PrairiePundit

Victor Davis Hanson: ... Liberalism rode high during the Watergate era. It had demanded that civil liberties be protected from the illegal or unconstitutional overreach of the Nixon-era FBI, CIA and other agencies. Liberals alleged that out-of-control officials had spied on U.S. citizens for political purposes and then tried to mask their wrongdoing under the cover of "national security" or institutional "professionalism." All those legacies are now eroding. The Democratic Party, the investigative media and liberalism itself are now weirdly on the side of the reactionary administrative state. They have either downplayed or excused Watergate-like abuses of power by the former Barack Obama administration. Liberal journalists apparently have few concerns that the FBI apparently used at least one secret informant to gather information about the 2016 Trump campaign. Nor are they much bothered that members of the Obama national security team unmasked the names of U...

Washington Post: Trump’s metal tariffs trigger retaliation from Mexico, E.U. in escalating trade war Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said President Trump acted on national security grounds, seeing a rising tide of imports as a threat to the domestic metals industry. But officials from the European Union, Mexico and Canada dismiss the idea that their shipments endanger the United States. Trump seems to be arguing that the suppliers from these countries are selling their goods to the US at below market rates while keeping American goods out with restrictive policies.  The EU especially has been protectionist to go along with their control freak mentality.  I think Trump is gambling that these countries will agree to fairer terms in exchange for withdrawing the tariffs.   For this stage, it is looking like a game of chicken by both sides.

Washington Post: Trump again asks for apology from Disney chief after ‘Roseanne’ cancellation The president complained that Disney chief Bob Iger has not apologized to him for anti-Trump comments made by ABC personalities, something he believes is a double standard since Iger reached out to Valerie Jarrett after she became the target of Roseanne Barr’s racist comments. I am pretty sure he will not get an apology and thus it will prove his point of a double standard where liberals are free to insult conservatives but not vice versa.

NY Times: How Liberals Got Lost on the Story of Missing Children at the Border A lesson in how partisan polarization colors people’s views on a gut emotional level without many even realizing it. Partisan passions sometimes lead to a rush to judgment and in the case of opponents of  President Trump, it happens often.

Washington Examiner: A new book from former White House adviser Ben Rhodes claims that President Barack Obama and his top administration staff did not know about the FBI's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia until they left office. A preview from the New York Times of Rhode's memoir, "The World as It Is," states that the former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications learned about the counterintelligence investigation in the same manner as the rest of the country: through media reports. He also explicitly wrote, per the Times, that Obama was not informed of the investigation until after the election. Rhodes seems to suggest that the administration was caught off guard by the investigation because they were so sure Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would win, yet still should have seen that defeat coming. "When you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run again...

Stephen Moore: ... One of the key principles of Trumponomics is that faster economic growth can help solve a multitude of other social and economic problems, from poverty to inner-city decline to lowering the national debt. We're not quite at a sustained elevated growth rate of 3 percent yet, but the latest economy snapshot tells us we are knocking on the door. The growth rate over the last four quarters came in at 2.9 percent, which was higher than any of the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency. Halfway through this current quarter, which began on April 1, the Atlanta Federal Reserve estimates growth at 4 percent. If that persists through the end of June, we will have reached an average growth rate of 3 percent under Donald Trump. Not bad, given that nearly every liberal critic trashed the president's campaign forecast of 3 percent to 4 percent growth as an impossible dream. Economists such as Larry Summers, Obama's first chief economist, gloomily declared ...

Power Line: The New York Times  reports that, at a meeting with Attorney General Sessions in March, President Trump berated Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and told him he should reverse this decision. Sessions refused. The Times also reports that Robert Mueller’s team is investigating this incident, along with Trump’s “public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign.” This “suggests that [Mueller’s] obstruction [of justice] investigation is broader than it is widely understood to be — encompassing not only the president’s interactions with and firing of the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, but also his relationship with Mr. Sessions.” I’ll say. If, true, the Times’ report also suggests (maybe “confirms” is the better word) that Mueller’s investigation is out of control. Earlier today,  Scott  put the matter this way: “The Mueller team apparently thinks that Trump can be guilty of a crime for the exer...

Thomas Lifson: When Tommy Robinson was arrested for live-streaming a report outside the Leeds courthouse where members of an alleged Muslim grooming gang who allegedly forced young British girls into prostitution, and the court quickly imposed a gag order on U.K. media reporting it, outrage (and an  overseas legal defense fund ) quickly followed.  (See my writing about it  here ,  here , and  here .) In the words of  Washington Post  writer Avi Selk: The gag order backfired, turning English Defense League founder Tommy Robinson into a sort of free-speech martyr to conservatives such as Donald Trump Jr. and Roseanne Barr before the gag order was lifted Tuesday. Selk's report, incidentally, drips with contempt toward Robinson, calling him "[o]ne of Britain's most  notorious anti-Muslim  campaigners" (emphasis added). Robinson wants to halt Muslim immigration and focuses on the crime statistics and the violent ji...

Chuck Devore: According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report , of the 15 fastest-growing cities larger than 50,000 people, seven are in Texas including the top three: Frisco, New Braunfels, and Pflugerville. Frisco’s growth rate was 8.2 percent, some 11 times faster than the national rate of 0.7 percent. Of the cities with the greatest population gain from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017, San Antonio, Texas, took the prize, adding some 66 people every day. Texas had the most cities in the top 15 of this category as well with five making the list and three of the top five overall in addition to San Antonio: Dallas, Fort Worth, Frisco, and Austin. San Antonio now has more than 1.5 million people and ranks as the nation’s seventh-largest city, just behind Philadelphia. Fort Worth, meanwhile, knocked Indianapolis, Ind., out of the top-15 with a population of 874,168. Houston is America’s fourth-largest city and is also the most diverse large city in the nation. Population growth doesn’t happ...

Austin American-Statesman: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, holds an 11 percentage point lead over U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, in the race at the top of the November ballot in Texas, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday. Half Texas voters prefer Cruz in his re-election bid, compared with 39 percent for O’Rourke, according to a news release announcing the poll results. That’s a substantially wider lead from April 18, when another Quinnipiac University Poll had Cruz leading O’Rourke 47 percent to 44 percent. Cruz, “apparently benefitting from a nationwide Republican mini-move, has taken a solid lead in his reelection race,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said. The poll has Cruz leading 57 percent to 35 percent among men, up from 51 percent to 40 percent in mid-April. Women go 44 percent for Cruz and 42 percent for O’Rourke, compared to last month when women went 47 percent for O’Rourke and 43 percent for Cruz. Cruz gets 46 ...

streiff: What started out as a surefire winner (for Iran) and grand adventure (for Russia) has now turned into something of a strategic nightmare for both. I posted on how Russia is getting sucked into the quagmire of an Israel-Iran conflict and its self-aggrandizing role of “mediator” is bringing it nothing good but is damaging Russia’s influence in the region. Now it seems that Iran may have concluded that its involvement in Syria and Lebanon is not sustainable. Militarily, Iran is at a disadvantage. Its military is your typical Third World armed thuggery that is useful for gunning down demonstrators and committing war crimes against civilian populations but for little else. Iran is trying to project power into Syria and Lebanon and it is finding that it doesn’t have the skills or logistical capability to prevail even against ISIS without a strong assist from the US, much less against the real target of its adventurism: Israel. There is a domestic problem, too. Many of the str...

Mollie Hemingway: Trey Gowdy Didn’t Even See Documents He Claims Exonerate FBI On Spygate: Reports Gowdy claimed that the FBI's use of spies against the Trump campaign was perfectly proper, but multiple reports indicate he never even saw the full records Congress subpoenaed on the matter. ... Although Gowdy intimated that the information he received in a briefing last week made clear the FBI did nothing wrong, numerous reports from multiple news outlets indicated that the lawmakers DOJ invited to the briefing were not given access to all of the records HPSCI subpoenaed. Other comments Gowdy made during recent television interviews raise questions about how firm a grasp he has on the investigation and concerns the investigation has raised. The May 24 briefing was held after tensions flared over the Justice Department’s refusal to comply with the congressional subpoena. DOJ initially claimed President Trump backed its obstruction efforts, a charge refuted by the White House...

Andrew McCarthy: Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree. What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing? And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influen...

Fuel Fix: Midwestern ethanol producers filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging waivers the Environmental Protection Agency issued to Texas refining companies, exempting them from the requirement they blend ethanol into the gasoline they sell. Under the law EPA is allowed to grant waivers to refineries that produce less than 75,000 barrels a day but a coalition that includes the Renewable Fuels Association and the National Corn Growers Association allege the agency granted waivers to three refineries that did not quality for the exemption. The refineries they are targeting are owned by Sugar Land-based CVR Energy and Dallas-based Hollyfrontier. "EPA is acting in contravention of the statute and its own regulations, methodically destroying the demand for renewable fuels," said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association. RELATED STORY: With flood of EPA waivers, refineries find way around ethanol mandate The EPA declined to comment on what it described as "pe...

Forbes: What happened to the rise of MSNBC? After showing historic growth--and a few months in 2017 when Rachel Maddow took the title of most-watched host in all of cable news, beating Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity--the just-released results of the May ratings period look very familiar: Fox News won--everything. In ratings data released Wednesday by Nielsen Media Research, FNC extended its run of consecutive months at number one to a staggering 197, while building hitting another impressive milestone: Fox News Channel has now beaten every other network in basic cable for 23 months straight, based on total day ratings, with an average total day audience in May of 1.4 million viewers. In prime time, Fox News destroyed its competition, with an average total audience of 2.381 million viewers, compared to MSNBC's 1.384 million and CNN's 835,000. Among viewers 25-54, the group most coveted by advertisers, FNC shook off a challenge in recent months from MSNBC to claim a cl...

Daily Caller: California cities suing over climate change must examine the benefits fossil fuels have had on civilization, per an assignment from a federal judge. ... On Thursday, Judge Alsup gave attorneys for Oakland, San Francisco and Chevron Corp. an interesting homework assignment: create a 10-page legal analysis on whether the benefits of years of U.S. dependence on fossil fuels were worth the climate change it caused.... “We needed oil and fossil fuels to get from 1859 to the present,” Judge Alsup stated. “Yes, that’s causing global warming. But against that negative, we need to weigh-in the larger benefits that have flowed from the use of fossil fuels. It’s been a huge, huge benefit.” Judge Alsup centered his questions on the “broader sweep of history” and the role fossil fuels played in both World Wars and the economic boom the U.S. experienced afterward. All five oil companies are seeking dismissal, but only Chevron will respond to the judge’s assignment since the oth...

Holman Jenkins: James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, gained a reputation among liberals as a liar for covering up the existence of secret data-collection programs. Since becoming a private citizen, he has claimed that President Trump is a Russian “asset” and that Vladimir Putin is his “case officer,” then when pressed said he was speaking “figuratively.” His latest assertion, in a book and interviews, that Mr. Putin elected Mr. Trump is based on non-reasoning that effectively puts defenders of U.S. democracy in a position of having to prove a negative. “It just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election,” he told PBS. Mr. Clapper not only exaggerates Russia’s efforts, he crucially overlooks the fact that it’s the net effect that matters. Allegations and insinuations of Russian meddling clearly cost Mr. Trump some sizeable number of votes. Hillary Clinton made good use of this mallet, as would be clearer now if she had also ma...

Washington Post: Walmart to offer employees a college education for $1 a day The retailer is partnering with three universities to offer associate’s and bachelor’s degrees to 1.4 million part-time, full-time and salaried Walmart and Sam’s Club employees — a pitch to improve employee retention rates and engagement at work, while also drawing new workers. This may be one of the smarter ways to pay for an education.  It is certainly better than being bogged down with debt teh size of a mortgage which makes it difficult for people to set up a household and even get married.

AP: A U.S. rocket artillery strike last week on a gathering of Taliban leaders in southern Afghanistan killed at least 50 of them, a U.S. military official said Tuesday. Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said a weapon system known as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is capable of firing GPS-guided rockets, destroyed a command-and-control position that was a known meeting place for high-level Taliban leaders. He said at least 50 leaders were killed. Additional, unspecified numbers of Taliban officials were killed in U.S. airstrikes over a recent 10-day period, the spokesman said. The May 24 rocket artillery attack in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province was announced by the U.S. military last week, but without a public estimate of the numbers killed. O’Donnell said that because of the large number of leaders killed and their involvement in a range of attack planning, the impact of the HIMARS strik...

Washington Times: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday called for more armed school safety personnel, a “hardening” of schools in the state, and expanded access to mental health treatment as part of the state’s response to the shooting earlier this month at Santa Fe High School. The recommendations in the governor’s 40-page plan include increasing local police presence on school campuses, training more school security marshals, and redirecting marshal training requirements to place more of an emphasis on firearms training. “This plan is a starting point, not an ending place,” Mr. Abbott said. “It provides strategies that can be used before the next school year begins to keep our students safe when they return to school. This plan will make our schools safer and our communities safer.” Mr. Abbott made the announcement after holding several meetings with stakeholders following the school shooting earlier this month in which 10 people were killed and a dozen others injured. The g...

Washington Post: Giuliani says Trump won’t sit for Mueller interview unless all documents on FBI source can be reviewed Rudolph W. Giuliani’s latest demand further ratcheted up the pressure that President Trump and his lawyers are trying to place on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team as the probe into alleged coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia reaches a key juncture. If this were a civil case the documents would be exchanged before any deposition so that the lawyers for both sides can prepare.  It should be noted that Trump and his campaign have already supplied all relevant documents to Mueller.  It is fair to ask for the same thing from Mueller before submitting to questioning.

NY Times: Trump’s Summer Campaign Priority: Target Red-State Democratic Senators The strategy, meant to take advantage of President Trump’s star power among core Republican supporters, will take him to six states where he can bring a message devised to stoke partisan outrage. The resistance outrage machine is facing well deserved backfire from Trump and his supporters.  They have tried to obstruct the Trump agenda despite its obvious success at turning around the economy and creating jobs.  Now Democrats try to ignore that and continue to make personal attacks on the President.  Having failed with their Russian collusion narrative they have moved on to "obstruction of justice" as their latest excuse for a coup attempt.  Trump does not have to "stoke partisan outrage."  The Democrats have done a pretty good job of doing that on their own.

NY Times: Trump Told Sessions to Reverse Recusal on Russia Inquiry Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a key witness in the investigation into whether President Trump tried to obstruct the Russia inquiry itself. In the time since the investigation started virtually all the evidence produced has shown there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.  None.  Yet the media still acts like the discredited investigation is still of some importance.  Reversing Sessions recusal at this point would make no difference in that investigation.  There would still not be a crime to obstruct an investigation of. I think it has gotten to the point where those who hate Trump and his policies are just looking for another excuse for their coup attempt.

Washington Times: Federal officers arrested 156 illegal immigrants and other people eligible to be deported from around the Chicago area over a six-day period, Homeland Security announced Tuesday. It’s the latest sweep to target “sanctuary city” jurisdictions, which refuse some level of cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, have some of the most generous sanctuary policies in the country. “‘Sanctuary cities’ not only provide refuge to illegal aliens, but they also protect criminal aliens who prey on people in their own communities,” said Ricardo Wong, field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division in Chicago. “The Chicago area is safer today because of the hard work of the men and women of ERO.” The six-day operation, which ended last Thursday, targeted illegal immigrants and legal immigrants whose criminal records made them eligible for deportation. ICE said the targets of the operation gene...

IBD: U.S. Back At No. 1 Competitiveness Ranking — Will Trump's Critics Ever Admit To Being Wrong? ... For 2018, there was a surprise: The U.S. leapt three places to take over the top spot in global competitiveness — just ahead of Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands and Switzerland. That jump was based on its "strength in economic performance and infrastructure," ranking first in both areas. ... Trump critics rarely admit they were wrong and they are unlikely to start now.

BBC: Amnesty International has accused the Nicaraguan government of colluding with paramilitary groups to suppress weeks of student-led demonstrations against President Daniel Ortega. It said the groups used semi-automatic weapons and co-ordinated their attacks with the security forces. Around 80 people have died so far in the protests. They began in April, triggered by welfare reforms but turned into a rejection of the Ortega government. The photos that explain Nicaragua's crisis Nicaragua reporter killed during Facebook live The Amnesty International (AI) report said the armed groups were often made up of pro-government students and motorcyclists, sometimes identifiable by clothing linking them to the authorities. "These groups appear to be acting with the acquiescence of the state, as is demonstrated firstly by the fact that most of the attacks were committed by private individuals in the presence of or in co-ordination with the security forces," the report said. ...

Daily Wire: The Democrats knew it was coming, but that can't make it any more pleasant to watch. The Republican National Committee has released its first "Democrats defend the brutal MS-13 gang whose motto is 'Kill, Rape, Control'" ad — and it's appropriately brutal. The MS-13 fiasco began with the media falsely reporting on President Trump's condemnation of the notorious gang as "animals," which the media distorted to be a condemnation of all illegal immigrants, despite the transcripts of the incident clearly showing that was not his intent. Even after the Associated Press and a few other outlets publicly admitted to misreported his comments, several Democratic leaders continued to claim disingenuously that Trump was "dehumanizing" all illegal immigrants. ... Using Pelosi's self-serving rant as its focal point, the RNC released the following ad on Facebook Tuesday.... ... You can also find the ad at the link above.  Trump seems...

Daily Caller: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is accusing Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson of giving “extremely misleading” statements, if not telling “outright lies,” during Senate testimony in 2017. Simpson may have lied when he denied working for clients to investigate President Donald Trump after the 2016 election, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a May 24 letter made public on Tuesday. Fusion GPS, which Simpson started in 2011, worked for the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia. The opposition research firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who would go on to write a dossier alleging Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin. Grassley noted that in his Aug. 22, 2017, testimony, Simpson claimed after the election, he was not working for a client to continue his Trump work. (RELATED: Back Channel To Christopher Steele Goes On The Record About Senate Testimony) “So you didn’t do any work on the Trump matter aft...

PJ Media: Reality never campaigns for Democrats. However, judging from the total silence over Monday's Reuters/Ipsos generic ballot poll, the nation's media certainly does. How else could an objective observer explain an apparent decision by every single mainstream outlet to ignore such a clear opportunity for website traffic? On Monday at 2:49 p.m., Thomson Reuters' Polling Editor Chris Kahn tweeted this shocker: the Democratic Party has completely lost the double-digit edge it held just weeks ago.... That all-but-certain #BlueWave the media has harped on for months is gone, along with the likelihood that the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives. Mainstream editors deemed the possible retaking of the House based on data gathered one year out from November to be worth scores of headlines. However, not one of those editors has yet reached the reasonable conclusion that the collapse of that narrative six months out from Election Day deserves any coverage...

Telegraph: A suspected terrorist on day release from prison executed two female police officers with their own guns and shot dead a trainee teacher before he was killed in a shootout after taking two women hostage at a school in the centre of the Belgian city of Liege. The bloody rampage on Tuesday morning, which left another four officers wounded, was captured on videos on social media, which showed the black clad man waving a pistol in each hand and shouting “Allahu Akbar” before he was gunned down by elite officers. Belgium's federal prosecutors office has opened an terror investigation into the attack. The “lone wolf” attacker, 36, was named locally as Benjamin Herman, who was well-known to police for a string of crimes including robbery, assault and drug-dealing and was from Rochefort, a city about an hour from Liege. One officer was named in local media reports as Soraya Belkacemi, 45, a widowed mother of twins, who are now orphaned. The other was Lucile Garcia, 53, w...

David Harsanyi: Obama Says ‘I Didn’t Have Scandals.’ So What Are All These? Democrats and media revisionists try to make eight years of abuse disappear. ... It’s not about Obama’s brazen lying about Obamacare or even recurrent abuse of power . I’m talking about supposed non-scandals like “ Operation Fast and Furious ,” a program devised by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that put around 2,000 weapons into the hands of narco-traffickers (and an Islamic terrorist), leading to the murder of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American, border agent Brian Terry. The body count could have been higher when a homegrown extremist who, with another assailant, attempted to murder the audience at a “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas with one of the Fast and Furious weapons. An off-duty police officer killed both of the attackers . Despite the incompetence, absurdity, recklessness, and fatalities of the program, the entire affair never really receive...

George Neumayer: Bret Baier, in his April interview with Jim Comey on Fox News, asked him if he had seen John Brennan and Jim Clapper together since his firing. “No, no,” Comey replied at first, then said, “Actually, I had dinner with the two of them together with our spouses.” Baier asked him if they discussed “Trump cases” on the triple date. “No, we did not,” he answered. Add that to Comey’s voluminous record of whoppers. The idea that the three stooges of Spygate, whose red-hot antipathy for Trump is nothing if not all-consuming, went out to dinner without discussing the investigation of him strains all credulity. No doubt one of their anxieties at the dinner was: When will the American public find out about the spy we sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign’s ranks? Beneath all of their flailing attacks on Congressman Devin Nunes lay the fear that his oversight would kick loose scandalous nuggets buried within their probe: a FISA warrant cribbed from Hillary’s campaign smears,...

Real Clear Politics has the transcript of a back and forth on whether the government was actually spying on the Trump campaign. ... "We are supposedly not allowed to call that a spy, but in the normal world people call that spying, but whatever it is, it is unprecedented, and the lack of journalistic curiosity about what was going on, how this happened, and whether protocol was followed is frankly scandalous," Hemingway quipped. Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty responded, saying: "Wait a minute, Mollie, you just were quoting stories from the Washington Post and then complaining about lack of journalistic [curiosity]. Hemingway responded incredulously, interrupting Tumulty: "But, The Washington Post , after breaking the news that there were spies in the campaign, then runs a bunch of stories saying this isn't spying and they have no idea of what Donald Trump is talking about when he's complaining about what happened in his campaign." ...

NY Post: President Trump taunted Democrats on Tuesday for mistakenly sharing photos of immigrant children being held in cages at detention centers during the Obama administration, saying they were trying to make “us look bad.” “Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires,” he posted on Twitter. He called on Democratic lawmakers to work with their Republican colleagues on building a wall and increasing security at the Mexican border. “Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country … Bipartisan Bill!,” he said. The photos of the youths lying on a mat inside a wire cage began appearing online over the weekend after reports said the federal government “lost track” of nearly 1,500 immigrant children at the end of 2017. ​ ...   You can see the images the Democrats were sending at the link above.

NY Times: In California’s Farm Country, the Tide of ‘Resistance’ Runs Dry Representative Devin Nunes has become a lightning rod on the left over his defense of President Trump. But he and other Republicans are likely to be re-elected in a region that tends to vote conservatively. In fact, I think the "resistance" has had a negative effect for Democrats.  They made the mistake of attacking conservative voters calling them "alt-right" and "Nazis" among other things.  They just assumed that everyone would agree with them about Trump and never made the case for liberalism.  Their visceral reaction to Trump has put them in the position of defending MS-13 and other people out to harm normal Americans. 

Mollie Hemingway: Media Double Down After New York Times Gets Busted Peddling Fake News There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn't be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn't on a minor point. The media falsely reported what was said during a background briefing and when Trump complained about it by saying they had made up the sources, the media outed the guy who gave the briefing and in the process revealed that they had misreported what was actually said. ... You will note that at no time does the White House official say a June 12 meeting is “impossible,” and at no point does he agree that the “ship sailed” or that time has run out. He definitely says it would be difficult to prepare for the summit given the lack of time to do so. His main point, as he says, is that the ball is in North Korea’s court and they need to act quickly. ... Clearly The New York ...

Zero Hedge: A recent article by George Neumayr in The American Spectator provides an excellent forensic dig into the earliest stages of the US Intelligence Community's surveillance of people in Trump's orbit - and makes clear something that many pointing to a politicized "witch hunt" have long suspected; the Obama DOJ/FBI began looking into "Trumpworld" and the Russians long before the official timeline would suggest. Moreover, the operation was conducted in close coordination with foreign counterparts, primarily the United Kingdom and Australia, but primarily the former. All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it. - American Spectator Here is George Neumayer explaining, how the " roots of Obamagate become clearer " originally published in The American Spectator . * * * Even before the first Republican primary, a London-to-Langley s...

streiff: ... One of the many signature accomplishments of the Obama administration was inviting Russia to take a role in the war in Syria. If one were writing a John le Carre-style novel one could draw a straight line from our withdrawal from Iraq to the rise of ISIS to the Arab Spring to our attempt to overthrow Assad to the rise of ISIS to the increase of Iranian power to using the Russians as our intermediary with Iran to negotiate the now-defunct Iran nuclear deal to a Russian military presence in Syria. But as Iran’s power has grown in the region and it looks more and more intent upon creating a Shia empire stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean, it has become an existential threat to Israel. Israel has struck at Iranian bases in Syria and the intermixing of Russian and Iranian assets has now become a liability. Two days ago, Israel told Russia that it would no longer confine its attacks to Iranian targets along the Syria-Israel frontier but would now target them throug...