PrairiePundit

Daily Mail: Angela Merkel admits there are ‘no-go’ areas in Germany that ‘nobody dares’ to enter  The chancellor said a zero-tolerance approach to crime must include ending no-go areas in Germany and claimed police and other outsiders fear entering certain locations. She would not say where they are or who lives there.  I suspect that are areas dominated by Muslim refugees.  It may take the German army to reimpose German sovereignty over the areas.  They should also make clear that there will be no benefits or welfare for those living in the no-go zones.

Washington Post: Independent voters like the Trump economy. But is that enough to win their vote? The Republican Party is facing a conundrum in the midterm elections: While Americans feel good about the economy, the president's approval ratings remain at anemic levels. The reason Trump may not be personally popular is because the media has demonized him from day one and continues to demonize him.  That is the reason the polls were so far off when he got elected. The polling companies that came closest to getting the vote right were using telephone polls where people punched a number to give their preference.  When they are not talking to someone who might argue with them they have no problem supporting Trump.  That is why Trump is at 50 percent approval now in the Rasmussen poll. That polling firm was one of the few that pegged the results of 2016.  At least now the polls are getting a clue of this phenomena with the polling on the economy.

NY Times: Cutting N.R.A. Ties Pits Companies Against the G.O.P. Delta Air Lines and others faced conservative backlash as they became mired in the gun control debate. The media, the left, and these companies are ignoring those who were really responsible for the shooter being allowed to buy a gun. It was the Obama-Holder Promise Program which colluded with schools and local law enforcement to keep juveniles criminal conduct from being recorded and showing up on the FBI database.  Without that collusion, this guy would not have a sheriff's office ignore his criminal activity.  The school was in on the scam too.  In fact, its superintendent was hired to reduce the number of students charged with criminal conduct.  They did it by not reporting crimes. It was not the NRA that made a mockery of the background check programs it was Democrat politicians from the White House to the schoolhouse and the sheriff's office.  The question is whether the media is...

NY Times: U.S. Loses Fighting Partner, the Kurds, After Turkish Assault Kurdish fighters in Syria who have been key in the American-led campaign against the Islamic State are peeling off to respond to Turkish attacks. If Turkey had not been such a lousy ally, to begin with, there would have been no need for the US to help the Kurds resist the genocidal organization.  Now Turkey is helping ISIS against by making war against the Kurds who helped to defeat ISIS.   Erdogan is an undependable ally whose interests winds up seeing him support radical Islam against the world. The US would be better served to cast off the Turks and support an independent Kurdistan.

Fox News: ICE arrests more than 150 people in Bay Area following Democratic mayor's warning It is weird to see California liberals protesting taking criminals off the streets as protecting "diversity."  Who wants to protect criminals in their neighborhood?

Reuters: 'It's a lifestyle': Teens at Florida shooting club defend guns I have a couple of grandkids who are competitive marksman that are state champions in Texas and will compete in the national 4-H shooting competition this year.  Both are also serious candidates for appointment to service academies.  It is disgraceful that the anti-gun left would stigmatize these good kids.  The Broward County sheriff was wrong to say that 18-year-olds can't be trusted with an AR-15.  What these kids have is a father who has taught them responsible handling of guns.

Jonathon Turley: ... This week, I was live on MSNBC’s program when I was cited in a presidential tweet about collusion. President Trump quoted my previously stated view on Fox News that I remain “skeptical” about the collusion theories advanced by critics and that I find these theories “implausible based on the evidence” currently available. MSNBC host Ari Melber immediately disagreed and said I was assuming that the absence of evidence means that a case could not be made. Putting aside that I expressly referred only to the known evidence and left open the possibility of new evidence, the exchange reflects a common disconnect in the analysis of collusion theories. Critics of the president seem more than willing to speculate on highly attenuated evidence of some criminal conspiracy but refuse to acknowledge the continued absence of any direct or even plausible evidentiary basis for collusion. The fact is that the Russians did not have to collude to achieve their purpose of disrup...

Legal Insurrection: The National Rifle Association has officially become a talking point in the upcoming Texas Senate race. Presumptive Democrat nominee (primary vote has yet to happen) boasted of his F rating from the NRA, a rating based on an elected official’s record supporting the second amendment. ... By most estimates, one in three Americans own a firearm and Texas gun ownership is above the national average by 6 to 15 points depending on the source. Running on an anti-gun platform might be in vogue for the Democrat party nationally, but it’s hard to see how that plays well with Texas voters.

Center for Immigration Studies: The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, in which the American government pays American employers to discriminate against American workers has grown rapidly in recent years, and during FY 2017 it used nearly $2 billion swiped from trust funds for the elderly to favor 240,000 alien college grads over an equal number of U.S.-resident grads. ... There is more. It has had bipartisan support in the past.  Companies that hire the aliens get a tax break paid out of trust funds that have nothing to do with the workers hired or displaced.

Sara Carter: Broward State Attorney’s Opened At Least 66 Cases Of Criminal Misconduct Into Sheriff’s Office Crimes that run the gamut from armed kidnapping to narcotics trafficking It is truly amazing that the Sheriff of Broward County thinks he has shown "amazing leadership." 

streiff: ... Tuesday, the House Democrats introduced a bill that lays out the gun control agenda in very clear terms . ... House Democrats have introduced a bill banning semi-automatic firearms in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., announced Monday he is introducing the Assault Weapons Ban of 2018. More than 150 Democrats have signed on in support of the legislation, Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., said. … The bill prohibits the “sale, transfer, production, and importation” of semi-automatic rifles and pistols that can hold a detachable magazine, as well as semi-automatic rifles with a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. Additionally, the legislation bans the sale, transfer, production, and importation of semi-automatic shotguns with features such as a pistol grip or detachable stock, and ammunition feeding devices that can hold more than 10 rounds. Cicilline’s legislation names 205 specific firearms that are ...

Times: North Korea provided Syria with the means to launch last year’s deadly sarin gas attack that killed at least 87 people and provoked military retaliation by the Trump administration, a leaked United Nations report suggests. It has shipped 50 tonnes of equipment used in the manufacture of chemical weapons to Syria since the uprising there began seven years ago, according to the report into the rogue state’s compliance with sanctions. Chemical weapons experts have long believed that Syria held back tonnes of precursors used to manufacture sarin when it gave up its stockpile in 2013 under a Russian-brokered deal. Its production facilities, however, were destroyed, robbing of it of the ability to mix fresh sarin from the precursors. ... The Trump administration needs to locate the new manufacturing facilities and destroy them.  It should also target North Korean shipments and make it clear to shipping companies that their boats are subject to being seized or destroyed if ...

Erick Erickson: Delta has spent a great deal of time siding with leftwing social justice warriors in Georgia. It has opposed a state RFRA. It has opposed protections for faith based adoption agencies. It has opposed gun rights legislation. Time and time again, Delta has sided with social just warriors. It is now siding with them against the NRA, which is putting Delta on the wrong side of the one group it owes a legal obligation to, i.e. its shareholders. Delta is a publicly traded company and its decision to publicly repudiate business with a popular, legal organization of considerable size has cost it a $40 million tax exemption it would otherwise have no later than today. For all of Delta's high minded rhetoric and claims about avoiding "controversial" groups, the NRA has a membership in excess of 5 million people whose sole crime is defending the second amendment to the constitution of the United States. Its members can and will choose to fly with other airlines w...

Tablet: ‘AMBASSADOR SAMANTHA POWER LIED TO MY FACE ABOUT SYRIA,’ BY KASSEM EID A letter from a survivor of Assad’s chemical attacks about his encounter with Obama’s chief diplomat at the United Nations Powers was the great unmasker in the Obama administration and her cohort Ben Rhodes was Mr. Echo Chamber in securing the terrible deal with Iran . Powers's lie had to do with Obama's illusory promise to do something about Assad's WMD attacks.

Fuel Fix: Efforts by Sen. Ted. Cruz to find relief for refiners from the high costs of meeting federal ethanol mandates hit a wall Tuesday as Midwestern senators rejected his proposals at a White House meeting aimed at finding a compromise. Cruz has proposed capping the prices of credits that refiners must buy if they don't blend ethanol themselves. But after a meeting with corn-belt lawmakers and President Donald Trump, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tweeted "no deal." Grassley later disputed Cruz's argument that the biofuels compliance system based on the credits - known as Renewable Identifications Numbers or RINs - was hurting oil refineries. "We haven't had any reputable economist say RINs was the most important problem," Grassley said. "I pointed that out to the president today." The ethanol mandates, known as the Renewable Fuel Standard was signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2005, primarily as a way to reduce U.S...

Daily Mail: Women protesting against wearing the hijab in Iran will be charged with inciting PROSTITUTION and jailed for up to ten years as regime cracks down on growing dissent At least two of the 35 anti-hijab protesters arrested in Tehran, Iran - Narges Hosseini and Shaparak Shajarizadeh (pictured) - are being charged with 'inciting corruption and prostitution'. It takes a real degenerate to even think this makes sense.  Other's have justified the requirement of women hair covering by saying the uncovered hair emits sex rays which leaves men unable to control their libido.  It seems obvious that Iran's leaders are sex perverts.  Will the #metoo movement ever catch up with Iran?

Bloomberg: In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before. Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation. More than 1 million pounds of drilling rigs, bulldozers, tanker trucks and other equipment spread out over a dusty 16-acre expanse. As of November, the 19 wells here collectively pumped almost 20,000 barrels of crude per day, according to company reports. Encana calls this “cube development," and it may be the supersized future of U.S. fracking, says Gabriel Daoud, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst who visited Davidson last year. The technique is designed to tap the multiple layers of petroleum-soaked rock here in Texas’ Permian shale basin all at once, rather than the one-or-two-well, one-layer-at-a-time approach of the past. ... With the new technique, Encana and other companies are pushing beyond the drilling patterns tha...

The Hill: Immigrants can be held by U.S. immigration officials indefinitely without receiving bond hearings, even if they have permanent legal status or are seeking asylum, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In a 5-3 ruling Tuesday, with Justice Elena Kagan recusing, the court ruled that immigrants do not have the right to periodic bond hearings. The ruling is a defeat for immigration advocates, who argued that immigrants should not be held for more than six months at a time without such a hearing. The Supreme Court ruling follows a Trump administration appeal of a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year that imposed a rule requiring immigrants held in custody be given a bond hearing every six months, as long as they aren't considered a flight risk or a danger to national security. ... This is a blow to liberals who see these immigrants as undocumented Democrats.

Victor Davis Hanson: Donald Trump has said a lot of silly stuff about Russia, from joking about Vladimir Putin helping to find Hillary’s deleted emails, to naïve musings about the extent of Russian interference into Western democratic elections. But far more important than what he has said is what Trump has done. That same caveat applies to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Start with two givens: Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor content to watch an aging, shrinking, corrupt, and dysfunctional — but still large and nuclear — Russia recede to second- or third-power status. From 2009 to 2015, in one of the most remarkable and Machiavellian efforts in recent strategic history, Putin almost single-handedly parlayed a deserved losing hand into a winning one. He pulled this off by flattering, manipulating, threatening, and outsmarting an inept and politically obsessed Obama administration. Under the Obama presidency and the tenures of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Ke...

Mark Meckler: Of the 27 Deadliest Mass Shooters, 26 of Them Had One Thing in Common ... “Indeed, there is a direct correlation between boys who grow up with absent fathers and boys who drop out of school, who drink, who do drugs, who become delinquent and who wind up in prison,” she writes. “And who kill their classmates.” This problem can’t be solved by any policy, or any sort of gun control. It is time to have a serious discussion about the degradation of our cultural norms. I don't think Democrats want that conversation.  They would rather ruse the mass murders as an excuse to disarm the innocent.

Washington Times: Court rules Trump can build border wall Judge who Trump accused of bias clears way for president’s big project The objections of the liberals never made much sense.  The court's order will also make it tougher for liberals to try to thwart the building with spurious environmental objections.

Washington Post: Eric Holder discusses Mueller probe, criminal justice with Jonathan Capehart Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sits down for a wide-ranging interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer and host of the “Cape Up” podcast. We now know that Obama and Holder policies that kept law enforcement from charging juveniles from being charged with serious crime led directly to the Broward shooter being able to buy a gun that he otherwise would have been blocked from acquiring.   Why not ask him about blood on their hands?  Their policies were far more responsible than those of the NRA. Also, why not ask him about his own scandals such as Fast and Furious and his obstruction of justice in dealing with the IRS abuses?  Are liberals blind to teh abuses of Holder and Obama?

NY Times: U.N. Links North Korea to Syria’s Chemical Weapons An unreleased report from the United Nations contends that North Korea has been shipping supplies to Syria that could be used in the production of chemical weapons. The evidence of the connection comes as the United States and others have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons on civilians. I have seen previous reports of North Korean shipments of WMD to Syria.  Both are rogue regimes who are indifferent to human life.  Any ship carrying chemical weapons from North Korea should be targeted and either seized or destroyed.

Houston Chronicle: After years of rancor over ethanol, Cruz, Cornyn go head to head on reform Cornyn is taking a softer approach with the Agribusiness rent seekers.  I am not connected to either the refineries or the Big Corn.  I am a consumer who despises what ethanol does to my equipment.  Unfortunately, no consumers are brought into the debate over the mandates that are enriching some and providing no benefit to consumers.  I would like to see the mandate disappear and let ethanol and other biofuels compete in the marketplace.  If that happened they would have some incentive to create a product that doesn't screws up small engines and is less efficient for larger engines on vehicles.  The current policy also forces refineries to buy crap they do not need instead of spending that money on converting their facilities to use US light crude from shale wells which would actually reduce dependency on imported oil which was the stated...

Daily Signal: Prager University, a conservative nonprofit that creates educational videos, is suing Google for allegedly discriminating against the digital media organization for its fairly moderate ideological slant. Specifically, PragerU is accusing YouTube, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, of restricting or “demonetizing” videos even though they all appear to be innocuous and compliant with the platform’s rules. PragerU’s videos include former and current professors and scholars from Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, like Alan Dershowitz; prominent athletes like Cobi Jones; popular celebrities like Mike Rowe; and influential figures like Steve Forbes. The majority of the people featured—sans political commentator Dinesh D’Souza—are not usually considered exceptionally controversial. Neither are a lot of the topics, some of which are likely studied in classrooms across the country. Topics include “Is the Death Penalty Moral” and “The Progressive Income Tax.” “If...

Stephen Moore: This has been a colder-than-usual winter in the Midwest and Northeast, so many Americans are facing high home heating and electric bills. In some areas, these bills can reach $1,000 a month. But wait. Donald Trump is pro-American energy development. He isn't the one who is making energy bills more expensive in the Northeast and the mountain states. It's the liberal green groups and politicians such as Bernie Sanders, who accede to their anti-fossil fuel demands. In my book Fueling Freedom, my co-author Kathleen Hartnett White and I discovered that the shale gas revolution lowered the price of natural gas by about two-thirds (from $10 to $3 per million cubic feet). This, in turn, has meant big savings in electricity and home heating costs from where they were a decade ago. We calculated the benefits to poor households from these lower prices and estimated that shale gas results in $10 billion in consumer savings each year. The annual budget for the LIHEAP pr...

Power Line: How out of touch is the Democratic Party? This out of touch:  The Washington Post  reports that Democrats expected the Trump tax cut to be unpopular and are surprised to find that voters like seeing more money in their pay checks. Post reporter Erica Warner writes: Democrats predicted a political backlash for ­Republicans in December when the GOP pushed through a deeply unpopular tax cut that added more than $1 trillion to the federal deficit and disproportionately helped the wealthy. But at the outset of the 2018 campaign season, Democrats’ early optimism appears less well founded here [in Indiana], where Democrat Joe Donnelly is facing a tough Senate reelection fight. The new law is rising in popularity as businesses in Indiana and elsewhere trumpet bonuses and bigger paychecks. And while Donnelly and fellow Democrats struggle to craft a consistent attack on the law, Republicans — boosted by outside spending from groups backed by the billionaire Koch ...

Red States: ... A Miami Herald article last week noted that, contrary to media reports, Cruz had never actually been expelled from the Broward County School system, despite a long and well-documented history of extremely disruptive and occasionally violent behavior: At times, Nikolas Cruz’s behavior could be a school administrator’s nightmare: Teachers and other students said he kicked doors, cursed at teachers, fought with and threatened classmates and brought a backpack with bullets to school. He collected a string of discipline for profanity, disobedience, insubordination, and disruption. In 2014, administrators transferred Cruz to an alternative school for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities — only to change course two years later and return him to a traditional neighborhood school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Cruz was banished from Douglas a year later for other disciplinary violations — then toggled between three other alternative placements, s...

NY Times: Lines Out the Door and Strong Sales at Tampa Gun Show As calls for gun bans intensify, a show continued in Tampa, Fla. Several sellers said they were on track to double their normal sales for a weekend even as some said they would support certain limits. Just when sales were in decline after Obama left office the Democrats overplay their hand on a school shooting and reinvigorate the market for guns. There is another irony to the attempts to blame the NRA for the shooting.  It now looks like a policy pushed by Obama and Eric Holder was responsible for the shooter not being in the database for background checks.  The school in Florida adopted their system of not charging juveniles for serious crims to keep their record clean.  They even gave the school money for going along with their scheme and apparently local law enforcement was also in on the scam. That is the reason why no charges were filed for serious offenses in the 20 to 40 visi...

Deroy Murdock: Special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators resemble axe-wielding firefighters frantically stomping through a house and not finding so much as a lit birthday candle. Meanwhile, the home next door burns to the basement. Team Mueller’s never-ending hunt for reds in October 2016 has found zero evidence of Russian collusion among Team Trump. In contrast, Russian collusion among Democrats has been as hard to miss as a California wildfire. And yet they still miss it. Team Mueller did find Russian interference in the 2016 election — and how! The February 16 announcement of federal criminal indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies was a Cold War flashback. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told journalists that Russians close to the Kremlin infiltrated the last presidential campaign “to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.” But Rosenstein threw a bucket of wet sand onto the Left’s sim...

Washington Times: More than 100,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in Pennsylvania alone, according to testimony submitted Monday in a lawsuit demanding the state come clean about the extent of its problems. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has identified similar noncitizen voting problems in studies of Virginia and New Jersey, said Pennsylvania officials have admitted noncitizens have been registering and voting in the state “for decades.” But state officials have stonewalled PILF requests for access to the data that could expose the problem, the group says in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisburg. “For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about noncitizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. He said Pennsylvania had already admitted to a “glitch” dating back to the 1990s that had allowed noncitizens applying to renew driver’s licenses to be offered the chance to regis...

LA Times: Visits by federal immigration authorities are spooking California businesses and workers Immigration audits have sparked fear and confusion in California’s business and immigrant communities, leading trade groups to issue guidance to their members. Oakland recently caused panic by tipping people off to a potential ICE raid in the city.   City officials are also setting themselves up for an obstruction of justice charge.  If California would cooperate with ICE and allow them to pick up illegals at the jail, this could likely be avoided.  Why is the state siding with criminals?  It looks like they probably misjudged the politics of such a move.

Washington Post: The Venezuelan oil industry is on a cliff’s edge. Trump could tip it over. Venezuela was once considered to be the Saudi Arabia of South America, but mismanagement by the socialist government has wreaked havoc on its oil industry. Now a potential U.S. embargo threatens to worsen the country’s humanitarian crisis and disrupt regional oil supplies. The only hope for Venezuelans is the complete collapse of teh socialists.  With them gone there is hope for the country and its people.  If they remain in power it will mean more incompetence and more starvation. Trump's actions are probably the people's best hope.

NY Times: Web of Conservative Donors Is Behind Key Anti-Labor Case A coordinated push by some of the right’s biggest contributors has paved the way for a Supreme Court decision that could cripple public-sector unions. While this case is about coerced contributions that are spent on Democrats anther serious problems with public sector unions is the inherent conflict of interest.  They take money from employees and use it to get Democrats elected and then, in turn, negotiate wages and other things with the people they just put in office.  There is no one at the bargaining table representing the taxpayers that are getting gouged by expensive salaries and benefits.

NY Times: Arizona Republicans Pay to Push Conservative Studies State lawmakers created new college programs focused on Western thinkers, drawing the ire of longtime faculty members who called the courses unnecessary. Liberals have tried to erase conservatism and conservatives from academia.  It is time to reinstate them to provide students with the facts and not liberal indoctrination.  Anytime polls show students favoring communism and socialism over capitalism it is clear evidence that they have been grossly misled.  Any university whose faculty is pushing these failed ideologies should require those doing it to spend a year in Venezuela.

Breitbart: Immigration officers arrested nearly 150 criminal aliens, previously deported illegal immigrants, and foreign nationals subject to an order of removal during a seven-day targeted operation in Central and South Texas. The operation took place in Texas cities from Waco and southward to the Rio Grande Valley. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers began a targeted operation on February 10 in Austin, San Antonio, Laredo, Waco, and border communities in the Rio Grande Valley. The officers arrested 145 individuals, mostly illegal immigrants with criminal records, previous deportations, and orders of removal from a judge, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by ICE officials. Of those arrested, 86 had previous criminal convictions; 39 had previous immigration violations including four with pending criminal charges; 20 with no previous immigration history; and one with pending criminal charges, officials...

Fox News: DACA recipient, 21, threatened to 'shoot all of ya b----es' at NY high school, police say Her actions are indefensible but Democrats will probably give it a go.  The mainstream media will likely pretend that this did not happen.

Glenn Reynolds: Florida shooting yet another government failure to keep us safe ... It’s not as if there weren’t warning signs.The Miami Herald has published a chilling list of the times authorities were warned about shooter Nikolas Cruz . Not only was the FBI told about a YouTube post in which Cruz said he wanted to be a professional school shooter (but failed to make the connection to Cruz despite him using his real name in the post), the FBI also received a phone call in which a woman warned that he would “get into a school and just shoot the place up .” She also said that he dressed as a ninja or ISIS member. And over two years ago, on Feb. 15, 2016, local authorities were warned: “A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy is told by an anonymous caller that Nikolas Cruz, then 17, had threatened on Instagram to shoot up his school and posted a photo of himself with guns. The information is forwarded to BSO Deputy Scot Peterson , a school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas...

Andrew McCarthy: Maybe Adam Schiff has more of a sense of humor than I’d have given him credit for. The House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat begins his long-awaited memo — the minority response to the Nunes memo that was penned by staffers of the committee’s Republican majority — by slamming Chairman Devin Nunes’s unconscionable “risk of public exposure of sensitive sources and methods for no legitimate purpose.” The Schiff memo , which has been delayed for weeks because the FBI objected to its gratuitous effort to publicize highly classified intelligence, including methods and sources, then proceeds to tell its tale through what appear to be scores of blacked-out redactions of information Schiff pushed to expose. Heavy Reliance on Steele Dossier Confirmed The FBI and the Justice Department heavily relied on the Steele dossier’s uncorroborated allegations. You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steel...

John Kass: CNN's town hall political takedown of the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment — in response to the tragic murders at a Florida school — has been wrongly described by some conservatives as an Orwellian Two Minutes Hate. So, those who called it CNN’s Two Minutes Hate should publicly admit how wrong they were. Because it went on for much longer than two minutes, didn’t it? It went on and on and on, and from the earliest moments it became clear that this wasn’t a reasonable discussion about complicated policy and the Bill of Rights. This was all about confrontation, drama, and exhorting a crowd that wants politicians to “do something” about guns. And so, the CNN many minutes of Second Amendment hate was nothing more than a campaign rally for the Democratic Party. Others might say otherwise, but it wouldn’t be the first time others would be wrong. This was about stoking politics, anger, frustration and fear, and weaponizing it to help Democrats “do something” ...

Byron York: ... Remember that the standard for winning a warrant to wiretap a U.S. citizen in the United States is quite high, and that the purpose of the warrant application was to convince the FISA judges that Page specifically, not the Trump campaign generally or any group of people, was a Russian agent and was likely violating the law. The first bullet point, about "Russia's election interference" — a reference to, say, evidence of Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee or Russian internet trolling — doesn't say anything about Carter Page. The second bullet point, an apparent reference to Russian contacts with George Papadapoulos, also doesn't say anything about Page. The third category, referring to Page's business history in Moscow in the 2000s, and more specifically a 2013 case in which Russian agents tried unsuccessfully to recruit him, does of course focus on Page. As I wrote this month, by several accounts, Page's history w...

Washington Post: NRA spokeswoman pushes back on Trump idea of raising age for buying semiautomatic rifles Dana Loesch dismissed proposals to raise the age to purchase a semiautomatic weapon to 21, saying a higher age limit is something that President Trump is only “discussing” and has not formally backed. Of all the factors that played into the mass murders at the Florida school, age had little to do with it.  The shooter had mental health issues and law enforcement agencies from top to bottom failed to do their job.  More important is the Obama policies that led to not filing charges against students who violate the law.  Without this policy, the shooter would never have passed a background check to buy the weapons.  The policy was an attempt by schools to with the help of law enforcement to cook the books on their discipline problems. If the FBI paid more attention to their tip line they could have stopped him.  If the local s...

Washington Post: After years of drought, Cape Town is about to run out of water The combination of a lack of rainfall and an explosion of urban growth has pushed the city’s reservoirs to their limits and is forcing officials to consider turning off the taps. If that happens, residents will be limited to 25 liters of water a day, the equivalent to a three-minute shower or three toilet flushes. The Israelis have years of success at managing a shortage of water.  They also have developed a process of converting sea water to fresh water.  South Africa lacks the talent to do the same thing and its government also lacks the will to ask the Israelis for help.  The South African government has been plagued by corruption and incompetence.

NY Times: Trump Endorses G.O.P. Fight to Keep Gerrymandered Congressional Map President Trump, calling the Pennsylvania ruling “very unfair to Republicans and to our country,” said that the decision should be appealed to the Supreme Court. This is an attempt by Democrats to use the courts to steal GOP seats in Pennsylvania.  The courts are fighting what they call a Republican gerrymander by creating a Democrat gerrymander.  This is all tied to the Democrats pursuit of a coup attempt against the President by trying to flip the House.

NY Times: Left to Louisiana’s Tides, a Village Fights for Time Climate change is threatening coastal areas across the globe. In a special report, The New York Times, in partnership with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, examines the struggles of south Louisiana, the epicenter of land loss in America. If you fly over the area where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico you can see the mud that used to deposit itself in the Louisiana coastal region flowing out to sea where it spreads as far away as the Texas coast.  In fact, if you sail out of Galveston Bay you have to go several miles to find blue water. This is caused by the levy system the Corps put in to protect areas along the Mississippi from flooding.  If the flooding of coastal Louisiana were actually caused by climate change, it would be happening in Texas too.  The outflow of mud also makes Texas beaches more brown than white.

Fuel Fix: ... The session is set to include Iowa's two senators -- Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst -- who have opposed policy changes they see as weakening the biofuel mandate. Also slated to attend: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who have argued that the high costs of complying with the current policy threatens the viability of some refiners. The biofuel mandate is politically treacherous for the president because it divides two important political constituencies: Iowa farmers growing corn for ethanol and Pennsylvania laborers who work in that state's four oil refineries. Trump won both states in 2016. The dispute intensified last month with the bankruptcy filing of Philadelphia Energy Solutions LLC, which supplies more than a quarter of the East Coast's crude refining capacity. Chief Executive Officer Greg Gatta has blamed much of the refining company's troubles on the cost of fulfilling annual biofuel quotas, specifically the r...

Tablet: A release last week of texts showed that Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose memos regarding the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia are referred to as the Steele dossier, reached out to Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, through a Russian-linked Washington, D.C., lobbyist named Adam Waldman. Among Waldman’s clients is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a text dated March 16, 2017, Waldman texted Warner, “Chris Steele asked me to call you.” In 2009, Waldman filed papers with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registering himself as an agent for Deripaska in order to provide “legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions” at a retainer of $40,000 a month. In 2010, Waldman additionally registered as an agent for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, “gathering info...

Daily Caller: CNN Has Another Embarrassing Ratings Week — 27% Drop From Same Week Last Year Attacking Trump is a loser from the media and for others who disrespect him and are seen as disrespecting the country.  CNN is not the only loser in doing this.  The NFL has had a significant drop in viewers when its athletes were seen as disrespecting the flag and national anthem.  The current Winter Olympics have been a disaster for NBC after athletes insulted the President and the media fawned over North Korea despots in attendance. Insulting half your potential audience is a bad media strategy.

Haaretz: Israel's Elite Intelligence Unit Helped Foil ISIS Plane Bombing in Australia, Army Reveals The success last year follows reports in May that Israel helped stymie an attempt by the group to put a bomb on a passenger plane Israeli intelligence helped foil an Islamic State passenger-plane bombing against Australia last year, after the 8200 intelligence unit passed on crucial information, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday after the lifting of a gag order. According to the IDF, arrests were made at a very advanced stage of planning late last year, possibly reflecting the latest such success by Israeli intelligence in a matter of months. The Australian Federal Police said at the time that four men had been arrested after law enforcement became "aware of information that suggested some people in Sydney were planning to commit a terrorist act using an improvised device." ... I think this was the case of using a laptop computer as a bomb.  It does point...