and they are willing to say anything to achieve that objective.

Washington Post:
CIA director alerted FBI to pattern of contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign associates

Describing a previously undisclosed high-level conversation between Washington and Moscow, John Brennan testified that in a phone conversation with the head of Russia’s domestic spy service he said that “American voters would be outraged by any Russian attempt to interfere in the election.” And Democrats have been pandering to that faux outrage ever since Hillary Clinton lost.   Remember when the media was aghast that Trump thought he and his campaign were under surveillance?  Now here is Brennan admitting that he was engaged in it and encouraged the FBI to engage in it.

Brennan did shoot down the claim that Trump tried to kill the Flynn probe.  There goes another aspect of the fantasy claim of "obstruction of justice."  Brennan did claim that Russians were trying to recruit Trump campaign workers, but could offer no evidence that they were successful.

Washington Post:
Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff

The advance is a step toward what industry insiders have long described as the “holy grail” of digital advertising, but it is also likely to renew concerns over whether technology companies know too much about people’s lives. It is kind of creepy to look at merchandise online and then find ads popping up on nearly every site you visit trying to sell you the same products.  It gives the feeling of being stalked.  It is not always bad.  Some sites do show up with better prices making the search for the best deal a little easier.

NY Times:
Navy SEAL Team Kills 7 Militants in Yemen During Raid, U.S. Says
It was the first ground raid in Yemen that the military has acknowledged since a Jan. 29 attack in which one Navy SEAL and as many as 25 civilians were killed. With the White House not having to approve every operation and nit pick it the military is hitting targets of opportunity with more freedom and flexibility.

Bill Gertz:
An exiled Chinese businessman with close ties to the government has begun revealing secrets about Beijing's intelligence operations after China pressured the official Voice of America radio to curtail a lengthy interview with him.

Four VOA employees were suspended last month after more than an hour of the radio's exclusive interview with billionaire businessman Guo Wengui exceeded a time limit imposed under radio rules.

The four employees of the Chinese language radio division are now calling on Congress to investigate whether VOA managers gave in to pressure from China's government to shorten the Guo interview and as a result undermined the radio's integrity.

Sasha Gong, one of the four suspended employees and chief of VOA's Mandarin language service, says Congress should probe the matter.

"I would like the Congress to investigate if the management of the taxpayer-funded Voice of America caved in to the request and demand of the Chinese government…

The Hill:
The Trump administration on Tuesday will propose the deepest cuts to government programs in a generation, delivering the opening salvo in a new round of budget battles in Washington.

The proposal, titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness” and set for release at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, sets out a 10-year plan to balance the budget.

It relies on a mix of cuts to anti-poverty programs, optimistic economic forecasting and deep cuts to nondefense discretionary funding to meet its targets. It would not touch Social Security and Medicare, which President Trump promised to leave alone during his campaign.

The budget would dramatically shift spending to the Pentagon from domestic programs.

In 2018, it would shift $54 billion from nondefense discretionary spending to defense by enacting major cuts to the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and other agencies.

It would eliminate or phase out funding for the Corporation for Public Br…

Washington Examiner:
President Trump will seek to tighten restrictions on some tax credits to prevent them from being claimed by illegal immigrants, a measure that the administration says is necessary to respect taxpayers and balance the budget.

Trump's fiscal 2018 budget, set to be released Tuesday, will set higher eligibility standards for the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Monday. According to the administration, the measures will save $40 billion over 10 years.

"How do I go to somebody who pays their taxes, and say, ‘Look, I want you to give this earned income tax credit to somebody who's working here illegally'? That's not defensible," Mulvaney told reporters. "And it's a reasonable accommodation to simply ask them for Social Security numbers."

The earned income tax credit is a refundable tax credit, which means that if a recipient has no income tax liability, t…

The Palestinian leader's remarks are not on the video and he has a record of rewarding terrorists and their families.

Daily Mail:
This is the dramatic moment anti-terror police swooped to arrest a man over last night's suicide bomb atrocity at Manchester Arena.

Pictures show non-uniform officers wearing masks to conceal their faces arresting a 23-year-old man outside a Morrisons supermarket in Chorlton, south Manchester this morning.

The arrest came hours after a suicide bomber slaughtered 22 and injured 119 after an Ariana Grande concert and as police tried to determine whether the attacker was part of a wider terror cell.

Officers are combing CCTV to determine whether the attacker carried out a 'recce' of the arena before detonating a nail bomb as thousands were leaving the concert at 10.30pm.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosion. But last night, ISIS supporters were celebrating the massacre online while two messages, posted four hours before the attack, appeared to predict the mass killing.
...
The suicide attacker is said to have been 'known' to the authorit…

Daily Caller:
A criminal suspect in an investigation into a major security breach on the House of Representatives computer network has abruptly left the country and gone to Pakistan, where her family has significant assets and VIP-level protection, a relative and others told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

Hina Alvi, her husband Imran Awan, and his brothers Abid and Jamal were highly paid shared IT administrators working for multiple House Democrats until their access to congressional IT systems was terminated Feb. 2 as a result of the investigation. Capitol Police confirmed the investigation is ongoing, but no arrests have been reported in the case.

The Awans are “accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network,” according to Politico. Many of the Democrats who employed the Awans are members of the House Committee on Homeland Security, the Committee on For…

Washington Times:
North Korea’s military has 300 to 400 attack drones capable of carrying biological and chemical weapons that could reach the South Korean capital of Seoul within one hour, according to a high-level defector from the isolated regime ruling Pyongyang.

The claim from a 42-year-old former third secretary who fled Kim Jong-un’s regime in 2015 coincides with heightened international concern over a different threat from North Korea: mobile, medium- to long-range missiles that Pyongyang has tested with increasing frequency.

After successfully launching one of the solid-fuel missiles Sunday, North Korean leaders said they are ready to begin deploying and mass-producing the Pukgukson-2 projectiles, which Pyongyang says are capable of reaching major U.S. military bases in Japan.

The Sunday launch was the latest of more than 70 North Korean missile tests since 2009, resulting in a U.S. and regional focus on countering the ballistic missiles.

An equally urgent drone threat may be eman…

Fuel Fix:
Exxon Mobil said Monday it has completed a large plastics plant expansion in Mont Belvieu as part of a massive, multibillion-dollar petrochemical growth effort in the Houston area.

Exxon Mobil said it finished mechanical construction of two plastics facilities at its existing plant that will add 1.3 million metric tons of annual capacity to manufacture the world’s most common plastic, polyethylene. The plastic is created in the form of tiny plastic resin balls to be shipped overseas to meet the rapidly growing demand in nation’s with expanding middle classes like China and India.

The new plastic facilities won’t begin operation until some point in the third quarter of the year. A massive ethane cracker plant expansion is still under construction at Exxon Mobil’s large Baytown complex. The ethane cracker takes cheap and abundant ethane that’s found in shale natural gas liquids and converts the ethane into ethylene, which is the primary building block for most plastics. Easy a…

Fox News:
Ariana Grande concert explosion: 19 dead, around 50 injured in 'terrorist incident' Police have not identified the mass murder who may have exploded with the bomb.  There were conflicting reports on whether there were two explosions and police are in the process of doing a controlled explosion on a suspicious package found at the site of the murders.

The UK has been on a "severe" alert for terror attacks for several days and it would not surprise me to learn that this was a mass murder for Allah attack by Islamic terrorists.

Washington Post:
Wall Street grows pessimistic about Trump’s agenda amid turmoil

Markets collapsed last week, and bankers and investors are ratcheting back their already-faded expectations for Republicans to deliver the wins that they believe will turbocharge the economy. Democrats are trying to make things ungovernable because the last thing they want to do is run against a President and a party that has created an economic boom by reversing their failed policies.

Washington Post:
Turkey condemns U.S. over treatment of its bodyguards during Erdogan’s visit to D.C.

The summoning of the U.S. ambassador marked a sharp escalation in a diplomatic rift over a violent confrontation that injured 11 people outside the Turkish ambassador's D.C. residence. American and Turkish officials have provided directly contrasting versions of how the violence unfolded. Erdogan is an Islamist despot who apparently believes that it is his right to beat up those who don't respect him or his security detail.  The video is pretty clear that the guards attacked demonstrators who were otherwise peaceful and then attacked police trying to stop the attacks.  The Turks don't have much of a case and they are such poor guests in this country, a lot of thought and conversation will be needed if they are ever invited back.

BTW, this appears to be a straight news story by the Post.  There have not been many of those when the subject is the President of the US who has n…

NY Times:
Flynn Rejects Senate Subpoena, Invoking 5th Amendment

Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, was ordered to turn over documents for the Senate inquiry into Russian election meddling. Oliver North is a rarity as someone targeted by Democrats who actually thrived under their questioning.  With the help a good attorney he managed to turn the public against the Democrats on the committee.

Flynn may not be as good a witness as North.  He sometimes says things that are not true when the truth would serve him better.  That alone is probably a good reason for his attorney to think there is no upside to doing a TV show for adversaries of Trump.

It is not clear why he was not candid with VP Pence but it was enough to cost him his job, even though Trump seems to have confidence in his judgment on dealing with radical Islamists.  Recent history suggests that there is not much Congress can do about his refusal to cooperate with their show trial.

Congress certainly was n…

Scout Warrior:
The US wants to stay in front of China with hypersonic weapons able to travel at five-times the speed of sound and destroy targets with a "kinetic energy" warhead.

The Air Force is aggressively accelerating its hypersonic weapons development effort, following findings from a recent service report identifying Russian and Chinese ongoing hypersonic weapons testing.

A recent Air Force Studies Board report identified that the U.S. is not alone in its quest for this increased speed, an Air Force statement said.

The statement went on to say that China and Russia are already flight testing hypersonic weapons, and several other countries have shown interest in pursuing many of the underlying technologies for hypersonic flight.

“We must push the boundaries of technology in every area," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein said in a statement. "Our adversaries aren’t standing still. They are looking for every advantage they can get.” (Air Force S…

Washington Times:
CBS’s Bob Schieffer accused of trying to ‘normalize’ Trump by praising speech I suspect that the believe that if they can make Trump "the other" then they are not under an obligation to treat him fairly.   So far, many of them have gone out of their way to treat Trump and his supporters unfairly.  I suspect that Schieffer was just being objective and that was too much for some leftist in the media.

NY Times:
In Saudi Arabia, Trump Reaches Out to Sunni Nations, at Iran’s Expense
President Trump used a speech in the kingdom to declare his commitment to Sunni Arab nations, signaling a return to a policy his predecessor rejected. The "death to Ameria" crowd is still in charge in Iran and it still wants to destroy Israelis with nuclear weapons, and Obama's policies only helped them pay for their goals which were only postponed for a few years in return.  The Sunni states know they are also targeted by Iran's ambitions and its potential use of nuclear weapons against them.  Obama's policies were at best naive and at worst sinister.

Will Rahn:
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump …

Newsbusters:
Guests Remind NBC, CNN: Obama Gave Classified Intel to Russia The media is so fixated on trying to destroy Trump that their brains are like a shaken etch-a-sketch which has no memory of previous reports.

Next Big Future:
...less than four months after Trump took office, Mattis said the operational and tactical difference has been clear.

Two significant changes resulted from President Trump’s review of our findings.
1. he delegated authority to the right level to aggressively and in a timely manner move against enemy vulnerabilities.
2. he directed a tactical shift”: surround ISIS fighters, instead of just pushing them out of a given territory.

The changes can be described as effective delegation and annihilation.

There has been no change to our continued extraordinary efforts to avoid innocent civilian casualties, despite needing to go into populated areas,” he said. And American troops are still under instruction to halt at the last point of cover and concealment, letting local forces go in for the direct assault.
... One of the major changes from the Obama administration is that commanders on the ground no longer have to get permission from amateurs in the White House before taking …

Military.com:
Is Now the Time to Arm US Tanks with Israeli Anti-Missile Tech?

...
For the past few months, Army leaders have been openly touting the service's accelerated effort to arm the M1 Abrams tank and other key platforms with APS technology to counter the proliferation of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and Russia's aggressive modernization of its armored fleet.

The accelerated APS effort, and the larger, long-term strategy to develop the Modular Active Protection System for the Army's entire combat-vehicle is a new path for a service that's been reluctant to commit to this type of sophisticated protection system in existence for more than two decades.
...
Israeli Merkava MK IV tanks equipped with Trophy APS withstood multiple anti-tank missile attacks from Hamas fighters in July 2014 during Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.
...
"In my battalion, we had one tank that was hit by an AT system throughout the operation because they turned the Trophy …

Roger L. Simon:
...
Nothing could be worse for Russia. Indeed it's disastrous for them, but you won't hear word one to that effect from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. They have bet their diminishing houses that Trump or one or two of his people said something equivocal on a phone call to a Russky or got paid too much for a speech. In their unresolved anger cum geriatric liberal orthodoxy, they live in an alternative universe divorced from reality.

Why? It should be obvious but I'll state it anyway. Not very long ago Ronald Reagan built up U.S. armaments not to go to war with the Soviet Union, but to bankrupt it out of existence. It worked. The same thing is going on here, as anyone with the proverbial pulse should notice. Selling three hundred and fifty billion in advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia is not just aimed at the obvious target -- Iran. It is also aimed at Iran's big brother Russia. And there is no way that relatively impoverished oligarc…

Kurt Schlichter:
Looking at it objectively, as a guy who opposed Trump until he dispatched Ted Cruz, I have to consider all the facts and ponder the evidence carefully before awarding Donald Trump the grade of A+. He has done an incredible job of doing exactly what I had hoped he would do in the off chance he defeated that naggy harridan and her corps of gender indeterminate hipsters, coastal snobs, race hustlers, aspiring libfascists, media scum, and wussy pseudo-conservatives terrified that a Hillary loss would mean people might expect them to do more than wear bow ties and go on NPR to prattle about Burke in their high-pitched, nasal voices.

There can be no serious debate. Donald Trump has done a truly outstanding job of not being Hillary Clinton.

His not being Hillary Clinton was and remains my sole expectation of Donald Trump’s presidency. Nothing else matters in the end; it is enough that Trump foiled Felonia von Pantsuit’s creepy scheme to subjugate forever the deplorable mass …

PJ Media:
Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, joined other civil rights advocates to condemn the new Texas immigration law that cracks down on sanctuary cities for not cooperating with federal immigration authorities, arguing that it “encourages bigotry,” “divides communities” and violates the rights of non-citizens.

Another activist said the new law treats every immigrant, regardless of status, as “suspicious” and invites racial profiling.

“Once again a law has been sold as a public safety measure that in reality will jeopardize the safety of not just immigrants but all Texans,” Murguía said on a conference call with immigrant rights activists last week. “We will hold elected officials accountable for dangers -- discriminatory – and unworkable laws based on falsehoods and stereotypes, and we will hold them accountable for policies that not only hurt their constituents but sow fear, encourage bigotry and divide communities. We will do that with the too…

Washington Times:
California Gov. Jerry Brown may have been trying to shame opponents of his gas-and-car tax increase by calling them “freeloaders,” but so far the barb has backfired.

Assemblyman Travis Allen, who is spearheading a proposed ballot initiative to repeal Senate Bill 1, said he was inundated with calls after Mr. Brown slammed foes of the $0.12 tax hike on every gallon of gasoline, which kicks in Nov. 1.

“Our phone has been ringing off the hook,” Mr. Allen said. “Californians are outraged. Jerry Brown signs a $52 billion tax increase with another billion to buy off legislators with no vote of the people, and, to top it off, now he’s calling them freeloaders.”
...

Instead of silencing gas tax foes, however, the comment has revved them up, much as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did last year when she blasted Republican Donald Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables.”

Mr. DeMaio said he was stunned by the governor’s “freeloaders” swipe given that the sta…

Daily Mail:
Trump shows off buddy act with Mideast leaders as he praises the Egyptian president's shoes – while promising 'beautiful military equipment' to Qatar
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Trump is 'a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible' – and Trump replied: 'I agree!' Actually, shoes are a bigger deal than many people think to successful American businessmen.  Highly polished shoes are seen as an important detail in places like Nw York's business community.  What disappointed some in Washington was that Trump did not preach human rights to those he was dealing with.  We have seen how "successful" that strategy was with Obama.  Trump was more focused on dealing with the security threat posed by Islamic terrorists and Iran.