PrairiePundit

Washington Post: ‘He doesn’t like bullies’: The story of the 37-year-old who took over the New York Times and is taking on Trump Publisher A.G. Sulzberger, the sixth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to lead the paper, sits in direct contrast to the president of the United States. If this were true he would be upset with Maxine Waters and Cory Booker.  He would be upset the Antifa and other left-wing bullies who physically attack Trump voters  There have been hundreds of such attack, plus attacks on women in the administration when just going out to eat.   While he may not appreciate Trump's style, Trump is primarily a counter-puncher who hits back on those attacking him.  Just because the media thinks it is their job to attack Republican Presidents and defend Democrat Presidents does not mean the media is immune from criticism.

NY Times: President Is Putting a Conservative Stamp on the Judiciary Beyond the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump has already put an imprint on federal appeals courts, and Senate Republicans have been eager partners in the effort. This is a much needed push back against the Democrats undemocratic use of the courts to push an agenda they can't get through Congress.

Washington Times: President Trump said Monday that he wouldn’t flinch from a government shutdown this fall over border wall funding, injecting confusion into what had been an unusually orderly and productive appropriations process for the Republican-run Congress. The threat bucked an agreement on spending bills Mr. Trump struck last week with Republican leaders, put immigration front and center in the midterm election campaigns and raised questions about exactly what sort of shutdown the president had in mind. Fed up with years of debate that accomplished nothing to secure the border or fix the broken immigration system, Mr. Trump said he wanted results or else. “If we don’t get border security, after many, many years of talk within the United States, I would have no problem doing a shutdown,” he said at a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte . The remark reinforced Mr. Trump ’s tweet over the weekend that threatened a shutdown over border wall funding...

Times: The US secretary of state has warned Pakistan that any funds provided under a possible $12 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund should not be used to repay Chinese loans. Mike Pompeo said there was “no rationale” for an IMF package that would be used to shift funds onto Chinese lenders. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister-elect after a general election last week, is said to be considering asking for the assistance to try and stabilise the country’s economy. Speaking only hours he had urged Asian nations to look towards the US for commercial ventures rather than Beijing, Mr Pompeo suggested that any IMF deal for Pakistan would be carefully scrutinised by the US, which is the largest contributor to the fund’s coffers, and has the largest voting rights within the organisation. “Make no mistake. We will be watching what the IMF does,” Mr Pompeo said in a television interview. “There’s no rationale for IMF tax dollars, and associated with that American dollars t...

Washington Times: Scenes of Californians fleeing their homes and Greeks swimming out to sea have fueled alarm about climate change fueling deadly wildfires, but recent studies show that such destructive blazes are on the decline worldwide. A September 2017 report in the journal Science found that global burned area dropped by about 25 percent over the previous 18 years, a finding consistent with a May 2016 paper published by the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. “[G]lobal area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago,” said the study by British researchers at Swansea University. Even in California, which for years has wrestled with fire devastation, a study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire found that the number of wildfires burning more than 300 acres per year has been tailing off since a peak in 1980. “The claim commonly made in research papers...

AP: The trial of President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman will open this week with tales of lavish spending, secret shell companies and millions of dollars of Ukrainian money flowing through offshore bank accounts and into the political consultant’s pocket. What’s likely to be missing: answers about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, or really any mention of Russia at all. Paul Manafort’s financial crimes trial, the first arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, will center on his Ukrainian consulting work and only briefly touch on his involvement with the president’s campaign. ... Prosecutors in Manafort’s case have said they may call 35 witnesses, including five who have immunity agreements, as they try to prove that he laundered more than $30 million in Ukrainian political consulting proceeds and concealed the funds from the IRS. Jurors are expected to see photographs of his Mercedes-...

Becket Adams: In 2011, President Barack Obama's inner circle saw Donald Trump as a gift. In Trump, they saw an opportunity to delegitimize Obama’s critics. They saw an opportunity to tarnish the GOP. Obama’s team chose to build up the Queens businessman, making him a political player. “There was strategy," Obama campaign manager and senior White House adviser David Plouffe said in Obama: An Oral History . "Lifting up Trump as the identity of the Republican Party was super helpful to us," he said of the decision for Obama to focus on the real estate tycoon at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. “The president went out in the briefing room to present his long-form birth certificate, [but] really to continue the dance with Trump." "Our view was lifting Trump up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, you know, as kind of the example of the Obama opposition," Plouffe added. "There was a strategy behind the material and the amount of time we ...

MTL Blog: ... An analysis conducted by The New York Times that pitted the health care services of countries against each other in a formal competition found Canada to be a major loser. The competition featured Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and the U.S. In Canada’s first round in the competition, going up against Britain, four out of five health care experts deemed our nation’s health care system to be wanting. Canada received only one vote in favour, the rest of the medical experts chose Britain. The United States even beat us, with our neighbour to the south making it to the semi-finals. Even though health care is “free” in Canada, the level of service offered seriously leaves citizens wanting. We may think that our health care system is infinitely better than the United States, but that may not be the case. When speaking to one of the experts used by The New York Times in the study, the National Post reported that Canada’s super-long wait tim...

Tucker Carlson makes the case against the current Democrat Party and its hostility toward Trump, his supporters, and the 1st Amendment.

Evan Siegfried: Members of the media were shocked as he was supposedly revealed as incredibly anti-woman presidential candidate, perhaps even the most ever nominated by a major political party in the modern era. He had admitted that he reduced women to objects and the Democrats pounced, seeking to make him lose him the support of women and, in turn, the presidency. I'm not talking about the media coverage of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and the "Access Hollywood" tape, but his predecessor, Mitt Romney. His sin? Saying that he had “binders full of women” that he was looking at appointing to key positions were he elected president. Sure, it was an awkward way of stating a fairly innocuous fact about how elected executives begin their transition efforts — with resumes of candidates for every position under the sun —- well before an election is held. Yet, the media and commentators came for Mitt Romney and they did so with guns blazing, as he was portrayed as a...

Stephen Moore: The media and other Trump haters can’t seem to let themselves admit it, but President Trump scored a big victory for the American economy on trade last week. Mr. Trump and the European Union reached a handshake deal that is designed to lower tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. They agreed to shoot for zero tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. Sounds like freer and fairer trade to me. The exact details are still a bit murky, but what we do know is that the EU has pledged to lower its tariffs and other trade barriers on American soybeans, oil and gas, pharmaceutical products and certain manufactured goods. Mr. Trump promised to suspend some of the auto and aluminum and steel tariffs that he was threatening to whack the Eurozone with. It gets better: The two sides also agreed in principle to find ways to combat “unfair trading practices, including intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, industrial subsidies and distortions created by state owned...

Forbes: The oil rhetoric coming out this past week has us all nauseated. I mean, which one is it guys: is oil going to hit $400 , is oil going to hit $200 , is oil going to hit $90 , or is oil going to hit $45 ? So, let's hit a few things that we know. This oil market is filled with a variety of bearish factors: rising U.S. production, rising Saudi production , an emerging U.S.-China trade war , a rising dollar , potential tapping of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve , a Brazil oil industry that is stronger than being reported, and a reopening of Libyan ports - just to name a few. These stand against some bullish factors such as new sanctions on Iran and the latest flavor of the week scare : the International Maritime Organization's move to cut sulfur in marine fuels starting in 2020. For reference, the global shipping fleet's use of high sulfur fuel oil now accounts for ~4% of the world's total oil demand, and don't underestimate the ability of clean LNG t...

NY Times: Ruling Sows Confusion About Genetically Modified Crops Plants made with gene-editing technologies will be stringently regulated in Europe. But older crops whose DNA has been altered will be left alone. The Europeans have chosen a route to starvation for millions if others adopt their approach.  The poor in developing nations will be their main victims.  It seems to be a part of the control freak culture of the EU that pushes back modern crop influences that increase production and makes crops more disease resistant.

David Harsanyi: On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president , Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food , announced he was lopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” Meghan McCain of “The View” was the target of Internet-wide condemnation for having stated some obvious truths about collectivism. In truth, McCain was being far too calm. After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. It’s true that not all socialism ends in the tyranny of Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism or Ba’athism or Chavezism or the Khmer Rouge — only most of it does. And no, New York primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t intend to set up gulags in Alaska. Most so-called democratic socialists — the qualifier affixed to denote that they live in a democratic system and have no choice but to ask for votes — aren’t consciously or e...

Carol Markowitz: Last week, a man was indicted for threatening to kill Republican Rep. Diane Black. “They were serious enough threats that the grand jury did take action,” Black said in an interview with Fox News. It’s been barely a year since the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise during congressional baseball practice, and the story of the threats to Rep. Diane Black were barely a blip in our news. The shooting last June should have been a wake-up call for our political discourse, but we’ve only been on a further slide since then. This month, Black’s fellow GOP congressman, Jason Lewis, says his daughters were threatened. A man threatened to chop up Sen. Rand Paul’s family with an ax. Another was arrested outside the campaign office of Rep. Lee Zeldin for threatening to kill Trump supporters. And the Nebraska GOP office had bricks thrown through its windows and graffiti painted on its wall. Last week, a guy was beaten up in Oakland after a crowd thought he was ...

Washington Post Op-ed: House Republicans cannot be allowed to obstruct justice This is the kind of story you get when anti-Trump bias runs wild in a newsroom.   It is the FBI and DOJ that are acting like they have something to hide.  They can't even explain how the counterintelligence investigation began or what spies the FBI used against the Trump campaign.  It is the stonewalling of those responsible for producing evidence to Congress that is the problem and not House Republicans.

Daily Caller: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes claimed Sunday that the American public will be “shocked” when it sees the remaining blacked out portions of the FBI’s applications for spy warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. “We are quite confident that once the American people see these 20 pages, at least for those that will get real reporting on this issue, they will be shocked by what’s in that FISA application,” Nunes said in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. Nunes’ comments raise expectations about what information remains hidden behind 20-plus pages of the FBI’s fourth and final application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. ... Nunes and his fellow Republicans on the Intelligence Committee asked President Donald Trump in a June 14 letter to declassify 21 pages from the final FISA application, which was signed by deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ... I think...

Daily Mail: What do they know? Mystery as Russia LIQUIDATED almost ALL of its holdings in US Treasury securities during run up to Helsinki summit, in move labeled 'unprecedented' by experts Russia slashed holdings in US Treasuries by 84 per cent from March to May Country is no longer considered major holder of Treasuries with just $14.9B Sell-off did not seem to affect yields much, having little impact on bond market Some speculate that US sanctions prompted Russia to move out of Treasuries In recent days Russia has canceled production of its 5th generation fighter plane designed to compete with the F-35.  It also announced that the retirement age for receiving a pension was being raised to a level close to the lifespan of the average Russian.  They have cut back their troops in Syria and taken other steps to save money.  It is not surprising that they are liquidating other assets like US treasuries.

Silvio Cantu: ... We are watching three countries going in different economic directions: the U.S., Cuba, and Venezuela. It is a classic case of free markets versus socialism. Down in Cuba, the message has not changed over the years, as the new president reminded us: Cuba's economy grew less than expected in the first half of 2018 and an ongoing liquidity crisis will force fresh belt tightening, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday. He is proposing constitutional changes. However, Cuban perestroika won't work any better than the one we saw in the USSR. Venezuela is more than falling apart: "Venezuela could eventually have 1 million percent inflation." What does that inflation level mean? It means this: "Venezuela's currency has lost 99.9997 percent of its value in the past 6½ years. To put that in perspective, $333,333 worth of bolivars in 2012 would be worth $1 today." ... Meanwhile, in the US the government announced 4.1 perce...

Joel Kotkin: The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream For minorities in the Golden State, opportunity and upward mobility are hard to come by. ... Its political leaders and a credulous national media present California as the “woke” state, creating an economically just, post-racial reality. Yet in terms of opportunity, California is evolving into something more like apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil rights South. California simply does not measure up in delivering educational attainment, income growth, homeownership, and social mobility for traditionally disadvantaged minorities. All this bodes ill for a state already three-fifths non-white and trending further in that direction in the years ahead. In the past decade, the state has added 1.8 million Latinos, who will account by 2060 for almost half the state’s population. The black population has plateaued, while the number of white Californians is down some 700,000 over the past decade. ... Even as incomes soared in th...

Power Line: I confess that even after I boarded the Trump train–basically, when no alternative was left–I didn’t imagine that Trump would prove to be a foreign policy genius. But isn’t that what we are seeing? Improving our trade deals, finally doing something about North Korea, standing up to Putin’s Russia, pushing back against Chinese theft of intellectual property, exposing anti-Semitism and fecklessness in the U.N., getting more contributions from NATO allies–it’s been a heck of a year and a half! Then there is Iran. Barack Obama pursued a bizarre Iran policy, from the first days of his administration, when he went on Iranian television. His view, apparently, was that strained relations between the U.S. and Iran were mostly our fault–never mind that incident at the embassy that stretched on for more than a year–and really, the U.S. and the mullahs’ “Death to America” Iran are natural allies. So he tried to build Iran up as a regional power, supplying pallets of cash and ultim...

Dr. Ron Martinelli: Why California Is Becoming A Third World Country Fifty percent of all of their murders were gang and drug related, with the predominate gang members being illegal aliens. I can only wonder how Silicon Valley dotcomer’s who are paying over half a million bucks for a home and commute over four hours a day to San Jose like living in that violent environment? ... Literally nothing substantive is good about L.A. An ever-growing homeless subculture populates the downtown area. The intoxicated, drug influenced, mentally impaired and criminal are everywhere. They literally surround Civic Center, federal buildings and courts – the so-called foundations and protectors of the Rule of Law and society. How ironic to be surrounded by the failures these very systems, liberal politicians and judges have created. Isn’t karma interesting to watch in real time? The homeless numbering in the thousands sleep in the shadows of immense, gleaming edifices owned by multi-billion do...

Monica Showalter: Has anyone ever called the Chinese 'stupid'? Not those guys. So now they're reading President Trump, and unlike the childish Eurotrash of western Europe, they see a shrewd, wily, chess-playing, Sun Tzu-grade genius, who could easily checkmate them, and they've got a lot of reasons for thinking so. That's the report from a European policy-domo, who actually went to Beijing and asked the local leaders what they were seeing. The report that European Council of Foreign Relations President Mark Leonard gives, in the  Financial Times , is well worth the subscription or trial subscription to read it. Some of his thoughts from the piece can be read on  Instapundit , however. Here's a bit of what Glenn Reynolds posted: I have just spent a week in Beijing talking to officials and intellectuals, many of whom are awed by his skill as a strategist and tactician. . . . Few Chinese think that Mr Trump’s primary concern is to rebalance the bilater...

Daily Mail: Iran's currency is continuing its downward spiral as increased American sanctions loom, hitting a new low on the thriving black market exchange. On Sunday, the Iranian rial plunged to a low of 111,500 against one U.S. dollar on the unofficial market, down from about 97,500 rials on Saturday, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com. Other websites said the dollar was exchanged between 108,500 and 116,000 rials. The rial has lost about half of its value since April because of a weak economy, financial difficulties at local banks and heavy demand for dollars among Iranians who fear the effects of sanctions. In May the United States pulled out of a 2015 deal between world powers and Tehran under which international sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear program. ... On Aug. 7, the United States will reimpose sanctions on the purchase or acquisition of U.S. dollars by the Iranian government, Iran’s trade in gold and precious me...

Wall Street Journal: China Is Losing the Trade War With Trump It’s like a drinking contest: You harm yourself and hope your opponent isn’t able to withstand as much. One thing came through loud and clear in President Trump’s press conference Wednesday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. When they announced an alliance against third parties’ “unfair trading practices,” they didn’t even have to mention China by name for listeners to know who their target was. Cooperation between the U.S. and EU will squeeze China’s protectionist model, and even before this agreement, there’s been evidence that China is already running up the white flag. ... Their trade surplus alone put them at a disadvantage in the contest.  But the US has also honed in on China's unfair trade practices and others are joining in.

Washington Post: Trump escalates feud with media, accusing ‘unpatriotic’ journalists of putting the ‘lives of many’ in peril The president’s Twitter tirade came after the publisher of the New York Times disclosed that he had warned Trump recently that his inflammatory rhetoric about the media could lead to violence. It never seems to occur to many in the media that their own criticism of Republicans might be seen in the same light as the return fire they are getting from President Trump.  Since he began his campaign much of the media decided that his policies were too dangerous and that they did not have to treat him fairly.  That is not a healthy attitude and it leads directly to the challenges Trump dishes daily back at the media.   How many stories have we seen that accuse the President of putting lives in jeopardy from such nonsense as "net neutrality" to his dealings with adversaries like North Korea and Iran?  Yet here we are with no mass cas...

NY Times: As Economy Booms, Republicans Ignore It as They Campaign The new tax law was supposed to mobilize Republican voters and help the party keep the House, but candidates are rarely bragging to voters about the economy’s strength. I think the tax cuts are an easy sell for Republicans as is the opposition to high taxes and high regulations by Democrats who want to impose the evils of socialism on the country.  I think all of that should play out as the campaign heats up. It should also be noted that millennials have massive disinterest in 2018. "Only 28% of young adults say they are absolutely certain they will vote in the 2018 election compared to 74% of seniors."  Maybe it is because that group is finally finding jobs that will allow them to move out of their parents' home.

Howie Carr: Donald Trump is the greatest threat to human life since the Black Death. As anyone who watches CNN or MSNBC knows, his policies have already murdered millions, er, billions, no make that trillions of people. It must be true, I saw it on Facebook. Trump’s death toll is staggering. It’s one genocide after another — net neutrality, tax cuts, pulling out of the Paris “climate accords,” Brett Kavanaugh, the Muslim travel ban, ripping children from their mothers’ arms, etc., etc. Who knew that full employment, a roaring economy and the destruction of ISIS could lead to the premature deaths of tens of millions of Democrats? But that’s what they’re saying on social — or should I say anti-social — media. I just stumbled across a Twitter thread in which assorted moonbats are commiserating with one another over the assorted epidemics that have apparently devastated the non-working classes since Nov. 8, 2016. It’s amazing there’s anyone even left alive to cash their trust-f...

Austin American-Statesman: City report on Confederate monuments raises idea of renaming Austin I normally go out of the way to avoid insulting names, but this attempt to change the name of a city is divisive and not intelligent.  My suggestion to those in the city government who don't like the name of their city is to move to one they like the name of better.  Otherwise, get busy making the city more functional instead of the dysfunctional place it has become under their administration of it. Do something about the horrible traffic and the lack of adequate parking downtown.  We all have to learn to live with our history both the good and the bad.  We don't have to live with poor urban planning and failure to build the infrastructure needed for a city to properly function.

Washington Post: As Europe locks up returning ISIS fighters, are prisons becoming hotbeds of extremism? Across Europe, prisons are the latest battleground in the fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism. Officials are experimenting with reeducation programs, but it’s a race against time, as many of the inmates will be freed in less than two years. “Some of them,” one official said, “could be human bombs.” It is a mistake to house these people with the general prison population.  They become a spreading cancer recruiting more people to their evil ideology.  They should get the Super-max treatment or a firing squad.  They are irredeemable.

NY Times: Housing Finance Director, Mel Watt, Investigated for Sexual Harassment Mr. Watt, whose term expires in January, is in charge of overseeing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He said he did not break any laws. Watt is a Democrat appointed by Obama.  I suspect if he were a white Republican appointed by Trump that would be in the lead.  Sexual harassment can take various forms.  It should be more serious than just being a flirt.

Monica Showalter: Was John Podesta a Russian dupe?  At a minimum, he was a Russian dupe, based on information from a long, interesting article today titled "How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies," from  Politico magazine . Politico points out that the very firm that Podesta was involved with, Rusnano USA (via its Joule subsidiary), is the likely new vehicle for Russian spying these days, effectively replacing the now shuttered Russian consulate in San Francisco.  Politico  writes  (emphasis mine): But even with the consulate shuttered, there are alternative vehicles for Russian intelligence-gathering in Silicon Valley. One potential mechanism, said three former intelligence officials, is  Rusnano USA , the sole U.S. subsidiary of Rusnano, a Russian government-owned venture capital firm primarily focused on nanotechnology. Rusnano USA, which was founded in 2011, is located in Menlo Park, near Stanford University. "Some of the [potential ...

Conservative Tree House: Curious legal developments in the case against the former Director of Security for the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Wolfe, are beginning to become quite troublesome. In a noted bit of research timing, Jeff at MarketsWork [ SEE HERE ] and CTH are following the same curious trail. SEE HERE . First, we know from overwhelming circumstantial evidence, conveniently overlooked by media, that one of Wolfe’s specific leaks involved sending his concubine Ali Watkins a copy of the 82-page FISA application used to gain a Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. { Full Backstory Here } Some key things about this leak: It is highly likely there were no redactions in the copy Wolfe leaked to the media. It is highly likely Wolfe was caught in a leak hunt, and the copy given to him included a specific, and intentionally wrong, internal date using October 19th as the origination date for FISA application approval. (The actual date was Oct ...

Daily Caller: Someone like Donald Trump is almost incomprehensible to the polished Washingtonian marble buildings and cliquish button down power structure that governs the Beltway. Of course, his indefatigable Tweeting, inarticulate speechifying, obnoxious high school bravado and cheerleading are jarring for all but his most ardent supporters. But the real problem is he challenges the orthodoxy of a town that has become so ossified by the legal profession that process has become far more important than any outcome — the exact opposite of Americans’ self-image of can-do rugged individualism. In Washington, lawyers oppressively rule and any measurable outcomes are merely an inconsequential byproduct of a vast bureaucratic infrastructure, which has been built to perpetually churn out mountains of the most arcane analysis; justify, write, and then re-write mind numbing rules and regulations; as well as establish, codify and argue legal positions, all with no urgency or concern of cost,...

Thomas Lifson: Normally, suing police for failing to prevent crime is not allowed by courts.  But a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just allowed a lawsuit against the City of San Jose and its police department to proceed, despite this general presumption (called "qualified immunity") that police cannot be held responsible for failing to prevent crime. News media, both local and national, watched and recorded as San Jose police stood aside as people leaving a Trump rally in San Jose were heinously assaulted by anti-Trump thugs.  The  Washington Post  at the time (June 2016) reported: Protests outside a Donald Trump rally in downtown San Jose spun out of control Thursday night when some demonstrators attacked the candidate's supporters. Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs and stole "Make America Great" hats off supporters' heads before burning the hats and snapping s...

This is a clear explanation of what the trade dispute with China is all about and it encompasses a huge attempt by the Chinese state to dominate markets at home and in the U.  It points out the obvious unfairness of Chinese trade practices in ways that should be easily understood.  Apparently the Chinese see Dr. Navarro's study as pretty scary.

Fuel Fix: A backlog in permitting new LNG terminals at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has drawn the attention of two Texas Congressmen. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, and Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, have introduced legislation that would raise staff salaries at the commission to try and attract more of the engineers needed to review the permit applications. "Our energy can't be properly utilized sitting in storage instead of being shipped to markets that need it. We must address this fundamental backlog in a smart way," Olson said in a statement. The move follows a report by Bloomberg last week that FERC was experiencing 12 to 18 months delays in permit applications and was looking to hire outside contractors to help review a dozen projects waiting approval. Right now the United States has two operational LNG export terminals, on the Louisiana Gulf Coast and the Chesapeake Bay, with four more slated to open before 2020. Green said FERC's recruiti...

Tom Rogan: This Marine veteran deserves your remembrance today Fourteen years ago this Saturday, Lt. Col. David Greene of the U.S. Marine Corps was shot and killed as he flew his Cobra gunship in support of operations in Anbar province, Iraq. I didn't know Greene personally, but I was motivated to learn a little about him when President Trump recalled Greene's life at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. And I think you should know a little about Greene. ... And with Iraqi security force leaders in Anbar heavily targeted by AQI and other insurgents, it was up to the Marines to hold the line. That effort fell to Marine officers like Greene and his comrades from smaller elements of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Greene was central to these efforts. Piloting a Cobra gunship, Greene flew in combat support for Marines on the ground. Lacking the abundance of aerial drones that Marines rely on today, the Marines of Anbar 2004 relied on Greene and his fellow aviator...

IBD Editorial: As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. Well, so do bad governments. Recent revelations about the behavior of President Obama and his CIA director John Brennan in pushing the bogus Russian collusion investigation suggest that's been the case. The release of the FISA application by the FBI to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and President Trump's campaign and recent comments made by top officials are eye opening. Not only did President Obama know about the investigation, he seems to have pushed it from the very beginning. But don't take our word for it. Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper: "If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller...